Didrachm

Segesta was an Elymian city on the northwestern coast of Sicily — not Greek, but deeply Hellenized, and locked in a generations-long territorial dispute with the neighboring Greek city of Selinus. The didrachms struck during this period are products of that tension: Segesta needed coinage credible enough to hire Greek mercenaries and conduct diplomacy with Athens, whose catastrophic Sicilian Expedition of 415–413 BC was partly triggered by Segestane appeals for military intervention against Selinus.

The dies were almost certainly cut by itinerant Greek engravers, a common arrangement for non-Greek Sicilian mints lacking resident specialists.