A seventy-year-old governor from Hispania, marching on Rome at the head of legions raised against a sitting emperor, needed something more than swords to make his usurpation feel like restoration. So Galba reached past Nero, past Claudius, past even Tiberius, and put Livia on the reverse of his denarius. The choice was not sentimental. Livia, wife of Augustus and mother of the dynasty, had been Galba's personal patron: she left him a substantial bequest in her will, a legacy Tiberius reportedly refused to honor in full.
By placing her on his coinage in the second half of 68, holding patera and scepter in the posture of a goddess, Galba was at once advertising his Augustan pedigree, settling an old score with the Julio-Claudians who had cheated him, and arguing that the new regime was less a coup than the resumption of a properly Augustan order. The argument did not survive the winter. By mid January Galba lay butchered in the Forum, hauled from his litter by Otho's guardsmen, and Livia's quiet endorsement from beyond the grave proved no defense at all against soldiers who had not been paid.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- circa July AD 68-January AD 69
- Authority
- Galba