1 Dollar Julius Caesar

Palau has issued an extensive run of small-format gold dollars under various themed series, and this Julius Caesar piece is one of dozens produced for the collector market rather than circulation. The coins are legal tender in name only — Palau uses the US dollar in practice and has never circulated its own coinage.

Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC, just five years after his first dictatorship was declared. The irony is not lost that his own portrait appeared on Roman coins during his lifetime — an unprecedented act that many senators read as a direct signal of monarchical ambition, and a proximate cause of the conspiracy that killed him.