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Pupienus – Roman Emperor: April 22 – July 29, 238 A.D.
Bronze Sestertius 28mm (17.28 grams) Rome mint, struck 238 A.D.
Reference: RIC 23a. BMC. 58. C. 38
Certification: NGC Ancients XF Strike: 4/5 Surface: 4/5 4244135-006
IMP CAES M CLOD PVPIENVS AVG, Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right.
VICTORIA AVGG Victory standing left holding wreath and palm; S-C across fields.
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 In ancient Roman religion, Victoria or Victory was the personified goddess of victory. She is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Nike, and was associated with Bellona. She was adapted from the Sabine agricultural goddess Vacuna and had a temple on the Palatine Hill. The goddess Vica Pota was also sometimes identified with Victoria.
Unlike the Greek Nike, the goddess Victoria (Latin for “victory”) was a major part of Roman society. Multiple temples were erected in her honor. When her statue was removed in 382 CE by Emperor Gratianus there was much anger in Rome. She was normally worshiped by triumphant generals returning from war.
Also unlike the Greek Nike, who was known for success in athletic games such as chariot races, Victoria was a symbol of victory over death and determined who would be successful during war.
Victoria appears widely on Roman coins, jewelry, architecture, and other arts. She is often seen with or in a chariot, as in the late 18th-century sculpture representing Victory in a quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany; “Il Vittoriano” in Rome has two.
Winged figures, very often in pairs, representing victory and referred to as “victories”, were common in Roman official iconography, typically hovering high in a composition, and often filling spaces in spandrels or other gaps in architecture. These represent the spirit of victory rather than the goddess herself. They continued to appear after Christianization of the Empire, and slowly mutated into Christian angels.
 Pupienus (Latin: Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus Augustus; born c. 165/170 – 29 July 238), also known as Pupienus Maximus, was Roman Emperor with Balbinus for three months in 238, during the Year of the Six Emperors. The sources for this period are scant, and thus knowledge of the emperor is limited. In most contemporary texts Pupienus is referred by his cognomen “Maximus” rather than by his second nomen (family name) Pupienus.
When Gordian I and his son were proclaimed Emperors in Africa, the Senate appointed a committee of twenty men, including the elderly Senator Pupienus, to co-ordinate operations against Maximinus until the arrival of the Gordians. On the news of the Gordians’ defeat and deaths, however, the Senate met in closed session in the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and voted for two members of the committee to be installed as co-emperors – Pupienus and Balbinus. Unlike the situation in 161 with Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, both emperors were elected as pontifices maximi, chief priests of the official cults.
According to Edward Gibbon (drawing on the narratives of Herodian and the Historia Augusta), the choice was sensible, as:
the mind of Maximus [Pupienus] was formed in a rougher mould [than that of Balbinus]. By his valour and abilities he had raised himself from the meanest origin to the first employments of the state and army. His victories over the Sarmatians and the Germans, the austerity of his life, and the rigid impartiality of his justice whilst he was prefect of the city, commanded the esteem of a people whose affections were engaged in favour of the more amiable Balbinus. The two colleagues had both been consul… and, since the one was sixty and the other seventy-four years old, they had both attained the full maturity of age and experience.
However, factions within the Senate who had hoped to profit from the accession of the Gordians manipulated the people and the Praetorian Guard to agitate for the elevation of Gordian III as their imperial colleague. Leaving his senior colleague Balbinus in charge of the civil administration at Rome, sometime during late April Pupienus marched to Ravenna, where he oversaw the campaign against Maximinus, recruiting German auxiliary troops who had served under him whilst he was in Germania; after the latter was assassinated by his soldiers just outside Aquileia he despatched both Maximinus’s troops and his own back to their provinces (along with a considerable donative) and returned to Rome with his newly acquired German bodyguard.
Balbinus, in the meantime, had failed to keep public order in the capital. The sources suggest that Balbinus suspected Pupienus of using his newly acquired German bodyguard to supplant him, and they were soon living in different parts of the Imperial palace. This meant that they were at the mercy of disaffected elements in the Praetorians, who resented serving under Senate-appointed emperors, and now plotted to kill them. Pupienus, becoming aware of the threat, begged Balbinus to call for the German bodyguard. Balbinus, believing that this news was part of a plot by Pupienus to have him assassinated, refused, and the two began to argue just as the Praetorians burst into the room. Both emperors were seized and dragged back to the Praetorian barracks where they were tortured and brutally hacked to death in the bath house.
Pupienus had at least three children. His eldest son, Tiberius Clodius Pupienus Pulcher Maximus, was a Consul Suffectus c. 235, and patron of the town of Tibur outside Rome. His youngest son, Marcus Pupienus Africanus Maximus, was Consul Ordinarius in 236 as colleague of the Emperor Maximinus Thrax. This run of consulships in the family, across the reigns of Severus Alexander and Maximinus Thrax, show that the family was influential and in high favour. Pupienus also had a daughter, named Pupiena Sextia Paulina Cethegilla, wife of Marcus Ulpius Eubiotus Leurus.
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