The shield on the reverse of this denarius is not a soldier's kit but a constitutional document. Struck at an uncertain Spanish mint around 19 to 18 BC, RIC I 42a shows the bare head of Augustus on the obverse and on the reverse the *clipeus virtutis*, the golden shield voted to him by the Senate in 27 BC and hung in the Curia Julia, here abbreviated to its essential text: SPQR has awarded CL V, the Shield of Virtue, to the man on the other side of the coin. The original shield, as the *Res Gestae* would later boast, was inscribed for *virtus, clementia, iustitia,* and *pietas*, the four cardinal qualities by which Augustus wished to be measured, and the same settlement that produced it produced the name Augustus itself and the careful fiction of the restored Republic.
By the time these denarii were struck, more than a decade into the new order, the shield had become shorthand for the whole bargain: the Senate gives the honors, the *princeps* accepts them, and the silver carries the receipt to every garrison and market town from the Ebro to the Euphrates. It is propaganda of the quietest and most effective kind, a coin that lets the Senate appear to be doing the talking.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- 19-18 BC
- Authority
- Augustus