Fraction Follis - Pandulf Ironhead

Pandulf I of Capua earned his epithet — "Ironhead" — through decades of brutal political maneuvering across southern Italy, at various points allying with and betraying both the Byzantine Empire and the Ottonian emperors as circumstances demanded. He briefly united Capua and Benevento under a single rule in 981, an achievement no Lombard prince had managed in over a century. These fractional copper issues were the small change of a principality constantly militarized, constantly taxed, and perpetually caught between competing imperial ambitions from Constantinople and Germany simultaneously.