Eboracum
Eboracum was a fort and city in the Roman province of Britannia. In its prime it was the largest town in a provincial capital; the site remained occupied after the decline of the Roman Empire and evolved into the present-day city York, occupying the same site in North Yorkshire, England. Two Roman emperors died in Eboracum: Septimius Severus in 211 AD, Constantius Chlorus in 306 AD; the first known recorded mention of Eboracum by name is dated c. 95–104 AD and is an address containing the genitive form of the settlement's name, Eburaci, on a wooden stylus tablet from the Roman fortress of Vindolanda in what is now the modern Northumberland. During the Roman period, the name was written both Eburacum; the name Eboracum comes from the Common Brittonic Eburākon, which means "yew tree place". The word for "yew" was *ebura in Proto-Celtic, combined with the proprietive suffix *-āko "having" meaning "yew tree place"; the name was Latinized by replacing the Celtic neuter nominative ending -on by its Latin equivalent -um,a common use noted in Gaul and Lusitania.
Various place names, such as Évry, Ivrey and Ivrac in France would all come from *eburacon / *eburiacon. The Roman conquest of Britain began in 43 AD but advance beyond the Humber did not take place until the early 70s AD; this was because the people in the area known as the Brigantes by the Romans became a Roman client state. When their leadership changed becoming more hostile to Rome, Roman General Quintus Petillius Cerialis led the Ninth Legion north from Lincoln across the Humber. Eboracum was founded in 71 AD when Cerialis and the Ninth Legion constructed a military fortress on flat ground above the River Ouse near its junction with the River Foss. In the same year Cerialis was appointed Governor of Britain. A legion at full strength at that time numbered some 5,500 men, provided new trading opportunities for enterprising local people, who doubtless flocked to Eboracum to take advantage of them; as a result, permanent civilian settlement grew up around the fortress on its south-east side.
Civilians settled on the opposite side of the Ouse along the main road from Eboracum to the south-west. By the 2nd century, growth was rapid. From its foundation the Roman fort of Eboracum was aligned on a north-east/south-east bearing on the north bank of the River Ouse, it covered an area of 50 acres. The standard suit of streets running through the castra is assumed, although some evidence exists for the via praetoria, via decumana and via sagularis. Much of the modern understanding of the Fortress defences has come from extensive excavations undertaken by Leslie Peter Wenham; the layout of the fortress followed the standard for a legionary fortress with wooden buildings inside a square defensive boundary. These defences consisting of turf ramparts on a green wood foundation, were built by the Ninth Legion between 71 and 74 AD; these were replaced by a clay mound with a turf front on a new oak foundation, wooden battlements were added which were replaced by limestone walls and towers. The original wooden camp was refurbished by Agricola in 81, before being rebuilt in stone between 107 and 108.
Multiple phases of restructuring and rebuilding within the fortress are recorded. Rebuilding in stone began in the early second century AD under Trajan but may have taken as long as the start of the reign of Septimius Severus to be completed. Estimates suggest that over 48,000m3 of stone were required consisting of Magnesian Limestone from the quarries nearby the Roman settlement of Calcaria. There is evidence that the Emperor Hadrian visited in 122 on his way north to plan his great walled frontier, he brought with him the Sixth Legion to replace the existing garrison. Emperor Septimius Severus made it his base for campaigning in Scotland; the Imperial court was based in York until at least 211, in which year Severus died and was succeeded by his sons and Geta. A biographer, Cassius Dio, described a scene in which the Emperor utters the final words to his two sons on his death bed: "Agree with each other, make the soldiers rich, ignore everyone else." Severus was cremated in Eboracum shortly after his death.
Dio described the ceremony: "His body arrayed in military garb was placed upon a pyre, as a mark of honour the soldiers and his sons ran about it and as for the soldier's gifts, those who had things at hand to offer them put them upon it and his sons applied the fire." In the 3rd century, the western Empire experienced political and economic turmoil and B
Maximian
Maximian was Roman Emperor from 286 to 305. He was Caesar from 285 to 286 Augustus from 286 to 305, he shared the latter title with his co-emperor and superior, whose political brain complemented Maximian's military brawn. Maximian spent most of his time on campaign. In late 285, he suppressed rebels in Gaul known as the Bagaudae. From 285 to 288, he fought against Germanic tribes along the Rhine frontier. Together with Diocletian, he launched a scorched earth campaign deep into Alamannic territory in 288, temporarily relieving the Rhine provinces from the threat of Germanic invasion; the man he appointed to police the Channel shores, rebelled in 286, causing the secession of Britain and northwestern Gaul. Maximian failed to oust Carausius, his invasion fleet was destroyed by storms in 289 or 290. Maximian's subordinate, campaigned against Carausius' successor, while Maximian held the Rhine frontier; the rebel leader was ousted in 296, Maximian moved south to combat piracy near Hispania and Berber incursions in Mauretania.
When these campaigns concluded in 298, he departed for Italy, where he lived in comfort until 305. At Diocletian's behest, Maximian abdicated on May 1, 305, gave the Augustan office to Constantius, retired to southern Italy. In late 306, Maximian took the title of Augustus again and aided his son Maxentius' rebellion in Italy. In April 307, he attempted to depose his son, but failed and fled to the court of Constantius' successor, Constantine, in Trier. At the Council of Carnuntum in November 308, Diocletian and his successor, forced Maximian to renounce his imperial claim again. In early 310, Maximian attempted to seize Constantine's title while the emperor was on campaign on the Rhine. Few supported him, he was captured by Constantine in Marseille. Maximian killed himself in mid-310 on Constantine's orders. During Constantine's war with Maxentius, Maximian's image was purged from all public places. However, after Constantine ousted and killed Maxentius, Maximian's image was rehabilitated, he was deified.
Maximian was born near Sirmium in the province of Pannonia, around 250 into a family of shopkeepers. Beyond that, the ancient sources contain vague allusions to Illyricum as his homeland, to his Pannonian virtues, to his harsh upbringing along the war-torn Danube frontier. Maximian joined the army, serving with Diocletian under the emperors Probus, he participated in the Mesopotamian campaign of Carus in 283 and attended Diocletian's election as emperor on November 20, 284 at Nicomedia. Maximian's swift appointment by Diocletian as Caesar is taken by the writer Stephen Williams and historian Timothy Barnes to mean that the two men were longterm allies, that their respective roles were pre-agreed and that Maximian had supported Diocletian during his campaign against Carinus but there is no direct evidence for this. With his great energy, firm aggressive character and disinclination to rebel, Maximian was an appealing candidate for imperial office; the fourth-century historian Aurelius Victor described Maximian as "a colleague trustworthy in friendship, if somewhat boorish, of great military talents".
Despite his other qualities, Maximian was preferred action to thought. The panegyric of 289, after comparing his actions to Scipio Africanus' victories over Hannibal during the Second Punic War, suggested that Maximian had never heard of them, his ambitions were purely military. The Christian rhetor Lactantius suggested that Maximian shared Diocletian's basic attitudes but was less puritanical in his tastes, took advantage of the sensual opportunities his position as emperor offered. Lactantius charged that Maximian defiled senators' daughters and traveled with young virgins to satisfy his unending lust, though Lactantius' credibility is undermined by his general hostility towards pagans. Maximian had two children with Eutropia: Maxentius and Fausta. There is no direct evidence in the ancient sources for their birthdates. Modern estimates of Maxentius' birth year have varied from c. 276 to 283, most date Fausta's birth to c. 289 or 290. Theodora, the wife of Constantius Chlorus, is called Maximian's stepdaughter by ancient sources, leading to claims by Otto Seeck and Ernest Stein that she was born from an earlier marriage between Eutropia and Afranius Hannibalianus.
Barnes challenges this view, saying that all "stepdaughter" sources derive their information from the unreliable work of history Kaisergeschichte, while other, more reliable, sources refer to her as Maximian's natural daughter. Barnes concludes that Theodora was born no than c. 275 to an unnamed earlier wife of Maximian one of Hannibalianus' daughters. At Mediolanum in July 285, Diocletian proclaimed Maximian as Caesar; the reasons for this decision are complex. With conflict in every province of the Empire, from Gaul to Syria, from Egypt to the lower Danube, Diocletian needed a lieutenant to manage his heavy workload. Historian Stephen Williams suggests that Diocletian considered himself a mediocre general and needed a man like Maximian to do most of his fighting. Next, Diocletian was vulnerable in that he had no sons, just a daughter, who could never succeed him, he was forced therefore to seek a co-ruler from outside his family and that co-ruler had to be someone he trusted. (The historian William Seston has argued that Diocletian, like heirless emperors before him, adopted Maximian as his filius Augusti ("Augus
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the area of the island of Great Britain, governed by the Roman Empire, from 43 to 410 AD. It comprised the whole of England and Wales and, for a short period, southern Scotland. Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 54 BC as part of his Gallic Wars. According to Caesar, the Britons had been overrun or culturally assimilated by other Celtic tribes during the British Iron Age and had been aiding Caesar's enemies, he received tribute, installed a friendly king over the Trinovantes, returned to Gaul. Planned invasions under Augustus were called off in 34, 27, 25 BC. In 40 AD, Caligula assembled 200,000 men at the Channel on the continent, only to have them gather seashells according to Suetonius as a symbolic gesture to proclaim Caligula's victory over the sea. Three years Claudius directed four legions to invade Britain and restore an exiled king over the Atrebates; the Romans defeated the Catuvellauni, organized their conquests as the Province of Britain. By the year 47, the Romans held the lands southeast of the Fosse Way.
Control over Wales was delayed by reverses and the effects of Boudica's uprising, but the Romans expanded northward. The conquest of Britain continued under command of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who expanded the Roman Empire as far as Caledonia. In the summer of 84, Agricola faced the armies of the Caledonians, led by Calgacus, at the Battle of Mons Graupius. Battle casualties were estimated by Tacitus to be around the 10,000's on the Caledonian side and about 360 on the Roman side; the bloodbath at Mons Graupius concluded the forty-year conquest of Britain, a period that saw between 100,000 and 250,000 Britons killed. In the context of pre-industrial warfare and of a total population of Britain of c.2 million, these are high figures. Under the 2nd-century emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, two walls were built to defend the Roman province from the Caledonians, whose realms in the Scottish Highlands were never controlled. Around 197, the Severan Reforms divided Britain into two provinces: Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior.
During the Diocletian Reforms, at the end of the 3rd century, Britannia was divided into four provinces under the direction of a vicarius, who administered the Diocese of the Britains. A fifth province, Valentia, is attested in the 4th century. For much of the period of the Roman occupation, Britannia was subject to barbarian invasions and came under the control of imperial usurpers and imperial pretenders; the final Roman withdrawal from Britain occurred around 410. Following the conquest of the Britons, a distinctive Romano-British culture emerged as the Romans introduced improved agriculture, urban planning, industrial production, architecture; the Roman goddess Britannia became the female personification of Britain. After the initial invasions, Roman historians only mention Britain in passing. Thus, most present knowledge derives from archaeological investigations and occasional epigraphic evidence lauding the Britannic achievements of an emperor. Roman citizens settled in Britain from many parts of the Empire.
Britain was known to the Classical world. The Greeks referred to the Cassiterides, or "tin islands", placed them near the west coast of Europe; the Carthaginian sailor Himilco is said to have visited the island in the 5th century BC and the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th. It was regarded with some writers refusing to believe it existed at all; the first direct Roman contact was when Julius Caesar undertook two expeditions in 55 and 54 BC, as part of his conquest of Gaul, believing the Britons were helping the Gallic resistance. The first expedition was more a reconnaissance than a full invasion and gained a foothold on the coast of Kent but was unable to advance further because of storm damage to the ships and a lack of cavalry. Despite the military failure it was a political success, with the Roman Senate declaring a 20-day public holiday in Rome to honour the unprecedented achievement of obtaining hostages from Britain and defeating Belgian tribes on returning to the continent; the second invasion involved a larger force and Caesar coerced or invited many of the native Celtic tribes to pay tribute and give hostages in return for peace.
A friendly local king, was installed, his rival, was brought to terms. Hostages were taken, but historians disagree over whether any tribute was paid after Caesar returned to Gaul. Caesar conquered no territory and left no troops behind but he established clients and brought Britain into Rome's sphere of influence. Augustus planned invasions in 34, 27 and 25 BC, but circumstances were never favourable, the relationship between Britain and Rome settled into one of diplomacy and trade. Strabo, writing late in Augustus's reign, claimed that taxes on trade brought in more annual revenue than any conquest could. Archaeology shows. Strabo mentions British kings who sent embassies to Augustus and Augustus's own Res Gestae refers to two British kings he received as refugees; when some of Tiberius's ships were carried to Britain in a storm during his campaigns in Germany in 16 AD, they came back with tales of monsters. Rome appears to have encouraged a balance of power in southern Britain, supporting two powerful kingdoms: the Catuvellauni, ruled by the descendants of Tasciovanus, the Atrebates, ruled by the descendants of Commius.
This policy was followed until 39 or 40
Augustus (title)
Augustus was an ancient Roman title given as both name and title to Gaius Octavius, Rome's first Emperor. On his death, it became an official title of his successor, was so used by Roman emperors thereafter; the feminine form Augusta was used for other females of the Imperial family. The masculine and feminine forms originated in the time of the Roman Republic, in connection with things considered divine or sacred in traditional Roman religion, their use as titles for major and minor Roman deities of the Empire associated the Imperial system and Imperial family with traditional Roman virtues and the divine will, may be considered a feature of the Roman Imperial cult. In Rome's Greek-speaking provinces, "Augustus" was translated as sebastos, or Hellenised as Augoustos. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Augustus was sometimes used as a name for men of aristocratic birth in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, it remains a given name for males. Some thirty years before its first association with Caesar's heir, Augustus was an obscure honorific with religious associations.
One early context, associates it with provincial Lares. In Latin poetry and prose, it signifies the "elevation" or "augmentation" of what is sacred or religious; some Roman sources connected it to augury, Rome was said to have been founded with the "august augury" of Romulus. The first true Roman Emperor known as "Augustus" was Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, he was the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar, murdered for his seeming aspiration to divine monarchy subsequently and deified. Octavian studiously avoided any association with Caesar's claims, other than acknowledging his position and duties as Divi filius, "son of the deified one", his position was unique and extraordinary. He had ended Rome's prolonged and bloody civil war with his victory at Actium, established a lasting peace, he was self-evidently favored by the gods. As princeps senatus he presided at senatorial meetings, he was chief priest of Roman state religion. He held consular imperium, with authority equal to the official chief executive, he was supreme commander of all Roman legions, held tribunicia potestas.
As a tribune, his person was inviolable and he had the right to veto any act or proposal by any magistrate within Rome. He was renamed Augustus by the Roman Senate on January 16, 27 BC – or the Senate ratified his own careful choice. So his official renaming in a form vaguely associated with a traditionally Republican religiosity, but unprecedented as a cognomen, may have served to show that he owed his position to the approval of Rome and its gods, his own unique, elevated, "godlike" nature and talents, his full and official title was Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus. Augustus' religious reforms extended or affirmed augusti as a near ubiquitous title or honour for various minor local deities, including the Lares Augusti of local communities, obscure provincial deities such as the North African Marazgu Augustus; this extension of an Imperial honorific to major and minor deities of Rome and her provinces is considered a ground-level feature of Imperial cult, which continued until the official replacement of Rome's traditional religions by Christianity.
The title or name of Augustus was adopted by his successors, who held the name during their own lifetimes by virtue of their status and powers. This included the Christian emperors. Most emperors used imperator but others could and did bear the same title and functions. "Caesar" was used as a title, but was the name of a clan within the Julian line. Augusta was the female equivalent of Augustus, had similar origins as an obscure descriptor with vaguely religious overtones, it was bestowed on some women of the Imperial dynasties, as an indicator of worldly power and influence and a status near to divinity. There was no qualification with higher prestige; the title or honorific was shared by state goddesses associated with the Imperial regime's generosity and provision, such as Ceres, Bona Dea, Juno and Ops, by local or minor goddesses around the empire. Other personifications perceived as female and given the title Augusta include Pax and Victoria; the first woman to receive the honorific Augusta was Livia Drusilla, by the last will of her husband Augustus.
From his death she was known as Julia Augusta, until her own death in AD 29. Under Tetrarchy, the empire was divided into Western halves; each was ruled by a senior emperor, with the rank of augustus, a junior emperor, who ranked below him as a caesar. The Imperial titles of imperator and augustus were rendered in Greek as autokratōr, augoustos; the Greek titles were used in the Byzantine Empire until its extinction in 1453, although "sebastos" lost its imperial exclusivity and autokratōr became the exclusive title of the Byzantine Emperor. The last Roman Emperor to rule in the West, Romulus Augustus became known as Augustulus, due to the unimportance of his reign. Charlemagne used the title serenissimus augustus as a prefix to his titles His successors limited themselves to imperator augustus, in order to avoid conflict with the Byzantine emperors. Beginning with Otto III, the Holy Roman Emperors used Romanorum Imperator Augustus; the form
Limes Germanicus
The Limes Germanicus was a line of frontier fortifications that bounded the ancient Roman provinces of Germania Inferior, Germania Superior and Raetia, dividing the Roman Empire and the unsubdued Germanic tribes from the years 83 to about 260 AD. At its height, the limes stretched from the North Sea outlet of the Rhine to near Regensburg on the Danube; those two major rivers afforded natural protection from mass incursions into imperial territory, with the exception of a gap stretching from Mogontiacum on the Rhine to Castra Regina. The Limes Germanicus was divided into: The Lower Germanic Limes, which extended from the North Sea at Katwijk in the Netherlands along the main Lower Rhine branches The Upper Germanic Limes started from the Rhine at Rheinbrohl across the Taunus mountains to the river Main along the Main to Miltenberg, from Osterburken south to Lorch in a nearly perfect straight line of more than 70 km; the total length was 568 km. It included 900 watchtowers; the weakest, hence most guarded, part of the Limes was the aforementioned gap between the westward bend of the Rhine at modern-day Mainz and the main flow of the Danube at Regensburg.
This 300-km wide land corridor between the two great rivers permitted movement of large groups of people without the need for water transport, hence the heavy concentration of forts and towers there, arranged in depth and in multiple layers along waterways, fords and hilltops. Roman border defences have become much better known through systematic excavations financed by Germany and through other research connected to them. In 2005, the remnants of the Upper Germanic & Rhaetian Limes were inscribed on the List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites as Frontiers of the Roman Empire, with lower Limes being placed on the tentative list in 2011, aiming to extend the world heritage site to the whole limes; the Saalburg is a reconstructed museum of the Limes near Frankfurt. The first emperor who began to build fortifications along the border was Augustus, shortly after the devastating Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD. There were numerous Limes walls, which were connected to form the Upper Germanic Limes along the Rhine and the Rhaetian Limes along the Danube.
These two walls were linked to form a common borderline. From the death of Augustus until after 70 AD, Rome accepted as her Germanic frontier the water-boundary of the Rhine and upper Danube. Beyond these rivers she held only the fertile plain of Frankfurt, opposite the Roman border fortress of Moguntiacum, the southernmost slopes of the Black Forest and a few scattered bridge-heads; the northern section of this frontier, where the Rhine is deep and broad, remained the Roman boundary until the empire fell. The southern part was different; the upper Rhine and upper Danube are crossed. The frontier which they form is inconveniently long, enclosing an acute-angled wedge of foreign territory between the modern Baden and Württemberg; the Germanic populations of these lands seem in Roman times to have been scanty, Roman subjects from the modern Alsace-Lorraine had drifted across the river eastwards. The motives alike of geographical convenience and of the advantages to be gained by recognising these movements of Roman subjects combined to urge a forward policy at Rome, when the vigorous Vespasian had succeeded Nero, a series of advances began which closed up the acute angle, or at least rendered it obtuse.
The first advance came about 74 AD, when what is now Baden was invaded and annexed and a road carried from the Roman base on the upper Rhine, Straßburg, to the Danube just above Ulm. The point of the angle was broken off; the second advance was made by Domitian about 83 AD. He pushed out from Moguntiacum, extended the Roman territory east of it and enclosed the whole within a systematically delimited and defended frontier with numerous blockhouses along it and larger forts in the rear. Among the blockhouses was one which by various enlargements and refoundations grew into the well-known Saalburg fort on the Taunus near Bad Homburg; this advance necessitated a third movement, the construction of a frontier connecting the annexations of AD 74 and AD 83. We know the line of this frontier which ran from the Main across the upland Odenwald to the upper waters of the Neckar and was defended by a chain of forts. We do not, know its date, save that, if not Domitian's work, it was carried out soon after his death, the whole frontier thus constituted was reorganised by Hadrian, with a continuous wooden palisade reaching from Rhine to Danube.
The angle between the rivers was now full. But there remained further fortification. Either Hadrian or, more his successor Antoninus Pius pushed out from the Odenwald and the Danube, marked out a new frontier parallel to, but in advance of these two lines, though sometimes, as on the Taunus, coinciding with the older line; this is the frontier, now visible and visited by the curious. It consists, as we see it today, of two distinct frontier works, known as the Pfahlgraben, is a palisade of stakes with a ditch and earthen mound behind it, best seen in the neighbourhood of the Saalburg but once extending from the Rhine southwards into southern Germany; the other, which begins where the earthwork stops, is a wall, though not a formidable wall, of stone, the Teufelsmauer.
Carus
Carus was Roman Emperor from 282 to 283, was 60 at ascension. During his short reign, Carus fought the Germanic tribes and Sarmatians along the Danube frontier with success, he died while campaigning against the Sassanid Empire of unnatural causes, as he was struck by lightning. He was succeeded by his sons Carinus and Numerian, creating a dynasty which, though short-lived, provided further stability to the resurgent empire. Carus, whose name before the accession may have been Marcus Numerius Carus, was born, according to differing accounts, either in Gaul, Illyricum or Africa. Modern scholarship inclines to the former view, placing his birth at Narbo in Gaul though he was educated in Rome. Little can be said with certainty of his rule. Due to the decline of literature, the arts, the want of any good historians of that age, what is known is invariably involved in contradiction and doubt, he was a senator and filled various posts, both civil and military, before being appointed prefect of the Praetorian Guard by the emperor Probus in 282.
Two traditions surround his accession to the throne in August or September of 282. According to some Latin sources, he was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers after the murder of Probus by a mutiny at Sirmium. Greek sources however claim that he rose against Probus in Raetia in a usurpation and had him killed; the unreliable Historia Augusta is aware of both traditions, although it prefers the former. He does not seem to have returned to Rome after his accession, contenting himself with an announcement to the Senate; this was a marked departure from the constitutionalism of his immediate predecessors and Probus, who at least outwardly respected the authority of the senate, was the precursor to the more despotic military autocracy of Diocletian. Bestowing the title of Caesar upon his sons Carinus and Numerian, he left Carinus in charge of the western portion of the empire to look after some disturbances in Gaul and took Numerian with him on an expedition against the Persians, contemplated by Probus.
Having inflicted a severe defeat on the Quadi and Sarmatians on the Danube, for which he was given the title Germanicus Maximus, Carus proceeded through Thrace and Asia Minor, annexed Mesopotamia, pressed on to Seleucia and Ctesiphon, marched his soldiers beyond the Tigris. The Sassanid King Bahram II, limited by internal opposition and his troops occupied with a campaign in modern-day Afghanistan, could not defend his territory; the Sasanians, faced with severe internal problems, could not mount an effective coordinated defense at the time. The victories of Carus avenged all the previous defeats suffered by the Romans against the Sassanids, he received the title of Persicus Maximus. Rome's hopes of further conquest, were cut short by his death. Like the splendid conquests of Trajan, 160 years before, Carus' gains were relinquished by his successor, his son Numerian of an unwarlike disposition, was forced by the army to retreat back over the Tigris. The report of the lightning strike was evidently accepted in the camp, the superstitious awe of the troops inclined them to ascribe Carus' death to the wrath of the Gods.
Rumors had been spread of dark oracles, affixing the limits of the Empire on the Tigris, threatening destruction against the Roman who should presume beyond the river in arms. Persia was abandoned to her rightful possessors, not till Diocletian, a decade was the Persian contest decided in Rome's favor, by that emperor's decisive victory. In the sphere of civil affairs, Carus is remembered principally for the final suppression of the authority of the senate, restored under Tacitus and Probus, he declined to accept their ratification of his election, informing them of the fact by a haughty and distant dispatch. He was the last emperor to have united a civil with a military education, in that age when the two were detached. Though Carus was known throughout his life for his austere and virtuous manners, the suspicion of his complicity in Probus' death, along with his haughty conduct towards the senate, tarnished his reputation before his death, Julian, as Gibbon observes, conspicuously places him among the tyrants of Rome, in his catalogue of The Caesars.
Crisis of the Third Century Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus Eutropius, Breviarium ab urbe condita Historia Augusta, Life of Carus and Numerian Joannes Zonaras, Compendium of History extract: Zonaras: Alexander Severus to Diocletian: 222–284 Leadbetter, William, "Carus", DIR Jones, A. H. M. Martindale, J. R; the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. I: AD260-395, Cambridge University Press, 1971 Potter, David. Constantine the Emperor. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199755868. Southern, Pat; the Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine, Routledge, 2001 Gibbon. Edward Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Carus, Marcus Aurelius". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press
Pietas
Pietas, translated variously as "duty", "religiosity" or "religious behavior", "loyalty", "devotion", or "filial piety", was one of the chief virtues among the ancient Romans. It was the distinguishing virtue of the founding hero Aeneas, given the adjectival epithet pius throughout Virgil's epic Aeneid; the sacred nature of pietas was embodied by the divine personification Pietas, a goddess pictured on Roman coins. The Greek equivalent is eusebeia. Cicero defined pietas as the virtue "which admonishes us to do our duty to our country or our parents or other blood relations." The man who possessed pietas "performed all his duties towards the deity and his fellow human beings and in every respect," as the 19th-century classical scholar Georg Wissowa described it. Pietas erga parentes was one of the most important aspects of demonstrating virtue. Pius as a cognomen originated as way to mark a person as "pious" in this sense: announcing one's personal pietas through official nomenclature seems to have been an innovation of the late Republic, when Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius claimed it for his efforts to have his father, recalled from exile.
Pietas extended toward "parents" in the sense of "ancestors," and was one of the basic principles of Roman tradition, as expressed by the care of the dead. Pietas as a virtue resided within a person, in contrast to a virtue or gift such as Victoria, given by the gods. Pietas, allowed a person to recognize the divine source of benefits conferred; the first recorded use of pietas in English occurs in Anselm Bayly’s The Alliance of Music and Oratory, published in 1789. Pietas was represented on coin by cult objects, but as a woman conducting a sacrifice by means of fire at an altar. In the imagery of sacrifice, libation was the fundamental act. Pietas is first represented on Roman coins on denarii issued by Marcus Herennius in 108 or 107 BC. Pietas appears in bust form. Pietas is among the virtues that appear on Imperial coins, including those issued under Hadrian. One of the symbols of pietas was the stork, described by Petronius as pietaticultrix, "cultivator of pietas." The stork represented filial piety in particular, as the Romans believed that it demonstrated family loyalty by returning to the same nest every year, that it took care of its parents in old age.
As such, a stork appears next to Pietas on a coin issued by Metellus Pius. Pietas was the divine presence in everyday life that cautioned humans not to intrude on the realm of the gods. Violations of pietas required expiatory rites. A temple to Pietas was vowed by Manius Acilius Glabrio at the Battle of Thermopylae in 191 BC. According to a miraculous legend, a poor woman, starving in prison was saved when her daughter gave her breast milk. Caught in the act, the daughter was not recognized for her pietas. Mother and daughter were set free, given public support for the rest of their lives; the site was regarded as sacred to the goddess Pietas because she had chosen to manifest her presence there. The story exemplified pietas erga parentes, the proper devotion one ought to show to one's parents. Pietas was depicted as goddess on the reverse of Roman Imperial coins, with women of the imperial family on the obverse, as an appropriate virtue to be attributed to them. Women of the Imperial family might be portrayed in art in the goddess's guise.
Eusebeia, for the Greek concept most similar to Latin pietas. Roman Charity, about Valerius Maximus' account, much depicted in early modern European painting, of a Roman woman who exemplified pietas by breastfeeding her incarcerated father to save him from enforced starvation. Filial piety, for the similar Confucian concept of xiào Dignitas Gravitas Pietism Virtus
Media related to Constantius Chlorus at Wikimedia Commons
