AUGUSTUS, a name bestowed upon Octavianus in B.C. 27, by the senate and the Roman people. It was a word used in connection with religion, and designated a person as sacred and worthy of worship; hence the Greek writers translate it by Σεβαστός. It was adopted by all succeeding emperors, as if descended, either by birth or adoption, from the first emperor of the Roman world. The name of _Augusta_ was frequently bestowed upon females of the imperial family; but _Augustus_ belonged exclusively to the reigning emperor till towards the end of the second century of the Christian aera, when M. Aurelius and L. Verus both received this surname. From this time we frequently find two or even a greater number of _Augusti_. From the time of Probus the title became _perpetuus Augustus_, and from Philippus or Claudius Gothicus _semper Augustus_, the latter of which titles was borne by the so-called Roman emperors in Germany. [CAESAR.] AULAEUM. [SIPARIUM.] AURĔUS. [AURUM.] AURĪGA. [CIRCUS.] [Illustration: Aureus Nummus. (British Museum.)] AURUM (χρυσός), gold. Gold was scarce in Greece. The chief places from which the Greeks procured their gold were India, Arabia, Armenia, Colchis, and Troas. It was found mixed with the sands of the Pactolus and other rivers. Almost the only method of purifying gold, known to the ancients, seems to have been that of grinding and then roasting it, and by this process they succeeded in getting it very pure. This is what we are to understand by the phrase χρυσίον ἄπεφθον in Thucydides, and by the word _obrussa_ in Pliny. The art of gilding was known to the Greeks from the earliest times of which we have any information. The time when gold was first coined at Athens is very uncertain, but on the whole it appears most probable that gold money was not coined there, or in Greece Proper generally, till the time of Alexander the Great, if we except a solitary issue of debased gold at Athens in B.C. 407. But from a very early period the Asiatic nations, and the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands, as well as Sicily and Cyrene, possessed a gold coinage, which was more or less current in Greece. Herodotus says that the Lydians were the first who coined gold, and the stater of Croesus appears to have been the earliest gold coin known to the Greeks. The Daric was a Persian coin. Staters of Cyzicus and Phocaea had a considerable currency in Greece. There was a gold coinage in Samos as early as the time of Polycrates. The islands of Siphnos and Thasos, which possessed gold mines, appear to have had a gold coinage at an early period. The Macedonian gold coinage came into circulation in Greece in the time of Philip, and continued in use till the subjection of Greece to the Romans. [DARICUS; STATER.] The standard gold coin of Rome was the _aureus nummus_, or _denarius aureus_, which, according to Pliny, was first coined 62 years after the first silver coinage [ARGENTUM], that is, in the year 207 B.C.