87. Melita e Gaulos: due identità territoriali a confronto attraverso il documento monetale

In the years following the Roman conquest in 218 BC, Melita and Gaulos started to\r\nproduce their own bronze coinage. The largest island in the Maltese archipelago struck\r\n11 issues. The last one was minted at the end of the Republican age, when Gaulos also\r\nminted its only issue. Their coinage is very different in terms of types and languages.\r\nMelita uses a multiplicity of types and all of them are religious images (heads of divinities,\r\ngods, objects or animals related to them). The legends are written in Punic, Greek\r\nor Latin. On the contrary, the coins from Gaulos have military types: a helmeted female\r\nhead on the obverse and a warrior on the reverse. The inscriptions are always in Greek.\r\nThe aim of this paper is to study how the identity of the two islands is expressed by\r\ntheir coins, comparing their types and legends with literary sources, archaeological and\r\nepigraphical evidence and coins minted in Roman times by towns in Sicily.