Hemilitron Campanian mercenaries

Nakone was a minor Sicilian settlement whose coinage is known almost entirely from a handful of types, and this hemilitron falls within a narrow window tied to the turbulent aftermath of Agathokles of Syracuse's wars against Carthage. The city briefly hosted Campanian mercenaries — soldiers whose loyalty shifted with whoever was paying — and this bronze was almost certainly struck to facilitate that payment rather than for ordinary civic commerce. Campanian mercenaries were notorious throughout Sicily for switching sides; some had done so as recently as the Syracusan catastrophe at Himera decades prior.