Curated category
3rd-century Roman consuls
- Constantius ChlorusFlavius Valerius Constantius entered the world on the 31st of March, though historians cannot name his birth year. His career and the age of his eldest son…
- GallienusGallienus ruled Rome for fifteen years, the longest reign in half a century, and spent nearly every one of those years fighting.
- CaracallaCaracalla was born Lucius Septimius Bassianus on the 4th of April 188 in Lugdunum, Gaul, the city now called Lyon, France.
- 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.
- Septimius SeverusSeptimius Severus died on the 4th of February 211, in a garrison city at the far edge of the known world, far from the sun-baked coast of Libya where he was…
- Claudius GothicusMarcus Aurelius Claudius, remembered today as Claudius Gothicus, once knocked out a horse's teeth with a single punch, or so an ancient legend claims.
- GaleriusGalerius Valerius Maximianus arrived in the world between 258 and 260 within the Danube provinces. Ancient texts place his birth either near Serdica or at a…
- DiocletianDiocletian retired from the most powerful office in the world and went home to grow cabbages. When rivals begged him to return to the throne in 308, he wrote…
- 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…
- 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…
- Valerian (emperor)Valerian ruled Rome as emperor from 253 to 260. His reign ended at the battle of Edessa, in a way no Roman emperor had experienced before.
- ElagabalusElagabalus became Roman emperor at fourteen years old, declared so by a single legion at sunrise on the 16th of May 218.
- Gordian IIIGordian III became Roman emperor at the age of thirteen, making him the second-youngest sole ruler the unified empire had ever seen.
- 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…
- 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.