Displays of Power: Imperial Ideology on the Coinage of Galba during the Crisis of 68/69 A.D.

The death of Nero in 68 A.D. plunged the Roman Empire into a state of total crisis. In the last years of his reign, the unpopular Nero already faced major uprisings in Gaul and Rome. Once he was declared a public enemy by the senate, he committed suicide. Plutarch compares the perilous situation following Nero’s death, which marked the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, to the revolt of the Titans in Greek mythology. The empire, he writes, was “torn into many fragments, and again in many places collapsing upon itself” because “the house of the Caesars … received four emperors, the soldiery ushering one in and another out, as in play.” This is hardly an exaggeration: in just one year and 195 days, four emperors donned the purple: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian