Crawford 433/1

Moneyer: Marcus Junius Brutus, 54 BC

Denomination: Denarius

Obverse:  LIBERTAS Head of Libertas to right, wearing pendant earring and necklace. 

Reverse:  BRVTVS The consul Lucius Junius Brutus (Rome's first consul), preceded by an accensus, walking left between two lictors, each carrying fasces with an axe over his left shoulder.

Reference: Crawford 433/1

Mint: Rome

Weight:

Provenance: coll. Lottie und Mark Salton

Notes: 

This piece was struck by Brutus when he held the post of moneyer, ten years before the infamous assassination of Julius Caesar. The type, while illustrating his strong republican views, is also a record of his ancestry. It recalls the legendary expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome in 509 BC by Lucius Junius Brutus, Rome's first consul. At this time Brutus was known as Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, on account of his having been adopted by his uncle, Quintus Servilius Caepio. He later reverted to his birth name, though following Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Brutus revived his adoptive name in order to illustrate his links to another famous tyrannicide, Gaius Servilius Ahala, from whom he was also descended.

Marcus Junius Brutus, assassin of Caesar, Ides of March 44 BC, was the son of Marcus Junius Brutus and Julius Caesar’s former mistress, Servilia. By 59 BC he acquired the alternative name Quintus Caepio Brutus through adoption by his uncle, Quintus Servilius Caepio. Brought up by Portius Cato, he was educated in philosophy and oratory and long retained a fierce hatred of his natural father’s murderer Pompey. He began his political career in 58 by accompanying Cato to Cyprus. As triumvir monetalis in about 54 he issued coins illustrating his strong republican views with Libertas and portraits of his ancestors L. Junius Brutus --who overthrew Tarquinius Superbus (the last Etruscan king of Rome)-- and Servilius Ahala, the later 5th century tyrannicide (Crawford 433/1 and 2). In 53 he served in Cilicia as quaestor to Appius Claudius Pulcher, whose successor, Cicero, found that ‘the honourable Brutus’ was extracting 48 per cent interest on a loan to the city of Salamis in Cyprus, contrary to the lex Gabinia.

Brutus, the principled student, stoic and Platonist who wrote a number of philosophical treatises and poems, seems an unlikely tyrannicide, quite dissimilar to the vehement Cassius. Despite his hatred of Pompey, he followed him in the Civil War of 49 against Caesar, but after the former’s defeat at Pharsalus he sought and was granted Caesar’s pardon. He proceeded to enjoy Caesar’s favour and was appointed governor of Gaul in 46, praetor in 44 and consul designate for 41. Perhaps under the influence of his second wife Porcia, Cato’s daughter, Brutus joined the conspiracy against Caesar, becoming the leader alongside Cassius. The reaction of the populace in the aftermath of the Ides of March compelled Brutus to leave Rome in April 44.

The Senate’s resolution to declare him a ‘public enemy’ on 28 November 44 was soon repealed and in February 43 he was appointed governor of Crete, the Balkan provinces and later Asia. Suspecting the intentions of Antony and Octavian, Brutus went to Macedonia and won the loyalty of its governor, Hortensius, and there levied an army and seized much of the funds prepared by Caesar for his Parthian expedition. Successful against the Bessi in Thrace, he was hailed imperator by his troops, but after the establishment of the triumvirate in November 43 he was outlawed again and joined forces with Cassius at Sardes. In the summer of 42 they marched through Macedonia and in October met Octavian on the Via Egnatia just outside Philippi and won the first battle. Cassius, as his conservative coins show, remained true to the old republican cause, while Brutus followed the self-advertising line of Antony in the new age of unashamed political propaganda and struck coins displaying his own portrait. In the end it was with his Caesar-murdering dagger that Brutus committed suicide during the second battle at Philippi on 23 October 42 BC.

Collection : 16 Roman Republic