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Brutus minted this coin after my assassination — the 'EID MAR' aureus, commemorating the Ides of March. He put two daggers on it, and a cap of liberty. He was announcing that he had freed Rome from a tyrant.

I would put a different interpretation on the two daggers. They stood for two consuls, Brutus and Cassius, who led the conspiracy. Within three years, both were dead. Cassius killed himself after Philippi. Brutus, surrounded on a hill, ran on his own sword.

The cap of liberty is the most interesting part. Liberty for whom? Not the slaves. Not the people in the provinces I had governed with some care. Liberty for the senatorial class who had spent a generation squabbling over who controlled the Republic. I had crossed the Rubicon because I refused to be handed to them defenceless. Their coin tells one version of the story. Mine tells another.