Is The Panther Nursing Young On This Gallienus?

I have no idea about the symbolism but, wow, that sure is a nice follis. The wolf and twins have held up well through the centuries. Obverse is great too.

Not so fast. Let's give due props to the Florida "panther", Florida's official state animal! They are endangered but not (yet) extinct. Curiously, they do not belong to genus Panthera but to genus Felis. And of course, their range never included Rome.
https://dos.myflorida.com/florida-f...tate-animal/

OK apparently this is a leopard or cheetah from the quotation below. (From: "The Roman Ethnozoological Tradition: Identifying Exotic Animals in Pliny's Natural History in Pliny's Natural History Benjamin Moser The University of Western Ontario")

-->"For an analysis on the identification and understanding of exotic animals in the Natural History, I have chosen to focus my attention on only two case studies. I realize that my reader may desire that I should cover more animals not only for a broader scope of information, but even for interest's sake. However, like Pliny's Natural History, the more inclusive the text, the less detailed the study can be. Furthermore, I have observed that previous studies on animals in the ancient world, although often exhaustive, frequently address the more obscure animals inadequately. That is not to say that there have not been some remarkably well-thought out advancements in Roman ethnozoology. I have also tried to be as explicit as possible, particularly in my discussion on the identification of these exotic animals from a modern taxonomic perspective, so that those after me can clearly see where I have been successful or where I have made my own mistakes and oversights. Too often I have seen a claim to an animal's identification be made with very little support or recognition of the ancient perspective. With that being said, the third chapter is devoted entirely to the relationship between the terms pardus and panthera. Pliny says that the pardus is a male panthera. With support from my study on the meaning and use of genus, I explore Pliny's use of both pardus and panthera in the Natural History to validate his claim. This identification is then supported through an analysis of its other literary appearances: I trace the history of the words from their first appearances in Greek extant literature -Herodotus and Homer respectively - through Aristotle to Cicero, Pliny and Aelian. Alongside a look into artistic representations of spotted cats in Greek,Roman, and Egyptian art, this inquiry reveals that the Romans prefer to translate the Greek word pardalis with the Latin panthera and not pardus; an evolution of the words appearsto have been taking place in Pliny's time, eventually arriving at leopardus a couple of centuries later. I address the issue of the identification of which animal(s) these names represent from a modern viewpoint: Otto Keller and Helmut Leitner suggest that the names originate from the various leopard subspecies; Toynbee and Ann Ashmead consider the two names to represent the cheetah and leopard specifically. Nevertheless, I argue from Pliny's perspective that the two names indeed represent the same animal which includes non-exclusively any large, spotted cat, including both the cheetah and leopard."<--

The coin is dedicated to the god Liber Pater (Bacchus/ Dionysus). In mythology, this god is associated with a legendary cat-like creature called the "panther". So it is indeed a "panther", whatever the Greeks and Romans may have imagined the panther to be! The markings on the mythical panther suggest a cultural memory of the leopard, or perhaps the cheetah or even the tiger. The etymology of the word is Greek, from παν "all" + θηριο "beast". In any event, "panther" is the correct term numismatically to describe the reverse type and getting back to the original question, yes, she is clearly nursing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panth...ry_creature)