The trophy on the reverse of this denarius, struck at Emerita around the time the city was founded, is no generic pile of captured arms: that is a Celtiberian helmet flanked by a native dagger and a *bipennis*, the double-headed axe of the tribes of northern Iberia. Augustus had taken the field in person in 26 BC against the Cantabri and Astures, the last unconquered peoples of the peninsula, and the war went badly enough that he fell ill at Tarraco and handed operations to his legates. Emerita Augusta, modern Mérida, was founded in 25 BC to settle the *eméritī*, the time-served veterans of that ugly mountain campaign, and this coin was struck in their new colony with their new emperor's bare head on the obverse and the spoils of their enemies on the reverse.
The conquest the coin advertises was not in fact complete: Cantabrian resistance flared again and was not finally crushed until Agrippa returned in 19 BC. For the veterans paid in this silver, the helmet on the reverse was the helmet of a man one of them had probably killed.
- Mint
- Emerita
- Struck
- circa 25-23 BC
- Authority
- Augustus