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Tyndaris was founded in 396 BC by Dionysius I of Syracuse as a strategic settlement on Sicily's northern coast, populated largely by survivors of the destroyed Messenian colony at Zanкle and Sicel refugees. By the late third century, the city had passed through Carthaginian pressure, Roman alliance, and the chaos of the Second Punic War — during which its loyalty to Rome proved consequential enough that Livy mentions it among the Sicilian communities that emerged from the conflict with their status intact. This bronze was struck in the immediate aftermath of that war, when Tyndaris remained a nominally free allied city under Roman hegemony rather than a stipendiary province town.