Struck around 130 AD, this aureus belongs to a small group of posthumous issues Hadrian produced honoring his adoptive father Trajan and Trajan's wife Plotina — the woman widely credited with engineering Hadrian's own adoption on Trajan's deathbed in 117. Whether that deathbed adoption was genuine or a fabrication coordinated by Plotina remains one of the more contested questions in Roman imperial history. Hadrian had every political reason to commemorate her conspicuously.
The DIVIS PARENTIBVS legend — "to the divine parents" — frames both as consecrated. Plotina had received deification under Hadrian himself, not Trajan.
Struck around 130 AD, this aureus belongs to a small group of posthumous issues Hadrian produced honoring his adoptive father Trajan and Trajan's wife Plotina — the woman widely credited with engineering Hadrian's own adoption on Trajan's deathbed in 117. Whether that deathbed adoption was genuine or a fabrication coordinated by Plotina remains one of the more contested questions in Roman imperial history. Hadrian had every political reason to commemorate her conspicuously.
The DIVIS PARENTIBVS legend — "to the divine parents" — frames both as consecrated. Plotina had received deification under Hadrian himself, not Trajan.