The kneeling Parthian on the reverse of this denarius is not a captive. He is handing back, with both arms outstretched, the legionary standards lost by Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BC and by Antony in 36 BC, and the small X on the vexillum marks the fictive legion to whom they are returned. Augustus had recovered the standards in 20 BC not by force but by patient diplomacy with Phraates IV, and his propagandists then spent the rest of the decade insisting that this was a triumph greater than any battlefield victory.
The radiate head of Sol on the obverse lifts the whole transaction into a cosmic register: a new sun rises over a Rome whose humiliation has been undone, and the East at last bows to the West. Romans had spent thirty years being told that the ghosts of Carrhae demanded vengeance. Augustus gave them paperwork instead, and convinced them it was glory.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- 19/8 BC
- Authority
- Augustus