Servius Sulpicius Galba was seventy years old when the legions hailed him emperor, and the silver tetradrachm struck for him at Antioch in his brief reign carries no flattering softening of that fact. The bare head on the obverse is a magistrate's portrait, not a god's: lean, jowled, the head of a man who had governed Tarraconensis for eight years in obscurity before Vindex's revolt against Nero hauled him onto the imperial stage. The reverse keeps to the Antiochene formula that had served Augustus and his successors, the eagle of Syrian coinage standing on a wreath with palm beside it, here marked ΕΤΟΥΣ Β, "year 2," reckoning by the local Caesarean count rather than by Galba's own accession. That dating tells you something about how Antioch saw the matter: the mint was minding its provincial calendar while Rome cycled through emperors.
By the time these coins were circulating in the bazaars of the Orontes, Galba was already dead in the Forum, hacked down by Othonian cavalry in January 69 after a reign of seven months. Tacitus delivered the verdict that has stuck: capax imperii nisi imperasset, equal to ruling had he never ruled. The eagle on the wreath outlasted him without breaking stride.
- Mint
- Antioch
- Struck
- AD 68-69
- Authority
- Galba