This is BM 1867,0101.1124.  It is die linked to one of the few (only?) authentic Republican dies ever found, now in the Madrid Collection. 

The quaestor who issued this L. Fabius. L. f. Hispaniensis defected to Sertorius:

The location in which the die was found (near Orange) puts into question Crawford’s assumption that Fabius’ coins were struck in Italy.

I don’t believe this explanation of RRC 402/1 but it is still interesting to have on file as one in the range of interpretations that have been put forward:

From Nousek 2008.

Grateful for the comments that pointed me to a parallel, but more fully argued discussion by Harlan!

I’ve now found three references to three separate sling shot bullets with Sertorius’ name and title and also on the other side the word Pietas from Three distinct locations (map below).  Borja Díaz Ariño 2005 (quoted below) knows 5, and these three here may be in addition to those he documents (this is far from certain).

The phenomena has been interpreted in these ways:

Cf. also p. 113 of the same book.

UPDATE, best overview I’ve found so far:

Via Twitter Hannah Cornwell provides comparative evidence:

“Just checked: the Deities from the Sicily shots are not abstractions (Athena, Artemis, ‘the Mother’, Herakles, Zeus Keraunos). IG v.14. 608-10, no. 2407; also Chiron 12 (1982) 238-44.”

Context from Daremberg and Saglio.

Update 2/8/2022:

I tweeted about Perusine Glandes a long time back specifically the sexually explicit references to Fulvia. I was frustrated at how hard it was to find the citation not on the blog so I’m adding that old info to this post so they can be more easily found. (I think i put it in my teaching material at the time).

Benedetti, Lucio. 2012. Glandes Perusinae: revisione e aggiornamenti

Update 1-20-23:

Pompey or Pompeius Sextus sling bullet with CN.MAC IMP inscription not unlike coinage (cf. this post on RRC 402/1).

Then [Fimbria] hired a slave, with money and the promise of freedom, to go to Sulla as a pretended deserter and assassinate him. As the slave was nearing his task he became frightened, and thus fell under suspicion, was arrested and confessed. Sulla’s soldiers who were stationed around Fimbria’s camp were filled with anger and contempt for him. They reviled him and nicknamed him Athenio – a man who was once a king of fugitive slaves in Sicily for a few days.

Appian Mithridatic Wars 59

Ptolemy abandoned his alliance with Rome, out of fear for the outcome of the war, but furnished Lucullus with ships to convoy him as far as Cyprus, embraced him graciously at parting, and offered him a costly emerald set in gold. At first Lucullus declined to accept it, but when the king showed him that the engraving on it was a likeness of himself, he was afraid to reject it, lest he be thought to have sailed away at utter enmity with the king, and so have some plot laid against him on the voyage.

Plut. Luc. 3

gems

The Ptolemy is I think Ptolemy IX Lathyros…

Not sure how I didn’t make the mental connection prior to this but… the guy celebrated on this coin (RRC 401/1) is the same dude, Manius Aquillius, cos. 101, Mithridates’ killed by pouring gold down his throat!

I find it remarkable that a father with such a checkered career was rehabilitated by his son as the epitome of virtus.  Besides his death he was put on trial for his mismanagement of Sicily and he was given an ovation, not a triumph because he only fought against rebel slaves… (links to ancient sources)

How you die by this method is discussed in this Smithsonian article (the evidence that Crassus died this way is questionable).

Part of a speech from Posidonius preserved in Athenaeus from the Athenian usurper, Athenion:

‘King Mithradates is master of Bithynia and Upper Cappadocia; he is master of the whole continent of Asia as far as Pamphylia and Cilicia. And kings form his bodyguard, Armenian and Persian, and princes ruling over the tribes who dwell round the Maeotis and the whole of Pontus, making a circuit of three thousand six hundred miles. The Roman commander in Pamphylia, Quintus Oppius, has been delivered up and now follows in his train as a captive; Manius Aquilius, the ex-consul, who celebrated a triumph after his Sicilian campaign, bound hand and foot by a long chain to a Bastarnian seven and a half feet tall, is dragged along on foot by a man on horseback. Of all the other Roman citizens, some are prostrated before the images of the gods, while the rest have changed their dress to square cloaks and once more call themselves by the countries to which they originally belonged. And every community, greeting him with more than human honours, invokes the god-king; oracles from all quarters predict his supremacy over the civilized world. Wherefore he is dispatching great armies even to Thrace and Macedonia, and all parts of Europe have gone over to his side in a body. yes, ambassadors have come to him not only from Italic tribes, but even from the Carthaginians, demanding that they be allies to accomplish the destruction of Rome.’

And they didn’t even let the author put a picture of it on the cover!?

Any way this is really just a note to myself that this exists and when I feeling flush I should acquire a copy.  RRC 431/1. Google Preview Link.

This is BM 1867,0101.1099.

I believe Pobjoy’s write up on this coin and most of the social war coins. 

The BM catalogue calls the scepter tied with a fillet the mast.  This is just wrong.  That is not what masts on ships on coins or gems look like.

addendum, later same day: This is the same description given in HN Italy 416–mast and sail–still wrong, but at least I know where BM is getting it, must check but probably also in Campana…

Filleted Scepter is clearly right reading BUT this is problematic to me because of it being iconographically unprecedented until later.  That scepter tied with a fillet is a hallmark of the famous fleet coinage of Antony and also appears on the coins of Sextus Pompeius.

Also the hand shake with the prow in the background is an iconography of the civil war period (RRC 469, 470/1a).

Now all these parallels could have a common Hellenistic precursor, but if they do, I don’t know what it is (and that bothers me).  I think it unlikely the later Roman Civil War types would copy Social War types.

It just makes me a little worried about the issue and its legitimacy, but there are a number of specimens which a good deal of variation…..

Just a lovely specimen I came across 19 Dec 2023. It shows super clearly that the reverse is Dionysus and the creature next to him… Panther? Bull? I forget what Pobjoy concluded… I think the former.