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Vibia Sabina

Reece Period attributed: Period 6

Member of the The Adoptive Emperors dynasty.

Coins for this issuer were issued from 128 until 137.

Hadrian’s long-suffering wife, Sabina, was Trajan’s great-niece. She endured poor relations with her husband, though she appears on many of his coins. Hadrian’s biographer notes that:

Septicius Clarus…and Suetonius Tranquillus [the biographer of the first twelve Caesars]…[Hadrian] replaced, because they had at that time behaved in the company of his wife Sabina, in their association with her, in a more informal fashion than respect for the court household demanded. He would have dismissed his wife too, for being moody and difficult.

(Life of Hadrian, Scriptores Historiae Augustae).

Sabina’s ashes were ultimately buried with Hadrian’s at his mausoleum, now the Castel Sant’Angelo.

View all coins recorded by the scheme attributed to Vibia Sabina.

Wikipedia derived information

Vibia Sabina (83-136/137) was a Roman Empress, wife and second cousin, once removed, to Roman Emperor Hadrian.

She was the daughter to Salonina 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 lived with their grandmother, mother and were raised in the household of Trajan, his wife Pompeia Plotina and her stepfather. She married Hadrian in 100, at the Roman Empress Pompeia 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. They had no children and had an unhappy marriage. Sabina was said to have remarked that she had taken steps to see she never had children by Hadrian because they would "harm the human race".

It seems that she once aborted a child of theirs. Sabina was strong and independent and her beliefs in marriage didn't sit well with the Emperor. Sabina had an affair with Suetonius, a historian (and Hadrian's secretary), in the year 119.

In 128, she was awarded the title of Augusta. Vibia Sabina died before her husband, some time in 136 or early 137..

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibia_Sabina
This data is sourced from dbpedia, and as such should be treated with caution

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