Arria Fadilla

Arria Fadilla was from Nemausus (Nimes) in Roman Gaul. She was a member of the new provincial elite that came to power with the emperor Trajan and that formed the dynasty of the Antonines.

She was well educated and very wealthy. Like many of the women in these elite families, she successfully managed her own business affairs with properly inherited from her father’s as well as her mother’s sides of the family. Her father, Arrius Antoninus, had been consul suffectus in 69 c.e. and proconsul of Asia. He was a friend of the emperor Marcus Cocceius Nerva, under whom he served a second time as consul, and with whom he shared an interest in Greek poetry. His poetry was suffi ciently well known for Pliny the Younger to have commented favorably upon it. Arria Fadilla’s mother was Boionia Procilla, whose family probably had connections to the emperor Trajan.

Arria Fadilla married Aurelius Fulvus, a man also from a provincial consular family in Nimes. It was a successful marriage. Their son, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionus Arrius Antoninus, became the emperor Antoninus Pius (reigned 137–61) after his adoption by Hadrian.