Flavia Titiana

Flavia Titiana was the wife of emperor Pertinax, who ruled briefly in 193 during the Year of the Five Emperors.

Life Flavia Titiana was the daughter of senator Titus Flavius Claudius Sulpicianus, and sister of Titus Flavius Titianus (b. 165), consul suffectus c. 200. Her maternal grandfather was Titus Flavius Titianus, who was praefectus of Egypt from 126 to 133. Titiana married Publius Helvius Pertinax, a wealthy self-made man who had a successful military and civil career. She bore two children, a boy named Publius Helvius Pertinax and a daughter.

Pertinax was proclaimed emperor after the murder of Commodus on January 1, 193. While the new princeps was offering the customary sacrifice on the Capitoline Hill, the Roman Senate gave Flavia Titiana the honorary title of Augusta. After the murder of Pertinax by the Praetorian Guard on March 28, neither Flavia nor her children were hurt.

The highly unreliable Historia Augusta claims that Flavia Titiana "carried on an amour quite openly with a man who sang to the lyre", but Pertinax was not concerned.