Gordian I

• 1. Introduction

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  Gordian I held power over the Roman Empire for exactly 22 days. That figure alone sets the stage for one of the strangest episodes in Roman history, a year so chaotic that six men would claim the title of emperor before it ended. The man at the center of this story was Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus, born around 158 AD, an elderly proconsul who reportedly wept and begged to be left alone when a mob thrust imperial purple upon him. He was roughly 80 years old at the time. His reign, shared with his son, would end in battlefield defeat, a suicide carried out with a belt, and a legacy built almost entirely on reputation rather than rule. What drove a man of that age into rebellion? Who was Gordian before the purple found him? And why does his name persist in Roman history at all, given how brief and disastrous his moment at the top proved to be?

• 2. Family and Roots

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  The name Marcus Antonius in Gordian's full title pointed to a specific family history. Roman naming conventions tied praenomen and nomen to citizenship grants, and the combination Marcus Antonius suggested that Gordian's paternal ancestors received Roman citizenship through the triumvir Mark Antony, or through one of his daughters, during the late Republic. His cognomen Gordianus carried its own signal: it indicated family origins in Anatolia, probably in Galatia or Cappadocia.

  The Historia Augusta, the ancient source most often cited for his family, named his mother as Ulpia Gordiana and his father as the senator Maecius Marullus. Modern historians have largely rejected the father's name as invented, though the Prosopographia Imperii Romani proposes that a man of that name could be identified as the son of a prominent Corinthian politician, Maecius Faustinus.

  The names Sempronianus Romanus embedded in Gordian's own name may point to a maternal or grandmaternal connection. In Ankara, a funeral inscription names a Sempronia Romana, the daughter of a man called Sempronius Aquila who served as an imperial secretary. French historian Christian Settipani constructed a conjectural family tree placing Gordian's parents as a Marcus Antonius Gordianus and a Sempronia Romana, and placing further back in that tree a connection to Herodes Atticus, the famous Athenian intellectual and philanthropist. Anthony Birley noted that the precise line of descent connecting Gordian to Herodes Atticus remains unresolved.

  Gordian had at least two children with his wife. His son bore the same name, and his daughter, called Maecia Faustina by the Historia Augusta, would go on to become the mother of the future Emperor Gordian III.

• 3. The Long Climb

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  Gordian's political career started relatively late in his life. His early years appear to have been devoted to rhetoric and literary studies rather than military or administrative ambition. He commanded the Legio IV Scythica when that legion was stationed in Syria, and he served as governor of Roman Britain in 216. Inscriptions bearing his name in Britain were partially erased, which suggests some form of imperial displeasure during that posting.

  As aedile, Gordian staged games and public shows on a scale that earned him widespread popularity. His prudent and quiet manner of living kept him out of trouble during the reign of Caracalla. In honor of Caracalla, he wrote a long epic poem he called the Antoninias. Gordian managed to hold onto both his wealth and his political standing through the turbulent years of the Severan dynasty, a survival that hinted at a genuine talent for staying clear of factional intrigue.

  Philostratus, the biographer of Greek sophists, dedicated his work Lives of the Sophists to either Gordian or his son. Gordian I served a suffect consulship before 223 and later drew lots for the proconsular governorship of Africa Proconsularis, which he took up in 237. He was in his late sixties during the reign of Alexander Severus and approaching 80 when his final chapter opened.

• 4. The Revolt in Africa

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  Maximinus Thrax had seized the throne after killing Alexander Severus at Mogontiacum in Germania Inferior. He was not a popular ruler. His fiscal policies bore down heavily on the provinces, and resentment spread wide.

  In 238, in the province of Africa, that resentment exploded. The exact month is not recorded. Maximinus' fiscal curator was killed in a riot, and the people of the region turned to their elderly proconsul and demanded he take the throne. According to the historian Herodian, Gordian was about 80 years old at that point. Edward Gibbon described the spark of the revolt in vivid terms: wealthy young men of Africa faced a sentence that would have stripped them of most of their property. They gathered slaves and peasants armed with clubs and axes, killed the procurator in the town of Thysdrus, and then looked to Gordian as their leader.

  Gordian's own response, as Gibbon rendered it, was one of genuine reluctance. He reportedly wept and asked to be allowed to live out his remaining years without involving his old age in civil bloodshed. The threat of what Maximinus would do to him if he refused eventually moved him to accept the purple. He also demanded that his son be made co-emperor, citing his own advanced age.

  Gordian entered Carthage days later with the support of its population and local leaders. He sent assassins to kill Vitalianus, Maximinus' praetorian prefect, who was indeed killed. An embassy under Publius Licinius Valerianus was sent to Rome to seek Senate recognition. The Senate confirmed the new emperors, and many provinces sided with the Gordians. The date of the 2nd of April is sometimes attached to these events, but only from a passage of the Historia Augusta describing an eclipse, and that source is now considered highly unreliable.

• 5. Twenty-Two Days

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  The neighboring province of Numidia held the only full Roman legion in the region, the III Augusta. Its governor, Capelianus, was both loyal to Maximinus Thrax and personally hostile to Gordian. He did not wait. Capelianus marched his legion and other veteran units into the African province.

  Gordian II led the defense with a militia army of untrained soldiers. At the Battle of Carthage, that force was no match for the veterans under Capelianus. Gordian II was killed in the fighting. When word reached his father, Gordian I hanged himself with his belt. The total reign of the two Gordians came to 22 days, the second shortest in all of imperial history. Gordian I also became the first Roman emperor to die by suicide since Otho in 69 AD, during the Year of the Four Emperors.

  The Senate, having committed itself to the Gordians, found it could not simply stand down. It appointed Pupienus and Balbinus as joint emperors to continue the resistance against Maximinus. Before 238 closed, however, the recognized emperor was Gordian III, the maternal grandson of Gordian I, who was the son of Maecia Faustina.

• 6. A Literary Legacy

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  Both Gordian I and his son were remembered for their love of literature and their own prolific writing. Ancient sources described their works as voluminous. Gordian's care for his intellectual reputation stretched back decades, to the poem he wrote in honor of Caracalla and the dedication Philostratus placed in Lives of the Sophists.

  Ancient assessments of Gordian's character were generally warm. He was described as amiable. Neither he nor his son, however, was considered by ancient writers to have possessed the practical skills needed to govern or the resources needed to sustain power against a determined military rival. His positive reputation rested on character rather than achievement.

  Gordian I assumed the cognomen Africanus when he took the throne, a title that tied his brief rule to the continent where it began and ended. The Senate's memory of him was generous enough that when a third Gordian emerged to rule the empire, the family name carried weight. Gordian III, who ruled for six years, was Gordian I's grandson through the daughter the Historia Augusta called Maecia Faustina.