Julia Augusta examines the socio-political impact of coin images of Augustus’s wife, Livia, within the broader context of her image in other visual media and reveals the detailed visual language that was developed for the promotion of Livia as the predominant female in the Roman imperial family. The book provides the most comprehensive examination of all extant coins of Livia to date, and provides one of the first studies on the images on Roman coins as gender-infused designs, which created a visual dialogue regarding Livia’s power and gender-roles in relation to those of male members of the imperial family. While the appearance of Roman women on coins was not entirely revolutionary, having roughly coincided with the introduction of images of powerful Roman statesmen to coins in the late 40s BCE, the degree to which Livia came to be commemorated on coins in the provinces and in Rome was unprecedented. This volume provides unique insights into the impact of these representations of Livia, both on coins and in other visual media. Julia Augusta: Images of Rome’s First Empress on the Coins of the Roman Empire will be of great interest to students of women and imperial imagery in the Roman Empire, as well as the importance of visual representation and Roman imperial ideology.

Sabina Augusta (ca. 85-ca. 137), wife of the emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-38), accumulated more public honors in Rome and the provinces than any imperial woman had enjoyed since the first empress, Augustus' wife Livia. Indeed, Sabina is the first woman whose image features on a regular and continuous series of coins minted at Rome. She was the most travelled and visible empress to date. Hadrian also deified his wife upon her death. In synthesizing the textual and massive material evidence for the empress, T. Corey Brennan traces the development of Sabina's partnership with her husband and shows the vital importance of the empress for Hadrian's own aspirations. Furthermore, the book argues that Hadrian meant for Sabina to play a key role in promoting the public character of his rule, and details how the emperor's exaltation of his wife served to enhance his own claims to divinity. Yet the sparse literary sources on Sabina instead put the worst light on the dynamics of her marriage. Brennan fully explores the various, and overwhelmingly negative, notions this empress stirred up in historiography, from antiquity through the modern era; and against the material record proposes a new and nuanced understanding of her formal role. This biographical study sheds new light not just on its subject but also more widely on Hadrian-including the vexed question of that emperor's relationship with his apparent lover Antinoös-and indeed Rome's imperial women as a group.