The standards were home, and Augustus wanted everyone holding a coin to know it. This denarius, struck around 19 BC at an uncertain Spanish mint (RIC I 69a), shows on its reverse a small round temple, tetrastyle and perched on a three-stepped podium, with Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger, standing inside clutching an aquila and a signum. The legend MAR VLT names him plainly. The reference is to one of the great diplomatic theatres of the Augustan age: the recovery in 20 BC of the legionary eagles lost by Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BC and by Antony's lieutenants in the 30s, prised at last from the Parthians not by force but by negotiation.
Augustus had promised Mars a temple in return for vengeance back at Philippi, and although the great Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus would not be dedicated until 2 BC, the regime was not waiting that long to advertise the settlement. The little round shrine on the coin is almost certainly a provisional structure on the Capitoline, built to house the recovered standards in the meantime. To a Roman who remembered Carrhae, and many still did, this was the closing of a thirty-three year wound, performed without a battle and stamped onto the silver in everyone's purse.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- Struck circa 19 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- temple of Mars Ultor, round-domed tetrastyle structure with acroteria set on podium of three steps; Mars standing left within, holding aquila and signum