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Messene's bronze coinage of the early Imperial period reflects the city's careful navigation of Roman authority following Augustus's reorganization of Greece into the province of Achaea in 27 BC. The city retained nominal autonomy under Roman oversight, and local bronze issues like this one filled the practical gap left by Rome's general indifference to supplying small-denomination coinage to provincial Greek cities.

Messene had been refounded by Epaminondas in 369 BC after centuries of Spartan subjugation, and civic pride in that independence ran deep enough that the city continued issuing its own bronze well into the Julio-Claudian period.