BRUTUS SILVER DENARIUS – SAVIORS OF THE REPUBLIC ANCESTORS ISSUE – XF NGC GRADED ROMAN IMPERATORIAL COIN (Inv. 18944)

$1,800.00

18944. ROMAN IMPERATORIAL. M. JUNIUS BRUTUS, d. 42 BC.
Silver Denarius, 3.60 g, 19 mm. Issue of Rome, struck by Brutus while he served as moneyer, 54 BC.
Obv. BRVTVS, head of L. Junius Brutus right. Rev. AHALA, head of C. Servilius Ahala right.
Crawford, 433/2; Sydenham, 907.
NGC graded XF, Strike 4/5, Surface 4/5, superb portraits.

The coins of M. Junius Brutus struck in 54 BC regularly refer to his famous ancestor, L. Junius Brutus, who became a celebrated figure in Rome for his expulsion of L. Tarquinius Superbus, the last Etruscan king of Rome in 509 BC. In the new era of freedom from kings that followed, Brutus established a republican form of government in which supreme authority was granted to two annually elected officials called consuls, of which Brutus was one. When M. Junius Brutus was not advertising his connection to this homonymous forebear, he was noting his descent on his mother’s side from C. Servilius Ahala, an early Republican magistrate responsible for killing another politician who aspired to kingship. The anti-monarchical and strongly republican flavor of M. Junius Brutus’s coinage reflects his deeply held personal convictions and seems to telegraph his later role in the murder of Julius Caesar, a would-be Roman king, on the Ides of March 44 BC.