Marcus(?) Aurelius Heraclianus (died 268) was a Roman soldier who rose to the rank of Praetorian Prefect in the latter part of the reign of the Emperor Gallienus. He was a member of the cabal of senior commanders of the Imperial field army that plotted and achieved the assassionation of the Emperor Gallienus. His subsequent fate is uncertain. The only ancient reference has him committing suicide - presumably in the upheaval that followed the murder of Gallienus - but it has been suggested that he survived this episode only to come to grief in the service of the Emperor Claudius II.
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His praenomen is not cited in the sources, but his nomen (i.e. 'Aurelius') suggests that it could have been M. - i.e. 'Marcus'. The Aurelius gentilicum was often adopted by families admitted to Roman citizenship by Caracalla under the provisions of that Emperor's law known as the Constitutio Antoniniana of 213 - i.e. probably the time around which Heraclianus was born. The nomenclature therefore supports the notion that Heraclianus's father or grandfather would have been a non-citizen of provincial or even servile origin. However, this is far from conclusive. He could equally well have been descended from an ancestor of his branch of the Aurelii clan that settled in the Balkans in the early days of Roman expansion into these regions.If this was in fact his origin he would have been a member of the select group of Illyricani who had a very personal interest in ensuring that the ruling Emperor was always wholly committed to the maintenance of Roman control over the Balkan regions with the heavy expenditure that that policy implied.
The place where Heraclianus was born isnot known for certain. However, an inscription dedicated to him by a fellow-soldier, Trajanus Mucianus, at Mucianus's hometown of Augusta Traiana (Stara Zagora, Bulgaria) lends colour to the supposition that he was a Moesian or, at least, that he hailed from one of the Danubian provinces, though this is not a conclusive evidence.[1] Heraclianus's later association with Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian in the coup against Gallienus also suggests that he had connections with the Illyrian clans that dominated the officer cadres of the Balkan garrisons in the 3rd century as the two chief conspirators would, no doubt, have preferred to work with a fellow countryman. A second dedication from Stara Zagora to Heraclianus, by Mucianus's brother, Marcus Aurelius Apollinarius,[2] who was an equestrian governor of Thrace, reinforces the notion that Heraclianus had strong family connections in the eastern regions of the Balkans.
Heraclianus rose to prominence during the troubled reign of the Emperor Gallienus becoming Praetorian Prefect[3] – an office of state that combined the command of the Emperor's Praetorian Guard and principle ministry.[4] Heraclianus probably became Praetorian Prefect in 267 following the appointment of Lucius Petronius Taurus Volusianus, the former Praetorian Prefect, to the Urban Prefecture in that year.
Heraclianus was thus likely to have been a highly competent soldier who was either born into the Illyrian military elite or earned a place in their ranks by his behaviour in Gallienus's many wars against barbarian invaders and would-be usurpers. Either way he served in a hard school and would have deserved his advancement.[5]
The Vita Gallieni[6] also asserts that he was the leader (Dux) of a force sent by Gallienus to the East to reassert imperial authority in the region after the death (assassination?) of Odenathus of Palmyra in 267, but was defeated and his army destroyed - presumably by [Zenobia]]. This is the only ancient reference to such an attempt being made in Gallienus's reign and the usual caveat regarding the reliability of the Historia Augusta as a historical record must apply.[7] However, Alfoldi[8] suggests that Gallienus did attempt to assert himself in Asia if not in Syria and Mesopotamia at that time (vis-a-vis Palmyra not Persia), but the effort was negated by the barbarian invasions of the eastern Balkans of the final year of Gallienus's reign[9] However, Alfoldi does not believe that Rome and Palmyra actually engaged in hostilities as the Historia Augusta suggests. Bray is inclined to dismiss any notion of an expedition in 267-8.[10]
This is also the conclusion of David Potter.[11] However, Prof. Potter does make the interesting suggestion that Heraclianus might have made an expedition to the East to reassert Roman authority in the Asian provinces not in 267 - when he was almost certainly engaged in the Gothic war - but at the behest of Gallienus's murderer and successor, the Emperor Claudius Gothicus, in 270.[12] This effort might either have been undertaken in response to aggression of Zenobia of Palmyra in Arabia and Egypt in that year[8] or have been the cause of that aggression. Potter's thesis is not wholly persuasive. To be sure, given his capacity for shameless invention, it would certainly not have been beyond the author of the Vita Gallieni to attribute to his bete noire, Gallienus, a disaster that actually occurred under his hero, Claudius, some two years after the murder of Gallienus. On the other hand, it is odd that Zozimus who was, after all, an easterner, should have had no knowledge of a calamity to Roman arms on the scale suggested. Zosimus is generally much cooler towards Claudius than the Historia Augusta - no doubt because, as a pagan, he disapproved of Claudius's self-proclaimed descendant (i.e. Constantine the Great's) conversion of the Roman state to Christianity - and it seems unlikely that he would have hesitated to record anything so substantially to Claudius's discredit had he been aware of it. However, the Potter thesis seems more plausible if it is postulated that Heraclianus' failed mission was diplomatic rather than military in its nature.
Whether or not he was in Asia in 267, it is likely that Heraclianus returned to Europe in time to take part in Gallienus's campaign against the Goths and Heruls in 267-8. He was certainly with Gallienus's comitatus (Imperial field army) when it moved from the Balkans to Italy against Aureolus when he came out for the Gallic Emperor Postumus in Mediolanium and was a ring-leader of the so-called Equestrian Marshals' Plot[13] which finally accomplished by treachery what so many overt rebels and barbarian invaders had failed to achieve by open opposition - the destruction of Gallienus and the end of his rule. However, Heraclianus appears to have been discarded by the main plotters, Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian, after the coup succeeded. This would be consistent with the tradition that he committed suicide. (However, if he did remain a major player into Claudius's reign, possibly even as Praetorian Prefect, and then failed his new master in some spectacular way in Asia in 270 this would have been a much greater reason for self-destruction in the Roman tradition than desertion by his comrades-in-crime). In short, the circumstances of Heraclianus' end are likely to remain a mystery.
Heraclianus appears in the Vita Gallieni of the Historia Augusta, Zonaras and Zosimus, but it is impossible to develop any sustained narrative of his life from the ancient sources.
The references are usefully listed by L.L. Howe in his book on the 3rd century Praetorian Prefect:
The best recent summary of the available information on Heraclianus is to be found in John Bray's biography of Gallienus:
See also: