A rare and ancient gold coin that morbidly celebrates the stabbing death of Julius Caesar was returned to Greek authorities this week by New York investigators who determined it had been looted and fraudulently put up for auction in 2020.
The coin, known as “Eid Mar” and valued at $4.2 million, depicts the face of Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar’s former friend and ally who, along with other Roman senators, murdered on the Ides of March in 44 BC. According to historians and experts, Brutus had the gold and silver coins minted to applaud Caesar’s fall and to pay his soldiers during the civil war that followed the murder.
The return took place Tuesday in a ceremony attended by officials from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and cooperating U.S. Homeland Security Investigations on the case.
The piece, one of 29 items returned to Greek authorities, was given away earlier this year by an unidentified American billionaire who investigators believe purchased it in good faith in 2020. The British dealer who helped organize the sale was arrested in Januaryand the piece itself was recovered in February, officials said.
Experts said the coin, minted two years after Caesar’s death, was about the size of a nickel and weighed about 8 grams, and was one of only three coins known to be in circulation . A silver version of the coin was also minted and there are approximately 100 copies in existence. These can sell for between $200,000 and $400,000.
“The Eid Mar is an undisputed masterpiece of ancient coinage,” Mark Salzberg, president of Numismatic Guaranty Corp., which has verified the coin but does not research provenances, said in a 2020 statement.
Experts said they believe the coin was likely discovered more than a decade ago in an area of present-day Greece where Brutus and his civil war ally, Gaius Cassius Longinus, camped with their army.
The front, or obverse, of the coin features an engraved side view of Brutus and the Latin letters “BRVT IMP” and “L PLAET CEST.” Experts say the first means “Brutus, Imperator”, imperator referring not to the emperor but to the commander. The latter represents Lucius Plaetorius Cestianus, who was a treasurer of sorts to Brutus and oversaw the minting and analysis of his coins.
The reverse features two daggers on either side of a hood called pileus. The daggers represent Brutus and Cassius and reflect the manner in which Caesar died, experts say, while the cap is a symbol of freedom worn by freed slaves. Overall, the image is intended to celebrate the murder as an act by which Rome was freed from Caesar’s tyranny. Beneath the symbols is the Latin inscription “EID MAR,” denoting the Ides of March – March 15, 44 BC – the fateful day when the conspirators left Caesar dead on the floor of the Roman Senate.
Historians see the irony in the fact that Brutus, who had berated Caesar before the murder for the self-aggrandizing act of putting his face on Roman currency, ended up doing the same with his own coins .
Ultimately, the forces favoring the dead Caesar, led by Mark Antony and others, defeated Brutus and his men in October 42 BC at the Second Battle of Philippi, and Brutus and Cassius committed suicide.
According to investigators, the coin arrived on the market between 2013 and 2014. Richard Beale, 38, director of the London auction house Roma Numismatics, put it up for sale on his company’s website and bought for several years. at coin shows in the United States and Europe before its sale in October 2020. The $4.2 million was the highest amount ever paid for an ancient coin, according to the Numismatic Guaranty Corp.
Mr. Beale is charged with first-degree grand larceny and several other crimes and has been released on his own recognizance. His attorney, Henry E. Mazurek, declined to comment on the case.
Other Greek antiquities repatriated Tuesday included figurines of people and animals; marble, silver, bronze and clay vessels; and gold and bronze jewelry. Their total value was estimated at $20 million.
In a speech at the ceremony, Konstantinos Konstantinou, Greece’s consul general in New York, said his country had been hit hard by the illicit trade in antiquities and was seeking to recover them “by any means possible.” “.
He praised investigators for “hitting illegal international criminal networks whose activity distorts the identity of peoples, cutting archaeological finds from their context and transforming them from evidence of peoples’ history into mere works of ‘art “.