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Thirty Tyrants (Roman)

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Summary

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The Thirty Tyrants (Latin: Tyranni Triginta) were a series of thirty rulers who appear in the Historia Augusta, as having ostensibly been pretenders to the throne of the Roman Empire during the reign of the emperor Gallienus.

Given the notorious unreliability of the Historia Augusta, the veracity of this list is debatable. There is a scholarly consensus that the author deliberately inflated the number of pretenders in order to parallel the Thirty Tyrants of Athens. Edward Gibbon identified nineteen.

The Historia actually gives 32 names. The author, who wrote under the name of Trebellius Pollio, places the last two during the reigns of Maximinus Thrax and Claudius II respectively, leaving thirty alleged pretenders during the reign of Gallienus.

The following list gives the Thirty Tyrants as depicted by the Historia Augusta, along with notes contrasting the Historia Augusta's claims with their actual historical positions:

Table

Chapter in
Historia Augusta	Name	Notes about historicity
2	Cyriades	never claimed Imperial dignity
3	Postumus	accurate placement
4	Postumus Junior	youth; probably never existed
5	Laelianus	accurate placement
6	Victorinus	contemporary not with Gallienus but Claudius II and Aurelian
7	Victorinus Junior	Fiction, never existed
8	Marius	accurate placement
9	Ingenuus	accurate placement
10	Regalianus	accurate placement
11	Aureolus	accurate placement
12	Macrianus	accurate placement
13	Macrianus Junior	accurate placement
14	Quietus	accurate placement
15	Odaenathus	never claimed Imperial dignity
16	Herodes	youth, never claimed Imperial dignity, but older brother of Vaballathus (see below), who did so.
17	Maeonius	never claimed Imperial dignity
18	Balista	never claimed Imperial dignity
19	Valens	probably never claimed Imperial dignity
20	Valens Superior	contemporary of Decius, not Valerianus
21	Piso	probably never claimed Imperial dignity
22	Aemilianus	probably never claimed Imperial dignity
23	Saturninus	probably fictitious
24	Tetricus Senior	contemporary not with Gallienus but Claudius II and Aurelian
25	Tetricus Junior	youth, contemporary not with Gallienus but Claudius II and Aurelian
26	Trebellianus	probably fictitious
27	Herennianus	youth, never claimed Imperial dignity, possibly fictitious
28	Timolaus	youth, never claimed Imperial dignity, possibly fictitious
29	Celsus	probably fictitious
30	Zenobia	female, accurate placement, her son Vaballathus also claimed imperial dignity
31	Victoria (or Vitruvia)	female, never claimed Imperial dignity
32	Titus	admittedly not contemporary with Gallienus but Maximinus Thrax
33	Censorinus	admittedly not contemporary with Gallienus but Claudius II

Notwithstanding the author's pretensions regarding the time during which these persons aspired to the throne, this list includes:

two women and six youths who never claimed imperial dignity
seven men who either certainly or probably never claimed imperial dignity
three probably and two possibly fictitious persons
two pretenders admittedly not contemporary with Gallienus
three pretenders not contemporary with Gallienus

Leaving nine pretenders roughly contemporary with Gallienus. According to David Magie (the editor of the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Historia Augusta), at least some of these men issued coins.

References

Gibbon (1776), ''The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', chapter 10 (London: Folio Society, 1983, p. 149)
J. F. Drinkwater (1987). ''The Gallic Empire: Separatism and continuity in the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire, A.D. 260–274'', Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, Stuttgart, {{ISBN. 3-515-04806-5, p. 65.
Cancik, H.; Schneider, H.; Salazar, C., Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 14 (2009), p. 91

Wikipedia Source

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