Æ Drachm

The Brettii — the Bruttian league of southern Italy — struck this issue during the closing years of their alliance with Hannibal, a partnership that had made them Rome's most committed Italian enemy after Cannae. By 203 BC, with Scipio pressing Carthage in Africa and Roman legions methodically reclaiming the south, Bruttium was effectively finished as an independent political force. Rome's retribution after 202 BC was severe: mass enslavement, land confiscation, and the reduction of the Bruttii to a servile class barred from military service. Coins from this terminal phase are among the last artifacts of a people Rome chose to erase rather than absorb.