Æ18 Asklepios

Rhegion's bronze coinage of this period reflects the city's precarious position during the decades bracketing the First Punic War — geographically stranded on the Sicilian Strait, repeatedly caught between Roman, Carthaginian, and Syracusan spheres of pressure. The city had already suffered catastrophically when a Campanian garrison, stationed there by Rome, massacred much of the citizen population around 280 BC. Roman restitution came slowly, and civic identity rebuilt itself partly through religious coinage emphasizing healing cults.

Asklepios held particular resonance in Magna Graecia, where his cult spread rapidly from Epidauros in the fourth century. The SNG ANS attribution places this type firmly within a well-documented series.