Didrachm

Segesta was never a Greek city. The Elymians who inhabited it claimed descent from Trojan refugees, and their coins — struck in the Greek style using Greek die-cutters — were partly a diplomatic instrument aimed at Athenian and Spartan audiences. This issue falls within the period when Segesta was actively cultivating Athenian alliance against neighboring Selinus, a campaign that would eventually draw Athens into the catastrophic Sicilian Expedition of 415 BC.

The use of mercenary engravers from the broader Greek world gives Elymian coinage an aesthetic fluency that belies the city's non-Hellenic origins.