I'm excited to share this new acquisition: a very
rare denarius from the time of the emperor
Claudius portraying
his deceased mother,
Antonia Minor. This represents the second time in
Roman history that a woman was portrayed on a
denarius and identified by name in the attendant
legend (the first was
Agrippina Senior under
Caligula). For those who don't know their
Julio-Claudian politics,
Antonia is one of the most fascinating figures in all of
Roman history.
Antonia was the youngest daughter of Mark Anthony and
Octavia and grew up in the imperial household amidst almost half a dozen siblings and half-siblings, evidence of dynastic alliances made and unmade by connivance, divorce, and death. Famous for her dignity and beauty (she was the inspiration for the famous Clytie
bust, one of the crown jewels in the British Museum's
collection),
Antonia was married to Livia's son
Drusus and gave him three children:
Livilla,
Germanicus, and
Claudius. After her husband's untimely death from a riding accident,
Antonia refused to remarry, remaining a "univira," a one-man-woman. Instead, she focused on helping to raise her grandchildren and the princes and sundry royal hostages from around the empire who were being brought up with the imperial family, including future
king Herod
Agrippa. She was proud of her son
Germanicus for
his military victories, but disappointed in
Claudius for
his physical infirmities, calling him a monster of a
man only half begun by Mother Nature. According to Suetonius,
Augustus so trusted her judgment that he wrote to
his wife
Livia that she was free to share
his letter with
Antonia inquiring what was to be done with the drooling, stuttering, and limping
Claudius at public events.
In the reign of
Tiberius,
Antonia was horrified to see her daughter-in-law
Agrippina exiled and her grandchildren
Nero and
Drusus murdered. She blamed these events on the influence of Tiberius' praetorian prefect
Sejanus (played memorably by Patrick
Stewart in I,
Claudius). With the emperor out of the loop in Capri,
Antonia took it on herself to expose Sejanus' treachery in a letter to
Tiberius. She implicated her own daughter
Livilla in Sejanus' schemes when evidence emerged that
Livilla had poisoned her husband, Tiberius' son, to clear the way for
Sejanus to take the throne. The tragic
Livilla was evidently handed over to her mother for punishment, and she was subsequently locked in a room and starved to death by
Antonia. Broken,
Antonia lived to see
Caligula become emperor. But when
Caligula killed her grandson, Livilla's son Gemellus,
Antonia committed suicide in protest. She
had previously been honored as high priestess of
Augustus by
Caligula, but they did not get along; she
had discovered him in incest with
his sister when he was young, and he even dared to tell
his grandmother "remember, I can do whatever I want!" when he became emperor. Sadly,
Antonia thus did not live to see her son
Claudius become emperor, who honored Mark Anthony's daughter with this coin.
According to
RIC, this coin has a
rarity of R-2. It shows
Antonia wearing a crown made of ears of
corn, associating her with
Ceres, and a hairstyle modeled on that of
Livia, linking her to the first
Augusta, her mother-in-law. I love the delicacy and pride in this
portrait, which can be compared to the physiognomy of the famous Clytie. The
reverse shows two torches linked with a
fillet, linked to the worship of the divine
Augustus. Margaret Tyzack's performance as
Antonia in I,
Claudius is one of the highlights of the series for me, capturing all the intensity and tragic dignity of the
Julio-Claudian princess.