Uranius Antoninus

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Aureus of Uranius Antoninus

Lucius Julius Aurelius Sulpicius Severus Uranius (short Uranius ) was around 253/254 Roman Gegenkaiser in the Syrian city of Emesa . He is known from various coins that bear his name and show his bust. However, it is not clear from them whether he was actually striving for permanent imperial rule over the Roman Empire or whether he only briefly took over military control and political administration of Syria in view of the acute military danger posed by the Sassanids at the time. Research equates Uranius with a certain Sampsigeramos who, according to ancient written sources, commanded a force against the Sassanid army as a general in the 250s and achieved decisive successes.

Source location, name and equation with Sampsigeramos

Bronze coin of Uranius Antoninus with Greek inscriptions. The reverse shows the Elagabal Temple of Emesa with the holy stone.

Uranius Antoninus ruled from the Syrian city of Emesa as counter-emperor to Valerian for a period that cannot be precisely determined . The only ancient source evidence for his survey are some coins with his likeness, which are dated to the year 565 of the Seleucid era (= 253/254 AD). These are local Emesenian coins and Syrian tetradrachms , as well as Roman-style aurei and some denarii . From the legends of the coins the full name Lucius Iulius Aurelius Sulpicius Severus Uranius Antoninus is known. The name component "Severus," but also the combination of two imperial gentile name ( "Julius Aurelius") have a conscious link with the Imperial House of Severer out - could actually Antoninus family ties to the family originating from Emesa Empress Julia Domna have had. The fact that a third nomen gentile , namely Sulpicius, appears in addition to the name "Iulius Aurelius", which were common among the Emesen nobility , is interpreted to mean that the father of Uranius Antoninus was a Sulpicier. But since the mother had the much more prestigious names Iulius and Aurelius (that is, she belonged to the old upper class of Emesa), the son also took these two into his own name. Likewise, the name could also have come about because Uranius Antoninus originally belonged to the family of the Iulii Aurelii, but was then adopted by a Sulpicius.

Presumably this Uranius Antoninus was identical with the high priest of the city Emesa, Sampsigeramos, who is known from a report of the Byzantine chronicler Johannes Malalas . As a result, the clergyman was able to prevent the Sassanid king Shapur I's armed force advancing along the Orontes from advancing further towards southern Syria and killing an enemy military leader (but this cannot have been Shapur himself, who only died around 270). The equation with Uranius Antoninus, which was first considered in 1908 by Alfred von Domaszewski , has become generally accepted in research. Previously, researchers had tried in other ways to identify Uranius Antoninus, known from coins, with a usurper documented in literature, and equated him with the usurpers Uranius and Antoninus , who rebelled against Severus Alexander around 231 . However, Domaszewski's point of view was able to prevail and can be regarded as certain since Hans Roland Baldus' dissertation on Uranius Antoninus (1971).

It is mostly assumed that Sampsigeramos was the priest of the local god Elagabal ; the statement by Malalas that he was a priest of Aphrodite (Urania) is attributed to an error of the ancient writer who interpreted the name Uranius, which was assumed as a usurper, accordingly. Baldus also suspects that Johannes Malalas took the report on the defense of the Persian army from a Syrian source, which glorified the military success of Sampsigeramos as a service to Rome and therefore wanted to conceal his subsequent usurpation. For this reason, only the priest's name appears in the history of the Malala, but not the subsequent claim to imperial rights.

A section of the Sibylline Oracle , three inscriptions from Qalʿat el-Hawâys near Hama and a section of the Res Gestae Divi Saporis about an allegedly successful Sassanid campaign refer to the events of Uranius Antoninus without mentioning his name.

Form and character of rule

Because of the great lack of clarity regarding the life and work of Uranius Antoninus, it is uncertain to what extent he exercised “imperial” rule at all. Due to the failure of the Roman central government, which was heavily burdened at that time, the city of Emesa seems to have organized the military defense against the attacks of the Sassanids in the 250s in any case independently - and successfully. Possibly the local priest Sampsigeramos, as the organizer of these activities, could have stylized himself as the “new bearer of hope” in the region that he could take over political control of the area in an emergency, but without claiming rule over larger parts of the Roman Empire.

An analysis of the coins he made, all of which come from Emesa, reveals an ambiguous finding in this regard: Uranius Antoninus bears imperial titles on the local coin types and the imperial insignia ( laurel wreath , crown of rays) on his various coins . He does not pay tribute to the reigning Emperor Valerian, which would have been possible by depicting him on a series of coins. The Latin legends of the supraregional aurei, on the other hand, do not show any titles of power and there are also no indications that the consulate or tribunician power was claimed. Hans Roland Baldus therefore suspected that Uranius Antoninus could make his claim to power clear on the coins that only circulated in Syria without running the risk of being considered a rival to the Roman emperor. On the other hand, on the Latin coins, which were in circulation across the empire, he had renounced the open presumption of imperial rights, especially since the majority of the people of Emesa did not speak Latin and could not perceive this limitation of their position of power to the aurei anyway.

Uranius Antoninus seems to have seen himself more as a local representative of the central Roman authority; it is unlikely that as a usurper he actually sought an empire-wide government. He probably gave up his sovereign claims again when Emperor Valerian decided to turn to the Sassanids himself (from the beginning of 254 coins were minted for him in Antioch ) or at the latest when the Emperor actually appeared in the east. So he could have withdrawn into private life or to his religious post, but there is no information about the further fate of Uranius Antoninus.

literature

  • Hans Roland Baldus : Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas . Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971.
  • Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus of Emesa. In: Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes. Volume 42, 1996, pp. 371-377.
  • Udo Hartmann : The Palmyrenische Teilreich (= Oriens et Occidens . Volume 2). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2001.
  • Martin Schottky: Uranius. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 12/1, Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01482-7 , Sp. 1025.
  • Gary K. Young: Emesa in Roman Syria: Resistance, Rebellion and Regionalism in the Third Century AD. In: Prudentia. Volume 36, 2004, pp. 31–48, here: pp. 37–39 ( PDF; 3.3 MB ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Roland Baldus : Uranius Antoninus of Emesa. In: Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes. Volume 42, 1996, pp. 371-377.
  2. ^ Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas . Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971, p. 138 f.
  3. ↑ Johannes Malalas , Chronographia 12:26.
  4. ^ Alfred von Domaszewski : The political significance of the religion of Emesa. In: Archive for Religious Studies . Volume 11, 1908, pp. 223-242, here p. 230 f. ( online ).
  5. ↑ In summary with the other documents Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas. Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971, pp. 246-250.
  6. ^ Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas. Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971, pp. 165–173 with references to the older literature.
  7. ↑ Johannes Malalas: Weltchronik (= library of Greek literature . Volume 69). Anton Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2009, p. 309, note 152.
  8. ^ Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas. Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971, p. 249 f.
  9. ↑ Sibylline Oracle 13: 158-171.
  10. ↑ Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie IV, 1799-1801.
  11. ^ Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas. Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971, pp. 229–236 and pp. 252–255 (Res Gestae Divi Saporis), pp. 240–246 (Sibylline oracle), p. 250–252 (inscriptions from Qalʿat el-Hawâys).
  12. ↑ Ulrich Huttner : From Maximinus Thrax to Aemilianus. In: Klaus-Peter Johne (Ed.): The time of the soldiers' emperors. Crisis and transformation of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD (235–284). Volume 1, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-004529-0 , pp. 161–221, here p. 220.
  13. ^ Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas. Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971, pp. 140–142.
  14. ^ Hans Roland Baldus: Uranius Antoninus. Coin minting and history (= Antiquitas. Series 3, Volume 11). Rudolf Habelt, Bonn 1971, p. 143.
personal data
SURNAME Uranius Antoninus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lucius Iulius Aurelius Sulpicius Severus Uranius Antonius (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman counter-emperor
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd century or 3rd century
DATE OF DEATH after 254