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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;zumbly, post: 1853964, member: 57495&quot;]I&#039;ve only recently started collecting in this period, so the couple of coins I have are my favorites.&nbsp; This one is a really nice example of the bronze coinage of the Brettii.&nbsp; I think the style is excellent for the period and this one has a really lovely deep green patina.&nbsp; If I follow the seller&#039;s attribution, it should have a crab monogram opposite the thunderbolt on the reverse.&nbsp; I can&#039;t see even a ghost of a crab on mine, and this is now causing me to feel some jealousy toward Doug and his Brettian coin with TWO crabs.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]310252[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p><b>BRUTTIUM, The Brettii</b></p><p>AE Double Unit (Didrachm), 15.03g, 27mm.</p><p>Circa 208 - 203 BC. Scheu, Bronze 58; HN Italy 2001.</p><p>O: Head of Ares left in Corinthian helmet decorated with a griffin&nbsp; </p><p>R: BRETTIVN, Hera Hoplosmia advancing right holding shield and spear, thunderbolt to right, crab monogram practically absent.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The entire series of coinage of the Brettii has been dated to the Second Punic War.&nbsp; They were a tribe of Italian people of Bruttium (present day Calabria in southern Italy) who had long attempted to resist the growing dominance of the Roman Republic.&nbsp; They supported Pyrrhus in his doomed war against Rome and later threw in their lot with Hannibal in the Second Punic War.&nbsp; After the defeat of the Hannibal, they suffered their own version of Carthaginian peace (see Steve&#039;s post above) at the hands of the victorious Romans and soon would no longer trouble the annals of history.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I haven&#039;t managed to find out much about the cult of Hera Hoplosmia (&quot;the armed Hera&quot;), but her surname possibly derives from hoplon, the variety of shield used by Greek hoplite soldiers.&nbsp; She is certainly carrying a big a** shield on this coin.&nbsp; As a bit of trivia, hoplology is the study of the evolution and development of human combative behaviour.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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