Saloninus Licinius

242 – 260 · Generation XV · Emperor for weeks (AD 260) · The Third Century

Saloninus (AD 242 – AD 260). Emperor for weeks (AD 260). Proclaimed inside besieged Cologne and handed to the usurper at its gates. Son of Gallienus and Cornelia Salonina, a Greek from Bithynia, he was made caesar in 258 — as his elder brother Valerian II had been before his early death — and sent to Gaul so the frontier would answer to a prince of the Licinian line, with the praetorian prefect Silvanus as guardian. Ruin came over plunder: in 260 Silvanus, acting in the boy’s name, ordered the commander Postumus to hand over booty his troops had seized from a German warband returning from a raid. The soldiers refused, acclaimed Postumus emperor, and marched on Cologne. His father, engaged on the Danube, could do nothing, and his grandfather Valerian was by then probably already Shapur’s prisoner. Postumus professed regret at the murders that followed; it seems unlikely he tried very hard to prevent them.

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: Valerian Licinius → Gallienus Licinius → Saloninus Licinius.

Parents

Gallienus Licinius (218 – 268)
Cornelia Salonina (220 – 268)

Siblings

Valerian II Licinius (240 – 258)