Severina, AE antoninianus. Rome.
Obverse: SEVERINA AVG, diademed, draped bust right,
on crescent.
Reverse: CONCORDIA AVGG, Severina standing right,
clasping hand of Emperor, standing left
Mintmark digamma XXIR in exergue.
RIC V-1 Rome 3
(Remember from reading the Aurelian
page that XXI meant that twenty of such coins would contain the same silver
quantity of an old silver denarius.)
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Ulpia Severina (fl. 3rd century) was a Roman Empress, the wife of the emperor
Aurelian. There is evidence that she reigned in her own right for
some period after Aurelian's death in 275, which would make her the only
woman to have ruled over the entire classical Roman Empire by her own power.
Very little is known about her, as there are no literary sources mentioning
her existence. Almost everything known about her, including her name,
is gathered from coins and inscriptions.
Life:
Nothing certain is known of Ulpia Severina before her marriage to Aurelian.
It has been suggested that she was the daughter of Ulpius Crinitus, a figure
appearing in the Historia Augusta. This Ulpius is said to have been
a descendant of the line of Trajan and to have supported and adopted Aurelian.
However, the Historia Augusta is notoriously unreliable, and the story,
and perhaps Ulpius himself, may have been invented by propagandists trying
to connect Aurelian with the "Good Emperor" Trajan. Some scholars
believe that Ulpia Severina was from Dacia, where the nomen Ulpius was
common due to the influence of Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus).
At any rate, Ulpia Severina married Aurelian probably before he became
emperor in 270. It is known they had a daughter. According
to coinage depicting her, Ulpia gained the title Augusta in the autumn
of 274, though it is possible she had the title even before that.
She also received the titles of Pia ("pious") and mater castrorum et senatus
et patriae ("mother of the barracks (armies), senate, and country").
There is considerable numismatic evidence for Ulpia Severina ruling in
her own right between the death of Aurelian and the election of Marcus
Claudius Tacitus. Sources mention an interregnum between Aurelian
and Tacitus, and some of Ulpia's coins appear to have been minted after
Aurelian's death. As such she may have been the only woman to rule
over the whole Roman Empire in her own power.
Information was taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
at this URL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Severina
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