The First Ladies of Rome
Empresses in history and on coins By Julia Trocmé-Latter The very presence of imperial women on Roman coins speaks to the desire of the ruling dynasty to cast itself as an idealized Roman family. At this time, the most important public role for women was materfamilias, whose societal function was to bear and rear children (particularly sons) for the Empire. So, the decision to feature the wives of emperors on the imperial currency, even when heirs did not yet exist, served as a promise of dynastic continuity and stability. Roman society was decidedly male-dominated, with politics and government an exclusively male preserve. Yet women could and did exert a powerful influence behind the scenes, serving as advisors and sounding boards for their political husbands and fathers. And, from the third century on, there were several periods when de facto feminine control of government was more or less accepted by all levels of society.
Figure 1: Quinarius with Fulvia as Victory, circa 42 BC
Figure 2: Caligula “Three Sisters” Sestertius
Living women associated with powerful men had been appearing on Roman coins (as opposed to provincial coins, where the rules were more flexible) since the Second Triumvirate, but almost always disguised as goddesses or allegorical figures. Mark Antony’s first wife Fulvia, who was very politically active, was portrayed as Victory on silver quinarii struck before her death in 40 BC. Octavia, Antony’s next wife, appeared on provincially struck coins with her husband without any pretence of disguise (it helped that she was the sister of Antony’s co-ruler Octavian and thus served as a symbol of their short-lived partnership). Still, the “disguised portrait” convention continued into the early Empire, with Augustus’s daughter Julia depicted as Diana, or his wife Livia as the personification of Justice or Pax, as early examples. Caligula issued a sestertius with his three sisters on the reverse, all portrayed as allegorical figures considered appropriate for women (namely Securitas, Concordia, and Fortuna), but the identity of the three cannot be contained by their divine guises, as their names are unambiguously arranged around them.
Figure 4: Bust of Antonia Minor, Glyptotek, Munich
Figure 3: Dupondius of Antonia Minor
The emperor Claudius issued several coins featuring the women of his family, but many of these had died by the time he took the throne in AD 41. These included his sister-in-law, Agrippina Senior, and his mother, Antonia Minor, whom he had posthumously named Augusta. The first living woman to appear as herself on coins issued by the Roman mint (again, in contrast to provincial mints, located in areas more amenable to the concept of monarchy) was Agrippina the Younger, who featured on the reverse of coins of her husband Claudius. Such double obverse types sometimes serve to blur the issue of who is really the authority, and had been done before by Antony and Octavian during the second triumvirate. By featuring Agrippina on the reverse (or second obverse) of such coins, Claudius was in effect advertising Agrippina as co-ruler. Agrippina would, indeed, become the first woman to wield something like imperial power, although her ascendancy was short-lived. When Agrippina’s son Nero took the throne at age 17, she became a kind of regent, though no such official post existed, let alone for women. Agrippina’s new role was reflected by her frequent presence with Nero on the obverse of coins, reflecting the fact that the two held power together. Rome’s elite viewed this as intolerable and her position was gradually usurped by two male advisors, Seneca and Burrus. Her loss 4