Unfortunately I never found the time and energy to tie up the loose ends, in particular how to name the children whose births seem to be recorded by the coin
types!
Fittschen in
his portrait study, and Birley in
his biography of
Marcus, give you impressive-looking lists of names and birthdates of Marcus' children, but in my opinion many of these details are quite wrong, and most of the remainder are uncertain!
We know the first child, a daughter, was born 30 Nov. 147, and the birth of a second child, a boy, is commemorated on coins of 149, Pius TR P
XII (the crossed cornucopias
type, usually wrongly taken to indicate the birth of male twins rather than simply a second male child).
However both of these children soon died, and
Faustina did not produce another (
Lucilla?) until early 152, because in the interval when he was childless (this was the major discovery of my study)
MARCUS REFUSED TO ADVANCE
HIS TRIBUNICIAN NUMBER BECAUSE HE
HAD BEEN GRANTED THAT POWER AS A REWARD FOR PRODUCING
HIS FIRST CHILD! This is why coins of
Marcus as TR P III are so common (he bore that title for two full years, not just one!), while those dated TR P IIII are extremely
rare and there are none at all dated TR P V!
The coins commemorate the birth of a third surviving daughter (Fadilla?) in 159 and a fourth (Cornificia?) in 160, then came the twin boys on 31 Aug. 161, finally Annius
Verus was born c. 162-3. Other names of children are known, but it's hard to attach them with certainty to the deceased daughter and son of 147 and 149 or to establish when else they might have been born and died.