At first it seemed so preposterous it had to be fake news. A new dollar coin with Donald Trump's face on one side and on the other Trump again, fisted raised in front of the Stars and Stripes, surrounded by the words FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.

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But this wasn't fake news. Last week, the US Treasury confirmed it was planning to release the coin to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence.

"No fake news here," posted US Treasurer Brandon Beach on X. "These first drafts honoring America's 250th Birthday and @POTUS are real."

There's nothing new about living rulers with outsized egos putting their likenesses on coins. The ancient Persians did it, the Macedonians too. The Greeks followed suit followed by Julius Caesar, not long before he was assassinated. And, of course, our own coins have always featured reigning monarchs but that says less about their egos and more about our subservience.

But in the US there are laws against the depiction of living people on the reverse of coins. Not that laws have ever presented insurmountable obstacles to Trump, who likes to rule by decree, executive order after executive order signed like a graffiti tag with a black Sharpie.

Perhaps the president should cast an eye back ito Julius Caesar's bid to put his face in every Roman purse - not that the president is known for seeing beyond his last social media post.

The Caesar's rivals were outraged, not just by the likeness on the coin normally reserved for the gods, but by the accompanying words: DICTATOR FOR LIFE. The display of supreme authoritarian arrogance no doubt gave them yet another reason to remove Caesar.

Julius Caesar didn't just put his mug on coins. "[H]e set about flooding the city and wider world with his portraits, in numbers never seen before: hundreds, if not thousands, were planned," wrote Mary Beard in her book Emperor of Rome. The practice didn't end with Caesar's assassination. Brutus had his own likeness stamped on coins just a couple years after he plunged the dagger into his old friend.

Try as he might to fake it with........

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