A denarius without a single letter of legend is already telling you something: by 19 or 18 BC, Augustus felt no need to spell things out. RIC I 313, struck at Rome, places the head of Honos on the obverse, the personification of public honor itself, and on the reverse a slow ceremonial quadriga whose car is shaped like a modius and holds a single flower. This is the iconography of the *tensa* and the triumphal procession compressed into silver, the kind of car that carried sacred objects through the streets at the *ludi*, here loaded not with a god's image but with the quieter symbolism of harvest and grain measure.
The moneyer's name, which would once have dominated such a piece, has vanished; what remains is a vocabulary of civic virtue and ritual that any Roman could read at a glance. Augustus had closed the temple of Janus, settled with Parthia over the standards in 20 BC, and was now governing through a language of restored religion and quiet honors rather than swords. A coin that does not need to shout is the surest sign that the argument has already been won.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- circa 19-18 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- shows a slow quadriga moving right with a modius-shaped car containing a flower