Hostilian

• 1. Introduction

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  Hostilian ruled Rome for one of the shortest reigns in the empire's long history, a boy emperor caught between a catastrophic military defeat and a disputed death. His full name, recorded on coins and inscriptions, was Gaius Valens Hostilianus Messius Quintus. To that, the historian Aurelius Victor added Perpenna or Perperna, a name of Etruscan origin. He was a son of Decius and Herennia Etruscilla, born at an unknown date, and his story is inseparable from the disasters that overtook his family in a single summer. Who was this young caesar, why did a rival general rush to make him co-emperor, and did he die of plague or by murder? The answers reach into one of the bloodiest years Rome ever faced.

• 2. The House of Decius

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  Decius was a Roman general before he was an emperor. In September 249, his army declared him emperor in opposition to Philip the Arab, and he defeated and killed Philip in a battle near Verona. The Roman Senate then confirmed his appointment and honoured him with the name Traianus, a deliberate echo of Emperor Trajan. He and his wife Herennia Etruscilla had at least three children: Herennius Etruscus, Hostilian, and one sister. In or around September 250, Decius appointed both his sons caesars, marking them as successors within the dynasty he was building. By May 251, Herennius Etruscus had been elevated further to the rank of augustus, making father and elder son co-emperors with Hostilian positioned as the heir of either or both of them.

• 3. The Battle of Abritus

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  In June 251, the Goths sprung an ambush that changed everything. At the Battle of Abritus, Decius and Herennius Etruscus were both killed, making it one of the rare moments in Roman history when a reigning emperor died in battle against a foreign enemy. The legions on the ground declared Trebonianus Gallus the new emperor. Gallus faced an immediate problem of legitimacy. He was a general who had just watched the previous dynasty die, and the public had to be convinced that the transition was orderly rather than opportunistic. His solution was to elevate the surviving son of Decius, Hostilian, to the rank of augustus and co-emperor almost at once. At the same time, Gallus raised his own son Volusianus to the position of caesar.

• 4. A Disputed Death

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  Hostilian's time as co-emperor was brief, and the circumstances of his death have never been settled. Some sources date his death to November, but contemporary evidence places it in or before August, most probably in July 251. Aurelius Victor and the author of the Epitome de Caesaribus record that Hostilian died of a plague. The historian Zosimus tells a different story, claiming that Trebonianus Gallus had him killed. The two accounts are irreconcilable, and no later evidence has resolved them. What followed his death is less ambiguous: Gallus's son Volusianus was elevated to augustus and became the new co-emperor, completing the transfer of power away from the Decian family entirely.

• 5. Coins and Portraits

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  Hostilian's coins are the clearest physical evidence of his brief time at the top of Roman power. His gold aurei fall into four distinct types, each bearing his bust on the obverse. The reverses show Mars walking to the right; priestly implements; Mercury standing; and Roma seated, holding Victoria. Those same coins complicate a modern art-historical argument. Some historians have proposed that Hostilian is the Roman general depicted in the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus, a famous and elaborate marble carving. The coins argue against it: every portrait on his coinage shows a beardless young boy, not a mature military commander. The numismatic evidence even raises the possibility that both Hostilian and his brother Herennius Etruscus were still children or teenagers when they died at Abritus and shortly after.