Aitna's coinage history is fractured by catastrophe. The original city was destroyed by Hieron I of Syracuse around 476 BC when he expelled the population and refounded it as Katane, leaving the first Aitna mint effectively extinct within years of opening. The city was later re-established, and these bronzes belong to that second phase — a community reasserting civic identity on the slopes of the volcano after decades of Syracusan dominance in the region.
The trias denomination, worth three onkiai, was the workhorse of Sicilian bronze coinage in this period.
Aitna's coinage history is fractured by catastrophe. The original city was destroyed by Hieron I of Syracuse around 476 BC when he expelled the population and refounded it as Katane, leaving the first Aitna mint effectively extinct within years of opening. The city was later re-established, and these bronzes belong to that second phase — a community reasserting civic identity on the slopes of the volcano after decades of Syracusan dominance in the region.
The trias denomination, worth three onkiai, was the workhorse of Sicilian bronze coinage in this period.