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Emporiae — modern Empúries on the Catalan coast — was a Greek foundation of Phocaean Massalia that had, by the late Republic, evolved into a uniquely bilingual community: a Greek town and a Roman veteran settlement sharing the same promontory under an uneasy joint civic arrangement described by Livy. This bronze was struck precisely during that contested period of dual identity, before Augustus formally reorganized the Iberian provincial structure and the city's independent coinage ceased.

The Spanish excavations at Empúries have produced die-linked examples of this type in stratified contexts, giving it one of the better-documented archaeological provenances of any Iberian civic bronze.