Own a piece of history with this Marcus Junius Brutus Historical new Roman Denar. This coin depicts the iconic image of the infamous Roman senator who played a pivotal role in the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. This museums denar is in excellent condition and is a must-have for any collector of historical memorabilia. Add it to your collection today.

Historical new Denar 16 mm 3.7 g bronze

Marcus Junius Brutus (/ˈbruːtəs/; Latin pronunciation: [ˈmaːrkʊs juːniʊs ˈbruːtʊs]; c. 85 BC – 23 October 42 BC) was a Roman politician, orator,[2] and the most famous of the assassins of Julius Caesar. After being adopted by a relative, he used the name Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, which was retained as his legal name. He is often referred to simply as Brutus.

Early in his political career, Brutus opposed Pompey,[4] who was responsible for Brutus' father's death.[5] He also was close to Caesar. However, Caesar's attempts to evade accountability in the law courts put him at greater odds with his opponents in the Roman elite and the senate.[6] Brutus eventually came to oppose Caesar and sided with Pompey against Caesar's forces during the ensuing civil war (49–45 BC). Pompey was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48, after which Brutus surrendered to Caesar, who granted him amnesty.

With Caesar's increasingly monarchical and autocratic behaviour after the civil war, several senators who later called themselves liberatores (Liberators), plotted to assassinate him. Brutus took a leading role in the assassination, which was carried out successfully on the Ides of March (15 March) of 44 BC.[8][9] In a settlement between the liberatores and the Caesarians, an amnesty was granted to the assassins while Caesar's acts were upheld for two years.[10]

Popular unrest forced Brutus and his brother-in-law, fellow assassin Gaius Cassius Longinus, to leave Rome in April 44.[11] After a complex political realignment, Octavian – Caesar's adoptive son – made himself consul and, with his colleague, passed a law retroactively making Brutus and the other conspirators murderers.[12] This led to a second civil war, in which Mark Antony and Octavian fought the liberatores led by Brutus and Cassius. The Caesarians decisively defeated the outnumbered armies of Brutus and Cassius at the two battles at Philippi in October 42.[13] After the defeat, Brutus took his own life.

His name has been condemned for betrayal of his friend and benefactor Caesar, and is perhaps only rivalled in this regard by the name of Judas Iscariot (famously in Dante's Inferno).[15] He also has been praised in various narratives, both ancient and modern, as a virtuous and committed republican who fought – however futilely – for freedom and against tyranny.

The ancient sources embellish the Ides with omens ignored, soothsayers spurned, and notes to Caesar spilling the conspiracy unread, all contributing to the dramatic and tragic propagandic stories of Caesar's death.[83] The specific implementation of the conspiracy had Trebonius detain Antony – then serving as co-consul with Caesar – outside the senate house; Caesar was then stabbed to death almost immediately.[84] The specific details of the assassination vary between authors: Nicolaus of Damascus reports some eighty conspirators, Appian only listed fifteen, the number of wounds on Caesar ranges from twenty-three to thirty-five.

Plutarch reports that Caesar yielded to the attack after seeing Brutus' participation; Dio reported that Caesar shouted in Greek kai su teknon ("You too, child?").[86] Suetonius' account, however, also cites Lucius Cornelius Balbus, a friend of Caesar's, as saying that the dictator fell in silence,[87] with the possibility that Caesar spoke kai su teknon as a postscript.[88] As dramatic death quotes were a staple of Roman literature, the historicity of the quote is unclear. The use of kai su, however, indicates the possibility of a curse, per classicists James Russell and Jeffrey Tatum.

Immediately after Caesar's death, senators fled the chaos. None attempted to aid Caesar or to move his body. Cicero reported that Caesar fell at the foot of the statue of Pompey.[90] His body was only moved after night fell, carried home to Caesar's wife Calpurnia.[90] The conspirators travelled to the Capitoline hill; Caesar's deputy in the dictatorship, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, moved a legion of troops from the Tiber Island into the city and surrounded the forum.[91] Suetonius reports that Brutus and Cassius initially planned to seize Caesar's property and revoke his decrees, but stalled out of fear of Lepidus and Antony.

Before Lepidus' troops arrived to the forum, Brutus spoke before the people in a contio. The text of that speech is lost. Dio says the liberatores promoted their support of democracy and liberty and told the people not to expect harm; Appian says the liberatores merely congratulated each other and recommended the recall of Sextus Pompey and the tribunes Caesar had recently deposed.[92] The support of the people was tepid, even though other speeches followed supporting the tyrannicide. Publius Cornelius Dolabella, who was to become consul in a few days on the 18th, decided immediately to assume the consulship illegally, expressed his support of Brutus and Cassius before the people, and joined the liberatores on the Capitoline.

Cicero urged the tyrannicides to call a meeting of the senate to gather its support; but instead Brutus sent a delegation to the Caesarians, asking for a negotiated settlement. This may have been due to family connections: Lepidus was married to one of Brutus' sisters; or perhaps Brutus believed that Antony could be won over.[93] The Caesarians delayed for a day, moving troops and gathering weapons and supplies for a possible conflict.

After Caesar's death, Dio reports a series of prodigies and miraculous occurrences which are "self-evidently fantastic" and likely fictitious.[94] Some of the supposed prodigies did in fact occur, but were actually unrelated to Caesar's death: Cicero's statue was knocked over but only in the next year, Mt Etna in Sicily did erupt but not contemporaneously, a comet was seen in the sky but only months later.[94]