Didrachm

Barke, a Greek colonial city in Cyrenaica (modern Libya), was founded around 560 BC by settlers from Cyrene following a dynastic dispute. By 480 BC the city had already survived Persian conquest — Darius I's forces took Barke around 512 BC after a siege, and a portion of its population was deported to Bactria according to Herodotus. That the mint resumed production of quality silver coinage within a generation of that upheaval says something about the city's recovery, even as Cyrene increasingly overshadowed it politically.