Quadruple

The Mamertinoi were Oscan-speaking mercenaries — originally recruited from Campania by Agathocles of Syracuse — who seized the Sicilian city of Messana around 288 BC after their employer's death left them without pay or purpose. Their occupation of the city, and the coinage they struck there, represents one of the more audacious acts of military opportunism in the ancient Mediterranean world. This bronze issue belongs to the earliest phase of their independent authority at Messana, before their fateful appeal to Rome in 264 BC that helped trigger the First Punic War.