Didrachm

Segesta's coinage of this period reflects the city's urgent diplomatic maneuvering rather than any settled civic confidence. In 415 BC, the Segestans had famously exaggerated their wealth to Athenian envoys, helping trigger the catastrophic Sicilian Expedition — a miscalculation that ended with the near-total destruction of the Athenian fleet in Syracuse harbor by 413 BC. These didrachms fall in the immediate aftermath, when Segesta, now exposed and vulnerable, pivoted sharply toward Carthage for protection, a relationship that would define the western Sicilian political order for generations.

Hurter's die study remains the essential reference; H9 is among the less common die pairings in the sequence.