Die Münzprägung unter Kaiser Augustus – Einblicke in eine
Umbruchszeit zwischen später Republik und früher Kaiserzeit
by
Bernhard Weisser
Thanks Joe. It's a pretty light article, with no new research, summarising how most people would view the coinage of Octavian/Augustus, but it is coincidental considering an on-list comment I made yesterday that summarised my views on the silver coinage of
Augustus:
Consider as a parallel Octavian / Augustus. His first decade after 44BC was limited to sporadic poorly made issues as triumvir. Then he produced a magnificent, complex and artistic series of themed coins on very large flans between 33 and 27BC. Then he produced nothing for a decade. Then, from 19BC, he allowed Republican-style moneyers to produce interesting coinage that seemed pretty independent of central government for another decade. And finally for the last 20 years of his reign, output was limited to some dreadfully boring and large volume silver issues (but some very nice bronzes). Take any one of his five decades in power, and you'd see a series of unpredictable switches from sublime to monotonous to complex and back again. I'm sure none of these reflected his own wishes, unless he had schizonumismatic tendencies.Weisser's article seems to give the much same views, but spread over five pages. Half of
his article is on the coins of 33-27BC (he dates them 31-27 but I think they started earlier) which are evidently the most interesting of the 50 years. He ignores those of the pseudo-Republican
moneyers between 19 and 12BC, perhaps because he didn't consider them as reflecting on Augustus' power, but, in a way, their absence of references to the supreme power is in fact a reflection of the relative modesty of
Augustus as compared say with Pompey, Antony or
Caesar. And the last two decades of
his reign, as I'd indicated above,
had little numismatic interest, treated by Weisser in a couple of paragraphs about a couple of coin
types.
In relation to the comment on the
Domitian thread (what magnificent coins might we have expected,
had Domitian or
Probus lived longer??), it would have perhaps been far better for
Rome had Augustus died before 12BC;
Agrippa would have taken over, and we would have no
Julio-Claudian succession line, but perhaps something that looked a lot more
Republican, and, assuming continuity of coinage, with
Republican style coinage too. We numismatists would however have missed the wonderful dynastic
sestertii of the first century BC, perhaps among the most beautiful coins ever minted.