DENARIUS OR AUREUS MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS
43 - 42 BC.
Obverse: head of Brutus with beard looking to the right , BRVT IMP L-PLAET-CEST.
Reverse: a felt cap (pileus) between two daggers, inscription EID-MAR below.
- Hand embossed
- Silver color
- Diameter 1,8cm
- Dating ca. 43-42 b.C.
- Material tin
The coins with the minting EID MAR were minted and issued by order of Marcus Junius Brutus. This, as everyone knows, went down in history as Caesar's assassin. The EID-MAR coin was available in the form of aurei or denarius. Both coins are extremely rare , with the aureus having only a few findings. This particular coin shows on the obverse the portrait of the Roman politician Brutus and on the reverse to the inscription EID-MAR , which stands for EIDIBUS MARTIIS ( to the Ides of March ), also the unmistakable symbols of freedom ( Pileus ) and the murder of Caesar (two Pugiones ). These two Roman daggers are representative of the Caesar murderers Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. The purpose of this coin was the self-portrayal of Brutus , as the savior of freedom and the Republic.
According to Hans-Joachim Gehrke "Römische Münzen", Frankfurt/Main 1990, accompanying booklet, p. 13.
"This is a coin of the Caesar murderer M. Iunius Brutus; his mint master is L. Plaetorius Cestianus. The beard (difficult to recognize on this coin) is a sign of mourning for the republic (Brutus grew a beard for this reason), already by this the coin betrays itself as anticaesarian-republican. This is even more true for the reverse: the daggers, together with the legend 'Eidibus = Idibus Martiis', point to the assassination of Caesar. How the murderers depicted this deed - and on what basis they boasted of it - is shown by the pileus in the center. It is the felt cap that a slave received as a sign of his release. Caesar's murderers thus freed Rome from a slavery-like oppression (the Latin term for this is dominatio), and such an oppression is - according to Greco-Roman conception - the oppression by a tyrant, the prime example of an illegitimate ruler. Caesar as tyrant, his murderers as tyrannicide - exactly this was the ideology of the conspirators, who wanted to let their deed shine thereby before the public in a particularly bright light."
