Æ Quadruple Unit The Mamertinoi

The Mamertinoi were Oscan mercenaries — originally hired by Agathocles of Syracuse — who seized Messana by force around 288 BC after his death left them without a paymaster. The name they adopted, invoking Mamers, the Oscan war god equated with Mars, was a deliberate assertion of identity by men who were essentially a standing army with nowhere else to go. Their coinage, including this heavy bronze unit, served the immediate practical needs of a garrison population running a captured city.

Their occupation of Messana would eventually draw Rome into Sicily for the first time, triggering the First Punic War in 264 BC.