Sestertius

Lakedaimon — the ancient city-state we know as Sparta — struck bronze coinage only in the Hellenistic and Roman provincial periods, a consequence of Sparta's notorious historical prohibition on precious metal coinage, a policy rooted in Lykurgan tradition that kept the city reliant on iron spits as currency for centuries longer than any of its Greek peers. By the 30s BC, that ideology had long collapsed under Roman pressure, and the city was minting civic bronzes within the chaotic final years of the Roman Republic — the very window when Antony and Octavian were carving up the Mediterranean.