Leukaspis ('he of the white shield') is a hero of the Sicani, the pre-Greek people of central and western Sicily. Diodorus Siculus relates that when Heracles drove the cattle of Geryon through the interior of the island the Sicani opposed him in a pitched battle, and that among the many slain were distinguished generals who continued to receive heroic honours down to his own day, Leukaspis being named first among them alongside Pediacrates and four others. Alone of that company Leukaspis can be traced in cult: at the end of the fifth century BCE, under Dionysius I, the Syracusan mint issued silver drachms whose reverse names him ΛΕΥΚΑΣΠΙΣ and shows the nude, crest-helmeted hero advancing with spear and oval shield, a sword slung at his shoulder, beside a garlanded altar and the forepart of a sacrificed ram — the image of an armed guardian hero honoured with sacrifice in Syracusan territory. The adoption of an indigenous Sican hero on the coinage of Greek Syracuse is a striking witness to the interweaving of native and colonial religion in Sicily; the name itself is Greek, evidently a Hellenization of the native figure.