Denarius - Augustus OB CIVES SERVAT

The oak wreath crown depicted on this reverse — the corona civica — was voted to Augustus by the Senate in 27 BC as a perpetual honor for "saving the lives of citizens," the same award traditionally given to a soldier who rescued a comrade in battle. Augustus displayed one above the door of his house on the Palatine, and the Senate ordered it reproduced on coinage, making this issue part of a decades-long propaganda program normalizing his constitutional fiction as first citizen rather than monarch. RIC I 102 is among the later emissions of this type, struck under the Lugdunum mint's authority during a period when Augustus was managing succession crises following the deaths of his grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar.