Crawford 511/4a

Moneyer: Sextus Pompey, 43-35 BC.

Denomination: Denarius

Obverse:  MAG•PIVS•IMP•IT[ER] The Pharos of Messana (Messina, Sicily) surmounted by a statue of Neptune standing right, holding trident and rudder and placing his left foot on prow; in foreground, galley left with aquila on prow; scepter, trident, and grappling-iron in stern.

Reverse: . PRAEF•CLASS•ET•[ORAE•MARIT•EX•S•C] The monster Scylla left, her torso of dogs and fishes, wielding a rudder as a club with both hands.

Mint: military mint in Sicily, 37-36. 

Reference: Crawford 511/4a

Weight: 

Provenance:  ex Auction Münzzentrum Köln no. 47, Köln 1982, lot Nr. 491.

Notes: Beautiful old cabinet tone and great provenance! Very rare, pictorially attractive and desirable reverse type!

It seems beyond doubt that this coin marks Pompey's "victory" over Octavian's fleet, which was mainly accomplished by an unfavorable wind that drove the latter's ships onto the rocks known as Scylleum near the harbor of Messana. Therefore the dates given for this issue in RSC and Crawford (42-40 BC) too early; the disaster at Messana occured circa 38 BC. (Strait of Messina - cieśnina Mesyńska).

This fascinating Sicilian coinage of Sextus Pompeius (RRC 511) is a testimony of the war between the imperatores of the finishing Roman Republic, and particularly between the two heirs (Sextus Pompeius, the (last) heir of Pompeius Magnus "Neptunius", and Octavian, the (adopted) heir of Caesar), with its high aesthetical value, the density of its political and iconographical message, borrowing to the Sicilian mythistory (the female monster Scylla, with her belt of barking dogs, destroying the ships in the Strait of Messina). Apart of the ideological value of this coinage, a much discussed topic runs on how Sextus Pompeius could get the silver bullion to mint these issues (he rescued in his Sicilian fortress the proscripts of -43, then the 'Republican' crushed at the battle of Philippes -42) and particularly on the chronology of these emissions. For prof. Estiot, the occasion of this emissions was in 42 BC Sextus Pompeius' naval victory on Q. Salvidienus Rufus in the Strait of Messina, in front of the Scyllaeum Cape, hence the representation of Scylla crushing ships).

Messana (nowadays Messina) founded by Greek colonists of Magna Graecia in the 8th century BC, Messina was originally called Zancle (Greek: Ζάγκλη), from the Greek ζάγκλον meaning "scythe". The city was sacked in 397 BC by the Carthaginians and then reconquered by Dionysius I of Syracuse. In 288 BC the Mamertines seized the city by treachery, killing all the men and taking the women as their wives. The city became a base from which they ravaged the countryside, leading to a conflict with the expanding regional empire of Syracuse. Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse, defeated the Mamertines near Mylae on the Longanus River and besieged Messina. Carthage assisted the Mamertines because of a long-standing conflict with Syracuse over dominance in Sicily. When Hiero attacked a second time in 264 BC, the Mamertines petitioned the Roman Republic for an alliance, hoping for more reliable protection. Although initially reluctant to assist lest it encourage other mercenary groups to mutiny, Rome was unwilling to see Carthaginian power spread further over Sicily and encroach on Italy. Rome, therefore, entered into an alliance with the Mamertines. In 264 BC, Roman troops were deployed to Sicily, the first time a Roman army acted outside the Italian Peninsula. At the end of the First Punic War it was a free city allied with Rome. In Roman times Messina, then known as Messana, had an important pharos (lighthouse). Messana was the base of Sextus Pompeius, during his war against Octavian.

In Greek mythology, Scylla  is a legendary, man-eating monster who lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart, the sea-swallowing monster Charybdis. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid the whirlpools of Charybdis would pass dangerously close to Scylla and vice versa.

Scylla is first attested in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus and his crew encounter her and Charybdis on their travels. Later myth provides an origin story as a beautiful nymph who gets turned into a monster. Book Three of Virgil's Aeneid associates the strait where Scylla dwells with the Strait of Messina between Calabria, a region of Southern Italy, and Sicily. The coastal town of Scilla in Calabria takes its name from the mythological figure of Scylla and it is said to be the home of the nymph.

The idiom "between Scylla and Charybdis" has come to mean being forced to choose between two similarly undesirable or risky outcomes, similar to "between a rock and a hard place"

Collezione : 16 Roman Republic