One of only three known examples of the “Eid Mar” aureus, celebrating the “liberation” of Rome after the bloody assassination of the dictator Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44BC is up for sale again at Numismatica Ars Classica auction taking a place on May 30, 2022.
The present aureus has been known since at least 1932, when it was offered to the British Museum by Oscar Ravel, but the deleterious economic effects of the Great Depression and the recent end of the gold standard in Great Britain prevented its purchase by the museum at that time.
In 1953, Herbert Cahn discussed the coin in his presentation of “The Aureus of Brutus with EID MAR” at the Paris International Numismatic Congress. He also included it (Cahn 24a) in the corpus of 52 EID MAR coins published in Quaderni ticinesi in 1989 although Michael Crawford had questioned its authenticity in Roman Republican Coinage (1975). In the intervening years, any doubts have faded and even Michael Crawford confirmed its authenticity. The coin has been publicly displayed at the British Museum in the main gallery from 2010 to 2021.
The aureus comes to the block with an estimate of SFr750,000 (about 780,000 USD).
