BRUTUS SILVER DENARIUS – LIBERTAS AND LICTORS ISSUE OF 54 BC EX 19 CENTURY COLLECTION OF THE BERLIN SURGEON – VF ROMAN IMPERATORIAL COIN (Inv. 18831)

$1,800.00

FPL V, 54 (18831). ROMAN IMPERATORIAL. M. JUNIUS BRUTUS, d. 42 BC.
Silver denarius, 4.00 g, 20 mm. Issue of Rome, struck by Brutus while he served as moneyer, 54 BC.
Obv. LIBERTAS, head of Libertas right. Rev. BRVTVS, procession of L. Junius Brutus, consul of 509 BC, and lictors.
Crawford 433/1; Sydenham 906.
Ex Southern Collector; ex Berlin Surgeon, Hirsch 279, lot 2108, “acquired before 1895.”
VF.

Although this coin was struck years before M. Junius Brutus made the fateful decision to become one of the liberators of Rome by striking down Julius Caesar in 44 BC, it is somewhat uncanny how the types advertise the motive behind one of the most famous murders in ancient history. However, when Brutus chose the types for his denarii, he was actually trying to connect himself to the greatness of his famous ancestor rather than plotting the future. Both obverse and reverse types refer to L. Junius Brutus, who was responsible for expelling L. Tarquinius Superbus, the last Etruscan king of Rome from the city and inaugurating a new era of liberty for the Romans. This new freedom from the haughtiness of kings is illustrated by the personification of Libertas on the obverse. Following the overthrow of the Etruscan kingship in 509 BC, L. Junius Brutus established a new republican form of government in which supreme authority was granted to two annually elected officials called consuls, of which Brutus was one. He is shown on the reverse of this coin in procession flanked by lictors carrying the fasces (bundles of rods and axes symbolic of the consuls’ power of corporal and capital punishment) emblematic of the consular office.