Excellent Quality for Issue

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 615. Estimate $2000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $2200. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Brutus. 42 BC. AR Denarius (3.86 g, 12h). Military mint with Brutus and Cassius in the East. L Sestius, pro-quaestor. L • SESTI • PRO Q •, veiled and draped bust of Libertas right, wearing pearl necklace / Q • CAEPIO BRVTVS PRO COS, tripod between axe to left and simpulum to right. Crawford 502/2; CRI 201; Sydenham 1290; Kestner 3772; BMCRR East 41-45; RSC 11. EF, toned, reverse struck slightly off center. Excellent silver quality for issue.

Ex Numismatic Fine Arts XXXIII (3 May 1994), lot 395.

This coinage was issued for an army under the command of L. Sestius Quirinalis, son of a Pompeian commander, who joined forces with the tyrannicides. After the downfall of Brutus, Sestius was pardoned by Octavian and later became a consul (23 BC). Sestius is also known as the dedicatee of one of Horace's odes (Carmina 1.4). Sestius and Horace both served under Brutus (Horace as a tribunus militum), and it may be during this service together that their friendship developed.