Aureus - Augustus S P Q R

The 18 BC date places this aureus squarely within Augustus's sweeping moral and constitutional reforms — the same year he pushed through the controversial *lex Iulia de adulteriis* and *lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus*, legislation that reorganized Roman family law and, not incidentally, reinforced his own authority through an apparatus of civic virtue. The SPQR formula on coinage of this period was politically loaded: Augustus was careful to present his power as delegated by the Senate and Roman people rather than seized, and the mint output of these years reflects that calculated constitutional fiction.