Questions about new Faustina II denarius

Wonderful analysis, pinpointing the coin not only to the year but the month! And it appears that Foss reached the same conclusion as yours regarding the four children's identity, as mentioned in @Valentinian's post, although I don't know if it was by the same analysis as yours.

 

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Wow that first portrait really looks like Faustina I in both the face and neck. Super cool!

 

@DonnaML.......Great looking coin!..
Found this thread very informative @Roman Collector .....Thanks for the break down, really cleared up a few grey areas. I think my attribution is correct now?
Here's my first Sestertius commemorating the birth of Fadilla..
ANTONINUS PIUS. 138-161 AD. Æ Sestertius (33mm, 26.75 g.)
Struck 159 AD.
Obverse..ANTONINVS AVG PIVS P P TR P XXIII, laureate head right
Rev. PIETATI AVG COS IIII SC, Pietas standing left holding globe, Faustina Junior as Pietas standing left, between Faustina III, Lucilla & holding baby Fadilla.
RIC III 1031

 

@Roman Collector yours is a very interesting and convincing analysis of Donna's questions. I enjoyed reading it.

 

How do we know that the four children on DonnaML's coin represent Faustina's own children? Well, as Roman Collector shows above, the same type of a woman accompanied by four children appears on coins of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Caesar that are dated by their tribunician numbers to late 160 and early 161 AD, and a similar type but with only three children accompanying the woman appears on coins of Antoninus dated to 160 generally, that is from 10 Dec. 159 until near the end of 160. Three children in 160, but four in 161, so looking rather like a growing family.

Now we know from the vita Commodi that on 31 August 161 Faustina gave birth to twin boys, namely the later emperor Commodus and his brother Antoninus, who died a couple of years later. This birth of twin boys to Faustina and Marcus in 161 was commemorated on Faustina's coins not only with the type of two infants on a throne, also illustrated above by Roman Collector, but with the type of a woman standing holding two infants, while four more children, two small and two a bit larger, stand by her feet. See illustration below (BM specimen). There can be no doubt that the two babes in arms in this type are Commodus and Antoninus, and that the four standing children are Faustina and Marcus' four earlier surviving children, all daughters, the birth of the fourth of whom had been commemorated on the four-children coins of Antoninus, Marcus, and Faustina herself late in 160 and early in 161. Note the continuous obverse legend on the BM aureus, a form that was used on the dated coins of Antoninus and Marcus only c. 160-1, so fitting perfectly with the date of the birth of the twins on 31 August 161. The differing sizes of the four standing children in this type confirm that they represent children of different ages, namely the two youngest daughters whose births had been commemorated on the coins of 160 and 161, and the two older daughters who had been born earlier. .

 

An interesting fact about the children of Marcus Caesar and Faustina that almost no one else knows, because I have never published it: the sequence of Marcus Caesar's denarius reverse types seems to prove beyond reasonable doubt that sometime during his TR P III = Pius TR P XII, Marcus gave up numbering his TR P, so that when Pius became TR P XIII and then TR P XIIII, Marcus continued striking as just TR P III. Towards the end of Pius’ TR P XIIII, however, Marcus resumed numbering his TR P, and soon became TR P IIII with Pius TR P XV. Very soon thereafter the decision was made to restore Marcus’ original TR P numeration, so he changed from one day to the next from TR P IIII to TR P VI. I have even observed one denarius obverse die of Marcus that was used with his Clementia type dated both TR P III and TR P VI; easy to understand, for that was not an interval of two or three years as it might seem, but only a matter of months or weeks, as Marcus advanced from TR P III to TR P IIII soon after 25 Feb. 151, then corrected that TR P IIII to TR P VI soon thereafter. This reconstruction explains for the first time why coins of Marcus as TR P IIII are all very rare, and why he struck no coins at all dated TR P V: by updating his tribunician number from TR P IIII to TR P VI, he had jumped over TR P V.

I think only one explanation is possible for this remarkable deviation in numbering. Marcus had received the TR P for producing his first child with Faustina in 147. His refusal to advance his TR P two years later (probably he renounced that power altogether and no longer considered it current) can only mean that his and Faustina’s first two children had both died! Marcus was always extremely scrupulous about adopting honorary titles, so it makes perfect sense that when all of his children had died, he refused to hold the TR P any longer. When Lucilla was eventually born on 7 March 151, Marcus resumed holding the tribunician power, first as just TR P III and then IIII, but soon restoring his old numeration with TR P VI.

If I am correct about Marcus' temporary resignation from his tribunician power in 150-151 AD, then the birth dates of his first three children are likely to have been as follows:

1. A daughter, born 30 Nov. 147, resulting in the titles Augusta for Faustina and TR P for Marcus, as recorded in the Ostian Fasti.

2. A son, born between c. Sept. 148 (nine months after Faustina's first childbirth) and March 149, commemorated on the crossed cornucopias coins of Antoninus Pius as TR P XII. The children on the two cornucopias in this type are traditionally assumed to have been male twins, but there is no reason why the type should not commemorate the birth of a single son to join the earlier daughter, and on a couple of dies the portraits seem to be differentiated, with the daughter on the right having longer hair with a small bun (cf. Strack, pl. XIII, 1026). Both of these children had died, however, before March 149, for by that time Marcus was no longer numbering his TR P.

3. Lucilla, born 7 March 151, apparently commemorated by the LAETITIA COS IIII type (Ceres and Proserpina) on aurei of Antoninus as TR P XIIII. A longed-for daughter had now been restored to Faustina too, so the type seems appropriate. A chronological difficulty: Lucilla's attested birthday was 7 March (year unnamed), but Marcus had apparently already resumed his tribunician power before he became TR P IIII in 151, on a tribunician day which is assumed to have been the same as Antoninus', viz. 25 February. But if Marcus became TR P IIII on 25 Feb. 151, then he would appear to have resumed his TR P about ten days before Lucilla's birth, so at a time when he was still childless. Perhaps Antoninus' tribunician day was actually a couple of weeks later, maybe when his tribunician assembly met, 25 Feb. having been the day when Hadrian adopted him and the Senate proclaimed him Caesar.

So the tallest child on DonnaML's denarius, at far right, would appear to deserve the name Lucilla, now about nine years old.

 

Superb analyses, as always