Aureus - Augustus AVGVSTVS

This issue dates to the period immediately surrounding the Secular Games of 17 BC, a ritualized festival revived by Augustus after a gap of over a century to signal the dawn of a new age for Rome. The games were organized in part by the commission overseeing the mint, and the coinage of 18–17 BC reflects a deliberate propagandistic program tied directly to that moment — Augustus was reshaping not just the state but the calendar of Roman memory itself.

RIC I 125 is attributed to the Colonia Patricia mint in Spain, one of the traveling military mints that followed Augustan campaigns before being consolidated under tighter imperial control in the following decade.