Katane sat on the eastern coast of Sicily at the foot of Etna, and the city's coinage from this period reflects its turbulent position between Syracusan ambition and Carthaginian pressure. In 403 BC, Dionysius I of Syracuse expelled the Katanean population entirely, resettling the city with Campanian mercenaries and renaming it Aitna — making the final issues of this series the product of a city literally on the edge of erasure.
The SNG ANS and Gulbenkian references place this piece within a tightly documented sequence. Jameson 540 in particular has been used as a benchmark attribution for the die groupings established by Jenkins in his study of Sicilian coinage.
Katane sat on the eastern coast of Sicily at the foot of Etna, and the city's coinage from this period reflects its turbulent position between Syracusan ambition and Carthaginian pressure. In 403 BC, Dionysius I of Syracuse expelled the Katanean population entirely, resettling the city with Campanian mercenaries and renaming it Aitna — making the final issues of this series the product of a city literally on the edge of erasure.
The SNG ANS and Gulbenkian references place this piece within a tightly documented sequence. Jameson 540 in particular has been used as a benchmark attribution for the die groupings established by Jenkins in his study of Sicilian coinage.