Tetrachalkon

Kentoripai — ancient Centuripae, in the interior of Sicily — occupied an awkward political position during the Second Punic War, caught between Carthaginian pressure and Roman military consolidation of the island. This bronze issue dates to precisely the years when Rome was reasserting control over Sicily following the fall of Syracuse in 212 BC, a campaign that effectively ended Carthage's Sicilian ambitions. Local civic bronzes of this period from inland Sicilian communities are thought to reflect a brief window of residual municipal autonomy before full Roman administrative absorption made independent civic coinage obsolete.