ROMAN. Brutus. Spring to early summer 42 BC. Silver Denarius (3.73g, 12h). Military mint travelling with Brutus and Cassius in the East. L. Sestius, proquaestor. Veiled and draped bust of Libertas right; L SESTI PRO Q around / Tripod; securis to left, simpulum to right, Q CAEPIOBRVTVS PRO COS around. Crawford 502/2; CRI 201; RSC 11; Sydenham 1290; Kestner 3772; BMCRR East 41-5; RBW 1768. Sharply struck, nicely toned and very well preserved, a very attractive example overall and certainly one of the finest known for the type. EF. This usually rough and hasty coinage was struck for the army of L. Sestius Quirinalis, the son of a Pompeian officer who later cast his lot with the assassins of Caesar. After the defeat of Brutus, Sestius managed the delicate task of securing Octavian's pardon and, remarkably, rose high enough to serve as consul in 23 BC. He is not just a name on a coin, as he also lives on in literature as the man to whom Horace addressed one of his odes, giving this issue a direct link to both the battlefield and the world of Augustan poetry. The other protagonist behind this type, Marcus Junius Brutus, followed a career that in many respects paralleled that of his fellow conspirator Cassius. A pardoned Pompeian, he enjoyed special favour from Caesar, who appointed him governor of Cisalpine Gaul in 46 BC and urban praetor two years later. Despite these honours, Brutus became one of the ringleaders in Caesar's assassination and, after the deed, fled Rome. Rejecting the province legally assigned to him, he instead seized control of Greece, where he assembled troops and raised money until the Senate retroactively legalised his actions in February 43 BC by granting him the command of Illyria, Macedonia and Achaea. Although allied with Cassius, he campaigned separately in order to maximise revenues for the Republican cause until the two finally combined forces in the summer of 42 BC for the fatal confrontation with Antony and Octavian at Philippi, where defeat drove Brutus to take his own life. This denarius, which employs his adoptive name Q. Caepio Brutus and styles him proconsul, thus encapsulates the complex alliance between Brutus and Sestius and serves as a direct contemporary witness to the desperate last phase of the Republican resistance. For the most comparable example in both type and condition to the present coin, see Triton XX, lot 559, hammered USD 7,000. From the Titan Collection; previously from the David Allan Collection, acquired from Noble Numismatics Sale 48 (11-13 Jul 1995), lot 2998. (P)

Estimate: AUD 2500