Caecilia Paulina was the Empress of Rome and wife of Emperor Maximinus Thrax

Maximinus Thrax

Maximinus Thrax , also known as Maximinus I, was Roman Emperor from 235 to 238.Maximinus is described by several ancient sources, though none are contemporary except Herodian's Roman History. Maximinus was the first emperor never to set foot in Rome...

, who ruled in 235–238.

Name

Her full name, Diva Caecilia Paulina Pia Aug[usta], was preserved on an inscription (CIL 10,5054).

On the coins she is called simply Diva Paulina, but these were not struck during her life, but some time later, probably after she was deified. No sculptural likenesses of her survive.

Life

Almost nothing is known about her life. Ancient writers never mention her by name. The 4th century historian, Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity...

 wrote about Paulina in his book about the Gordians but this was lost. In a later passage Marcellinus refers to the Empress as the good wife of the truculent Maximinus who tried to "led him back into the paths of truth and mercy, by feminine gentleness".

She had one son, Gaius Julius Verus Maximus, who was appointed Caesar by his father, but both men were murdered by the soldiers in May 238.

Paulina probably died around late 235 or early 236. The city of Anazarbus

Anazarbus

Anazarbus in Ancient Cilicia was an ancient Cilician city, situated in Anatolia in modern Turkey, in the present Çukurova about 15 km west of the main stream of the present Ceyhan River and near its tributary the Sempas Su.A lofty isolated ridge formed its acropolis...

 in Cilicia

Cilicia

In antiquity, Cilicia was the south coastal region of Asia Minor, south of the central Anatolian plateau. It existed as a political entity from Hittite times into the Byzantine empire...

 struck coins in the name of "Thea Paulina" (the Greek equivalent of "Diva Paulina"), and dated it to the year 254 of that city’s era which equals 235/236 in our modern calendar. The fact that Paulina is called divine means that she was dead when the coins were produced.

Joannes Zonaras

Joannes Zonaras

Ioannes Zonaras was a Byzantine chronicler and theologian, who lived at Constantinople.Under Emperor Alexios I Komnenos he held the offices of head justice and private secretary to the emperor, but after Alexios' death, he retired to the monastery of St Glykeria, where he spent the rest of his...

claims that Maximinus had executed his wife but that accusation is unproven, indeed highly improbable if she was deified by her husband.