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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
434, Lot: 415. Estimate $100.
Sold for $190. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Aquilia Severa. Augusta, AD 220-221 & 221-222. AR Denarius (19.5mm, 3.23 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck under Elagabalus. Draped bust right / Concordia standing left, holding double cornucopia and sacrificing out of patera over lighted altar to left; star to right. RIC IV 226 (Elagabalus); Thirion 478; RSC 2. EF, slightly irregular flan, minor obverse roughness.


Julia Aquilia Severa was a maiden from a good Roman family who had been selected to join the order of Vestal Virgins. Late in AD 220, she caught the eye of the emperor Varius Avitus Bassianus Antoninus, popularly known as Elagabalus after the Syrian sun god he worshipped as high priest. Having conceived the scandalous idea of a union with a Vestal, the young emperor abruptly divorced the bride he’d only recently married and informed the Senate that a child begotten of a high priest of Elagabal and a priestes of Vesta could only be considered divine. Few in the Senate were likely moved by such an argument, but the emperor proceeded to marry the girl early in AD 221, causing widespread consternation and revulsion among the Roman elite. Oddly, the marriage seems to have been a happy one, and Aquilia seems to have been the only female who excited the flamboyant emperor’s interest. Aquilia was given the rank of Augusta, becoming the fourth woman to bear the title in the female-dominated regime. However, the true power behind the throne, Elagabalus’ formidable grandmother Julia Maesa, saw the tide of public favor turning and forced her grandson to divorce Aquilia to marry a respectable matron, Annia Faustina, a descendant of Marcus Aurelius. The willful emperor tired of Faustina almost immediately and returned to Aquilia before the end of AD 221, a course of action which surely contributed to his downfall in March of AD 222. Aquilia Severa seems to have survived her husband’s murder, but her subsequent career is unrecorded.