D. 68 to 69) he reached past a century of Julio-Claudian rule to clasp hands with a ghost. D. 42 after Tiberius spent decades refusing to deify his own mother. Galba had reason to claim her: as a young man he had been a favorite of Livia's, and she had reportedly left him a substantial legacy in her will, a bequest Tiberius then quashed on a technicality.
By putting Livia on his coinage beside the unadorned obverse legend IMP SER GALBA CAESAR AVG, the new emperor was doing two things at once. He was reminding Rome that he, not Nero, embodied the dignified Augustan past, and he was settling a very old personal grievance in silver. The man who had marched on Rome to replace a Julio-Claudian was advertising himself as the last true heir of one. Within months the Praetorians cut him down in the Forum, and the coin became a relic of the shortest argument for legitimacy in Roman history.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- A.D. 68-69
- Authority
- Galba
- Reverse
- Livia draped standing facing left holding vertical scepter and patera