The End of Plautilla

Even though she was probably immensely popular during her marriage to Caracalla, afterwards she was subject to a so-called damnatio memoriae. This means that all images of her were erased or destroyed by order of the emperor, her own husband. Why?

To know the answer, we have to delve into the beginnings of the marriage in 202 AD. Plautianus, Plautilla’s father, had arranged for her to marry Caracalla to further his own position in the empire. When that position became a little too powerful for Caracalla’s liking, he had Plautianus killed in 205 AD.

Immediately afterwards, he exiled Plautilla to Lipari, an island near Sicily. Directly after his father and brother had died and Caracalla had become the sole emperor, he had her killed. However, the damnatio memoriae had already started with her exile in 205 AD. Kienast, D. 2009. Römische Kaisertabelle: Grundzüge römischen Kaiserchronologie, Darmstadt, 165.

So, because of this, not many portraits of Plautilla have survived, and of those that have survived, we are often not sure if they are of Plautilla. To be fair: imperial portraits in this time do not always depict the true face of the emperor or the empress, so we are not sure what Plautilla really looked like.H.B. Wiggers, 1971. Caracalla, Geta, Plautilla, Berlin, 115-129. Still, this coin is one of the only portraits we still have of her. This evidence from coins could play an important role to be able to decide what Plautilla looked like.Varner, E.R. 2001. ‘Portraits, Plots and Politics: “Damnatio memoriae” and the Images of Imperial Women.’ Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 46, 41-93, esp. 80-83.

Without having this coin and others depicting Plautilla, we would probably know nothing of her appearance or of the story of her marriage. So you see how just one small coin can tell us a lot about the lives of empresses, and women in general, in the Roman Empire. Women, despite having little to no power at all, could be the face of power on coins in the Roman Empire!