This issue falls squarely within the most turbulent decade in Syracusan history — the period beginning with Athens' catastrophic Sicilian Expedition of 415 BC, which ended in 413 BC with the near-total annihilation of the Athenian force at the Assinarus River. Syracuse emerged not merely intact but emboldened, flush with Athenian prisoners and plunder. The surge in silver coinage from this period likely reflects both the practical demands of paying mercenaries and the civic momentum of a city that had just defeated the most powerful fleet in the Greek world.
The SNG ANS 259 attribution places this among a tightly defined die group studied extensively by Jenkins and Lewis in their 1967 corpus of archaic Syracusan coinage.
This issue falls squarely within the most turbulent decade in Syracusan history — the period beginning with Athens' catastrophic Sicilian Expedition of 415 BC, which ended in 413 BC with the near-total annihilation of the Athenian force at the Assinarus River. Syracuse emerged not merely intact but emboldened, flush with Athenian prisoners and plunder. The surge in silver coinage from this period likely reflects both the practical demands of paying mercenaries and the civic momentum of a city that had just defeated the most powerful fleet in the Greek world.
The SNG ANS 259 attribution places this among a tightly defined die group studied extensively by Jenkins and Lewis in their 1967 corpus of archaic Syracusan coinage.