The shield on the reverse is the point. In 27 BC the Senate had voted Octavian, newly rebranded as Augustus, a golden shield to be hung in the Curia Julia, inscribed with the four virtues that supposedly justified his unprecedented position: virtus, clementia, iustitia, pietas. This denarius, struck in Spain a few years later as Augustus campaigned in the northwest and reorganized the provinces, miniaturizes that shield and puts Victory herself behind it, wings spread, holding the *clipeus virtutis* aloft for everyone handling silver to see. SPQR claims the gesture is the Senate's; CL V (clipeus virtutis) names the object; the bare head on the obverse, stripped of diadem or wreath, insists this is still a citizen among citizens.
It is propaganda of a specific and clever kind, not the bombast of a king but the quieter assertion that the Republic itself had decided Augustus was its best man, and had the engraved gold to prove it. The original shield is long lost. The denarii survive by the thousand, which is rather the point: the marble Curia decayed, but every paymaster in Hispania carried the Senate's verdict in his purse.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- circa 20-19 BC
- Authority
- Augustus