Octavian's Gifts

The nature of the Augustan regime has been the subject of
controversy for almost two millennia. Here, Richard Alston uses
two coin-types to rethink the political slogans of 28 BCE at the
very start of the Augustan regime. He argues that even though
Octavian restored the Republic, the coins show him acting as a
monarch. The Augustan state came to depend on Augustus himself,
and the rights and freedoms enjoyed by the Roman people
were not theirs by nature of their citizenship, but were in the
gift of the Emperor.