Colonial Acres Coins
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Ancient Rome c.268 Salonina Bronze Coin
Ancient Rome c.268 Salonina Bronze Coin
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Ancient Rome c.268 Salonina Bronze Coin
There is unfortunately little to say about Salonina. She was the wife of Emperor Gallienus, the maligned son of Valerian, who lost the Gallic-Roman Empire. She was probably Greek. She probably died in Milan in 268 with her husband. Who she actually was, what she believed, and any accomplishments she might have had have been lost to history.
Roman society was deeply, fundamentally misogynistic. Women were second-class citizens, legally subordinate to the men in their lives. They didn't even have their own names; they were given the feminine variant of their father's name, with numbers to distinguish between sisters. Publia Cornelia Salonina -- her full name -- was probably the daughter of a Publius from the Cornelian family (the meaning of "Salonina" is lost along with the rest of her story). The ideal for a Roman woman was a homemaker, content to be married in her teens, to produce and raise legitimate children, and to pursue the feminine arts of handicrafts and needlework. They could not vote or speak publicly, and, while they could inherit, they could not make legal or financial decisions in their own interest -- a man had to act for them. Nowhere can the Roman woman's complete lack of agency be felt more acutely than in the biographies of Rome's empresses. These were the most powerful women in one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world. None of them ruled by their own authority. Most of them don't even have full biographies, and are defined only by their relationships to men: the daughter of x, the wife of y, the mother of z. Salonina is one of these; a forgotten empress, defined wholly by whose wife she was. This bronze coin features her bust, with coiffed hair and a diadem.
There is unfortunately little to say about Salonina. She was the wife of Emperor Gallienus, the maligned son of Valerian, who lost the Gallic-Roman Empire. She was probably Greek. She probably died in Milan in 268 with her husband. Who she actually was, what she believed, and any accomplishments she might have had have been lost to history.
Roman society was deeply, fundamentally misogynistic. Women were second-class citizens, legally subordinate to the men in their lives. They didn't even have their own names; they were given the feminine variant of their father's name, with numbers to distinguish between sisters. Publia Cornelia Salonina -- her full name -- was probably the daughter of a Publius from the Cornelian family (the meaning of "Salonina" is lost along with the rest of her story). The ideal for a Roman woman was a homemaker, content to be married in her teens, to produce and raise legitimate children, and to pursue the feminine arts of handicrafts and needlework. They could not vote or speak publicly, and, while they could inherit, they could not make legal or financial decisions in their own interest -- a man had to act for them. Nowhere can the Roman woman's complete lack of agency be felt more acutely than in the biographies of Rome's empresses. These were the most powerful women in one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world. None of them ruled by their own authority. Most of them don't even have full biographies, and are defined only by their relationships to men: the daughter of x, the wife of y, the mother of z. Salonina is one of these; a forgotten empress, defined wholly by whose wife she was. This bronze coin features her bust, with coiffed hair and a diadem.
