Antoninus Pius - Roman Emperor: 138-161 A.D.
Silver Denarius 17mm (2.4 grams) Rome mint: 140 A.D.
Reference: RIC 417a, BMC 155, S 4254, C 15
ANTONINVSAVGPIVSPPTRPCOSIII - Laureate head right.
AVRELIVSCAESARAVGPIIFCOS - Marcus Aurelius bare head right.
* Numismatic Note: Scarce type depicting the successor of
Antoninus Pius, future emperor Marcus Aurelius.
You are bidding on the exact
item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime
Guarantee of Authenticity.
Marcus Aurelius' work
Meditations, written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is
still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty.
Marcus Aurelius owes much of him becoming Augustus to Hadrian who
groomed him from childhood for the post. He became Caesar shortly after Hadrian
died and the political grooming continued under Antoninus Pius. He had to wait
another twenty years or so to become Augustus himself in the year 161. No sooner
did this happen than he was thrust in a series of wars that would eat up the
rest of his time in office. He died while fighting the ever-harassing tribes of
the Germanic region and power then passed to his son Commodus.
During his lengthy reign he is remembered as being among the noblest and most
even-keeled of emperors. He preferred to use the considerable power of his post
to pursue a period of enlightenment out of character not only for his age but
clear across time to our very own. Gibbon summarizes that he "was severe to
himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all
mankind."
Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus (19 September 86 – 7
March 161), generally known in English as Antoninus Pius was
Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the
Five Good Emperors and a member of the
Aurelii. He
did not possess the
sobriquet
"Pius" until after
his accession to the throne. Almost certainly, he earned the name "Pius" because
he compelled the
Senate
to deify his adoptive father
Hadrian; the
Historia Augusta, however, suggests that he may have earned the name by
saving senators sentenced to death by Hadrian in his later years.[1]
Early
life
Childhood
and family
He was the son and only child of
Titus Aurelius Fulvus,
consul in 89
whose family came from
Nemausus
(modern Nîmes)
and was born near
Lanuvium
and his mother was Arria Fadilla. Antoninus’ father and paternal grandfather
died when he was young and he was raised by
Gnaeus Arrius Antoninus, his maternal grandfather, a man of integrity and
culture and a friend of
Pliny the Younger. His mother married to Publius Julius Lupus (a man of
consular rank),
Suffect
Consul in 98, and bore him a daughter called Julia Fadilla.
Marriage
and children
As a private citizen between 110 and 115, he married Annia Galeria
Faustina the Elder. They had a very happy marriage. She was the daughter of
consul
Marcus Annius Verus and
Rupilia
Faustina (a half-sister to Roman Empress
Vibia
Sabina). Faustina was a beautiful woman, renowned for her wisdom. She spent
her whole life caring for the poor and assisting the most disadvantaged Romans.
Faustina bore Antoninus four children, two sons and two daughters. They were:
Marcus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus (died before 138); his sepulchral
inscription has been found at the Mausoleum of Hadrian in Rome.
Marcus Galerius Aurelius Antoninus (died before 138); his sepulchral
inscription has been found at the Mausoleum of Hadrian in Rome. His name
appears on a Greek Imperial coin.
Aurelia Fadilla (died in 135); she married Lucius Lamia Silvanus, consul
145. She appeared to have no children with her husband and her sepulchral
inscription has been found in
Italy.
Annia Galeria Faustina Minor or
Faustina the Younger (between 125-130-175), a future Roman Empress,
married her maternal cousin, future Roman Emperor
Marcus Aurelius.
When Faustina died in 141, he was in complete mourning and did the following
in memory of his wife:
Deified her as a goddess.
Had a temple built in the Roman Forum in her name, with priestesses in
the temple.
Had various coins with her portrait struck in her honor. These coins
were scripted ‘DIVAE FAUSTINA’ and were elaborately decorated.
He created a charity which he founded and called it Puellae
Faustinianae or Girls of Faustina, which assisted orphaned girls.
Having filled with more than usual success the offices of
quaestor
and praetor,
he obtained the consulship in 120; he was next appointed by the Emperor
Hadrian as
one of the four
proconsuls
to administer
Italia, then greatly increased his reputation by his conduct as
proconsul
of
Asia. He acquired much favor with the Emperor Hadrian, who adopted him as
his son and successor on 25 February, 138, after the death of his first adopted
son
Lucius Aelius, on the condition that Antoninus would in turn adopt Marcus
Annius Verus, the son of his wife's brother, and Lucius, son of Aelius Verus,
who afterwards became the emperors
Marcus Aurelius and
Lucius
Verus (colleague of Marcus Aurelius).
Emperor
On his accession, Antoninus' name became "Imperator Caesar Titus Aelius
Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pontifex Maximus". One of his first acts as Emperor
was to persuade the
Senate
to grant divine honours to Hadrian, which they had at first refused; his efforts
to persuade the Senate to grant these honours is the most likely reason given
for his title of Pius (dutiful in affection; compare
pietas). Two other reasons for this title are that he would support his
aged father-in-law with his hand at Senate meetings, and that he had saved those
men that Hadrian, during his period of ill-health, had condemned to death. He
built temples, theaters, and mausoleums, promoted the arts and sciences, and
bestowed honours and financial rewards upon the teachers of
rhetoric
and
philosophy.
In marked contrast to his predecessors
Trajan and
Hadrian,
Antoninus was not a military man. One modern scholar has written "It is almost
certain not only that at no time in his life did he ever see, let alone command,
a Roman army, but that, throughout the twenty-three years of his reign, he never
went within five hundred miles of a legion".[2]
His reign was the most peaceful in the entire history of the
Principate;
while there were several military disturbances throughout the Empire in his
time, in
Mauretania,
Iudaea, and amongst the
Brigantes
in
Britannia, none of them are considered serious. The unrest in Britannia is
believed to have led to the construction of the
Antonine Wall from the
Firth of Forth to the
Firth of Clyde, although it was soon abandoned. He was virtually unique
among emperors in that he dealt with these crises without leaving Italy once
during his reign, but instead dealt with provincial matters of war and peace
through their governors or through imperial letters to the cities such as
Ephesus (of which some were publicly displayed). This style of government was
highly praised by his contemporaries and by later generations.
Of the public transactions of this period we have scant information, but, to
judge by what we possess, those twenty-two years were not remarkably eventful in
comparison to those before and after his; the surviving evidence is not complete
enough to determine whether we should interpret, with older scholars, that he
wisely curtailed the activities of the Roman Empire to a careful minimum, or
perhaps that he was uninterested in events away from Rome and
Italy and his
inaction contributed to the pressing troubles that faced not only Marcus
Aurelius but also the emperors of the third century. German historian Ernst
Kornemann has had it in his Römische Geschichte [2 vols., ed. by H. Bengtson,
Stuttgart 1954] that the reign of Antoninus comprised "a succession of grossly
wasted opportunities," given the upheavals that were to come. There is more to
this argument, given that the Parthians in the East were themselves soon to make
no small amount of mischief after Antoninus' passing. Kornemann's brief is that
Antoninus might have waged preventive wars to head off these outsiders.
Scholars place Antoninus Pius as the leading candidate for fulfilling the
role as a friend of Rabbi
Judah
the Prince. According to the
Talmud (Avodah
Zarah 10a-b), Rabbi Judah was very wealthy and greatly revered in Rome. He had a
close friendship with "Antoninus", possibly Antoninus Pius,[3]
who would consult Rabbi Judah on various worldly and spiritual matters.
After the longest reign since Augustus (surpassing
Tiberius by
a couple of months), Antoninus died of fever at
Lorium in
Etruria,
about twelve miles (19 km) from Rome, on 7 March 161, giving the keynote to his
life in the last word that he uttered when the
tribune of
the night-watch came to ask the password—"aequanimitas" (equanimity). His body
was placed in
Hadrian's mausoleum, a
column was dedicated to him on the
Campus Martius, and the
temple he had built in the Forum in 141 to his deified wife Faustina was
rededicated to the deified Faustina and the deified Antoninus.
Historiography
The only account of his life handed down to us is that of the
Augustan History, an unreliable and mostly fabricated work. Antoninus is
unique among Roman emperors in that he has no other biographies. Historians have
therefore turned to public records for what details we know.
In
later scholarship
Antoninus in many ways was the ideal of the landed gentleman praised not only
by ancient Romans, but also by later scholars of classical history, such as
Edward Gibbon or the author of the article on Antoninus Pius in the ninth
edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannicaca:
A few months afterwards, on Hadrian's death, he was enthusiastically
welcomed to the throne by the Roman people, who, for once, were not
disappointed in their anticipation of a happy reign. For Antoninus came
to his new office with simple tastes, kindly disposition, extensive
experience, a well-trained intelligence and the sincerest desire for the
welfare of his subjects. Instead of plundering to support his
prodigality, he emptied his private treasury to assist distressed
provinces and cities, and everywhere exercised rigid economy (hence the
nickname κυμινοπριστης "cummin-splitter"). Instead of exaggerating into
treason whatever was susceptible of unfavorable interpretation, he
spurned the very conspiracies that were formed against him into
opportunities for demonstrating his clemency. Instead of stirring up
persecution against the Christians, he extended to them the strong hand
of his protection throughout the empire. Rather than give occasion to
that oppression which he regarded as inseparable from an emperor's
progress through his dominions, he was content to spend all the years of
his reign in Rome, or its neighborhood.
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