Aureus - Galba AEQVITAS AVG?, Aequitas

Galba's seven-month reign — June 68 to January 69 AD — was among the most financially chaotic of the entire Principate. Having promised enormous donatives to the legions that backed his rise, he then refused to pay them in full, famously remarking that he was accustomed to levy soldiers, not buy them. That decision cost him his life. The aurei struck under his authority carry an irony: a gold coinage of impeccable weight issued by a man whose fiscal rigidity triggered his own assassination by the Praetorian Guard on the 15th of January, 69 AD.