1/2 Stater

Siphnos had been one of the wealthiest islands in the Aegean thanks to its silver and gold mines, which funded a legendary treasury at Delphi in the late sixth century. By the time this piece was struck, that prosperity was a fading memory — Persian forces allied with Samian exiles had sacked the island around 524 BC, stripping it of resources it never fully recovered. That a gold fractional issue was still being produced in the fourth century suggests some residual access to precious metal, though the island's political and economic weight was by then negligible.