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Emporia — modern Empúries on the Catalan coast — was one of the few Iberian cities granted the right to strike its own bronze coinage under Roman oversight during the late Republic. This issue falls within the turbulent decades spanning Caesar's assassination, the Second Triumvirate, and Octavian's consolidation of power, a period when local civic minting in Hispania Citerior was both politically tolerated and administratively convenient for paying taxes and managing local exchange. The city's Greek colonial roots, descending from the Phocaean foundation of Emporion, gave it an unusual dual identity that Roman administrators found useful rather than troubling.