Tetradrachm

Katane's silver coinage from this period reflects the city's awkward position in the aftermath of Hieron I of Syracuse's forced population transfers — in 476 BC, Hieron expelled the original Katanaean inhabitants entirely, resettling the city with Syracusan and Peloponnesian colonists and renaming it Aitna. The original population wandered for over a decade before reclaiming their city around 461 BC, following Hieron's death and the broader democratic revolutions that swept Sicily. This tetradrachm almost certainly belongs to that restoration period, struck by a community reasserting its identity after years of displacement.