Plautilla, wife of Caracalla, Rome mint, 204 AD.,
Denarius (19-21 mm / 3.42 g),
Obv.: PLAVTILLA - AVGVSTA , draped bust of Plautilla right.
Rev.: VENVS - VICTRIX, Venus standing left, bare to the waist, resting her left elbow on oval shield and holding apple in her right hand and palm branch in her left; to left, Cupid standing left, holding a helmet.
RIC 369 ; BMC 238, 429 ; C. 25 ; Hill, Severus 679 .
Plautilla’s marriage in 202 to the 14-year-old emperor Caracalla was an act of political expedience rather than love; we are told she despised her husband so much that she would not even dine with him. Plautilla’s father Plautianus had for five years been Caracalla’s praetorian prefect, and by this marriage he sought to strengthen his ties to the Imperial family. He had prepared his daughter well, sparing no expense along the way. Dio, who attended the wedding, tells us that Plautianus had castrated one hundred Romans of good birth just so his daughter would have a suitable number of eunuchs to school her in the finer arts of life, and that the dowry he offered was fifty times the normal amount for a royal woman. Plautianus’ wealth, power and ego grew immensely, and he even held the consulship in 203. This alone would have infuriated Caracalla, but the additional insult was that Geta, the brother who Caracalla hated perhaps even more than Plautianus, was his colleague in that consulship. The prefect had become virtual co-emperor with Septimius Severus, the senior emperor and Caracalla’s father. But, as history has shown Caracalla was no shrinking violet, and as his own power and independence grew he became less tolerant of Plautianus and Plautilla. By early 205 he had assembled enough evidence to murder Plautianus and to banish his wife to Lipari, a volcanic island north of Sicily. Plautilla remained there for the better part of a decade until, upon becoming sole Augustus, Caracalla had her murdered.
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