By the time this tetradrachm left the dies at Antioch in AD 67/8, Nero was on tour in Greece, competing in chariot races and singing competitions while his governors quietly registered the temperature of the eastern provinces. The coin betrays none of that distraction. The emperor wears the aegis of Jupiter, a borrowing from Augustan iconography that pulled the wearer into the company of the gods, and the reverse eagle, wings spread on a wreath with a palm frond beside it, is the standard Antiochene language of victory and divine favor, here pressed into service for a princeps who badly needed both. The date in the field, ETOYC ΣIP, year 116 of the Caesarean Era, places the striking in the last full year before everything came apart: Vindex would raise Gaul against Nero within months, Galba would follow, and by June of 68 the singer of Rome would be dead by his own hand in a freedman's villa.
The Syrian legions whose pay these tetradrachms underwrote would, within eighteen months, hail Vespasian emperor and march west to make it stick. The aegis on the shoulder promised a god. The mint was already counting the days.
- Mint
- Antioch
- Struck
- AD 54-68, dated year 116 of the Caesarean Era (AD 67/8)
- Authority
- Nero
- Reverse
- shows eagle standing left on wreath with wings displayed, holding wreath in beak, with palm frond to left and date inscription