Aureus - Mark Antony ANT·AVG III·VIR·R·P·C / LEG IV

These aurei were struck at a mobile mint traveling with Antony's forces as he prepared for the confrontation that would end at Actium in 31 BC. The legionary series — of which this is the aureus companion to the far more common silver denarii — funded what was arguably the largest military mobilization in the late Republic, with Antony fielding somewhere around 500 warships and 19 legions. Legio IV had a long Republican pedigree and served Antony through the Parthian campaigns of 36 BC before being present at his final defeat.

The aureus denomination made these far less practical as soldier pay than the denarii struck from the same dies, and surviving examples are genuinely rare.