Mark Antony and Mark Antony the Younger. Aureus 34 BC, mint moving in Asia Minor. ANTON · AVG · IMP · COS · DES · III · III · V R P · C Bare head of Mark Antony right / M · ANTONIVS · M · F · F Bare head of Mark Antony the Younger right. 8,09g. Calicó 118a; Crawford 541/2; Sear 1514 (this coin); Sydenham 1207. Very rare and the finest specimen known. Splendid. Provenance: Kastner 4 (27 November 1973), 212. Collection Nelson Bunker Hunt, Sotheby's 6043 (19 June 1990), 120. Leu 52 (15 May 1991), 150. NAC 54 (24 March 2010), 285. Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. In the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, Mark Antony became one of the most powerful men in Rome. Together with Octavian, Caesar’s official heir, he led the Caesarian forces against the assassins, Brutus and Cassius, until their decisive victory at Philippi in 42 BC. By this time, it had become clear that the Republic, as it had existed, would never be restored. Since Caesar’s rise to power, authority in Rome was increasingly destined to be concentrated in the hands of a single man. Mark Antony was one of those who could plausibly aspire to become that man. This coin is therefore an assertion of power. It shows that the period when the Republic had refused to allow a living Roman to be celebrated on its coinage—and thus the beginning of a true cult of personality—had definitively passed. More significantly, the reverse depicts Mark Antony’s eldest son and designated heir, introducing an explicitly dynastic element. Born from Mark Antony’s marriage to Fulvia around 43 BC, Marcus Antonius Antyllus, known as “Marcus Antonius the Younger”, would not have the opportunity to pursue a genuine political career, because shortly after Octavian’s victory at Actium, he was executed on Octavian’s orders in 30 BC, at the age of sixteen or seventeen. On the reverse of this coin, this young man of tragic destiny is therefore still very young, approximately ten years old. Yet one can already notice an amusing resemblance to his illustrious father. This aureus is thus a witness to the final years of the Roman Republic: a period in which the most powerful men in Rome fought for supremacy and, in doing so, were already presenting and promoting their designated heirs.