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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 2719655, member: 76194&quot;]At the end of 2015 I did a write-up on the following coin:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]615646[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>It is an M. Junius Silanus denarius minted circa 145 BCE.</p><p><br /></p><p>At the time I hypothesized that the ass head behind Roma had something to do with the family name Brutus, a pun of sorts:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>*The Juni Sillani were a distant offshoot of the family of the famous Brutus who expelled the kings from Rome and founded the Republic.</p><p><br /></p><p>And to further make the write-up interesting, I provided a write-up on the man behind the coin: See thread here:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/mysteries-of-the-m-junius-silanus-denarius-145-bce-revealed.271125/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/mysteries-of-the-m-junius-silanus-denarius-145-bce-revealed.271125/">https://www.cointalk.com/threads/mysteries-of-the-m-junius-silanus-denarius-145-bce-revealed.271125/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>In that thread, I stated that he had held a position as mint director in 160 BCE provincial quaestor in 159 BCE. Unfortunately, that information is erroneous. I fell for the oldest trick in the Roman book, fathers and sons with nearly identical names. Recently, I was doing further study on the man behind this coin, when I discovered my error, and I feel compelled to correct it even if it was a long time ago.</p><p><br /></p><p>It seems like the M. Junius Silanus behind this coin was actually mint director in 145 BCE, which would make sense as this coin dates to 145 BCE. Furthermore, it appears that he was a Tribune of the People in 124 or 123 BCE, when he introduced a law curbing the abuses of Roman governors on the provinces. Apparently, there was a crisis with Roman governors robbing Greek provincials blind, and the problem got so bad that it threatened to destabilize the provinces. This is something historian Tom Holland briefly mentioned in his book &quot;Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic&quot;, a book which I recently read and which got me to re-research M. Junius Silanus. I became suspicious that there was no way it could be the same M. Junius Silanus of 160 BCE. Far too much time had passed. That is how I discovered my error.</p><p><br /></p><p>Furthermore, the correct M. Junius Silanus, whom minted the above coin, was the first Juni Sillani (a newer off branch of the Juni family) to reach the post of consul, which he did in 109 BCE. Unfortunately for him, he led the Roman Army against the Cimbri and was badly defeated. He had the misfortune of then being sued by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus over his terrible defeat of 109 BCE, which according to Cicero, Silanus just barely managed to avoid a guilty verdict. We know nothing else about him, as he probably died shortly after, though some of his later descendants appeared to have been consuls during the time of the early Empire.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Please accept my apologies for dragging this back up, but I believe it is important to correct erroneous information. </b>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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