died c. ad 123
wife of the Roman emperor Trajan. She earned great respect in her lifetime by her virtue and her advocation of the people’s interests. During the ceremony of Trajan’s accession, she is supposed to have turned around as she climbed the palace steps and addressed the crowd, saying that she desired always to be the same as she was then. One of her accomplishments was to curb the excesses of the procurators, the state’s revenue agents.
Plotina was childless. As Trajan lay dying at Selinus (Cilicia) in August 117, she induced him to adopt Hadrian, with whom she was on close terms. Plotina survived Trajan, and, upon her death, the emperor Hadrian had her deified and had temples erected in her honour at Rome and at Nemausus (Nîmes) in Gaul.
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