Æ20 Helmet

Oea — modern Tripoli — was one of three Phoenician settlements collectively known as the Emporia, a region contested between Carthage and the Numidian kings before Rome absorbed it following the Third Punic War. Municipal bronze issues of this type were struck during the early Augustan period, when Oea fell under the administrative umbrella of the province of Africa Proconsularis. The city retained enough autonomy to produce its own civic coinage, a privilege that quietly disappeared as Roman provincial organization tightened through the first century AD.