Servius Sulpicius Galba was seventy-one years old when his face first appeared on the silver of Rome, and the portrait does not flatter him: a hard jaw, a thin mouth, the laurel laid over a head that had spent decades in the service of emperors before deciding, in the summer of 68, that it might wear the wreath itself. This denarius from the Rome mint, struck in the brief window between Nero's suicide in June and Galba's own murder in the Forum the following January, answers a delicate problem: how does a provincial governor turned usurper persuade the city that he is not a usurper at all? The reverse gives the answer in the oldest visual grammar Rome possessed.
Roma herself stands armed, Victory perched on the globe in her hand, the transverse spear planted, and the message is that the new regime is simply the continuation of Roman power, undisturbed by the embarrassment of having been acquired through a legionary revolt in Spain. It was a respectable lie, told in respectable silver, and it bought Galba about six months. Tacitus would later deliver the verdict that no coin could: *capax imperii nisi imperasset*, equal to ruling, had he never ruled.
- Mint
- Rome
- Struck
- circa July AD 68-January 69
- Authority
- Galba
- Reverse
- Roma standing left, holding Victory on globe and transverse spear