Tetradrachm

Punic silver tetradrachms of this period were struck primarily to pay Carthaginian mercenary forces operating in Sicily, where decades of grinding conflict with Syracuse demanded a reliable military coinage. The issues are notoriously difficult to attribute with precision — Carthage maintained multiple field mints across western Sicily whose output overlapped considerably, which is why "uncertain Punic mint" remains the honest answer even after more than a century of scholarship on the series.