Denarius - Julius Caesar CAESAR DICT•PERPETVO / C•MARIDIANVS

Issued in the final weeks before the Ides of March, 44 BC, this denarius belongs to a series struck under the moneyer C. Marius, whose family connection to the great populist general Gaius Marius was almost certainly not incidental — Caesar's own aunt had been married to the elder Marius, making the appointment a deliberate dynastic signal. The obverse legend naming Caesar as dictator in perpetuity was itself the provocation: Brutus and Cassius moved within weeks of its circulation. No other Republican denarius carries a title that so directly precipitated the issuer's murder.