Leontini was one of the earliest Chalcidian colonies in Sicily, founded from Naxos around 729 BC, and by the mid-fifth century was producing small silver fractions at a moment of intense inter-city rivalry on the island. The litra was the native Sicilian weight standard — distinct from the Aeginetan or Attic systems — and these diminutive pieces circulated alongside larger denominations in a regional economy where small change was genuinely scarce.
The city was forcibly depopulated by Syracuse in 422 BC, its citizens absorbed into the larger polis. Coins of this type therefore have a hard terminus: nothing from Leontini was struck after that absorption until a brief revival decades later.
Leontini was one of the earliest Chalcidian colonies in Sicily, founded from Naxos around 729 BC, and by the mid-fifth century was producing small silver fractions at a moment of intense inter-city rivalry on the island. The litra was the native Sicilian weight standard — distinct from the Aeginetan or Attic systems — and these diminutive pieces circulated alongside larger denominations in a regional economy where small change was genuinely scarce.
The city was forcibly depopulated by Syracuse in 422 BC, its citizens absorbed into the larger polis. Coins of this type therefore have a hard terminus: nothing from Leontini was struck after that absorption until a brief revival decades later.