The globe perched at the point of Galba's neck is the giveaway: this is a coin struck while the empire itself was still up for grabs. In the spring of 68, Servius Sulpicius Galba, the elderly governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, had thrown in with Vindex's revolt against Nero and found himself, almost by accident, the figurehead of a rebellion that would end with a Julio-Claudian emperor cutting his own throat in a freedman's villa. RIC I 64, struck at Tarraco in those electric months, does not yet name him Caesar or Augustus on its surviving legend; it shows him laureate, with that small globe asserting universal dominion, and on the reverse a personification of VIRTVS holding Victory and the *parazonium*, the short sword of a commander.
The message is the message a usurper has to send before he can afford subtlety: this man has the manly courage Rome needs, and the gods (or fortune) have already handed him the world. Galba would reach the city by autumn, alienate the legions and the Praetorians within weeks, and be hacked down in the Forum on 15 January 69, the first of the four emperors that year. The Virtus on this denarius outlived him by about six months.
- Mint
- Tarraco
- Struck
- circa April-late AD 68
- Authority
- Galba
- Reverse
- Virtus standing left, holding Victory on globe and parazonium