Roma Numismatics Ltd
Auction XVI 26 Sep 2018
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Diva Faustina I (wife of A. Pius) AV Aureus. Rome, after AD 141. DIVA FAVSTINA•, draped bust right / AETERNITAS, Fortuna standing left, holding patera and rudder. RIC 349a (Pius); BMCRE 368, pl. 9, 1 (Pius, same dies); Calicó 1743, cf. 1743a (same rev. die). 7.32g, 20mm, 12h.
Fleur De Coin. A highly attractive example struck from rare dies.
Ex Monsieur Note (1910-1982) Collection, France;
Privately purchased in Paris, March 1980.
Annia Galeria Faustina was born into a distinguished and well connected family; her father Marcus Annius Verus was three times consul and prefect of Rome, and she counted Sabina and Matidia as her maternal aunts. Sometime between AD 110 and 115 she married Titus Aurelius Fulvius Boionius Arrius Antoninus (who would later gain favour with Hadrian, be adopted and succeed to the throne, and be known to history as Antoninus Pius). Her marriage to Antoninus was a happy one and she bore him two sons and two daughters; her namesake, the only one to survive to adulthood, would marry the future emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Faustina was by all accounts a beautiful woman noted for her wisdom, though the Historia Augusta criticized her as having 'excessive frankness' and 'levity'. Throughout her life, as a private citizen and as empress, Faustina was involved in assisting charities for the poor and sponsoring the education of Roman children, particularly girls. When she died in AD 140 shortly after her fortieth birthday her husband Antoninus was devastated. To honour her memory he had her deified, built a temple for her in the Forum and issued a prodigious coinage in her name as Diva Faustina. The most fitting and touching act of this grieving husband and emperor was to ensure her legacy of charitable work would be continued: he established an institution called Puellae Faustinianae ('The Girls of Faustina') to assist orphaned Roman girls, evidenced by the extremely rare aurei and denarii with the legend PVELLAE FAVSTINIANAE (cf. RIC 397-399 [Pius]) and he created a new alimenta or grain dole to feed the poor.
Unusually, the posthumous coinage in her name was produced over a sustained period, though this is clearly linked to the significant role she played in the ideological theme of pietas that characterised the reign of Antoninus, and which Martin Beckmann (Diva Faustina: coinage and cult in Rome and the provinces, ANS, New York, 2012) suggests likely included a distribution of the issues with the reverse legends PIETAS and AETERNITAS, being evocative of "the 'spiritual side' of Faustina's divinisation" (p. 19), at a public ceremony in her memory on the tenth anniversary of her deification.
Fleur De Coin. A highly attractive example struck from rare dies.
Ex Monsieur Note (1910-1982) Collection, France;
Privately purchased in Paris, March 1980.
Annia Galeria Faustina was born into a distinguished and well connected family; her father Marcus Annius Verus was three times consul and prefect of Rome, and she counted Sabina and Matidia as her maternal aunts. Sometime between AD 110 and 115 she married Titus Aurelius Fulvius Boionius Arrius Antoninus (who would later gain favour with Hadrian, be adopted and succeed to the throne, and be known to history as Antoninus Pius). Her marriage to Antoninus was a happy one and she bore him two sons and two daughters; her namesake, the only one to survive to adulthood, would marry the future emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Faustina was by all accounts a beautiful woman noted for her wisdom, though the Historia Augusta criticized her as having 'excessive frankness' and 'levity'. Throughout her life, as a private citizen and as empress, Faustina was involved in assisting charities for the poor and sponsoring the education of Roman children, particularly girls. When she died in AD 140 shortly after her fortieth birthday her husband Antoninus was devastated. To honour her memory he had her deified, built a temple for her in the Forum and issued a prodigious coinage in her name as Diva Faustina. The most fitting and touching act of this grieving husband and emperor was to ensure her legacy of charitable work would be continued: he established an institution called Puellae Faustinianae ('The Girls of Faustina') to assist orphaned Roman girls, evidenced by the extremely rare aurei and denarii with the legend PVELLAE FAVSTINIANAE (cf. RIC 397-399 [Pius]) and he created a new alimenta or grain dole to feed the poor.
Unusually, the posthumous coinage in her name was produced over a sustained period, though this is clearly linked to the significant role she played in the ideological theme of pietas that characterised the reign of Antoninus, and which Martin Beckmann (Diva Faustina: coinage and cult in Rome and the provinces, ANS, New York, 2012) suggests likely included a distribution of the issues with the reverse legends PIETAS and AETERNITAS, being evocative of "the 'spiritual side' of Faustina's divinisation" (p. 19), at a public ceremony in her memory on the tenth anniversary of her deification.