Opellius Macrinus (217-18 ce) and Gaius Verus Julius Maximinus (235-8 ce) are rarely seen as significant figures in Roman imperial history (but see Peachin, this volume). Yet the actions of both outsiders - they were the first men without senatorial antecedents to claim the throne - show us how strongly felt was the urge to dynastic succession. One of Macrinus’ first acts was to proclaim his son caesar, and when the revolt of Elagabalus began to gain momentum, he raised his son to the rank of Augustus. Macrinus felt that if he could prove that he was a likely founder of a dynasty, his soldiers would be more likely to remain loyal. He might even have been proved right about this if he had not lost his nerve at a crucial moment in the battle at Immae and deserted his men (Dio 78.38.4). As for Elagabalus, people claimed that he looked like caracalla. This is possible, though it is doubtful that he looked as much like caracalla as his mint masters made him appear when the regime began to unravel (Potter 2004: 155).
Maximinus was descended from colonists settled by Trajan in the Balkans, and he appears to have been a mid-grade officer charged with levying troops when he led his revolt against Alexander (Syme 1971a: 179-89). He succeeded, we are told, because the army regarded Alexander with contempt, seeing him as the creature of his mother (Herod. 6.9.6). Whether or not this is true, it is significant that the story should have been told. The assertion that the soldiers had called Alexander a ‘‘boy tied to his mother’s apron,’’ was not especially accurate. Alexander was then 25 years old, but he had produced no heir, and his regime had tried to reverse the very close relationship with the army that had been asserted under Caracalla and Severus (Campbell 1984: 196-7). There had been several military revolts against Alexander in the context of the failed campaign against the Persians, as well as complaints from the legions about at least one senior appointee - Cassius Dio (Dio 80.4.2-5.1) - and the murder of Ulpian by the praetorian guard. It appears that under Severus Alexander we see a shift in the nature of dynastic loyalty. In the Antonine age, when the throne was passed via adoption, the army had played little direct role in the proceedings. The shift had begun under Septimius Severus, as Michael Peachin shows in his chapter. The origins of the revolt of Elagabalus were largely attributable to Macrinus’ effort to reverse what were seen as Severan gifts to the army in the form of pay increases, and the ability of Elagabalus’ supporters to link his image with that of Caracalla, the ‘‘soldier’s friend,’’ by claiming that he was Caracalla’s illegitimate son (Dio 78.31.3; Herod. 5.3.10). For the soldiers it appears that the Severan dynasty was seen as the guarantor of their privileges, and they were not prepared to continue to show the same loyalty to the regime if they felt that members of the dynasty were not living up to their end of the bargain (Campbell 1984: 411-13).
Maximinus appears to have understood the soldier’s point of view. After his accession he paid a large donative (financial gift) to the army on the Rhine - though quite possibly not to other legions (Potter 1990: 25-6). His proclamation of his young son Maximus as Caesar may be seen as an assertion that a new dynasty had arisen that would understand the singular importance of the soldiers to the empire. Indeed, the civil war of 238 may be seen as a conflict between two visions of imperial authority, one being that it derived from the soldiers, the other that it derived from the consensus of the governing class. It is striking that the Senate opposed Maximinus by electing a board of twenty to administer the war, and selected two elderly officials as emperors. One of them, Pupienus, had a son of mature years, who was notably excluded from the imperial college (Dietz 1980: 133). This gave the new rulers room to negotiate. When the friends of the deceased Gordian I, whose failed revolt in North Africa was the opening phase of the civil war, asserted their continued importance by sparking a riot in which the crowd demanded that a blood relative of Gordian (his grandson) be added to the college, the new emperors were able to agree to his proclamation as Caesar (Herod. 7.10.5-9).
Maximinus and Maximus, who, like the young Macrinus, was raised to the rank of Augustus when the revolt broke out, fell victim to their soldiers outside of Aquileia (Herod. 8.3.8-9). We will never know what happened for certain, but it is not improbable that, expecting that he would be able to move rapidly on the capital, Maximinus had not prepared properly for a siege. Maximinus had prided himself on his image as a great warrior, but he was appearing anything but great at this point, and that may have contributed to the sudden change of heart on the part of at least some of his men.
The regime that emerged in the middle of 238 looks like yet another compromise. The soldiers murdered Pupienus and Balbinus, but allowed the young Gordian to live. Pupienus and Balbinus may have appeared as precisely the sort of officials whose authority the soldiers had resented under Alexander: they were elderly and they were not about to assert their devotion to the men (they had permitted the praetorian guard to be besieged by the mob at Rome in the course of the insurrection). Gordian was too young to do much of anything, and it is plain that those who took power in the new regime, chiefly equestrian officials who had made their careers in the service of the patrimonium, were primarily interested in reconciling the former supporters of Maximinus with those who had served the victorious side. One of the losers in all of this was the man who ought to have been considered the greatest hero of the new regime, Tullus Menophilus, an ex-consul and member of the board of twenty who had commanded at Aquileia during the decisive siege (Dietz 1980: 233-45). He was given the governorship of Lower Moesia, charged with treason, and, presumably, executed. P. Aelius Ammonius, the procurator of the province, replaced him as governor. Ammonius may be seen as a tool of the group of senior equestrian officials led by C. Furius Sabinus Aquila Timesitheus, who had played no part in the events of 238, but would now become praetorian prefect. The only member of the board of twenty whom we know to have continued a prominent career after 238 was an equestrian jurist named Rufinus, who stressed his equestrian dignity even after he had been adlected into the Senate (Millar 1999a: 90-108). Timesitheus’ daughter became the wife of Gordian, so that if a question of dynastic succession should arise, it would be the family of Timesitheus that would play the crucial role. Timesitheus himself died in 243 after a successful campaign to drive the Persians from territory that they had seized under Maximinus.
There would be no Gordianic dynasty because Gordian was assassinated in the course of an unsuccessful invasion of the Persian Empire during 244. He was succeeded by the praetorian prefect, Julius Philippus, a man from the province of Arabia, who seems to have been elevated to the prefecture by his brother, Priscus, Timesitheus’ colleague in office (Potter 1990: 215). Philip took the novel step of appointing two of his relatives, Priscus and a man named Severianus, to senior commands in the east and the Balkans respectively (Zos. 19.2). He also made his son Caesar. At the same time he ordered the massive reconstruction of his hometown of Chabha in modern Jordan as Philippopolis to make it an appropriate patria or home city for an imperial family (Millar 1993a: 156). In the course of this he arranged the deification of his father, Marinus. Philip’s assertion of dynastic ambition recalls that of Septimius Severus, and seems to have marked a strong break with the style of collective government under Gordian. It also appears to have been unpalatable. He was killed in a military uprising led by a senior senator named Decius in 249. Decius too had dynastic ambitions, for he had two sons, one of whom appears to have been in his early twenties. This older son, Herennius Etruscus, was raised first to the rank of Caesar, and then to the rank of Augustus following a catastrophic defeat that his father suffered at the hands of the Goths. Decius followed up this defeat by launching an ill-advised attack on the Goths at Abitus (Birley 1998: 77; Potter 1990: 278-82). He was killed, and power passed to Trebonianus Gallus, who briefly associated Decius’ surviving son with himself and his own son, Volusianus, in power. This too proved a failure; Gallus was killed in a military uprising during 253. Aemilianus, the leader of the revolt against Gallus, was killed a few months later by Valerian, who had supported Gallus (Christol 1980: 73).
Valerian followed in the footsteps of his immediate predecessors, attempting to solidify his power by asserting dynastic ambitions. In this he was aided by the fact that he had an adult son, Gallienus, who was father to several sons, some of whom appear also to have reached maturity (Christol 1975). If he had been a better general, or simply a luckier man, Valerian might have succeeded. The fact that Gallienus was able to act as a fully functional colleague made it possible for Valerian to bring unprecedented security to the imperial office: there were no revolts during the seven years that he survived as emperor. Had Valerian not fallen victim to Sapor of Persia, who took him prisoner in 260, the course of subsequent Roman history might have been different, for his career suggests that it was still possible to maintain the Antonine model of government that Peachin has described in his chapter. The feasibility of that model was destroyed when Valerian was taken off to finish his days building bridges in Iran (Potter 2004: 256).
World History
