The beautiful coin featured above represents a remarkable fusion of cultures across the Mediterranean. It was struck in Sicily, a thoroughly Greek island, likely with the aid of Greek engravers. But those minting the coin were Carthaginian soldiers from across the sea in North Africa, and the obverse design alludes to the tetradrachms of Alexander the Great, the Macedonian who struck coins with this design as far east as Iran.


 
The Carthaginians, a seafaring people that originally came from Phoenicia (Lebanon), took an interest in Greek Sicily as early as the 6th century BC. Carthaginian general Malchus conquered much of Sicily around 540 BC, which they retained until a Spartan prince named Doreius arrived to expel the “barbarian” Carthaginians from the island. While he was defeated and killed, Doreius became a martyr and inspired a coordinated pan-Greek response to expel Carthage from Sicily, which was largely successful. As a side note, Doreius’ brother Leonidas was the famed Spartan king who led the Band of 300 at Thermopylae.

Above: One of the first Carthaginian coins to be struck on the island of Sicily was this issue of Motya, struck ca. 400 BC. It closely copies the styles of the coinage of the Greek city states, with the Arethusa head surrounded by dolphins following the types of Syracuse and the crab seen from above copying the issues of Acragas.
 
Across the next two centuries, there were frequent wars between Syracuse and their Greek allies and Carthage. The conflict relevant to the coin for sale, the Seventh Sicilian War (311-306 BC), involved a Greek Syracusan army actually crossing the sea to march on Carthage itself, where they, like the British in the Revolution or the US in Vietnam, won nearly all the battles but eventually tired of the conflict and returned home. Carthage retained bases in western Sicily, including Entella, where the “People of the Camp” (likely Carthaginian troops or mercenaries) struck the tetradrachm available for sale and the coin below.

Below: One of the most important coins of Carthaginian Sicily, possibly featuring a portrait the legendary Carthaginian queen Dido, who hosted Aeneas before he left to found the precursor to Rome.


Centuries of Carthage – Sicilian Greek conflict finally ended in a victory for neither side, but the Roman Republic, which intervened in 264 BC as “protector” of Syracuse against the Punic threat. The Rome-Carthage sea battle at Cape Ecnomus in 256 BC was the largest naval battle in history with a whopping 300,000 combatants. Roman victory in the war expelled Carthage from Sicily for the last time, and Rome gained its first territory outside Italy, a prelude of the empire.