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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 2281133, member: 76194&quot;]<span style="color: #ff0000">[Edit - There is an update, please follow the link in post #10. Thank you, Sallent!]</span></p><p><br /></p><p>As you all know, I purchased an M Junius Silanus denarius the other day. Unfortunately, despite this being a very beautiful example of a Roman Republic denarius, there a huge dearth of information available on this coin online. One of the most compelling features of the coin, an ass&#039; head behind Roma, remains a mystery. No website online provides the meaning of this ancient pun. Furthermore, there is no information on who M. Junius even was. A Wikipedia search yields others by that name who came a generation or two later, but the man behind this denarius cannot be found anywhere.</p><p><br /></p><p>I knew I needed to do this coin justice. It is&nbsp; not right that these two key bits of information should remain hidden from us. This coin is just too compelling to just be content with the lack of information about it. So determined to honor the man who gave us an ass&#039; head behind Roma, and recover the original meaning behind this comical symbol, I&#039;ve spent several hours trying to uncover the mystery, and I&#039;m proud to report that this ancient coin can now speak to us for the first time in a long time.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>MYSTERY OF THE ASS&#039; HEAD PUN REVEALED</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p>I had to dig deep, but the answer to this mystery is contained in the &quot;Descriptive Catalogue of a Cabinet of Roman Family Coins Belonging to His Grace The Duke of Northumberland, LG, by Rear-Admiral Henry Smyth,&quot; published in 1856.</p><p><br /></p><p>According to this mid-19th century book, page 113, the ass&#039; head is believed to refer to the name Brutus (stupid), and is an allusion to the assumed fatuity of the elder liberator (whom as you all know was the man responsible for driving the last king out of Rome, and the founder of the Brutus family). One of his descendants would go down in history as the man who killed Julius Caesar, and ended the Republic.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>MYSTERY OF THE MAN BEHIND THE COIN</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p>According to the same source, the person responsible for this coin is believed to be Marcus Junius Brutus Silanus, a provincial quaestor in 159 BCE, and who held the position of monetary quaestor before that. So if you have a Roman coin from 160 BCE, chances are he supervised it&#039;s production. The man behind the ass&#039; head ran the mint for the Roman Republic <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie9" alt=":eek:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />&nbsp; No wonder he had such a good sense of humor when it came to choosing what to depict on his coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>And there you have it. It took a little digging, but this coin finally has a chance to speak again, and maybe by placing this information in an accessible and very public place, the next person who buys one of these coins will know the history and meaning behind it, instead of having to guess,&nbsp; and regret the lack of information on it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thank you M. Junius Brutus Silanus for leaving us this legacy, and thank you for running the Roman mint and overseeing the creation of so many other wonderful coins during your time as the head of the mint. Some of those coins you helped oversee are probably now resting in the collections of others here.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]455876[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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