PUPIENUS

(Redirected from Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus)

'Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus', born about 178, was jointly Roman Emperor with Balbinus between April and July of 238, the Year of the Six Emperors. The sources for this period are scanty, and in some texts he is referred to, incorrectly, as 'Maximus' rather than by his family name of Pupienus.

Contents

Origins, Career and Family

Reign

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Origins, Career and Family

The ''Historia Augusta'', whose testimony is not to be trusted unreservedly, paints Pupienus as an example of ascension in the Roman hierarchical system due to military success. It claims he was the son of a blacksmith, who started his career as a ''primus pilus'' and became a military tribune, and then praetor. It further claims he was adopted by one Pescennia Marcellina (otherwise unknown), and served as proconsul of Bithynia, then of Greece, and then Gallia Narbonensis before serving as a special legate in Illyricum and subsequently governing one of the German provinces. It is likely most of this is fiction: only the last post - probably the troublesome Germania Inferior - is independently attested (by Herodian). It was presumably then that Pupienus gained the personal bodyguard of Germans which is mentioned by Herodian as remaining with him when he became Emperor.
What is certain is that Pupienus, though he may not have been born a patrician, was a leading member of the senatorial class during the latter half of the Severan dynasty. He may have come from the Etruscan city of Volaterra, where inscriptions relating to his daughter, who carried the highly aristocratic name Pupienia Sextia Paulina Cethegilla, show that Pupienus (or his father, who need not have been the blacksmith claimed by the ''Historia Augusta'') married into the ancient Roman noble family of the Sextii. He was twice consul - the date of his first consulship is unknown, but was probably about 213. His second consulship was in 234 and in that year he was City Prefect of Rome and gained a reputation for severity, to the extent that he became unpopular with the Roman mob. In addition to his daughter, Pupienus had two sons: Tiberius Clodius Pupienus Pulcher Maximus, who was a suffect consul about 235, and Marcus Pupienus Africanus, consul in 236 as colleague of the Emperor Maximinus Thrax. The second consulship, the city prefecture, and the son as consul of the year with the reigning Emperor, are all signs that the family was influential and in high favour. Evidently they owned property in Tibur outside Rome, where Pupienus Pulcher Maximus was a patron of the town.

Reign

When the Gordians were proclaimed Emperors in Africa, the Senate appointed a committee of twenty men, including Pupienus, to co-ordinate operations agains Maximinus. On the news of the Gordians' defeat, the Senate met in closed session in the Temple of Jupiter and voted Pupienus and Balbinus as co-emperors, though they were soon forced to co-opt Gordian III as a colleague. Pupienus marched to Ravenna, where he oversaw the campaign against Maximinus; after the latter was assassinated by his soldiers just outside Aquileia he despatched both Maximinus's troops and his own back to their provinces and returned to Rome with just the Praetorian Guard and his German bodyguard. Balbinus had failed to keep public order in the capital. The sources suggest that Balbinus suspected Pupienus of wanting to supplant him, and they were soon living in different parts of the Imperial palace, where they were later assassinated by disaffected elements in the Praetorians, who resented serving under Senate-appointed emperors.

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