Apollo on the reverse of this Lugdunum denarius is not just any Apollo. The exergue ACT names him: Apollo of Actium, the god whose promontory shrine looked down on the sea where Octavian broke Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC. Two decades on, in 10 BC, Augustus was still minting the memory, now from the great new western mint at Lugdunum that was steadily taking over silver production for the western provinces. The god stands in his civilian guise, Apollo Citharoedus, lyre and plectrum in hand, the patron of music and prophecy rather than the archer who fights battles. That was the point.
Augustus had spent the years since Actium rebuilding his victory as something other than a victory: not a Roman general crushing other Romans in a civil war, but Apollo restoring harmony to the world, with his temple on the Palatine (dedicated 28 BC) standing next door to the princeps's own house. The laureate head on the obverse, stripped of legend on this variant, lets the image do the arguing. By 10 BC Augustus no longer needed to name himself on his own coin. Everyone knew whose face this was, and everyone knew which god had chosen him.
- Mint
- Lugdunum
- Struck
- 10 BC
- Authority
- Augustus