Ancient Rome - 27 BCE Augustus AR Denarius NGC Choice VF

Strike 5/5; Surface 4/5. Excellent opportunity to acquire a coin from the reign of Augustus. Obverse presents Augustus facing right within a beaded border, with 'CAESAR' to his left within the border. Reverse features a bull standing right, facing out. 'AUGUSTUS' is above him. Pergamum mint. This piece has rich golden brown patina on both sides.

The Arch of Augustus in Rimini (Ariminum), dedicated to Augustus by the Roman Senate in 27 BC, the oldest surviving Roman triumphal arch.

The bull played a significant role during the reign of Augustus. There is historical evidence that temples and priests of Augustus were in Italian municipalities before CE 14. On the altars there are representations of various sacrificial apparatus and an attendant who carries an axe and leads a bull, the typical sacrifice to the emperor. In Augustus' Forum the only divinities honored were Mars Ultor and the genius of the ruler. Mars Ultor was not only the god who avenged the death of Julius Caesar. For as the father of Romulus, he was also the patriarch of the house of Julian, as the goddess Venus was the matriarch of the same. It is important that the creature regularly sacrificed both to Mars and the emperor's genius was a bull. 

Scholarly examination of sacrificial scenes in Greco-Roman art shows that the bull is the most frequent victim. Historian Lily Ross Taylor writes, "A civic crown and laurel branches on the altar indicate a connection with an emperor, and the sacrificial scene in which a bull ...  is the victim shows that the emperor was living and that accordingly the offering was made to his genius .... The altar from Pompeii showing imperial emblems and the sacrifice of a bull, the regular victim offered to the genius, indicates the existence of an official municipal cult of the genius over which the priests of Augustus in Pompeii must have presided."