Proclaiming the Imperial Survival of Another Pregnancy

CNG 85, Lot: 928. Estimate $5000. Sold for $4600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Faustina Junior. Augusta, AD 147-175. Æ Medallion (37mm, 41.45 g, 12h). Rome mint. Struck under Marcus Aurelius, AD 161-175. FAVSTINA AVGVSTA, Bareheaded and draped bust left / SALVS in exergue, Salus seated left on throne, adorned by sphinx and griffin, feeding snake uncoiling from branch; to left, column surmounted by statuette. Gnecchi II 3, pl. 67, 3 = Banti 103 (same dies as illustration); MIR 18, 1002-1/20. VF, rough green and red-brown surfaces. Extremely rare.

To the Romans, Salus was the personification of health and the equivalent of the Greek goddess, Hygieia, the daughter of the Greek god of healing, Aesculapius. As such, the role of Salus, like Hygieia, was preventative rather than restorative - she was associated with the prevention of sickness and the continuation of good health - both physical and mental. Consequently, her presence on Roman imperial coinage may be taken as the possible indication of the recovery of the imperial person from some bout of illness or indisposition or, as in the case of Faustina Junior, the recovery from the process of childbirth.

Originally betrothed by her parents, Antoninus Pius and Faustina Senior, to Lucius Verus, Annia Galeria Faustina Minor was subsequently married to Marcus Aurelius in AD 145. Over the next twenty-one years, she produced thirteen children, including the rare birth of two sets of twins - T. Aelius Aurelius and T. Aurelius Antoninus in AD 149 (both subsequently dying before the year was out), and T. Aurelius Fulvus and the future emperor L. Aurelius Commodus in AD 161. Of all her offspring, only three - Lucilla, Cornificia, and Commodus - survived to adulthood. Such repeated pregnancies, even for a woman in the imperial household, were fraught with danger, but, given the number of births which failed to reach adulthood, was necessary in the drive to produce an imperial heir. Faustina’s recovery from childbirth would have been of prime concern for the empire, if she needed to be called upon once again to produce a possible heir.