Aureus - Octavian CAESAR DIVI F, Victory

Struck in the three-year window bracketing Actium, this aureus belongs to the mobile military mint issues that traveled with Octavian's forces — not a product of Rome proper. The CAESAR DIVI F legend was politically loaded: claiming divine descent from Julius Caesar while the senate had not yet conferred the title Augustus, which came only in 27 BC. Octavian was building legitimacy coin by coin, literally paying his legions with his own propaganda.

RIC I 260 is attributed to an uncertain mint, possibly Brundisium or a traveling camp mint, a distinction that has shifted across successive scholarship.