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Drachm Zancle
| Issuer | Messana |
|---|---|
| Year | 500 BC - 493 BC |
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| Currency | Litra |
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| Obverse description | A dolphin leaping to the left, rendered in bold relief with fine incised detail on the fins and body, enclosed within the distinctive sickle-shaped harbor (drepanon) of Zancle, which curves around the field. The Greek legend DANKLE appears below the dolphin in archaic retrograde characters, occupying the lower portion of the harbor curve. The outer border features a beaded dotted rim, characteristic of early Sicilian coinage. |
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| Obverse lettering | ΔΑΝΚΛΕ |
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| Additional information |
Zancle — the city's original Sikanian name, meaning "sickle" in reference to the curved harbor — was a Chalkidian colony that by 500 BC had become one of the most strategically contested ports in Sicily. The coin's type belongs to the final years before Anaxilas of Rhegion seized the city around 489–488 BC, expelled the Samian settlers who had briefly occupied it, and renamed it Messana after his own homeland. That political rupture ended this coinage type definitively; what was struck before the takeover belongs to a different civic identity entirely.