Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander, also known as Alexander Severus, was Roman emperor from 222 until 235. The last emperor from the Severan dynasty, he succeeded his slain cousin Elagabalus in 222, at the age of 13. Alexander himself was eventually assassinated, and his death marked the beginning of the events of the Crisis of the Third Century, which included nearly fifty years of civil war, foreign invasion, and the collapse of the monetary economy.
Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus was Roman emperor with his father Valerian from 253 to 260 and alone from 260 to 268. He ruled during the Crisis of the Third Century that nearly caused the collapse of the empire. He won numerous military victories against usurpers and Germanic tribes, but was unable to prevent the secession of important provinces. His 15-year reign was the longest in half a century.
Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, the Aeli Hadriani, came from the town of Hadria in eastern Italy. He was a member of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known by his posthumous nicknames Elagabalus and Heliogabalus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222, while he was still a teenager. His short reign was notorious for religious controversy and alleged sexual debauchery. A close relative to the Severan dynasty, he came from a prominent Syrian Arab family in Emesa (Homs), Syria, where he served as the head priest of the sun god Elagabal from a young age. After the death of his cousin, the emperor Caracalla, Elagabalus was raised to the principate at 14 years of age in an army revolt instigated by his grandmother Julia Maesa against Caracalla's short-lived successor, Macrinus. He only posthumously became known by the Latinised name of his god.
Marcus Claudius Tacitus was Roman emperor from 275 to 276. During his short reign he campaigned against the Goths and the Heruli, for which he received the title Gothicus Maximus.
Zosimus was a Greek historian who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I (491–518). According to Photius, he was a comes, and held the office of "advocate" of the imperial treasury. Zosimus was also known for condemning Constantine’s rejection of the traditional polytheistic religion.
Septimia Zenobia was a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. Many legends surround her ancestry; she was probably not a commoner and she married the ruler of the city, Odaenathus. Her husband became king in 260, elevating Palmyra to supreme power in the Near East by defeating the Sasanian Empire of Persia and stabilizing the Roman East. After Odaenathus' assassination, Zenobia became the regent of her son Vaballathus and held de facto power throughout his reign.
Marcus Aurelius Claudius "Gothicus", also known as Claudius II, was Roman emperor from 268 to 270. During his reign he fought successfully against the Alemanni and decisively defeated the Goths at the Battle of Naissus. He died after succumbing to a "pestilence", possibly the Plague of Cyprian that had ravaged the provinces of the Empire.
Sir Ronald Syme, was a New Zealand-born historian and classicist. He was regarded as the greatest historian of ancient Rome since Theodor Mommsen and the most brilliant exponent of the history of the Roman Empire since Edward Gibbon. His great work was The Roman Revolution (1939), a masterly and controversial analysis of Roman political life in the period following the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Gordian I was Roman emperor for 22 days with his son Gordian II in 238, the Year of the Six Emperors. Caught up in a rebellion against the Emperor Maximinus Thrax, he was defeated in battle and committed suicide after the death of his son, having had the shortest reign in imperial history.
Gordian II was Roman emperor with his father Gordian I in 238 AD, the Year of the Six Emperors. Seeking to overthrow Maximinus Thrax, he died in battle outside Carthage. Since he died before his father, Gordian II had the shortest reign of any Roman emperor, at about 22 days.
Publius Helvius Pertinax was Roman emperor for the first three months of 193. He succeeded Commodus to become the first emperor during the tumultuous Year of the Five Emperors.
Marcus Didius Julianus was Roman emperor from March to June 193, during the Year of the Five Emperors. Julianus had a promising political career, governing several provinces, including Dalmatia and Germania Inferior, and defeated the Chauci and Chatti, two invading Germanic tribes. He was even appointed to the consulship in 175 along with Pertinax as a reward, before being demoted by Commodus. After this demotion, his political career languished.
Chancellor is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the cancellarii of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the cancelli of a basilica, which separated the judge and counsel from the audience. A chancellor's office is called a chancellery or chancery. The word is now used in the titles of many various officers in various settings. Nowadays the term is most often used to describe:
The Historia Augusta is a late Roman collection of biographies, written in Latin, of the Roman emperors, their junior colleagues, designated heirs and usurpers from 117 to 284. Supposedly modeled on the similar work of Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, it presents itself as a compilation of works by six different authors, collectively known as the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I and addressed to those emperors or other important personages in Ancient Rome. The collection, as extant, comprises thirty biographies, most of which contain the life of a single emperor, but some include a group of two or more, grouped together merely because these emperors were either similar or contemporaneous.
Gaius Pius Esuvius Tetricus was a Gallo-Roman nobleman who ruled as emperor of the Gallic Empire from 271 to 274 AD. He was originally the praeses of Gallia Aquitania and became emperor after the murder of Emperor Victorinus in 271, with the support of Victorinus's mother, Victoria. During his reign, he faced external pressure from Germanic raiders, who pillaged the eastern and northern parts of his empire, and the Roman Empire, from which the Gallic Empire had seceded. He also faced increasing internal pressure, which led him to declare his son, Tetricus II, caesar in 273 and possibly co-emperor in 274, although this is debated. The Roman emperor Aurelian invaded in 273 or 274, leading to the Battle of Châlons, at which Tetricus surrendered. Whether this capitulation was the result of a secret agreement between Tetricus and Aurelian or that surrender was necessary after his defeat is debated. Aurelian spared Tetricus, and made him a senator and the corrector (governor) of Lucania et Bruttium. Tetricus died of natural causes a few years after 274.
Gaius Claudius Maximus was a Roman politician, a Stoic philosopher and a teacher of Marcus Aurelius. No works by him are known to exist; however, he is mentioned in a few prestigious works from classical literature.
Ulpia Severina was Roman empress as the wife of Roman emperor Aurelian from c. 270 to 275. Severina is unmentioned in surviving literary sources and known only from coinage and inscriptions, and as a result, very little is known about her. Her nomen Ulpia suggests that she may have been related either to Emperor Trajan or the usurper Laelianus, as they share the same nomen, and perhaps from Dacia, where the name was common. It is not known when she married Aurelian, but it might have been before he became emperor. She was probably proclaimed Augusta in the autumn of 274.
The Massacre of Thessalonica in Macedonia, Greece, was a massacre of local civilians by Roman troops which is believed to have occurred around 390. According to Sozomen, in June of that year Butheric, a Roman general stationed in Thessalonica as a magister militum was lynched in an urban riot by an angry mob in the circus after having a famous circus charioteer arrested for pederasty, and refusing the people's demand for his release, although, this is found in only one source. In response, Theodosius authorized his Gothic soldiers to punish the people of the city resulting in the killing of a large number of citizens when they were assembled in the city's hippodrome.
Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus "Thrax" was a Roman emperor from 235 to 238. Born of Thracian origin – given the nickname Thrax – he rose up through the military ranks, ultimately holding high command in the army of the Rhine under Emperor Severus Alexander. After Severus was murdered in 235, he was proclaimed emperor by the army, beginning the Crisis of the Third Century, a 50-year period of instability and civil war. He is often remembered for his unusual height, although the veracity of this is disputed.
