Acting “Republican” under Augustus

Abstract

A long-standing republican institution, the mint at Rome, had been inactive for two decades before Augustus revived it. The precious metal coinage it produced from 19 BCE has been understood as a symbol of the tension between the ambition of individual Roman aristocrats and the ideological program of the Augustan principate. C. Antistius Vetus and C. Antistius Reginus are regarded as the last moneyers to pursue traditional strategies of gentilician promotion. Through an examination of their coin types, this chapter challenges scholarly views of the relationship between “republican” and “Augustan” image making. Rather than treating these modes as a binary, it considers the ways in which images of Augustus could serve “republican” ends and how aristocratic self-interest could give rise to “Augustan” images.