Cr 433/2 AR Denarius M. Junius Brutus

AR Denarius 54 bce Rome 4.09 gm 17.5 mm
o: BRVTVS, downwards behind head of L. Iunius Brutus r, border of dots
r: AHALA, downwards behind head of C. Servilius Ahala r, border of dots
Junia 30; Servilia 17; Sydenham 932

This type has always puzzled me. It clearly depicts the two anti-tyrants in the Junia family tree, L. Junius Brutus and C. Servilius Ahala. (Crawford uses the phrase "tyrannicides", but Brutus did not kill Tarquin and Ahala seems to have sucker-stabbed Maelius in anger.) Young Brutus, or whatever his name was when he was a moneyer, clearly chose to put them on his coins at the time when Pompey's prominence in the state was at its peak; Caesar was in Gaul or Britain, and could not help him. This decision as to coinage, therefore, seems to me extremely unhealthy. Roughly the same number of dies have been identified for both of Brutus's moneyer issues, so it is unlikely that this type is an indiscretion that was quickly withdrawn. So, was Brutus being played or deployed by Pompey against Caesar? Pompey was ostentatiously NOT claiming the dictatorship, so why "warn" him, especially when a "warning" from a 30-ish year old aspiring politician who maybe had held a staff officer's post would not likely impress Pompey, "the teenage butcher"? Worth, I think, exploring a bit.