Matidia Piety Of The Emperor

Roman Imperial Matidia Niece Of Emperor Trajan - AD 112-117​

Pietas is not directly translatable to the modern term piety, meaning devotion to one's gods, but was a much wider virtue to the ancient speakers of Latin. It included this sense of devotion to the gods within its remit, but also a similar sense of duty, loyalty and even obedience to one's parents, relatives, people, state and so on, and even shaded into one's interactions with all people, whereby one must remain compassionate and gentle. It is a virtue close to the hearts of the Romans, being the repeated epithet of Virgil's pius Aeneas, the founder of the Roman people and therefore its ways of conduct.

It is in the guise of the goddess Pietas that Matidia is depicted on the reverse of this coin, and, whilst we might note that comparisons to gods on coinage are often [sometimes hilariously] ironic, nevertheless there is good reason to believe that for Matidia, and to the family of which she was a part, pietas was a guiding principle in their relationships. Her mother, Ulpia Marciana, was sister to the Emperor Trajan and very dear to him: when her husband died, she and her daughter Matidia were moved in to live with him; she was involved by him in affairs of state, and was the first sister of a Roman Emperor to receive the title of Augusta; furthermore, when she died, she was deified at his behest this deification is commemorated on the obverse legend of our coin, naming Matidia as the daughter [filia] of Diva [deified] Marciana.

Similarly Matidia, living with her childless uncle Trajan, was very dear to him. Like her mother, she was involved by Trajan in his business of governance, and travelled widely with him, being named Augusta upon the death of her mother and similarly rewarded with monuments and inscriptions across the provinces of the Empire. When Trajan died in AD 117, she and his wife Plotina carried his ashes back to Rome from his death-place in Cilicia. She held her second cousin Hadrian in great affection and allowed him to marry her first daughter Sabina. [Sabina and her sister, Matidia Minor, are shown on the reverse of our coin, with their mother's hands lovingly placed on their heads]. Hadrian's pietas to her saw him delivering her funeral oration in AD 119, before deifying her and dedicating a temple and altar to her in the city of Rome the first large scale temple to be dedicated to a Roman woman on her own.

This coin, then, inscribed as it is on obverse and reverse with the signs of idealistic pietas, is an earnest emblem of a rare thing a harmonious and affectionate Imperial family.

MATIDIA AVG DIVAE MARCIANAE F - Matidia Augusta, Divae Marcianae Filia : [Salonia] Matidia, the venerable daughter of the divine [Ulpia] Marciana. PIETAS AVGVST - Pietas Augusti: Piety of the Emperor.