Gordian II Africanus

192 – 238 · Generation XII · Co-emperor (AD 238) · The Third Century

Gordian II (AD 192 – AD 238). Co-emperor (AD 238). Ruled beside his father for three weeks and died fighting outside Carthage. The purple came to him in Africa, where he was serving as legate under his father, then proconsul of the province, when local notables rose against the low-born emperor Maximinus Thrax. The Senate and most provinces ratified the pair, and like his father he took the surname Africanus. The revolt was undone from next door: Capelianus, governor of Numidia and an old enemy of the family, marched on Carthage with the region’s only legion, and Gordian met the veterans at the head of an untrained militia. The Historia Augusta says his body was never recovered; his father took his own life at the news. Gibbon relished the tale of his twenty-two concubines and sixty-two-thousand-volume library — both, he judged, kept for use rather than show.

One of 11 people of The Third Century (159–285) in this archive. Not one house but several short ones, in the fifty years the empire nearly came apart.

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Parents

• Gordian I Africanus (159 – 238)

Siblings

• Antonia Gordiana (201 – 250)