Aureus - Vitellius, Aulus Vitellius Germanicus and Vitellia LIBERI IMP GERMAN

Vitellius reigned for just eight months in 69 AD, the Year of the Four Emperors, before being dragged through Rome and executed by Vespasian's forces. This aureus honoring his children — issued to project dynastic legitimacy he never lived to establish — was struck at a moment when the empire was functionally at war with itself, with Othonian and then Flavian armies advancing from the Danube.

RIC I 78 is among the scarcer emissions of his brief reign, a direct consequence of how little time the Vitellian mint had to operate before the regime collapsed.