Galba came to power because the army let him, and this denarius admits as much. Struck at an uncertain Gallic mint in the convulsive months between Nero's suicide and Galba's own murder, the coin shows Mars on the obverse, helmeted, draped, and unusually bearded, and on the reverse an aquila planted between two military standards beside an altar. There is no legend, no name, no title: only the war god and the furniture of a legionary camp. That silence is the message.
Galba had been hailed emperor by his troops in Hispania Tarraconensis in the spring of 68, and his march on Rome was underwritten by Vindex's revolt in Gaul and the acquiescence of the Rhine legions. A coin that pictures the standards and the altar of sacramentum, the oath that bound soldiers to their commander, is a coin that says power now flows from the camps. Tacitus drew the lesson in a sentence that has never lost its edge: the secret of empire was out, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome. Galba lasted seven months.
- Mint
- Gaul
- Struck
- AD 68-69
- Authority
- Galba