Hard currency
Ancient Rome could be a brutal place. Indeed, Caesar’s assassin even advertised his crime with a celebratory coin, says Frank L. Holt

Et tu, Brute?
When this denarius was struck in northern Greece in late summer or early autumn 42 BC, Marcus Junius Brutus was so well known that an entire family legacy could be conjured in just four letters: BRVT. Brutus’ family were known as noble defenders of Roman independence, and he very proud of this legacy
The mugshot
Reminiscent of a police ID photo, Brutus’ picture is in fact a gesture of prestige – even vanity. While being able to mint coins is a sign of high status, having your portrait on the coins you issued was very bad form in Republican Rome. The action, citizens might argue, of a future despot
Paying the price
These few letters testify to the ongoing political crisis after Caesar’s death. L.PLAET.CEST is the shortened form of Lucius Plaetorius Cestianus, quartermaster under Brutus. He was responsible for paying Brutus’ army – sorely needed, as Mark Antony and Octavian mustered forces against him
In the Senate, with a dagger…
This is no game of Cluedo: the murder weapon is as clearly identified as the location. Indeed, the dagger formed another part of Brutus’ symbolic inheritance, for his ancestor Gaius Servilius Ahala had done his bit of tyrant-slaying with a concealed dagger. Certainly Brutus saw no reason at all to be ashamed of his bloody deed
Memorial to murder
EID.MAR stands for eidibus martiis, ‘the Ides of March’ – a date so famous it needs no introduction. But that Brutus chose to identify the day of his victim Caesar’s death, further demonstrates his overwhelming sense of the justice of his cause: 15 March should not just be known, but commemorated
To cap it all
In the centre of the coin is a pileus, a cap associated with former slaves. To Roman citizens who handled Brutus’ coin issue, the implication would have been crystal clear: under Caesar they were slaves; his murder gave them freedom
Think of the thousands of lofty ideals commemorated on coins of the world: Liberty! Justice! Charity! Unity! Peace! Equality! Murder? This last might seem out of place to us, but not to the ancient Romans. Their money celebrated a long list of public virtues from aequitas (‘fairness’) to virtus (‘courage’), but with a killer coin among them that shamelessly praised the merits of political assassination. Imagine a coin issued by John Wilkes Booth with the pistol that he fired at President Lincoln’s head depicted on one side. Yet, in 42 BC, Marcus Junius Brutus did indeed commission a special denarius – one of which is offered by Bruun Rasmussen in an online sale on 15 March – to memorialise his role in the murder of Julius Caesar. To understand why, we must use that coin to get inside the mind of an assassin.
Skilfully compressed on the two sides of a small silver coin, we find the murderer’s full confession – bearing his name, ‘mugshot’, means, motive, and even the date of his victim’s death. On the obverse of this coin, the killer announces himself quite boldly. He is so well known that his name has been abbreviated simply as ‘BRVT’ for Brutus. He proudly hails from two of Rome’s most patriotic families, with ancestral heroes in both his father’s and mother’s lineage. Lest anyone overlook that legacy, Brutus made a habit of celebrating it on coins. First, as a minor magistrate in about 54 BC, he issued state currency honouring the virtues of libertas (‘liberty’) and its greatest champion, his ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus. This man was famous for ridding the Romans of a tyrannical king named Tarquin the Arrogant back in 509 BC. That liberation had allowed a grateful population to found their new Republic. The original Brutus was forthright and courageous in his defence of freedom, but he was neither well-educated nor refined, as his name attests: brutus refers to someone dull and dim-witted, whence our word ‘brute’. Nevertheless, the Romans erected a bronze statue showing this simple hero waving a sword in his hand. Another coin commemorated the courageous actions of Brutus’ maternal forefather Gaius Servilius Ahala, who saved the young Republic in 439 BC by slaying a dangerous would-be tyrant. This noble assassin used a dagger he had concealed under his arm, hence the name his family carried down through history: ahala means ‘armpit’ in Latin. These hallowed family traditions of stopping tyrants in their tracks were never far from the mind or the money of Brutus. He very deliberately followed in the footsteps of his famous forebears by taking the lead in Caesar’s assassination – and then he minted a killer coin to prove it.

Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), dictator of Rome from 49 BC
Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), dictator of Rome from 49 BC

Caesar betrayed – the assassination at the Senate, 15 March 44 BC. Copyright: ALAMY
Caesar betrayed – the assassination at the Senate, 15 March 44 BC. Copyright: ALAMY
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On that coin of 42 BC, Brutus celebrates himself in name, title and image. His portrait reminds us of Caesar’s remark, recorded by Plutarch, that fattened, long-haired companions are far safer than the lean and hungry kind. The face on Brutus’ coin does appear gaunt, with wide eyes, sunken cheeks and a frail neck. This killer was a thinker, not a mere thug. In fact, compatriots admired him as a skilled orator and philosopher. Yet, like most Roman aristocrats, he craved recognition as a man of action. To that end, his portrait looks on the stamp of his authority, the title IMP(erator) that signifies his success as a battlefield commander. Proud though he was of this achievement, Brutus would be pained to know that the term imperator would come to mean ‘emperor’ after the fall of the Republic he was trying to save.
That is not the only irony on this side of the coin. It was one thing to picture distant ancestors on Roman currency, as he had done earlier, but quite another to portray himself. The display of a living man’s portrait on Roman money had long been anathema to Republican sentiment: it was a foreign practice that smacked of royal pomp and despotism. Caesar’s self-serving image on Roman currency had been one of the loudest alarms to startle men like Brutus into opposition. Yet, just a few years later, Brutus indulges his own vanity on this denarius.
The other name on the obverse of this coin identifies the quartermaster (quaestor) assigned to accompany Brutus on military campaign: L(ucius) PLAET(orius) CEST(ianus). He is a low-level official, whose imprint on the coin attests to his responsibility for the payment of Brutus’ troops while on the march. Armed and ready, they have rallied to Brutus to fight those still loyal to Caesar, men such as Mark Antony and Octavian, who have vowed to avenge the fallen dictator. Brutus killed for his principles, but his soldiers preferred killing for cash. To satisfy both, these coins combine good spendable silver with a message of political justice.
The image of a distinctive cap called a pileus occupies the centre of the reverse. This simple object sends an unmistakable message. Unadorned and fashioned from cheap felt, such caps were worn by former slaves in Rome. Every soldier serving under Brutus saw its significance, for this freedman’s cap symbolised the motive for Caesar’s murder and justified the current civil war. Declaring himself Dictator for Life, the tyrannical Caesar had enslaved the Roman state. The two daggers illustrate the brutal but necessary means taken by Brutus and others to liberate their Republic. Below these images, Brutus has immortalised the very day of the event: EID(ibus) MAR(tiis), ‘the Ides of March’. All coins have a history, but not all history has a coin: 15 March 44 BC is the rare exception, thanks to this extraordinary mintage of Brutus. It commemorates a day worthy in his mind of the examples set for him by Gaius Servilius Ahala and Lucius Junius Brutus. Assassins brood about such things. Is it mere irony that the father of Lincoln’s killer was named Junius Brutus Booth?
In the end, Brutus lost the war and took his own life. A new Caesar replaced the dead one and became Rome’s first true emperor: Caesar Augustus. Even as new Roman coins heralded this turning point in world history, here and there, dwindling in number with each passing year, a few aging specimens still bearing Brutus’ last message survived the melting pot. The Roman historian Cassius Dio saw one of them in the 3rd century AD. He described it in his History of Rome: “Brutus stamped upon coins his own likeness and a cap with two daggers, indicating by this design and by the inscription [EID MAR] the liberation of Rome.” Dio’s remark adds to the rarity of this mintage, for ancient sources seldom mention a particular coin as being so historic.
Today, Brutus’ EID MAR coin may be the only signed confession of a political assassin that collectors could hope to own. It is an important historical document, immortalised in metal. Little wonder that, in 2008, numismatic connoisseurs voted this the greatest of all ancient coins.
Frank L. Holt is an archaeologist and author.

Evening falls at the Coliseum, shadows lengthening on the ancient Roman idyll
Evening falls at the Coliseum, shadows lengthening on the ancient Roman idyll
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