Aureus - Augustus IMP XII ACT, Apollo

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.