Plotina, Augusta, 105-123. Sestertius (Orichalcum, 35 mm, 26.94 g, 6 h), Rome, 112-117. PLOTINA AVG IMP TRAIANI Draped bust of Plotina to right, wearing stephane. Rev. FIDES AVGVST / S - C Fides standing facing, head to right, holding grain ears in her right hand and basket of fruits with her left. BMC 1080. CBN 730. Cohen 12. L. D'Orazi, La collezione Numismatica di Prospero Sarti e il Mistero del Ripostiglio di Bolsena, in: Quaderni di Studio XV (2020), p. 150 (this coin illustrated). RIC 740. Woytek 711. Very rare and in exceptional condition, undoubtedly among the finest known sestertii of Plotina. Perfectly centered on a full flan, with attractive deposits deliberately left untouched. Slightly rough, otherwise, good very fine.



Pompeia Plotina, probably a native of Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis, had been married to Trajan long before his accession in 98, but their union remained childless. Although the title Augusta was reportedly offered to her as early as 100, she accepted it only some years later, a reluctance that accorded well with the carefully cultivated image of modesty and restraint surrounding Trajan’s household. Pliny accordingly presents Plotina as an exemplary Roman matron, devoted to her husband and untouched by courtly ostentation, though recent scholarship has emphasized how deliberately constructed this ideal was and how imperfectly it reflects the scope of her actual influence.

The couple’s lack of children made the organization of the succession particularly important, and Trajan increasingly fashioned an imperial house around Plotina, his sister Marciana, his niece Matidia and the younger generation represented by Sabina and Hadrian. Plotina seems to have played an especially important part in Hadrian’s advancement, and the later literary tradition even credited her with securing his adoption by the dying Trajan in 117; the more sensational allegation that the adoption was fabricated after Trajan’s death remains impossible to verify and belongs partly to a wider ancient discourse suspicious of politically influential imperial women. Her continuing prominence under Hadrian is less ambiguous: he treated Plotina as his adoptive mother, honoured her conspicuously, and had her deified after her death, probably in 123.

Particularly revealing of Plotina’s intellectual interests is her close association with the Epicurean school at Athens. In 121 she successfully petitioned Hadrian on behalf of its head, Popillius Theotimos, so that future scholarchs might be chosen from non-Roman citizens as well as Romans; in her surviving letter to the community she repeatedly speaks of the Epicureans as 'we' and 'us' and employs distinctly Epicurean terminology, suggesting genuine philosophical engagement rather than merely conventional patronage. The combination of an officially exemplary matrona with demonstrable intellectual and dynastic agency makes Plotina one of the most revealing imperial women of the early second century. The obverse legend of the present sestertius, PLOTINA AVG IMP TRAIANI, encapsulates that position with remarkable economy: it grants her the dignity of Augusta while simultaneously defining her public identity through Trajan and the imperial house to which she belonged.