Heptachalkon - Syrakosioi

These small bronzes fall within the final years of Hiero II's reign and the turbulent succession that followed — Syracuse had maintained careful neutrality between Rome and Carthage for decades, but after Hiero's death in 215 BC, his grandson Hieronymus almost immediately defected to Hannibal following the Roman catastrophe at Cannae. Roman forces under Marcellus besieged the city beginning in 214 BC, a siege that lasted nearly three years and ended with the sack of 212 BC. Coins of this fractional denomination circulating through those years were produced under a government that knew its political calculus had fundamentally shifted.