Unity and Children?

What role could women have had in the Roman empire? The inscription here gives us a hint. The legend PROPAGO IMPERI is written on the edges of the coin, which means imperial offspring. Some people have suggested that this signifies that Plautilla and Caracalla had a child. A. Lichtenberger, 2011. Severus Pius Augustus, Leiden, 274–276. But as we’ve already heard, Caracalla despised his wife, and there are no other ancient sources about a child of Caracalla and Plautilla.

Therefore, the more logical option is that this coin was issued by the imperial authority to express the wish for children. To say it bluntly, that was the most important reason for emperors to have an official wife. If there are no children, the marriage has gone awry. That was the case for Plautilla and Caracalla.

In spite of this, we should realize that the authority behind the coin wanted us to believe in the unity of this marriage and their wish for children. This is known to us from other coins of Plautilla as well. The same image has been issued on coins with the legends CONCORDIA FELIX or CONCORDIAE AETERNAE, which means happy unity or eternal unity. RIC 4A Caracalla 360, 361 and 365.

Those coins can tell us that there was a common imperial message on this coin and that this coin made people believe in a lovely imperial marriage and therefore in a lovely emperor as well. Through having the same iconography, our coin is part of this happy marriage propaganda. It is not easy to tell whether this happened in the first years of marriage or at the end. We don’t have any hints to date it better than between the years that the marriage endured: 202 to 205 AD.

Call it Fake News, if you want to. But does not everyone want to portray themselves better than they are?

Plautilla’s life was thus not as happy as this coin wants us to think. This contrast becomes even clearer when we look at the way the marriage ended…