Gordian III Pius
225 – 244 · Generation XIII · Roman emperor (r. AD 238–244) · The Third Century
Gordian III (AD 225 – AD 244). Roman emperor (r. AD 238–244). Emperor at thirteen — the youngest sole ruler Rome ever had; died on the Persian campaign. Grandson of Gordian I, he was raised to Caesar by a Senate that needed a popular name beside its own unloved choices, Pupienus and Balbinus; when the Praetorians killed both, the boy was proclaimed sole ruler. Real power sat elsewhere — first with the aristocratic families governing through the Senate, then with Timesitheus, the praetorian prefect whose daughter Tranquillina he married and who ruled the empire in fact. When Shapur’s Sasanians invaded Mesopotamia, Gordian opened the doors of the Temple of Janus — the last time Rome ever did — and his army drove the invaders back over the Euphrates, winning at Resaena in 243. Timesitheus’s death unmade the campaign: Philip the Arab took the prefecture, and Gordian’s end is disputed — Shapur’s inscription claims he fell at Misiche, Roman writers that he died as the army withdrew.
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.
Line of descent: Gordian I Africanus → Antonia Gordiana → Gordian III Pius.
Parents
- Antonia Gordiana (201 – 250)