The Empress Sabine

Further to the previous post about Roman remains in Provence, I couldn’t resist giving you an update on the identity of the intriguing statue of a woman in Vaison la Romaine. She is the Empress Sabine, wife of the Emperor Hadrian who ruled from AD 117 to 138. And she was indeed a strong and independent-minded woman.

The photo above shows another statue of her, from the Villa Adriana in Tivoli, Italy. She was born in AD 83 and married Hadrian while she was still a teenager. That must have been pretty normal in those times, but what wasn’t quite as normal was that she took steps never to have children with her husband because she feared their offspring would “harm the human race”! She had an affair, too, with the historian Suetonius.

And Hadrian was known as one of the good emperors…though he did enjoy stomping around in military uniform and spending a great deal of time with his armies. Most Britons know him as the man who built Hadrian’s Wall across the north of England to mark the northernmost boundary of the Roman empire.

There’s also a neat little coincidence in that Sabine is the name of a character in The Lantern – and it’s not a particularly common name either. How about that?!

This comes with thanks to Sacha for solving the mystery – her blog Un Jour…Une Photo is full of visual treats which you can find here. And if you are interested in reading more about Vaison and its Gallo-Roman past there’s a great link here.