As - Augustus P CARISIVS LEG AVGVSTI

Publius Carisius served as Augustus's legate in Hispania during the Cantabrian Wars, and these provincial bronzes were struck at Emerita Augusta — the colony he founded in 25 BC to settle veteran soldiers from those campaigns. The city itself, modern Mérida, takes its name from those veterans: *emeriti*. That Carisius named himself on the coinage as *legatus Augusti* rather than acting under his own authority was a pointed demonstration of the new Augustan order, where even a general's money bore the emperor's name first.