One is reminded of a gold crown, left, issued by Oliver Cromwell, the great English Republican, in 1658, which bears the legend Pax Quaeritur Bello – 'Peace is sought through War'.
This side of the coin, then, stands both as a celebration of freedom and as a warning to others who would upset the established Republican government. This abbreviates Idus Martiae – the Ides (15th) of March – the date on which the murder took place. And if this were not enough to remind the Roman citizen of the recent bloodshed, then the legend EID MAR is stamped beneath the emblems. It is flanked by two daggers, the weapons used to kill Caesar. The reverse side shows a pileus, the cap worn by recently freed slaves that had become a more general symbol of liberty. Brutus left Italy a few months after the murder, and this coin was minted while he was campaigning in the East.
Marcus Junius Brutus, whose face appears on the obverse side, was one of several conspirators who stabbed this powerful general and statesman to death during a meeting of the Roman Senate. This coin, so remarkable even in antiquity that it was mentioned by the Roman historian Dio Cassius (150–235 CE), commemorates the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. 'Brutus stamped, upon the coins which were being minted, his own likeness and a cap and two daggers indicating by this and by the inscription that he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland.'
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