Annia Faustina

Annia Faustina (165-by 218) was a noblewoman of Anatolian Roman descent and a wealthy heiress who lived in the Roman Empire. She was a mother-in-law of the emperor Elagabalus. Biography Annia Faustina was the daughter and only child of the wealthy Roman heiress Ummidia Cornificia Faustina by an unknown Roman Senator. The full name of Annia Faustina is unknown. It appears she was named in honor of her mother and her late maternal grandmother, the noblewoman Annia Cornificia Faustina. The maternal grandmother of Annia Faustina was the sister of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and her maternal grandfather was Gaius Ummidius Quadratus Annianus Verus a Roman Senator who served as a suffect consul in 146. She was the great niece of Marcus Aurelius and through her mother, Annia Faustina was a distant relative of the ruling Nerva–Antonine dynasty of the Roman Empire. She is not mentioned in any ancient Roman historical sources. Annia Faustina has been only known through surviving inscriptions about her and her family found in Anatolia. Annia Faustina was born and raised in her mother's estate in Pisidia. The estate she was born and raised in is one of a number of estates in Pisidia called the Cyllanian Estates. These estates were very large properties and were around from the time of the Roman Dictator of the Roman Republic, Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c. 138 BC-78 BC). There are surviving inscriptions at the estate recording Ummidia Cornificia Faustina with her daughter Annia Faustina. The mother of Annia Faustina in 182 was involved in a failed plot to kill her first maternal cousin the Roman Emperor Commodus. When the plot was revealed, her mother was banished to the Italian island of Capri. Later in 182, Commodus sent a centurion to execute her mother.