Aureus - Augustus IMP CAES TRAIAN AVG GER DAC P P REST

This is a "restitution" issue — a coin struck not to commemorate a contemporary event but to reproduce a type from a previous reign. Trajan issued a substantial series of these under the REST legend, reviving Augustan imagery as a deliberate political statement: he was positioning himself as the heir to Rome's first and most legitimizing emperor. The gesture was calculated. Augustus had been dead for over eighty years.

RIC II 819 places this among the gold restitution pieces, a subset far less commonly encountered than the bronze equivalents in the same series.