Exceptional Galba Portrait

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 591. Estimate $30000.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $72500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Galba. AD 68-69. AV Aureus (7.24 g, 5h). Rome mint. Struck circa July, AD 68-January, AD 69. IMP SER GALBA CAESAR AVG, laureate and draped bust right / SALVS GEN HVMANI, Fortuna standing left, right foot on globe, cradling rudder in her left arm and sacrificing out of a patera in her right hand over an altar to left. RIC I 213; Calicó 503; BMCRE -; BN 94; Hunter 8. EF, underlying luster.

Ex Numismatica Ars Classica 5 (25 February 1992), lot 432; Leu 25 (23 April 1980), lot 261.

Salus Gen Humani was a legend introduced in the Civil War coinage associated with the revolt of Vindex, combined with a Victory type. This reverse is often interpreted to mean that the Victory of the revolt would be 'the World's Salvation.' Mattingly, in BMCRE (p. cxcvi), notes that Suetonius (Galba, 9) provides a comment related to this type: "an appeal comes from Vindex to Galba at Carthago Nova 'to lend his services as champion and leader of the human race.'" With the present issue, presumably struck near the time of his success over Nero, Galba pays homage to this war-cry of Vindex. The Victory type gives way to one of the 'Fortune of the Human Race', who is sacrificing in gratitude for the deliverance of the Romans from the vile Nero.