Oh, Brother
During his time in Sicily, Sextus Pompeius successfully minted coins that featured imagery which capitalised on his relationship to his father, Pompey the Great. However, his promotion of familial pietas did not stop there. The reverse of RRC 511/3a features three figures: Neptune holding an aphlaston, centred in between two other male figures. These two figures are identified as the Catanaean brothers, carrying their parents on their shoulders.
Considering the emphasis that Sextus placed on familial pietas, there is no question as to why he featured Catanaean brothers so prominently on RRC 511/3a. The myth and the figures themselves were fundamental embodiments of familial pietas within Roman culture, and more importantly, Sicilian culture. Present throughout multiple ancient sources, the myth tells of Amphinomus and Anapis, two brothers from Catana, who rescued their parents from death during the eruption of Mount Aetna. Rather than taking with them gold and silver, the brothers chose to carry only their parents on their backs. The gods saw this, and the two brothers were rewarded for their pietas and the lava flowed around them. Only Amphinomus, Anapis, and their parents survived the volcanic eruption, and it was only because of their pietas, to put their parents lives before wealth and their own safety. [1]
…for them a mother and father are the only wealth: this is the spoil they will snatch from the burning…O sense of loving duty, greatest of all goods, justly deemed the surest salvation for man among the virtues!
Aetna. 62
There can be little doubt as to why Sextus would have chosen to use this myth on a coin where the obverse already featured significant imagery which connected the memory of Pompey the Great and Sextus’ own title of Pius. The Catanaean brothers’ narrative is solely concerned with the promotion and justification of the importance of pietas towards one’s parents. This was exactly what Sextus was promoting through his own actions, and it was politically expedient for him to publicly remind those around him of his status as a dutiful son to a revered man.
The significance of the Catanaean myth is even more pronounced when remembering that the coin was minted in Sicily; the myth of the Catanaean brothers is set in the region of Catania within Sicily. When you combine that fact with the knowledge that the Pompeian line could be traces to Picenum, a region in Southern Italy, it is clear that Sextus was not only displaying this myth as an instance of familial pietas because it was a well-known and respected narrative. Rather, Sextus was deliberately connecting his imagery with the region he was establishing control over, and identifying himself as aligned with the mythic narrative of that region. [2]
[1] Aetna. 60-63.