[Image]

            Click on the image for an enlargement (about 150kb)

            The famous Eid Mar denarius of Marcus Junius Brutus

     Ex Leo Benz collection of Roman Republican coins, auction 88, lot
                                   803,
            Numismatik Lanz München, 12 Nov 1998, est DM50,000


...from CNG website, www.historicalcoins.com...



(Hammered down at 120,000DM plus 15% buyers fee.)

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Subject: Re: [Moneta-L] Eid Mar (Different Topic)
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 09:54:29 +0100 (BST)
From: "T.V. Buttrey" < t i v b 1 @hermes.cam.ac.uk>
To: Grzegorz Kryszczuk < h i v e 2 @home.com>
CC: Moneta-L@egroups.com 

Some thoughts.  (1) The EID MAR coin is one of the very few Roman issues
actually referred to in an ancient text, Dio Cassius 47.25.3: "In addition
to these activities [fooling around in northern Greece in 42 BC] Brutus
stamped upon the coins which were being minted his own likeness and a cap
and two daggers, indicating by this and by the inscription [EID MAR] that
he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland."
  [a] Dio wrote in the late 2nd /early 3rd cent. AD, so obviously
used others as sources.  He may be right or wrong, but he clearly
believed that the coin was a symbol of eleutheria/LIBERTAS, not of
suppression of the Republic.  He also gives Brutus and Cassius equal
credit (which Brutus himself didn't always), which is nicely
suggested by the coin: there are several reverse dies, on all of which the
two daggers differ.
  [b] Where Dio clearly didn't get the point is seen in his casual
reference to Brutus' portrait on the coin.  Dio was familiar with the
imperial coinages of a couple of centuries; in 42 BC Brutus' coin portrait
was astonishing, and might well have raised questions as to his
intentions, since thitherto [a word I hardly ever get the opportunity to
use] there was only Caesar's brash innovation, and then the portraits of
the Second Triumvirate guys.  However you read Brutus, this is striking --
even more so on the aureus where he pairs his portrait with that of his
(putative) ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, the greatest hero of the
Republic.  -- Note that Cassius never portrayed himself on his own
coinage.

(2)  As to IMP, the title is certainly a problem with Caesar.  In ordinary
Republican usage it ought to mean "acclaimed as victorious general", and
the acclamation, by the troops and/or the Senate, meant the right to
conduct a Triumphal parade in Rome, the greatest of all military honors.
Caesar had 5 such, and ought to have labelled himself something like
IMPERATOR QUINTO.  But on some of the denarii of 44 BC he is CAESAR IMP.
This has long been worried over.  It can hardly be military in sense.  My
own guess is that it has nothing to do specifically with the military, but
reflects his assumption in 44 BC of the totally unconstitutional title
DICTATOR PERPETUO, and means something like "Permanent Possessor of the
Imperium [i.e. both military and civil]".
    You then find Antony as ANTONIUS IMP, following Caesar's murder, I
think necessarily meaning "I am Caesar's successor as the head of state"
-- not DICTATOR, because that title was by now discredited. There was
certainly no military victory against non-Romans (those were the rules)
which could have justified Antony's assumption of the title IMPERATOR.
But skip ahead a few years, and you get his coins with a military trophy
and ANTONIUS IMPERATOR TERTIO -- purely Republican.  I think what happened
was that Antony's claim to be Caesar's successor (and in Caesar's own
terms) was so thoroughly undermined by Octavian, Caesar's civil heir, and
by clever manipulations the political heir, that he reverted to a
pseudo-Republican stance to set against Octavian's plainly dynastic
direction.
    This was then spoiled by his alliance with Cleopatra, but that's
another story.

(3) Back to Brutus as IMP.  With Caesar as antecedent you could argue that
Brutus was claiming the same power (and the same as Antony's claim).  But
I can't believe that.  Insensitive he was, and not very smart, but to
claim the supreme power -- and that means over all his colleagues in the
tyrannicide, who never gave any indication that they saw him in these
terms -- is so totally unrealistic: he was, in law, a provincial governor
at the time.  Here too we have Dio, in the passage just preceding the one
cited above, 47.25.2: "he invaded the country of the Bessi, in the hope
that he might at one and the same time punish them for the mischief they
were doing and invest himself with the title and dignity of IMPERATOR..."
   Again, you can accept Dio or not, but he doesn't seem to be bothered by
the title here, and actually gives it a sensible Republican context (again
note the rules: you couldn't claim the title in civil war, in fighting
fellow-citizens: so you go out and find some non-Romans to massacre, then
claim the title which was indeed particularly prestigious [strike fear
into the hearts of your enemies, though they didn't seem much impressed by
it: see Philippi]).  To me Brutus' coin, types and title are no more
sinister than that.

Ted Buttrey
http://www.bitsofhistory.com/moneta-l.html