If the
legend is also read across both sides (and it appears all on one
side of another related coin with
shield reverse) you have a
type apparently seeking the restoration of
liberty by anticipating the removal of a tyrant, that tyrant obviously being
Nero, at a stage where nobody seeing the coin needs to be thinking that
Galba is a successor to the
dictator Caesar.
It's kind of interesting that both daggers and
pilei feature in Suetonius' account of the period:
Nero 57
"He
met his death in the thirty-second year of
his age, on the
anniversary of the murder of
Octavia, and such was the public rejoicing that the people put on liberty-caps and
ran about all at city."
Galba 11
"To these sudden dangers was added news of
Vindex’s death, which caused
Galba the greatest alarm, and being now apparently bereft of support, almost precipitated
his suicide. But when word from the City arrived that
Nero was dead and that the people
had sworn allegiance to him, he set aside the title of governor and assumed that of
Caesar.
He then began
his march to
Rome in a general’s cloak, with a dagger, hanging from
his neck, at
his chest, and did not resume the
toga until
his main rivals
had been eliminated, namely the commander of the Praetorian Guard in
Rome, Nymphidius Sabinus, and the commanders in
Germany and
Africa, Fonteius Capito and
Clodius Macer."
There's a couple of free articles covering these coins in
part of the wider picture of their
types, in
German and
French.
https://www.academia.edu/27909725/https://www.academia.edu/45378620/