$63.79
$126.3
Description Roman Imperatorial (Late Republic). Julius Caesar AR (Silver) denarius. Military mint traveling with Caesar in North Africa; struck ca. 48-47 BC. VF; great eye appeal for the grade. Design: Diademed head of Venus (Aeneas's mother and therefore Caesar's purported ancestor) right / Scene from Book Two of Virgil's Aeneid / the Fall of Troy: Aeneas (on left) carrying his father Anchises on his shoulder and holding the palladium (statue of Athena) while fleeing Troy; CAESAR to right Reference: Crawford 458/1. Sydenham 1013. Dimensions: 18 mm / 3.83 gm Condition: VF; pleasant light surfaces. Julius Caesar Julius Caesar became so synonymous with power, success, and empire that his name became a byword for “ruler” across millennia. In Roman history, the title of Caesar became a standard epithet for every successive emperor, and his name’s power lasted into the 20th century, where the official title of the Russian emperor was “Tsar” and the German emperor “Kaiser,” both derived from the Roman dictator who lived twenty centuries before. There was, however, a time when Caesar was merely the name of another Roman aristocrat looking to survive in the rough-and-tumble world of late Republican politics. Caesar’s early years were spent in relative obscurity. He himself was so distraught by age 30 that he lamented to a friend, “at my age, Alexander had conquered the world; I have done nothing remarkable.” Still, there were signs of the great man to come. When captured by pirates in the Mediterranean, Plutarch reports that “when the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty talents [of silver], Caesar burst out laughing. They did not know, he said, who it was that they had captured, and he volunteered to pay fifty.” He also repeatedly explained, in a matter-of-fact tone, how he would return and crucify them all. Caesar indeed returned to do just that some years later. His first big political break was his election as pontifex maximus in 64 BC, and Caesar also skillfully maneuvered himself to become the informal face of the popular, non-aristocratic party, the populares. Owing mostly to the latter fact, Pompey and Crassus decided to include him in the First Triumvirate, an alliance of convenience between the three most powerful men in Rome to dominate the state, still nominally a Republic. Eager to escape Rome, Caesar appointed himself military governor of Gaul, which allowed him to campaign in Gaul and Germany for eight years, conquering many tribes and nearly all modern France for Rome. This great saga was immortalized by Caesar’s own firsthand account of the campaigns, De Bello Gallico (On the Gallic Wars), told in a straightforward and endearingly self-promoting style. But Pompey, surrounded by aristocratic senators who despised the populist Caesar, began to grow suspicious of his long-term intentions and ordered him back to Rome, without his army, to stand trial. Caesar refused, famously crossing the Rubicon River with his army, an action that meant civil war, in 49 BC, exclaiming “the die is cast.” His armies met Pompey’s in Greece at Pharsalus a year later, where Caesar emerged victorious. He pardoned most of Pompey’s supporters, including Marcus Brutus. Caesar spent the next few years mopping up opposition and even had time for a brief romance with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. In Rome, he appointed himself dictator and reorganized the calendar, increased the grain dole to the poor, and instituted other popular reforms. Nevertheless, his assumption of total power in what was nominally still a republic – particularly the title dictator perpetuo (dictator for life) in January of 44 BC were deeply odious to traditional Roman aristocratic values. Caesar became the first Roman leader to strike coins with his own portrait during his lifetime in January of 44 BC, accompanied by his title of dictator for life. Marcus Brutus, joined by a cabal of disaffected senators, many of whom Caesar had personally pardoned for their previous opposition to him, conspired to assassinate Caesar in the Senate House on the Ides of March, 44 BC. The assassination has gone down as one of the most famous events in human history, with his likely fictional final words, “Et tu, Brute” (Even you, Brutus) immortalized by William Shakespeare. Caesar’s murder was avenged by his right-hand-man Mark Antony and his stepson Octavian (later Augustus), who hunted down Caesar’s murderers and defeated them in battle at Philippi two years later.
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