This coin was struck during the 2nd Punic War.

After his successful campaigns against Rome Hannibal captured Tarentum in 212 BC but failed to control the harbor. The Romans mounted two sieges of Capua, which fell in 211 BC, and the Romans completed their conquest of Syracuse and destruction of a Carthaginian army in Sicily. The Romans pacified Sicily and entered into an alliance with the Aetolian League with Phillip V. Philip. Hannibal now found himself under attack from several sides at once and was quickly subdued by Rome and her Greek allies and eventually lost Tarentum. After a series of defeats Hannibal was recalled to Carthage in 203 BC to direct the defense of his native country against a Roman invasion under Scipio Africanus.