Stater

This series was struck primarily to pay Carthaginian mercenary armies — a financial obligation that dominated the city's coinage policy throughout the late fourth and early third centuries BC. The electrum alloy, with its gold content sitting well below the Near Eastern standard, reflects Carthage's pragmatic approach to military expenditure: get metal into soldiers' hands at the lowest defensible purity.

The chronological range overlaps directly with the Sicilian wars against Agathocles of Syracuse, including his audacious counter-invasion of North Africa in 310 BC — the first time Carthage itself faced a foreign army on home soil.