Domitia Paulina

Domitia Paulina, also known as Domitia Paulina the Elder (in Latin: ), was a Roman aristocrat and mother of the Roman emperor Hadrian.

Biography Paulina was born in Gades (modern-day Cadiz). She is believed to have come from a Romanized native family. Paulina married the senator Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, who attained the rank of praetor and was a cousin of emperor Trajan. However, a fragment of papyrus from Bakchias in the Egyptian Faiyum, called P.Fay 19, apparently contains, as a writing exercise, a letter from Hadrian to his successor and adopted son Antoninus Pius. In the few preserved lines, which show autobiographical traits, Hadrian, preparing for his imminent death, reports as a "scribe" that his father died at the age of forty and that he himself had reached about the age of his mother, who, according to conjecture based on a lacuna in the papyrus, died at sixty. In this letter, the author praises his mother's piety and modesty and prays that all his actions may be worthy of her praise.