Flavius ​​Maximus

Flavius ​​Maximus († 552 in Campania ) was a Roman senator and Patricius of the 6th century AD.

Maximus was a descendant of the Emperor Petronius Maximus from the house of the Anicians . He became consul in 523 when he was still young . The Variae (epistulae) of Cassiodorus contains a letter in which Theodoric the Great exhorts him during his consulate to ensure that the actors at the Games in Rome are adequately paid (Book V, 42). Between 525 and 535 Maximus was made Patricius . It is also known from Cassiodorus (Book X, 11 and 12) that he was awarded the military rank of primicerius domesticus by King Theodahad in 535 , possibly on the occasion of his marriage to a woman from the Gothic royal family , and received the fortune of Marcianus.

During the siege of Rome by the Goths in 537, Maximus and other senators were brought to safety by Belisarius . However, after the siege was lifted, he received permission to return to Rome. Later, on December 17, 546, during the capture of Rome by King Totila , he took refuge with other nobles in St. Peter's Basilica . During the defeat and death of Totilas in 552, Maximus was in Campania, where he was killed by the embittered Goths.

Emperor Justinian had meanwhile taken half of Macrianus' fortune from Maximus and gave it to the patrician Liberius .

literature

• Johannes Sundwall : Treatises on the history of late Romanism (= Öfversigt af Finska Vetenskaps-Societenens förhandlingar. B: Humanistiska vetenskaper. Vol. 60, No. 2, 1917/18, ZDB -ID 448249-9 ). Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, Helsingfors 1919, pp. 140 f., (Reprint: Arno Press, New York NY 1975, ISBN 0-405-07065-9 ).
• John Robert Martindale: Fl. Maximus. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, ISBN 0-521-20159-4 , pp. 748-749.