12 1/2 Litrai - Agathocles

Agathocles seized power in Syracuse in 317 BC through a coup that massacred several thousand of his political opponents in the assembly — the very year this denomination begins. His subsequent war against Carthage, which he audaciously carried onto African soil in 310 BC, created enormous demand for precious metal coinage to pay mercenaries. Electrum, an alloy occurring naturally in Lydian rivers but also produced artificially, allowed Syracuse to stretch its gold reserves during precisely these sustained military emergencies.

The 12½ litrai denomination is attested across only a narrow die corpus, reflected in the tight SNG ANS run of just three specimens.