Tetras Syracuse - no legend

Syracuse began striking small bronze fractions in the fifth century BC as the city's economy expanded beyond what electrum and silver could efficiently service — low-denomination coinage was needed for daily market transactions that larger silver pieces made impractical. This particular issue, struck across a twenty-year window that encompassed the disastrous Athenian Expedition of 415 BC, circulated through one of the most turbulent periods in Syracusan history. The absence of a legend is characteristic of the earliest bronze civic issues from Syracuse, before the city began regularly inscribing ethnic legends on its smaller denominations.