Hexas

Himera's bronze coinage dates to the city's final decades before its destruction by Carthage in 409 BC — a sack so thorough that the site was effectively abandoned for centuries. The hexas, worth one-twelfth of an obol, served the smallest daily transactions in a prosperous north Sicilian port that had already defined itself at the Battle of Himera in 480 BC, where Greek forces repelled a Carthaginian invasion. That earlier victory made the city's eventual annihilation carry particular symbolic weight for the ancient world.

CNS 21 is well-documented within the Corpus Nummorum Siculorum sequence for Himera's bronze issues, which are notably heterogeneous in weight — this example at 13.29g sits toward the heavier end of the attested range for the type.