Tetradrachm

The Siculo-Punic coinage of this period emerged directly from Carthage's renewed military campaigns in Sicily, launched in 410 BC under Hannibal Mago in retaliation for the Syracusan sack of Selinus and Himera decades earlier. Carthage had no established silver coinage tradition of its own — these tetradrachms were struck specifically to pay mercenary troops operating far from North Africa, drawing heavily on Syracusan weight standards and artistic conventions because that was the currency the soldiers expected and trusted.

The issuing mint remains unattributed with confidence. Panormus, Motya, and a mobile military mint have all been proposed.