Æ20 C ARRVNTANVS BALB PROPR

Melita — modern Malta — was administered as part of the Roman province of Sicily, and this bronze was struck under the authority of a Roman proquaestor pro praetore, one of the few provincial officials whose name appears on coinage from the island. The bracket of dates corresponds roughly to the tumultuous period between Caesar's assassination and Octavian's consolidation of power, when provincial governance across the western Mediterranean was in constant flux.

The island had been a Carthaginian possession before falling to Rome during the First Punic War, around 218 BC, and retained enough local identity to maintain its own bronze coinage well into the imperial period.