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Aureus - Augustus IMP XII ACT, Apollo
| Issuer | Roman Imperial Mint |
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| Year | 11 BC - 10 BC |
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| Value | 1 Aureus = 25 Denarii |
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| Obverse description | Bare head of Augustus facing right, rendered with fine naturalistic detail characteristic of Augustan court portraiture, showing closely cropped layered hair with characteristic comma-shaped locks above the forehead. The portrait is set within a beaded border and occupies the full field. The legend AVGVSTVS DIVI F is distributed around the periphery, reading from lower left and continuing clockwise around the portrait. |
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| Reverse description | Apollo standing left in full figure, holding a plectrum in his extended right hand and a kithara (lyre) cradled in his left arm, the instrument depicted with careful detail. The deity is shown in a classical contrapposto pose. The abbreviated legend IMP XII ACT is distributed in the field around the figure, referencing Augustus's twelfth imperatorial acclamation and the victory at Actium, emphasizing the ideological link between Apollo as the divine patron of the Actian victory and Augustus's authority. |
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Issued in the years immediately following the Secular Games of 17 BC, this aureus belongs to a period when Augustus was consolidating religious and political authority through Apollo, whose temple on the Palatine he had dedicated in 28 BC — built, according to ancient sources, on the site where lightning struck his own house. The IMP XII tribunician dating places it firmly in the aftermath of campaigns on the Danube frontier under Tiberius and Drusus, at a moment when Augustan coinage was functioning as active propaganda for a renewed Roman order under divine patronage.
RIC I 179 is relatively scarce in well-provenanced form, with many examples surfacing from older European collections rather than documented hoards.