Celsus (usurper)

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Titus Cornelius Celsus, Roman usurper under Gallienus, one of the Thirty Ty­rants enumerated by Trebellius Pollio.

In the twelfth year of Gallienus' reign (265), when usurpers were springing up in every quarter of the Roman world, a certain Celsus, who had never risen higher in the service of the state than the rank of a military tribune, living quietly on his lands in Africa, in no way remark­able except as a man of upright life and command­ing person, was suddenly proclaimed emperor by Vibius Passienus, proconsul of the province, and Fabius Pomponianus, general of the Libyan frontier. So sudden was the movement, that the ap­propriate trappings of dignity had not been pro­vided, and the hands of Galliena, a cousin it is said of the lawful monarch, invested the new prince with a robe snatched from the statue of a goddess.

The downfall of Celsus was not less rapid than his elevation: he was slain on the seventh day, his body was devoured by dogs, and the loyal inhabi­tants of Sicca testified their devotion to the reign­ing sovereign by devising an insult to the memory of his rival unheard-of before that time. The effigy of the traitor was raised high upon a cross, round which the rabble danced in triumph.

[edit] See also

• Gallienus usurpers.

[edit] References

• Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology