Obol

Saguntum — known to its Iberian inhabitants as Arse — was an Edetani settlement on the Mediterranean coast whose destruction by Hannibal in 219 BC served as the immediate casus belli for the Second Punic War. These small silver fractions were struck in the decades just before that catastrophe, circulating through a trading port active enough to require fractional silver for daily commercial exchange. The Edetani maintained their own monetary tradition largely independent of Greek colonial influence despite proximity to Emporion.