Augustus and his grandchildren

[Marsman]

I know, it's a common denarius from emperor Augustus, but I simply love this youthful portrait of the man and the history behind this coin. Very much welcome in my collection after the Flavian coins I purchased lately.

As always very interested in additional information about the type.

Cheers.

[Noah]

An important and notorious coin that is definitely worthy of COTD!  BTW, you have some remarkable Flavian specimens in your Forvm gallery.

Best, Noah

[Jochen]

The portrait is beautiful, indeed!

Best regards

[Potator II]

The perfect example of an idealized portrait

Congrats
Potator

[Arminius]

Nice coin!

By the way: I can´t remember having seen a portrait of an old or ugly Augustus (except those unskilled lowgrade by-products called "moneyer-coins" from the Roman mint - but that´s a different story).

Like Oscar Wilde´s Dorian Gray he never ages and is always idealized.

But where is his hidden real picture?

[slokind]

Suetonius doesn't mince words. 
There is no doubt that his 'portraits' are neo-Attic ideals.
Pat L.

[ancientdave]

Nice coin!

By the way: I can´t remember having seen a portrait of an old or ugly Augustus (except those unskilled lowgrade by-products called "moneyer-coins" from the Roman mint - but that´s a different story).

Like Oscar Wilde´s Dorian Gray he never ages and is always idealized.

But where is his hidden real picture?

In an old article I once read in the ANA publication "Selections from The Numismatist - Ancient & Medieval Coins (1960)" it was suggested that this coin, in the authors opinion, gave us the most believable portrait of Augustus, who was still known as Octavian when it was minted, with him receiving the title of "Augustus" the year after it's issue. Since I have this example in my collection and love it dearly, I am of course fond of this idea.

[ecoli]

Oh not too bad Pat

He was unusually handsome and exceedingly graceful at all periods of his life, though he cared nothing for personal adornment. He was so far from being particular about the dressing of his hair, that he would have several barbers working in a hurry at the same time, and as for his beard he now had it clipped and now shaved, while at the very same time he would either be reading or writing something. His expression, whether in conversation or when he was silent, was so calm and mild, that one of the leading men of the Gallic provinces admitted to his countrymen that it had softened his heart, and kept him from carrying out his design of pushing the emperor over a cliff, when he had been allowed to approach him under the pretence of a conference, as he was crossing the Alps. He had clear, bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of divine power, and it greatly pleased him, whenever he looked keenly at anyone, if he let his face fall as if before the radiance of the sun; but in his old age he could not see very well with his left eye. His teeth were wide apart, small, and ill-kept; his hair was slightly curly and inclining to golden; his eyebrows met. His ears were of moderate size, and his nose projected a little at the top and then bent slightly inward. His complexion was between dark and fair. He was short of stature (although Julius Marathus, his freedman and keeper of his records, says that he was five feet and nine inches in height [Roman measure, a little less than five feet seven inches American measure]), but this was concealed by the fine proportion and symmetry of his figure, and was noticeable only by comparison with some taller person standing beside him.

[Marsman]

I found an interesting article on the world wide web about ancient portraits. This is part of a chapter about roman emperors becoming older:

'Among portraits of Roman emperors, it is exceptional because it was never updated to show Augustus’s increasing age. In fact, because of the lack of signs of age and its serene expression, modern scholars have labeled it Classical in reference to ideal images created in 5th-century Greece and have compared it to Polykleitos’s Doryphoros. The subsequent emperors of the Julio-Claudian family followed the path set by Augustus. They maintained likenesses that are recognizable as individuals but that avoid signs of old age. No portrait of Livia, Augustus’s wife, was ever issued showing her as an old woman; the same holds true for the emperor Tiberius. The first official portrait type of Claudius, which was created when he was 51, featured only modest signs of age. The last portrait type of Nero diverges most greatly from all other images of the family in that it shows a particularly fat young man with a fanciful, modish hairstyle and an upturned glance. All three of these characteristics—ample physique, long hair, and a lofty gaze—appear to derive from the portraits of Hellenistic kings. The first Flavian emperor, Vespasian, was already 60 when he came to power. His official portrait type stands in contrast to that of Nero in that it shows an old man whose signs of age—for instance, the toothless mouth and crow’s-feet around the eyes—are emphasized. His image is frequently interpreted as a conscious return to the republican past and veristic sculpture, which was adopted in order to separate him from the failures of Nero, the last classicizing Julio-Claudian. The stylistic definition of this type of image, however, is modern, and in Antiquity it was the content of the portrait that was important. Rather than a young, spoiled, fashionable, and perhaps regal man, Vespasian appeared to be old, experienced, hardworking, and traditional. The portraits of his young or middleaged sons and successors, Titus and Domitian, do not strikingly differ from their Julio-Claudian predecessors (with the exception of the last portrait type of Nero)'.