Vibia Sabina

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Roman imperial dynasties
Nervo-Trajanic Dynasty
Busto de Vibia Sabina (M. Prado) 01.jpg
Bust of Vibia Sabina (Prado, Madrid).
Nerva
Children
   Natural - (none)
   Adoptive - Trajan
Trajan
Children
   Natural - (none)
   Adoptive - Hadrian
Hadrian
Children
   Natural - (none)
   Adoptive - Lucius Aelius
   Adoptive - Antoninus Pius

Vibia Sabina (83–136/137) was a Roman Empress, wife and second cousin, once removed, to Roman Emperor Hadrian. She was the daughter of Matidia (niece of Roman Emperor Trajan), and suffect consul Lucius Vibius Sabinus. After her father’s death in 84, Sabina, along with her half-sisters, went to live with their grandmother's mother, Marciana, and were raised in the household of Trajan with his wife Plotina.

She married Hadrian in 100, at the Roman empress Plotina's request, for Hadrian to succeed her great uncle, in 117. Sabina's mother Matidia (Hadrian's second cousin) was also fond of Hadrian and allowed him to marry her daughter.

Sabina was strong and independent and her beliefs in marriage didn't sit well with the Emperor. Sabina is rumored to have had an affair with Suetonius, a historian who was also Hadrian's secretary, in the year 119.[1] Meanwhile her husband was thought to be more sexually interested in his favourite Antinous and other male lovers, and he and Sabina had no children. In 128, she was awarded the title of Augusta. Vibia Sabina died before her husband, some time in 136 or early 137.[2] Hadrian's stone elegy for his wife "depicts the apotheosis, or divine ascent of Sabina in accordance with her posthumous deification on the order of Hadrian."[3]

Namesake

Denarius of Sabina

Vibia Aurelia Sabina (170-died before 217), daughter and youngest child of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Roman Empress Faustina the Younger was a great, great niece to Vibia Sabina. Her name was bestowed in honor of Sabina and her father.

Another statue of Vibia Sabina.

Nerva–Antonine family tree

Royal titles
Preceded by Empress of Rome
117–136
Succeeded by
Annia Galeria Faustina

Notes

  1. Historia Augusta 11.3
  2. Opper, Thorsten. Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, Harvard University Press, 2008, p. 205. ISBN 0-674-03095-8
  3. Annelise Freisenbruch, Caesars’ Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire (London and New York: Free Press, 2010), 170.

Further reading

  • (French) Minaud, Gérard, Les vies de 12 femmes d’empereur romain - Devoirs, Intrigues & Voluptés , Paris, L’Harmattan, 2012, ch. 7, La vie de Sabine, femme d’Hadrien, p. 169-188.

External links

Media related to Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. at Wikimedia Commons