Roma Numismatics Ltd
Auction XXIII 24-25 Mar 2022
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Q. Servilius Caepio (M. Junius) Brutus AR Denarius. Military mint travelling with Brutus and Cassius in western Asia Minor or northern Greece, late summer-autumn 42 BC. L. Plaetorius Cestianus, moneyer. Laureate, veiled and draped female bust to right, wearing polos on top of head; L•PLAET•CEST behind / Sacrificial axe and simpulum; BRVT•IMP below. Crawford 508/2; CRI 214; BMCRR East 66-67; RSC 2. 3.77g, 20mm, 12h.
Good Extremely Fine; beautiful old cabinet tone. Rare and among the finest specimens known in private hands.
This coin published in Richard Schaefer's Roman Republican Die Project (RRDP), binder 13, p. 110, available online at: http://numismatics.org/archives/ark:/53695/schaefer.rrdp.b13#schaefer.rrdp.b13_0163;
Ex Leu Numismatik AG, Auction 72, 12 May 1998, lot 399;
Ex V. J. E. Ryan Collection Part V, Glendining & Co. Ltd, 2 April 1952, lot 1887;
Ex M. P. Vautier & Prof. M. Collignon Collection, Naville & Cie., Auction II, 12-14 June 1922, lot 32.
This type, no less rare in fact than the famed EID MAR denarius bearing the portrait of Brutus, was also struck in the last days or weeks before the fateful and titanic clash of armies and ideologies at the Battle of Philippi on 3 and 23 October 42 BC. Despite being outshone in demand by the aforementioned most iconic of Roman coins, this beautiful and simple type is an excellent example of what may be accurately described as the final issue of Republican coins in the truest sense, before the Roman world passed forever from the hands of the Senate and People and into those of autocrats.
The brutal and bloody assassination had been prompted by the well-founded belief among the Senate that Caesar intended to make himself king, which in truth he was already in all but name. By special decree of the Senate Caesar had been made dictator perpetuo - dictator in perpetuity - and granted the extraordinary and unprecedented honour of striking coins bearing his own likeness, thus breaking the ancient taboo of placing the image of a living Roman upon a coin. By these and other affronts to the traditional values and institutions of the Republic did Caesar seal his fate. On 15 March, 44 BC, in a room adjoining the east portico of the Theatre of Pompey, Caesar was stabbed twenty three times by the gang of Senators numbering over thirty and perhaps as many as sixty, men that Caesar called his friends, and of whom many had been pardoned by him on the battlefield and now owed their ranks and offices to him, chief amongst them Brutus and Cassius.
Good Extremely Fine; beautiful old cabinet tone. Rare and among the finest specimens known in private hands.
This coin published in Richard Schaefer's Roman Republican Die Project (RRDP), binder 13, p. 110, available online at: http://numismatics.org/archives/ark:/53695/schaefer.rrdp.b13#schaefer.rrdp.b13_0163;
Ex Leu Numismatik AG, Auction 72, 12 May 1998, lot 399;
Ex V. J. E. Ryan Collection Part V, Glendining & Co. Ltd, 2 April 1952, lot 1887;
Ex M. P. Vautier & Prof. M. Collignon Collection, Naville & Cie., Auction II, 12-14 June 1922, lot 32.
This type, no less rare in fact than the famed EID MAR denarius bearing the portrait of Brutus, was also struck in the last days or weeks before the fateful and titanic clash of armies and ideologies at the Battle of Philippi on 3 and 23 October 42 BC. Despite being outshone in demand by the aforementioned most iconic of Roman coins, this beautiful and simple type is an excellent example of what may be accurately described as the final issue of Republican coins in the truest sense, before the Roman world passed forever from the hands of the Senate and People and into those of autocrats.
The brutal and bloody assassination had been prompted by the well-founded belief among the Senate that Caesar intended to make himself king, which in truth he was already in all but name. By special decree of the Senate Caesar had been made dictator perpetuo - dictator in perpetuity - and granted the extraordinary and unprecedented honour of striking coins bearing his own likeness, thus breaking the ancient taboo of placing the image of a living Roman upon a coin. By these and other affronts to the traditional values and institutions of the Republic did Caesar seal his fate. On 15 March, 44 BC, in a room adjoining the east portico of the Theatre of Pompey, Caesar was stabbed twenty three times by the gang of Senators numbering over thirty and perhaps as many as sixty, men that Caesar called his friends, and of whom many had been pardoned by him on the battlefield and now owed their ranks and offices to him, chief amongst them Brutus and Cassius.