Agrigentum, the great Sicilian city known to the Greeks as Akragas, retained the right to strike local bronze under Augustus as part of Rome's broader policy of allowing provincial municipalities to maintain civic coinage — useful for small transactions the Roman system didn't bother to supply. The Greek ethnic ΑΚΡΑΓΑΝΤΙΝΩΝ on an Augustan-era coin is a deliberate archaism, invoking the city's Hellenic past at precisely the moment Roman administrative authority was being consolidated across Sicily.
The BMC RE 165 reference places this firmly within the reorganized Sicilian civic issues following the upheavals of the Sextus Pompey conflict, which had devastated the island's population and economy through the 30s BC.
Agrigentum, the great Sicilian city known to the Greeks as Akragas, retained the right to strike local bronze under Augustus as part of Rome's broader policy of allowing provincial municipalities to maintain civic coinage — useful for small transactions the Roman system didn't bother to supply. The Greek ethnic ΑΚΡΑΓΑΝΤΙΝΩΝ on an Augustan-era coin is a deliberate archaism, invoking the city's Hellenic past at precisely the moment Roman administrative authority was being consolidated across Sicily.
The BMC RE 165 reference places this firmly within the reorganized Sicilian civic issues following the upheavals of the Sextus Pompey conflict, which had devastated the island's population and economy through the 30s BC.