Curated playlist
3rd-century murdered monarchs
- PostumusPostumus, a Roman commander of Batavian origin, seized power at one of the most chaotic moments the Roman Empire had ever faced, and then held on to it for nearly a decade. In the year 260, the reigning emperor Valerian had just been…
- CaracallaCaracalla was born Lucius Septimius Bassianus on the 4th of April 188 in Lugdunum, Gaul, the city now called Lyon, France. He would die on the 8th of April 217, stabbed by a soldier while stopping to urinate on a road in the eastern…
- GallienusGallienus ruled Rome for fifteen years, the longest reign in half a century, and spent nearly every one of those years fighting. He fought Germanic tribes on the Rhine, Persian-backed usurpers in the East, breakaway generals in Gaul, and a…
- BalbinusBalbinus ruled the Roman Empire for just three months in 238 AD, a year so chaotic it earned the name the Year of the Six Emperors. He was already in his early sixties when the Senate elevated him, alongside a colleague named Pupienus, to…
- Maximinus ThraxMaximinus Thrax became Roman emperor in 235 without ever having sat in the Senate, without ever having governed a province, and without any of the social credentials Rome's ruling class considered essential. He rose from what ancient…
- AurelianAurelian earned a title that no Roman emperor had ever held before: Restitutor Orbis, Restorer of the World. He was born around 214, the son of a tenant farmer in the borderlands of Moesia Superior, and he died in 275 with an empire…
- ElagabalusElagabalus became Roman emperor at fourteen years old, declared so by a single legion at sunrise on the 16th of May 218. He would be dead before he turned nineteen. In the four years between, this Syrian teenager managed to install a…
- MacrinusMacrinus, born around 165 in Caesarea - the city now called Cherchell in modern Algeria - became Roman emperor in April 217 without ever having set foot in the Senate. He was a Berber from Mauretania Caesariensis, the son of an equestrian…
- Gordian IIIGordian III became Roman emperor at the age of thirteen, making him the second-youngest sole ruler the unified empire had ever seen. The year was 238 AD, and Rome had already burned through a bewildering succession of rulers in a single…
- Severus AlexanderSeverus Alexander was born on the 1st of October 208 in Arca Caesarea, Phoenicia, and by the age of thirteen he was ruling the Roman Empire alone. His predecessor, the emperor Elagabalus, had been killed by his own guards, and the bodies…