Tetradrachm

This issue falls in the decade following the catastrophic Athenian expedition against Syracuse — the largest military undertaking of the entire Peloponnesian War, ending in 413 BC with the near-total destruction of the Athenian fleet in the Great Harbour and the enslavement or death of perhaps 40,000 men. Syracuse emerged from that victory flush with captured silver and political prestige, and the coinage of this period reflects exactly that confidence. The city was, briefly, the most powerful Greek polis in the western Mediterranean.

The decade closed with the rise of Dionysius I, who seized power around 405 BC and would reshape Syracusan coinage entirely.