In the third year of Nero's reign, the mint at Antioch was still striking tetradrachms that paired the young emperor with his mother. That alone should give us pause. By 56/7, when this coin (McAlee 253) left the dies, Agrippina the Younger had already been edged from the center of power at Rome, her face removed from the precious-metal coinage of the capital after a brief and revealing experiment in joint portraiture.
Yet here in Syria, on good silver, she still claims a reverse to herself: draped, dignified, the date mark ΓEP to her right marking regnal year three. The oak wreath crowning Nero on the obverse is the corona civica, the honor for saving citizens, granted to every Julio-Claudian as a matter of course, and it sits oddly above a face whose mother would within two years be dead at her son's order, hunted down at Baiae after a collapsing boat failed to drown her. Antioch's die-cutters were working from a template that Rome itself was already quietly abandoning, and the coin preserves, in provincial silver, a partnership the principate had decided it could no longer advertise.
- Mint
- Antioch
- Struck
- AD 54-68, Dated CY 3 (56/7 AD)
- Authority
- Nero
- Reverse
- Draped bust of Agrippina Junior right with date mark to right