Gordian II

• 1. Introduction

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  Gordian II held the Roman imperial throne for about 22 days in the spring of 238 AD. That figure alone sets him apart from every other emperor in Roman history: no recorded reign was shorter. Yet within those three weeks, he fought a battle, lost an empire, and died outside the walls of Carthage. His father, hearing the news, killed himself the same day. The questions the story raises are just as sharp as the numbers. How did a man with no surviving first-hand biography and a reputation for pleasure end up on the throne? Who was Capelianus, the governor who destroyed him? And why did the year 238 produce not two emperors but six? Those answers begin not in 238 but roughly four decades earlier, around the time Gordian II was born.

• 2. A Family of Shadows

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  Around 192, Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus was born as the only known son of Gordian I, who was himself connected to prominent senators. The name Marcus Antonius is a clue. Roman historians read it as a sign that the family's paternal ancestors received citizenship under the triumvir Mark Antony, or one of his daughters, during the late Republic. The cognomen "Gordianus" points east: scholars associate it with family origins in Anatolia, particularly Galatia and Cappadocia.

  The Historia Augusta, a source that ancient and modern historians alike treat with deep suspicion, claims his mother was a woman called Fabia Orestilla, born around 165, who it describes as a descendant of emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius through her father Fulvus Antoninus. Modern historians have dismissed this as fabrication. A more cautious reading of the evidence suggests his mother may have been the granddaughter of Herodes Atticus, the Greek Sophist, consul, and tutor whose influence in Roman intellectual life was considerable.

  His younger sister was Maecia Faustina, a name worth holding onto: her son would one day become Emperor Gordian III, the nephew who would eventually succeed where his uncle and grandfather failed.

• 3. A Career Reconstructed

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  Almost everything known about Gordian II's career before 238 comes from the Historia Augusta, which ancient sources and modern scholars agree is notoriously unreliable. That qualification matters enormously here. The same document that invents maternal lineages also claims Gordian served as quaestor during the reign of Elagabalus, then as praetor and consul suffect under Emperor Severus Alexander.

  In 237 or 238, father and son traveled together to the province of Africa Proconsularis, where Gordian I served as proconsular governor and Gordian II accompanied him as a legatus. Whatever the truth of his earlier offices, this posting placed him at exactly the right place at exactly the wrong moment.

  Edward Gibbon, writing in the first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1789, preserved one striking detail about the man's private life. Twenty-two acknowledged concubines and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, Gibbon wrote, attested to the variety of Gordian's inclinations, and Gibbon added in a footnote that Gordian had three or four children by each concubine. Whether those numbers are accurate is another matter, but they paint a picture of a man of appetite and learning who was not, by any obvious measure, groomed for civil war.

• 4. The Year of Six Emperors

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  Early in 235, Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother Julia Avita Mamaea were assassinated by mutinous troops at Moguntiacum, the city now called Mainz, in the province of Germania Inferior. The man who led the rebellion, Maximinus Thrax, seized the throne despite his low-born background and the active disapproval of the Roman Senate.

  Maximinus was an effective soldier but a poor politician. His procurator in Africa had just been killed by local elites when Gordian I found himself compelled to join a full-scale revolt, probably at the end of March 238. Gordian II, said at the time to be 46 years old, was attached to the imperial claim alongside his father. Both men received the title augustus and both were awarded the cognomen "Africanus."

  The Senate ratified their claim, and most of the other provinces followed. The rebellion appeared to have broad support. What neither Gordian counted on was the province next door.

• 5. The Battle Outside Carthage

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  Capelianus, the governor of Numidia, was loyal to Maximinus Thrax and personally hostile to the Gordians. He invaded Africa province with the III Augusta legion, the only regular legion stationed in the region, supplemented by other veteran units.

  Gordian II led out what the sources describe as a militia: untrained soldiers, not legionaries. Against professionals, they had no real chance. Gordian lost what historians call the Battle of Carthage and was killed in the fighting. According to the Historia Augusta, his body was never recovered.

  His father, on receiving the news, took his own life. The Gordian co-reign lasted 22 days, the shortest recorded for any Roman emperor. The first rebellion against Maximinus Thrax had failed. By the end of that same year, however, Gordian III, the nephew, would be recognized as emperor across the Roman world, suggesting that the family name still carried weight even after the disaster outside Carthage.