Julia Augusta

Images of Rome's First Empress on Coins of the Roman Empire

Tracene Harvey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032091303
• eBook ISBN: 9780429648502
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Julia Augusta examines the socio-political impact of coin images of Augustus's wife, Livia, within the broader context of her image in other visual media and reveals the detailed visual language that was developed for the promotion of Livia as the predominant female in the Roman imperial family.

The book provides the most comprehensive examination of all extant coins of Livia to date, and provides one of the first studies on the images on Roman coins as gender-infused designs, which created a visual dialogue regarding Livia's power and gender-roles in relation to those of male members of the imperial family. While the appearance of Roman women on coins was not entirely revolutionary, having roughly coincided with the introduction of images of powerful Roman statesmen to coins in the late 40s BCE, the degree to which Livia came to be commemorated on coins in the provinces and in Rome was unprecedented. This volume provides unique insights into the impact of these representations of Livia, both on coins and in other visual media.

Julia Augusta: Images of Rome's First Empress on the Coins of the Roman Empire will be of great interest to students of women and imperial imagery in the Roman Empire, as well as the importance of visual representation and Roman imperial ideology.

1

DESIGNING ROMAN WOMEN ON COINS

Origins and early typology

The first appearance of the image of a living Roman woman on coins took place shortly after the portrait of Julius Caesar first appeared on the coins of Rome in 44 BCE.¹ This public accolade of placing an illustrious Roman individual’s portrait on a coin was the pinnacle of over a century and a half of Roman statesmen promoting themselves and their distinguished families for political ends on the coins of the mint of Rome.² The first Roman woman to have her portrait placed on coins was Fulvia, Marc Antony’s third wife, who was depicted in the guise of the female personification Victoria (Victory) on an aureus of Rome issued by the moneyer C. Numonius Vaala in 43 BCE.³ On the surface this event may seem revolutionary to some in terms of Roman coin imagery, and some scholars have questioned the Fulvia identification.⁴ There is no disputing the fact that the portrait of Octavia, Antony’s fourth wife and sister of his fellow triumvir Octavian, appeared on coins just a few years later and then Livia about ten to 15 years after that, albeit almost exclusively on provincial coins. From this point on, the programme for the numismatic commemoration of Roman imperial women developed gradually with Livia’s coin images serving as models for those of later empresses.

While the first portrait of a living Roman woman, Fulvia, appeared on coins of western mints of Rome and Lugdunum, the majority of the early coin portraits of Roman women, including those of Livia from the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, were not issued at the mint of Rome itself, but rather they were issued by the eastern Greek mints of the Roman Empire, where there was already an established tradition of commemorating Hellenistic royal women on coins. Evidence from Greek coin hoards indicates that Romans of the 1st century BCE dwelling in the eastern Greek provinces of the Roman Empire would most plausibly have come into contact with coins bearing the portraits of Hellenistic royal women, given that coins of Hellenistic rulers from the 4th to the 2nd centuries BCE have been found in coin hoards dating from the 1st century BCE.⁵ While the number of coin portraits of Hellenistic queens was not nearly as prolific as those of their male counterparts, we know that such coin portraits continued to be issued down to the time of Cleopatra VII of Egypt (r. 51–30 BCE). I shall show that image types and image elements drawn from the visual iconographic repertoire of Hellenistic queens influenced the design of the portraits of Roman women on coins.

But why do the portraits of Roman women suddenly make a debut on coins of the 40s BCE? Or was it as sudden as it seems? This chapter explores the origins of the portrayal of Roman women on coins and will examine the earliest representations of Roman women on coins in order to establish the visual codes and modes used to portray these women, who ultimately were the prototypes for Livia’s eventual depiction on coins, both Roman and provincial. The systematic details and significance of such visual codes and modes as they pertain to Livia will be examined in Chapter 2. As will be shown, the practice of the depiction of women on coins had been developing in the Hellenistic Greek east for at least the last two centuries prior to the appearance of Fulvia and Octavia on coins. Under the Republic, although the occurrences are much less frequent than on Greek coins, the depictions of women of myth and ancestral distinction nonetheless made their mark on coins of Rome. It is in the traditions of these earlier numismatic representations of women that those of Livia developed.

While it is beyond the scope of this work to detail the entire iconographic programme for the coins depicting women, including Hellenistic queens, that were produced prior to those of Livia, what I aim to do in the following pages is set out some of the general iconographic concepts that either served as prototypes or influenced the visual programme that was eventually conceived for Livia. I will explore several examples which illustrate the specific visual iconographic elements and formulas that were employed to create a standard female image on coins.

Hellenistic prototypes: the conception of the visual canon

The practice of putting an individual’s portrait on a coin was not entirely unfamiliar to the Roman viewer when the Romans themselves began placing portraits of their own leaders on coins during the last decades of the Republic. Prior to this time, the Hellenistic kings and successors of Alexander the Great had been issuing coins with ruler portraits for two and a half centuries. Romans from the ruling class must have been aware of the fact that Hellenistic kings had been placing images of themselves and their royal family members on coins.⁶ It is also highly plausible that Romans controlled the output of coinage, in particular precious metal coinage, in the provinces of Achaea, Macedonia and Asia from 146 BCE onwards.⁷ In fact, the portrait of one of their own, the Roman general T. Quinctius Flamininus, appeared on gold stater coins struck somewhere in Greece circa 196 BCE, shortly after his defeat of Philip V of Macedon the year prior.⁸ It is generally agreed that Flamininus did not initiate the issue of these coins himself, but that the Greeks struck them in his honour.⁹ Similarly, Julius Caesar’s likeness had appeared on provincial coins before its debut in Rome in 44 BCE.¹⁰

Not only did the portraits of male rulers appear on Hellenistic Greek coins, but also those of important royal female family members, a practice that would later be employed by the Romans. An important question to address is why Hellenistic rulers felt the need to place their images on coins, especially when there had been no occurrence of such a phenomenon on Greek coins prior to this. Certainly, the argument can be made that these coins bearing ruler portraits were symbolic of independent royal status very much in the tradition of the Persian kings whom these Macedonian generals had conquered. Persian rulers, including satraps, had placed images of themselves on coins prior to late 4th century BCE when Alexander’s successors began issuing coins first with Alexander’s portraits and then their own soon after.¹¹ But perhaps a more pressing question for the purposes of this study is what inspired and influenced the design of these new Hellenistic coin portraits. What follows is a discussion of the visual elements that were incorporated into the initial design of Hellenistic coin portraits with a particular emphasis on Hellenistic queens. An understanding of the visual design of these early coin portraits of Hellenistic royal women, including their facial features and hairstyles, will provide a basis and a context from which we can later examine and analyse the visual design of the coin portraits of Fulvia, Octavia and eventually the corpus of coins depicting Livia.

Scholars of Greek and Roman numismatics generally agree that portrait sculpture served as the models for the portraits on coins whether they be human or divine subjects.¹² The prototypes for ruler portraiture on Hellenistic coins developed in much the same way as they did for ruler portraits in sculpture with portrait models being drawn from the extensive visual repertoire that existed for images of gods and goddesses, but with visual elements and styles adapted to show the depiction of a person rather than a god.¹³ A fusion of the iconographic traditions for the gods with the personal physiognomic features of an individual can be found in sculptural portraits of men and women that existed in the late Classical period, namely philosopher and funerary portraits.¹⁴ This fusion of iconographic elements and styles from two visual categories or traditions of representation, that of gods on the one hand and of individuals on the other, became much more prolific in the visual programme developed for Hellenistic kings and their family members. After the god-like status Alexander the Great achieved in life and in death, his successors from the Ptolemies to the Antigonids came to be seen as akin to the gods, yet at the same time human. The dualistic human/divine nature of the Hellenistic kings was refle...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Designing Roman Women on Coins: Origins and Early Typology
• 2 To Be or Not to be Livia: Rendering Readable Gender-Based Coin Images
• 3 Making an Impression? Livia on Coins of Rome Versus the Provinces
• 4 “Ulixes Stolatus”: Affirming Livia’s Power and Gender Roles Through Coins
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Catalogue of Coins
• Appendix B: Illustrated Conspectus of Livia’s Coin Portraits
• Appendix C: Epigraphic Data
• Bibliography
• Index