Lucilla Augusta
148 – 182 · Generation XI · Nerva–Antonine
Lucilla was the daughter of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger, the wife of her father’s co-emperor Lucius Verus, and the elder sister of Commodus, who had her killed. Born in Rome in 148 or 150, she was a twin whose brother died young. Her grandparents included the emperor Antoninus Pius.
Her father betrothed her to his co-ruler Lucius Verus in 161, and they married at Ephesus in 164, while Verus was campaigning against Parthia. She was made Augusta. Their daughter Aurelia Lucilla was born at Antioch in 165, and of their three children only a daughter, Plautia, lived. Verus died around 169, and her father quickly married her to Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, a twice-consul from Antioch whom Lucilla and her mother thought beneath her and far too old. Their son Pompeianus was born about 170.
She was with her father on the Danube when he died in March 180 and Commodus became emperor, ending any hope of her ruling again. Alarmed by her brother’s erratic rule and resentful of his wife Crispina, in 182 she joined a plot to kill him and put her husband on the throne. It failed when the assassin, Pompeianus’s nephew, announced himself with the words “Here is what the Senate sends to you” and was seized. Commodus banished Lucilla to Capri and later that year sent a centurion to kill her.
Place in the family
- Lucilla Augusta was the elder of 2 children of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Faustina the Younger recorded in this archive.
One of 12 people of Nerva–Antonine (30–192) in this archive. The adoptive emperors: for four reigns the purple passed to a chosen heir rather than a born one.
Line of descent: Nerva Cocceius → Trajan Optimus → Hadrian Aelius → Antoninus Pius → Marcus Aurelius Antoninus → Lucilla Augusta.
Parents
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 – 180)
- Faustina the Younger (130 – 175)
Siblings
- Commodus Antoninus (161 – 192)
Partners
- Married Lucius Verus (130 – 169) in 164
Sources
- Lucilla · Wikipedia
- Lucius Verus · Wikipedia