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Segesta's bronze coinage of this period was struck under extraordinary political pressure. The city had appealed to Carthage for protection against Selinus and Akragas, and the Carthaginian intervention of 409 BC — which ended with the total destruction of Selinus — bought Segesta a generation of relative security. These bronzes belong to that uneasy peace, issued by a city that survived largely through alliance rather than military strength.

Segesta was unusual among Sicilian communities in its non-Greek, Elymian origins, a distinction that shaped its political alignments throughout the classical period.