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Severina – Roman Empress 274-275 A.D. – wife of Emperor Aurelian
Silvered Bronze Antoninianus 22mm (3.90 grams) Ticinum mint: 274 A.D.
Reference: RIC 9, Cohen 12
SEVERINA AVG, diademed, draped bust right on crescent
PROVIDEN DEOR, Fides with standards and Sol with globe standing facing each other,
UXXT in ex.
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Fides (Latin: Fidēs) was the goddess of trust and bona fides (good faith) in Roman paganism. She was one of the original virtues to be considered an actual religious “divinity”.
Her temple on the Capitol was where the Roman Senate signed and kept state treaties with foreign countries, and where Fides protected them. The temple can be dated to 254 BCE. The original was said to have been built by Numa Pompilius, and a later building during the consulship of M. Aemilius Scaurus (115 BCE).
She was also worshipped under the name Fides Publica Populi Romani (“Public (or Common) Trust of the Roman People”). She is represented as a young woman crowned with an olive or laurel wreath, holding in her hand a turtle-dove, fruits or grain, or a military ensign. She wears a white veil or stola; her priests wore white clothes, showing her connection to the highest gods of Heaven, Jupiter and Dius Fidius.
Traditionally Rome’s second king, Numa Pompilius, was said to have instituted a yearly ceremony devoted to Fides Publica in which the major priests (the three flamines maiores-Dialis, Martialis, and Quirinalis) were to be borne to her temple in a covered arched chariot drawn by two horses on the 1st of October. There they should conduct her services with their heads covered and right hands wrapped up to the fingers to indicate absolute devotion to her and to symbolise trust.
The Greek equivalent of Fides is Pistis.
Sol was the solar deity in Ancient Roman religion. It was long thought that Rome actually had two different, consecutive sun gods. The first, Sol Indiges, was thought to have been unimportant, disappearing altogether at an early period. Only in the late Roman Empire, scholars argued, did solar cult re-appear with the arrival in Rome of the Syrian Sol Invictus, perhaps under the influence of the Mithraic mysteries. Recent publications have challenged the notion of two different sun gods in Rome, pointing to the abundant evidence for the continuity of the cult of Sol, and the lack of any clear differentiation – either in name or depiction – between the “early” and “late” Roman sun god.
 Severina – Augusta 274-275 A.D.
Wife of Roman Emperor Aurelian
Ulpia Severina (fl. 3rd century) was a Roman Empress, the wife of the emperor Aurelian. There is evidence that she reigned in her own right for some period after Aurelian’s death in 275, which would make her the only woman to have ruled over the entire classical Roman Empire by her own power. Very little is known about her, as there are no literary sources mentioning her existence. Almost everything known about her, including her name, is gathered from coins and inscriptions.
Life
Nothing certain is known of Ulpia Severina before her marriage to Aurelian. It has been suggested that she was the daughter of Ulpius Crinitus, a figure appearing in the Historia Augusta. This Ulpius is said to have been a descendant of the line of Trajan and to have supported and adopted Aurelian. However, the Historia Augusta is notoriously unreliable, and the story, and perhaps Ulpius himself, may have been invented by propagandists trying to connect Aurelian with the “Good Emperor” Trajan. Some scholars believe that Ulpia Severina was from Dacia, where the nomen Ulpius was common due to the influence of Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus).
At any rate, Ulpia Severina married Aurelian probably before he became emperor in 270. It is known they had a daughter. According to coinage depicting her, Ulpia gained the title Augusta in the autumn of 274, though it is possible she had the title even before that. She also received the titles of Pia (“pious”) and mater castrorum et senatus et patriae (“mother of the barracks (armies), senate, and country”).
There is considerable numismatic evidence for Ulpia Severina ruling in her own right between the death of Aurelian and the election of Marcus Claudius Tacitus. Sources mention an interregnum between Aurelian and Tacitus, and some of Ulpia’s coins appear to have been minted after Aurelian’s death. As such she may have been the only woman to rule over the whole Roman Empire in her own power.
 Aurelian – Roman Emperor: 270-275 A.D.
Husband of Severina
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Aurelian (Latin: Lucius Domitius Aurelianus Augustus; 9 September 214 or 215 – September or October 275) was Roman Emperor from 270 to 275. Born in humble circumstances, he rose through the military ranks to become emperor. During his reign, he defeated the Alamanni after a devastating war. He also defeated the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi. Aurelian restored the Empire’s eastern provinces after his conquest of the Palmyrene Empire in 273. The following year he conquered the Gallic Empire in the west, reuniting the Empire in its entirety. He was also responsible for the construction of the Aurelian Walls in Rome, and the abandonment of the province of Dacia.
His successes were instrumental in ending the Roman Empire’s Crisis of the Third Century, earning him the title Restitutor Orbis or ‘Restorer of the World’. Although Domitian was the first emperor who had demanded to be officially hailed as dominus et deus (master and god), these titles never occurred in written form on official documents until the reign of Aurelian.
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