Gratian (usurper)

Gratian (* in the 4th century; † 407 ) was a late antique Roman usurper in Britain , who was raised to the rank of Roman emperor by the troops there in 407 .

Life

Gratian was raised as the successor of the usurper Marcus , about whom nothing is known except that he was a soldier and was proclaimed emperor by disaffected troops. Marcus apparently did not meet the soldiers' expectations and was murdered after a very short time. Gratian himself only stayed in power for about four months ( Olympiodoros , frg. 12).

According to Orosius , Gratian is said to have been a native Briton and came from the local, urban aristocracy, so he did not belong to the military. On December 31, 406, various Germanic tribes , including the Vandals , Burgundians , Suebi and the Iranian Alans , crossed the Rhine near Mainz and thus broke into the Roman Empire (see Rhine crossing from 406 ). The Roman troops in Britain supposedly wanted to come to the rescue ( Zosimos 6: 3), but Gratian ordered them to stay in the province. The soldiers then murdered Gratian and raised Constantine III. to the emperor, who actually went to Gaul to fight against the Teutons. In doing so, however, he also stripped Britain of the last units of the field army and thus accelerated the collapse of the Roman administrative order on the island.

Gratian appears perhaps as Gracianus Municeps in the medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae .

literature

• Michael E. Jones: The End of Roman Britain . Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY et al. 1996, ISBN 0-8014-2789-4 , especially pp. 246f.
• Christopher A. Snyder: An Age of Tyrants. Britain and the Britons, AD 400-600 . Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park PA 1998, ISBN 0-271-01742-2 , p. 395 (index, see there Gratian, British tyrant ).
• CE Stevens: Marcus, Gratian, Constantine . In: Athenaeum 45 = NS 35, 1957, ISSN  0004-6566 , pp. 316-347.