[This shows a] silver denarius issued by Brutus to commemorate the assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC. It was worth four bronze sesterces at a time when the normal wage for an unskilled laborer was three sesterces. (Matthew 20:2 speaks of laborers in the vineyard earning one denarius per day.) On the reverse, there is the cap of liberty (pileus), flanked by two daggers and the legend EID MAR (Idus Martiae). On the obverse is a portrait of Brutus, himself, and the legend BRVT IMP L PLAET CEST (Brutus Imperator, L. Plaetorius Cestianus, the moneyer who minted the coin). It is one of the very few coins to be described in the ancient literature. Cassius Dio (XLVII.25.3) relates that "...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." Only fifty-five examples are known to exist; in 1994, one sold at auction for $123,500. During the Republic, a living person could not be represented on official coinage, although as moneyer in 54 BC Brutus did show his own purported ancestor, who had expelled the last of the Tarquin kings and proclaimed a new republic in 509 BC. Minting money for an anticipated campaign in Parthia, Caesar was the first to portray himself on a Roman coin. To republicans such as Brutus, the portrait of Caesar, who had been declared dictatus perpetuus in February, was further evidence of his aspiration for kingship. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Brutus, the self-proclaimed savior of Roman liberty, would put his own effigy on such a coin and declare himself Imperator. ---from Encyclopedia Romana