Tetradrachm

This issue dates to the decade immediately following the expulsion of Thrasybulus in 466 BC, when Syracuse dismantled the Deinomenid tyranny and reconstituted itself as a democracy — one of the ancient world's more dramatic civic reversals. The new government inherited a mint already capable of producing exceptionally fine coinage, a technical infrastructure the tyrants had built and the democrats were content to continue using.

Boehringer's die study places this piece within a tightly sequenced group, allowing closer dating than most fifth-century Sicilian issues permit.