While Caesar placed his portrait on silver coins during his lifetime, his portrait gold aurei are all posthumous, struck in the years following his infamous assassination on March 15, 44 BC. A Hirtius-type Caesar aureus in VF condition, with a few flaws, can be had for $5,000 or less examples in Superb condition have brought north of $30,000 at auction. As with all Roman coins, condition is key to price. These coins were struck in such huge numbers that they are still fairly common today, so if one is not fixated on obtaining an actual portrait of Caesar, a gold coin in his name can be easily obtained. The coins depict a rather mysterious veiled female head on the obverse, possibly the hearth goddess Vesta on the reverse are the symbols of the Pontifex Maximus, a title Caesar also held. Since each of Ceasar’s triumphing soldiers was paid 5,000 denarii, this was likely paid out in the form of 200 aurei per man. First struck by the Dictator Sulla in circa 83 BC, but issued only sporadically and in small numbers thereafter, the gold aureus, so named for aurum, the Latin word for gold, weighed about eight grams and was valued 25 silver denarii. The first truly large Roman coinage in gold was struck by Caesar in 46 BC, the year he staged a magnificent triumphal parade in Rome to celebrate his decade-long conquest of Gaul and the hard-fought victories over his political enemies. He was also utterly unscrupulous and willing to lay waste to centuries worth of Republican tradition to establish himself as the uncontested ruler of Rome, which he achieved between 49 and 45 BC. He quickly grew into a young man of remarkable intelligence, military genius, and immense charm. The first of the Twelve Caesars was born to an aristocratic but fairly impoverished family, the Julii, in 100 BC. From Classical Numismatic Group Triton XXIV (2021), 983. Aureus, August 43 BC, military mint travelling with Octavian in Italy. All the gold aurei pictured in this article are featured Classical Numismatic Group’s Triton XXIV auction, set for January 19-20 2021 in Lancaster, PA, USA. The main source book used here is The Roman Aurei by Xavier Calicó. It is not in any way comprehensive, but a quick survey of the emperors, the available coin types, and their prices. Here, then, is a rough guide to assembling a highly coveted Golden Set of the Twelve Caesars. So, what could be more natural for a collector to desire to assemble a set of Rome’s first Twelve Caesars in the most powerful coin of the realm? His book has never been “out of print” in nearly 1,900 years. The period between 49 BC and AD 96 also witnessed the reigns of the Twelve Caesars, a dozen strongmen whose lives and personalities were immortalized by the gossipy Roman biographer Suetonius in the second century AD, creating timeless archetypes for tyranny, wisdom, megalomania, and a host of other human qualities and foibles. For not only did Rome finish conquering the Mediterranean world and transition to a form of government that would endure for the next five centuries, it also introduced a coin that would come to symbolize wealth in the ancient world: the gold aureus. The 150 years straddling the turn of the first century BC to AD can accurately be called the Golden Age of the Roman Empire.
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