The first denarius of a civil war emperor still smells of the province that made him. Struck at Tarraco in the spring or summer of 68, while Nero was either still alive in Rome or freshly dead in a freedman's villa, this coin shows Galba already styling himself GALBA IMP, the laurel on his brow and a small globe tucked beneath his neck to advertise a reach he did not yet possess. The reverse is the real argument: HISPANIA herself, grain and poppy in one hand for the fertile peace of the peninsula, shield and spears in the other for the legions that had acclaimed their elderly governor.
This is not yet the coinage of a Roman princeps. It is the coinage of a Spanish revolt selling itself as the salvation of the state, minted by a man who had spent years governing Hispania Tarraconensis and who now asked the empire to accept his province as the womb of a new regime. Within a year he would be cut down in the Forum by Othonian cavalry, the globe at his neck having proved more aspirational than prophetic, and Tacitus would deliver the verdict that has stuck to him ever since: capax imperii nisi imperasset.
- Mint
- Tarraco
- Struck
- Struck circa April-late AD 68
- Authority
- Galba
- Reverse
- Hispania standing left, holding poppy and two stalks of grain in right hand and round shield and two spears in left