Here is a coin struck by a man who was not yet quite emperor, in a province that had just become the hinge of the Roman world. In the spring of 68, Servius Sulpicius Galba, the elderly governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, threw in with Vindex's revolt against Nero and let himself be hailed by his troops as legate of the Senate and Roman People. The denarius shows him doing the only thing that mattered in those months: riding, hand outstretched, the general on the move. On the reverse stands Hispania herself, draped and bareheaded, with the javelins and round shield (the *caetra*) that Roman writers had long associated with the peninsula's tribal warriors. The message is blunt.
This rebellion is not the adventurism of one ambitious senator, it is a province in arms, and its governor rides at its head. Struck without imperial titles (the legends are blank or generic on this issue), the piece belongs to that strange interval when Galba was marching toward a throne Nero still occupied, and the coinage had to speak the language of legitimacy without yet being able to name it. By the time anyone in Rome held this denarius in hand, Nero was dead by his own trembling hand and Galba was emperor. He would last seven months.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- Struck circa April-late AD 68
- Authority
- Galba
- Reverse
- Bareheaded and draped bust of Hispania right; two javelins above round shield to left