Hi Joe.
A wonderful and
rare denarius you have there. I was pleased to win one at
auction a couple of years ago as well, as it turns out, the same
type as yours. I was very pleased to get mine and I'm equally pleased one has landed in your safe
hands.
Of course we know that her marriage to
Elagabalus in 220 AD was the cause of enormous controversy.
Severa was a
Vestal Virgin, and to marry the Emperor she would have to break her thirty-year vow of celibacy- which we are assured by the ancient writers was taken
very seriously at the time.
I have heard it said that
Elagabalus married her for religious reasons. Which makes me wonder if the iconography of the
reverse is telling us a lot about court politics at the time.
The Vestals were as traditional as it was possible to get in
Rome as far as religion goes. For centuries they
had been regarded as fundamental to the continuance and
security of the
Roman state.
In the same year he married
Severa in 220,
Elagabalus instated
Elagabal as the chief deity of the
Roman pantheon. A move that outraged many
Romans.
Elagabalus had made himself chief priest, worshipping a foreign god above the traditional
Jupiter.
By marrying
Severa he was perhaps tying to forge a public link between the traditional religious practices of
Roman society and the newly imported religion of
Elagabal. So we can speculate that the coins
reverse showing the emperor holding
Severa by the hand, with the surrounding
legend CONCORDIA, is intended to show that by
his marriage the two religious belief systems were now in
harmony.
Only speculation of course, but given the events of the time one that seems fairly plausible.
Best regards,
Steve