Tetradrachm

This issue falls within the period bracketed by two catastrophes for Syracuse: the arrival of the Athenian armada in 415 BC and the Carthaginian sack of Akragas in 405 BC. The Athenian expedition — the largest amphibious force the Greek world had yet assembled — ended in total destruction before the walls of the city, with the surviving Athenian prisoners consigned to the stone quarries of the Latomiae, where most died.

Syracusan coinage of this decade circulated through a city that had just defeated a superpower and was already bracing for the next invasion from the west.