Concordia is the punchline of a very dark joke on this denarius, struck somewhere in Gaul in the spring or autumn of AD 68 while the Roman world was tearing itself apart. Galba, the elderly governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, had thrown in with Vindex's Gallic revolt against Nero that spring, and by the time these unsigned silver pieces (RIC I 105) were rolling out of an anonymous Gallic mint, Vindex was dead at Vesontio, Nero had opened his own throat in a suburban villa, and Galba was marching south as Rome's new princeps. The reverse goddess, holding her olive branch and cornucopia, promises harmony and plenty: the obverse shows the laureate face of a man in his seventies who would have neither.
Galba reached Rome, alienated the Praetorians by refusing the donative he had implicitly promised, adopted the wrong heir, and was hacked down in the Forum on 15 January 69, six months into a reign whose coinage had insisted, in image after image, on concord. Tacitus' verdict on him is the one the coins cannot quite shake: capax imperii nisi imperasset, equal to ruling had he never ruled.
- Mint
- Uncertain mint in Gaul
- Struck
- Struck circa April-late autumn AD 68
- Authority
- Galba