Tetradrachm

Syracuse's early tetradrachms occupied a peculiar political moment: the city was under the tyranny of Gelon and later Hieron I, rulers who used coinage aggressively as propaganda following the defeat of the Carthaginians at Himera in 480 BC. Victory issues flooded the western Greek world, and the Demareteia — a celebrated medallion struck from captured Carthaginian silver — was minted in this same decade, casting a long shadow over all Syracusan silver of the period.

Boehringer 211 places this piece within a well-documented die study of early Syracusan coinage published in 1968, which remains the essential reference for sequencing these issues chronologically.