Semis

The Untikesken gens — the Indigetes, centered at Emporion on the northeastern Iberian coast — were among the few native Iberian peoples to adopt the Roman semis denomination directly, almost certainly due to sustained commercial contact with the Roman colony at Emporiae rather than any formal Roman administrative mandate. This piece belongs to a civic bronze series produced for local market exchange, not Roman taxation. The Indigetes maintained a degree of autonomous coinage unusually late into the Republican period precisely because Rome found their cooperation in the region more valuable than their assimilation.