The two letters on the shield, CL V, are the whole point: *clipeus virtutis*, the golden shield of virtue voted to Augustus by the Senate in 27 BC and hung in the Curia Julia, inscribed with his four cardinal qualities of *virtus*, *clementia*, *iustitia*, and *pietas*. On this denarius from an uncertain Spanish mint around 19 BC, that shield is flanked by a legionary standard and an eagle, and the conjunction is not decorative. In 20 BC Augustus had recovered the legionary standards lost by Crassus to the Parthians at Carrhae, a humiliation a generation old that Roman poets had been instructed to feel as a national wound.
The coin yokes the diplomatic triumph in the East to the moral charter of the *princeps* at home: the man whose virtues the Senate had certified in gold was the same man who had brought the eagles back. The bare head on the obverse, no diadem, no laurel, simply Augustus, is the quiet half of the argument. He did not need to crown himself; the shield did the work.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- circa 19 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- with signum to left and aquila to right