'Diva Faustina', The Empress of Antoninus Pius by R. A. Slater

Originally published in The North American Journal of Numismatics, January 1968.

"de huius uxore multa dicta sunt ob nimiam libertatem et vivendi

facilitatem, quae iste cum animi dolore compressit." Scriptores Historiae

Augustae, Antoninus Pius, III,7.

Thus the author of the Historia Augusta (Julius Capitolinus) casually assassinates the character of another leading Roman figure, this time Annia Galeria Faustina, the wife and empress of Antoninus Pius. Gibbon and others who followed him who used the Augustan Histories as though they were sacred writ and who further wished little more than to believe that Rome collapsed in a cesspool of corruption have done little to improve the estimate of the lives of Faustina the elder or her equally slandered daughter, Faustina the younger, wife of Marcus Aurelius. The offsetting evidence which presents both these women in a better light are perhaps too much ignored. Marcus Aurelius in his MEDITATIONS speaks highly of his wife. Antoninus Pius perhaps gives us the best glimpse of the esteem in which he held his spouse by the huge outpouring of commemorative coins following her death in A.D. 141.

In A.D. 141 and the immediately following years a large number of coins in all metals were struck by the imperial mints honoring the dead and deified empress. These not only speak mutely though eloquently of the love and esteem in which Antoninus Pius held his wife, but they also give us considerable insight into the development of religious and mystical thought during the middle of the second century.

One large group of coins, which may depict Faustina as a number of beneficent deities bears the inscription AETERNITAS. Here we see the development and acceptance of the idea of life beyond time, a life into which Faustina has passed, but one which also exists for all men. Another large group of coins bear the inscription CONSECRATIO again symbolizing and hallowing the memory of the departed empress.

Possible the most important coin type of this series is the one which alludes to the "Puellae Faustinianae" - the provision of free education for orphan girls and presumably administered and financed by state funds in a way similar to alimentary institutions. Here once again our attention is drawn from the petty gossip of ancient authors to the humane and soundly administered programs of the Roman government under the Antonine emperors.