The Troubled Century : Gordion I and II

Imperator Caesar Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus Africanus (both) 238 AD

Gordion I
Born: 158 (or 9) AD
Date of Accession: January 238 AD
Died: Suicide, January 238 AD at Carthage

Gordion II
Born: 192 AD in Thrace
Date of Accession: January 238 AD
Died: January 238 AD at Carthage

Governors of Britannia during his reign:

Maecilius Fuscus 238 AD

The elder Gordion was around 80 when he was proclaimed Emperor by a group of disgruntled local aristocrats who had plotted and murdered Maximinus’s local Procurator at Thysdrus (modern El Djem).

Gordion I

Gordion had been governor of Britannia Inferior in 216 AD, Consul under either Caracalla or Elagabalus and governor of Africa in 237 AD. He accepted the title Augustus reluctantly but was fêted by the senate in Rome, he was after all one of their sort. His son – Gordion II – was also given the title Augustus in what seems to have been an attempt to replicate a diluted Republican Consulship.

Gordion II

The ill fated usurpers did not last long, the governor of the neighbouring province of Numidia marched with the 3rd Augusta and put down the rebellion at Carthage.

When the elder Gordion heard that his son had been killed during the fighting he committed suicide.

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