Himera's bronze coinage from this period carries a particular weight beyond its small denomination. The city was destroyed in 407 BC by Carthaginian forces under Hannibal Mago — a deliberate act of revenge for the Carthaginian defeat at the Battle of Himera in 480 BC, a humiliation that had festered for three generations. Survivors were reportedly massacred at the site of that earlier battle. Coins struck in the final years before that destruction are, by definition, among the last objects produced by a city that ceased to exist.
Himera's bronze coinage from this period carries a particular weight beyond its small denomination. The city was destroyed in 407 BC by Carthaginian forces under Hannibal Mago — a deliberate act of revenge for the Carthaginian defeat at the Battle of Himera in 480 BC, a humiliation that had festered for three generations. Survivors were reportedly massacred at the site of that earlier battle. Coins struck in the final years before that destruction are, by definition, among the last objects produced by a city that ceased to exist.