Sybaris was destroyed by Croton in 510 BC, the city literally razed and flooded by diverting the River Crathis over its ruins. The coins of this reference group belong not to that original polis but to a refoundation attempt in the 450s, when Sybarite exiles repeatedly tried to re-establish the city on or near the original site. That effort collapsed definitively when Thurii was founded in 444/3 BC under Athenian sponsorship — absorbing the surviving settlers and effectively ending the Sybarite name as a political entity.
The narrow five-year window of issue makes this one of the shortest-lived civic coinages of Magna Graecia.
Sybaris was destroyed by Croton in 510 BC, the city literally razed and flooded by diverting the River Crathis over its ruins. The coins of this reference group belong not to that original polis but to a refoundation attempt in the 450s, when Sybarite exiles repeatedly tried to re-establish the city on or near the original site. That effort collapsed definitively when Thurii was founded in 444/3 BC under Athenian sponsorship — absorbing the surviving settlers and effectively ending the Sybarite name as a political entity.
The narrow five-year window of issue makes this one of the shortest-lived civic coinages of Magna Graecia.