Plotina Earrings

These earrings are pure classic elegance. Simple and majestic, they are modeled after a pair found in the excavations of the ancient city of Herculaneum, in the Bay of Naples, that date to the first century AD. Pompeia "Plotina" was the wife of Trajan (r. AD 98 - 117), who was widely regarded as Rome's best emperor. The empress was the quintessential First Lady, renowned for her humility, simplicity, virtue and dignity. She was fair, and her influence was strong: she was credited with helping lower taxes, improve conditions for the poor, and promote tolerance. She also helped improve education, generally, and was herself a highly educated follower of Epicurean philosophy. From the historian Dio Cassius, we learn of her character: "When Plotina...first entered the palace, she turned around so as to face the stairway and the populace, and said: 'I enter here the kind of woman I would like to be when I depart.' And she conducted herself during the entire reign in such a manner as to incur no censure." - Roman History 68.5.5