The Troubled Century : Maximinus Thrax

Imperator Caesar Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus Pius Felix Invictus Augustus Augustus 235 – 238 AD

Born: 172 (or 3) AD in Thrace
Date of Accession: March 235 AD
Died: Murdered April 238 AD at Aquileia

Governors of Britannia during his reign:

Claudius Appellinus (or) 235 AD
Calvisius Rufus (or)
Valerius Crescens Fulvianus
Tuccianus 235 – 237 AD
Maecilius Fuscus 238 AD

Maximinus Thrax (the Thracian) was a common soldier, who by the time of Alexander Severus German campaigns of 235 AD had risen to high rank through natural ability. At the time he was in charge of the training camp for the waves of new recruits drafted into service for the German campaigns.

These troops were fiercely loyal to Maximinus, preferring his soldierly western style to the weak vacillating style of the young Emperor Alexander Severus who appeared to lurk in the shadow of his domineering Syrian mother. The army wanted a leader who would fight their enemies, something Alexander Severus would not do to the army’s satisfaction.
When the troops hailed Maximinus as Emperor, Severus’s fate was sealed, and he was murdered along with his mother a few days later at Vicus Britannicus (modern Bretzenheim).

Maximinus Thrax

Maximinus was a large man, rumoured to be eight foot six inches tall, though a more realistic six foot eight inches better reflects the anatomical reality. He spent all his years as Emperor with the army, successfully fighting Germans in the Taunus and Württemberg regions, before campaigning against the Dacians and Sarmatians on the Danube front.
These operations were enormously expensive, and it is likely this cost which drove the Senatorial class – once the frontiers were secured – to attempt to replace him with their own kind.

First to rise to the challenge were father and son patrician Gordion I and Gordion II in Tunisia. On their failure the Senate hurriedly appointed the ex Consuls Pupienus and Balbinus to front their open challenge to Maximinus.

Maximinus immediately moved to confront them but was stalled before the walls of the Italian city of Aquileia on the north Italian Adriatic. The siege did not progress well, the city refusing offers of amnesty and unity of purpose in Maximinus army failed before the city’s stubborn defence.

Maximinus’s Italian troops, disheartened by this lack of support in their homeland turned on Maximinus, and murdered him and his son in the camp before Aquileia.

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