Gordian was the grandson of Gordian I, the short-lived leader of the rebellion in North Africa that sparked the broader rebellion against Maximinus the Thracian. Gordian's mother was Gordian I's daughter. We do not know who his father was, or what his real name was before he was proclaimed Caesar by a mob at Rome in 238. Principal Events (Foreign)

240/241: Hatra captured by the Persians

Destruction of Istria by the Goths

242: Battle of Resaena, Persians driven from the Roman Province of Mesopotamia

244: (January/February), Roman invasion of Persian territory, defeat of Roman army

Principal Events (Domestic)

240: Sabinianus, governor of Africa Proconsularis, proclaimed emperor and defeated

241 Gordian marries Sabinia Tranquilla, daughter of Timesitheus, the praetorian prefect

242/243: death of Timesitheus, Julius Priscus and Julius Philip, brothers become praetorian prefects

244: (February/March) Gordian murdered by his troops

General Considerations

Maximinus was replaced by another committee. First by the board of twenty which had been selected to guide the state in its time of crisis, and after the murder of Pupienus and Balbinus (in early June) by the advisers to the young Gordian III. Like Alexander Severus before him, this Gordian was not noted for any personal eccentricity. He was probably an amiable adolescent who did what he was told. The effective day-to-day administration of the state was in the hands of the praetorian prefects.

In some ways the regime of Gordian III was a throwback to the days of Alexander. An irrelevant emperor allowed the great men of his time to reach agreement among themselves as to how the state should be administered and to settle their differences. The civil war of 238 was blamed on the "tyrant" and a number of his supporters retained considerable influence. On the other hand, two of the most prominent leaders of the revolutionary cause do not seem to have done particularly well in the reign of Gordian. One went on to a series of minor appointments. The other, appears to have been executed for treason around 241.

The advisers of Gordian were confronted by the same problems that Maximinus had confronted: unstable frontiers and an expensive army of doubtful loyalty. Indeed, the problem of the army must have been the most pressing. The events of 235 and 238 had shown that the loyalty of the legions could not be guaranteed for any ruler, it had to be carefully cultivated and paid for.

Enormous donatives had been promised in 238. Gordian's advisors did not resort to Maximinus' expedient of cutting other expenditures to raise the money. Instead they resorted to the debasement of the currency. This set in motion the rapid degeneration of the imperial silver coinage during the next thirty years.

The collapse of the imperial silver coinage, which was paralleled by a decline in the weight of the gold coinage, and seems to have led to the virtual elimination of bronze coinage, reflects the imperial government's failure to adapt the tax structure of the empire to meet its necessary expenditures. It is fair to place the beginning of this extraordinary decline in the reign of Gordian and to see it as the result of a short-sighted response to the fiscal exigencies caused by the civil war of 238. The impact of this action was increased by an explosion of pressure on the frontier, which increased costs and hampered the state's ability to collect revenue.

While the solution that Gordian's advisers adopted to their financial problems was not original-- earlier emperors had also debased the coinage to meet extraordinary demands-- it did set a trend for the next two decades which was to cause immense economic dislocation within the empire. But this possibility could scarcely have occurred to these men in light of their own immediate, pressing, concerns. The first priority must have been the pay of the army, and the restoration of the empire. They succeded well enough in this, until the ill fated invasion of Persia in 244.

Further Reading

Historia Augusta, Lives of the Three Gordians (some interesting detail and much fiction); Zosimus, New History (a sixth century history of varying reliablity, and never very informative); Eutropius, Short History of Rome; Aurelius Victor, Short History of Rome; Anonymous, Short History of Rome; Potter, Prophecy and History in the Crisis of the Roman Empire.