Galba Æ Sestertius. Rome, July AD 68-January AD 69. SER SVLPI GALBA IMP CAESAR AVG TR P, laureate and draped bust right with globe at point of bust / HISPANIA CLVNIA SVL, Galba, bare-headed and in military dress, seated left on curule chair, holding parazonium and extending hand to the draped figure of Hispania standing right, holding cornucopiae and extending palladium to emperor; in exergue, SC. AGC 367 (A122 / P189) = Hess, Luzern 211, 1932, 444; for similar varieties cf. RIC 469-73; CBN 237-8; BMC 252-254; Cohen 86-8 (200 francs). 24.90g, 35mm, 7h.
Near Very Fine. Extremely Rare; the second recorded example. Attractive light golden-brown Tiber tone.
At the outbreak of the Civil War of Vindex on 2 April AD 68 the scion of the gens Sulpicia and governor the province of Tarraconensis, Servius Supicius Galba, declared himself legatus SPQR. Soon after the news of Nero's death on 9 June of the same year Galba accepted the titles Augustus and Caesar from the Senate.
The remarkable Hispania Clunia Sul commemorative issue, struck later in the short Augustate of Galba, emphasises his Spanish power-base and has been fully discussed by Kraay in ACG, pp. 39-40. This singular reverse type depicts Galba at Clunia, curiously referred to by his family name SVL[picius] and seated on a sella curulis before the standing personification of Hispania, who offers him the imperium in the form of the palladium.
The older theory that the legend 'SVL' after CLVNIA was an honorary epithet given by Galba to that city, has no corroborating evidence to support it, and must therefore be dismissed. In the 1st century BC the original Iberian settlement of the Arevaci, had struck denarii with the Iberian legend Kolounioko and asses with the Latin legend CLOVNOQ. It was refounded, probably as a municipium, during Tiberius's reign. By the time of Galba's revolt against Nero it was an important fortified town in the Conventus Tarraconensis. It was at Clunia that Galba had given the standard to the new Legio VII Gemina in June 68 (Tacitus, Histories 2.11.1; 3.22.4; Dio Cassius 55.24; Suetonius, Galba 10) and it was at Clunia that Galba took refuge after the defeat of Vindex in Gaul in June 68, and before his slow march to Rome with Otho in the autumn of 68.
In an interesting providential anecdote concerning Clunia, it is recorded that according to the priests of Jupiter at Clunia, a certain nobly-born girl matched the prophecies spoken of in a trance by another girl two centuries before, that 'the lord and master of the world would some day arise in Spain' (Suetonius, Galba 9).