Gela's gold coinage is exceptional by Sicilian standards — the city mint almost exclusively struck silver, and gold issues appear only during the desperate final decade before Gela was sacked and depopulated by Carthage in 405 BC. These pieces were almost certainly emergency issues, produced as Carthaginian forces under Hannibal Mago and then Himilco systematically destroyed the Greek cities of western and central Sicily one by one. Akragas fell in 406 BC; Gela followed the next year.
The Jenkins 490 attribution places this among the rarest products of a mint that ceased to function entirely after 405 BC, when the surviving population was evacuated to Syracuse under Dionysius I.
Gela's gold coinage is exceptional by Sicilian standards — the city mint almost exclusively struck silver, and gold issues appear only during the desperate final decade before Gela was sacked and depopulated by Carthage in 405 BC. These pieces were almost certainly emergency issues, produced as Carthaginian forces under Hannibal Mago and then Himilco systematically destroyed the Greek cities of western and central Sicily one by one. Akragas fell in 406 BC; Gela followed the next year.
The Jenkins 490 attribution places this among the rarest products of a mint that ceased to function entirely after 405 BC, when the surviving population was evacuated to Syracuse under Dionysius I.