The pro-Carthaginian and pro-Roman Hispanorvm Coin Issues of Sicily (214-210 BC)

Abstract

The Sicilian coin issues with the legend HISPANORVM were not only coined after the fall of Syracuse late in the year 212 BC, and neither were they of exclusively Roman pedigree. Half of the HISPANORVM issues display a typology and manufacture that must be linked with the fifth Syracusan (and pro-Carthaginian) democracy of Epicydes and Hippocrates (214-212). HISPANORVM coins were minted at Leontini, Syracuse, Messana and Agrigentum by non-Hispanic engravers, and never in large quantities. They were made for delivery to a HISPANORVM military unit of 300, or, more plausibly, 600 Hispanic and Numidian troops who became the personal guard of Epicydes and Hippocrates. In the years 211 and 210, Marcellus and Laevinus used this Hispanic unit for their own purposes in almost all of the Sicilian locations which had previously served Carthage, while the hispani who settled in Morgantina, on the other hand, probably did not do so until the pacification of Sicily in 210.