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Annia Faustina

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Annia Faustina

Annia Aurelia Faustina (fl. c. 201 – c. 222 CE) was an Anatolian Roman noblewoman. She was briefly married to the Roman emperor Elagabalus in 221 CE and thus was a Roman empress. She was Elagabalus' third wife.

Faustina was of noble descent, the daughter and only child of the wealthy heiress Annia Faustina and the Roman Senator, consul Tiberius Claudius Severus Proculus. Her parents were maternal second-cousins.

Her paternal grandparents were the Pontian Greek Roman Senator and Peripatetic Philosopher, Gnaeus Claudius Severus and his second wife, the Roman Princess Annia Galeria Aurelia Faustina. Her maternal grandparents were wealthy Roman heiress Ummidia Cornificia Faustina and a Roman senator whose name is unknown. Her paternal half-uncle was Marcus Claudius Ummidius Quadratus, who had been adopted by the Roman Consul Marcus Ummidius Quadratus Annianus, the nephew of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. She was a Roman citizen of Pontic Greek and Italian ancestry.

Her paternal great-grandparents were the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius; Roman empress Faustina the Younger; the Roman senator, philosopher Gnaeus Claudius Severus Arabianus and his wife, whose name is unknown. Her maternal great-grandparents were Marcus Aurelius’ sister, the noblewoman Annia Cornificia Faustina and Gaius Ummidius Quadratus Annianus Verus, a Roman Senator who served as a suffect consul in 146. Thus she was a descendant of the former ruling Nerva–Antonine dynasty of the Roman Empire. Although by birth, Annia Aurelia Faustina was of the gens Claudia, she was not named after her father; instead she was named in honor of her parents' relations to the gens Aurelia, the gens Annia and the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.

Annia Aurelia Faustina was born and raised on her mother's estate in Pisidia, one of a number in that area called the "Cyllanian Estates". These estates were very large properties, established from the time of the dictator of the Roman Republic, Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c. 138-78 BC).

About 216, her father may have made a political alliance with a Roman Senator who was a member of the gens Pomponia that resulted in her marrying Pomponius Bassus.

Upon her marriage, they settled at her Pisidian estates. Pomponius treated Annia well and they both lived in domestic tranquility. She bore at least two known children during her marriage: a daughter, Pomponia Ummidia (born 219), and a son, Pomponius Bassus (born 220).

By 218, her parents had died and Annia inherited her mother's estate and their fortune, becoming a very wealthy heiress. On the site of the estate inscriptions have survived proclaiming her inheritance of the property from her parents and that she was its owner.

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