While the other two specimens are being kept in museums, a third specimen has appeared recently. On account of its enormous historical importance and enhanced by its virtual unobtainability to all but the most fortunate of collectors, this coin type like no other has inspired great admiration, fascination, disbelief and desire in the hearts of historians, numismatists and collectors. Anecdotal comments have long suggested the extent of the surviving population of EID MAR denarii could approximate as many as a hundred specimens – a reasonably high figure for what is considered to be an extreme rarity – and Campana’s as yet unpublished “Die Study” indeed identifies 88 examples (at last count) in silver (of which at least 34 are now in institutional collections) and 3 in gold. Cahn’s 1989 study entitled “Eidibus Martiis” noted 56 examples in silver and 2 in gold. Arguably no other type is more sought after by connoisseurs.

coins in his military mint travelling with him in the East. Brutus, his former supporter and one of the instigators in late summer or autumn 42 B.C. Eid MarĪfter Caesar’s death the political situation became instable and precarious. Offered by Roma Numismatics in Auction XX on 29 October 2020 and estimated at £500,000. Near mint state and highly lustrous the usual die breaks, minor surface marks, light red-brown calcite deposits on obverse and reverse. Military mint travelling with Brutus in the East, late summer-autumn, 42 BC. On 15 March, 44 BC (the Ides of March), in a room adjoining the east portico of the Theatre of Pompey, Caesar was stabbed twenty three times by the gang of Senators numbering over thirty and perhaps as many as sixty, men that Caesar called his friends, and of whom many had been pardoned by him on the battlefield and now owed their ranks and offices to him. By these and other affronts to the traditional values and institutions of the Republic did Caesar seal his fate. Just before, by a special decree of the Senate, Caesar had been made dictator perpetuo – dictator in perpetuity – and granted the extraordinary and unprecedented honour of striking coins bearing his own likeness, thus breaking the ancient taboo of placing the image of a living Roman upon a coin. Julius Caesar was murdered in the Senate.

Brutus ides of march