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Melita — modern Malta — occupied an awkward strategic position during the Second Punic War, sitting squarely between Carthaginian and Roman spheres of influence. The island had passed under Roman control in 218 BC, the very year Hannibal crossed the Alps, and its bronze coinage from this period reflects a community negotiating a new political reality while retaining enough civic autonomy to strike its own issues. The local Punic cultural substrate remained strong; Maltese bronzes of this period are among the few western Mediterranean civic issues that straddle both worlds without cleanly belonging to either.