Mark Antony's Special Intelligence Unit

E. Babelon, Coinage of the Roman Republic, 1885

The Coin

Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius), circa 32 to 31 BC AR denarius (3.39 g, 19 mm), legionary mint moving with the army in western Greece, probably Patrai Obv: ANT AVG III VIR R P C, praetorian galley right, a filleted scepter on the prow Rev: CHORTIS SPECVLATORVM, three standards, each hung with two wreaths and a ship's prow Ref: Crawford 544/12; Babelon, Antonia 103; Sydenham 1214 Cabinet toning, banker's mark on the obverse. Very Fine. Scarce.

In 32 and 31 BC, with the break from Octavian complete and war certain, Antony had to pay a fleet and some thirty legions. He struck an enormous number of legionary denarii to pay his legions at a mint that traveled with the army in western Greece. This mint is usually placed at Patrai, his naval base in the winter of 32 to 31.

Most of Antony's legionary denarii name a numbered legion. This coin is the only Roman coin type to call out this intelligence unit. Not many were issued, which is why it is sought after. For a quick comparison >3600 legionary denarii show up in ACSearch, and only 103 with CHORTIS SPECVLATORVM.

CHORTIS is the older, colloquial spelling of cohortis, the genitive of cohors, a cohort. SPECVLATORVM is "of the speculatores". The speculatores were the army's scouts and intelligence men. The word comes from specula, a lookout or watchtower, a high place from which one sees far. Their work began with reconnaissance and grew to include carrying confidential dispatches, passing in plain clothes as agents, and serving the commander as bodyguards and, when required, as enforcers. They are the nearest thing the Roman army had to a combined intelligence service and secret police.

On the obverse, ANT AVG marks Antony as an augur, a Roman priest who read the will of the gods, and III VIR R P C is triumvir rei publicae constituendae, one of the three men appointed to restore the republic to order.

The obverse is a small ancient test cut, the mark of a banker who punched the silver to test it for a plated core. Because these coins contain less silver than ordinary denarii, people spent them and held onto higher quality coins, so legionary denarii stayed in circulation for two hundred years and turn up worn smooth in hoards even into the third century AD.

Missing Eagle

In place of the eagle between two standards this coin shows three standards, each decorated with two wreaths and the prow of a ship. Ordinarily about ten speculatores were attached to each legion and scattered among them. Antony's innovation, recorded really only by this coin, was to form a single dedicated cohort reporting directly to him.

In a civil war, when a commander must know the enemy's movements and trust the men who carry his orders and guard his tent, a standing corps of such men was probably worth having. The idea outlasted Antony. Under the emperors the speculatores Augusti became a body of imperial couriers, guards, and confidential agents, the men who did quiet and grim work. In the original Greek it is a speculator (σπεκουλάτορα spekoulatora) who carries out the beheading of John the Baptist in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 6:27).

The ship's prows on the standards point to the sea. Caesar uses the phrase speculatoria navigia, scout-ships, for the light reconnaissance vessels of a fleet, sent in to help struggling troops during the landing in Britain:

"scaphas longarum navium, item speculatoria navigia militibus compleri iussit" 

"he ordered the ships' boats and the scout-vessels to be filled with soldiers"
-Caesar, De Bello Gallico 4.26, Latin at Perseus

The prows tie the cohort to Antony's fleet on the obverse and to the scouting role at sea. The two wreaths on each standard are honors, and the usual reading is that they mark a victory won through the speculatores' work. The sources do not say which victory but Philippi is a likely candidate.

The Connection to Philippi

If the wreaths commemorate a victory owed to these men, Antony's greatest land victory was Philippi in 42 BC, where he and Octavian destroyed Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius. Philippi is therefore the natural candidate for the honor the wreaths record. This was a decade before this coin was issued.

The first battle at Philippi, in October 42 BC, turned on the kind of intelligence failure that a cohort of speculatores exists to prevent. Cassius died of a botched reconnaissance and a misread signal, and he died needlessly, because at that very hour Brutus had overrun Octavian's camp on the other wing. Plutarch describes the moment:

"For Cassius thought that Titinius was actually taken by the enemy, and with the words 'My love of life has brought me to the pass of seeing a friend seized by the enemy,' he withdrew into an empty tent." 
- Plutarch, Brutus 43.7, translated by Bernadotte Perrin (Loeb Classical Library, 1918), at LacusCurtius

The day was a draw, Antony breaking Cassius's wing as Brutus broke Octavian's, but Cassius's suicide broke the Liberators, and three weeks later Brutus lost the second battle and the war.

Whether or not Antony or his moneyer intended the connection, Philippi resonates. This coin was issued on the eve of the Battle of Actium to honor the special reconnaissance and naval intelligence forces that served Antony.  Antony minted a coin to honor his cohort of scouts, and the man he had beaten at Philippi, Cassius, had died precisely because he lacked one. For Antony, the speculatores were not enough to save him from Octavian.

Bibliography

• Caesar. De Bello Gallico 4.26 (on speculatoria navigia, scout-ships). Latin and translation at Perseus.

• Plutarch. Brutus 43 (the death of Cassius at Philippi). Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library, 1918. At LacusCurtius. See also Appian, Civil Wars 4.113 to 114.

• Crawford, Michael H. Roman Republican Coinage. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. No. 544/12.

• Babelon, Ernest. Description historique et chronologique des monnaies de la République romaine. Paris, 1885 to 1886. Antonia 103.

• Sydenham, Edward A. The Coinage of the Roman Republic. London: Spink, 1952. No. 1214.

• Austin, N. J. E., and N. B. Rankov. Exploratio: Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople. London: Routledge, 1995.