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Petronius Maximus

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Petronius Maximus

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5th century western Roman emperor (396-455)

OverviewAI-generated

Flavius Anicius Petronius Maximus was a male politician and emperor of Ancient Rome, born in 396 in Rome. He belonged to the Petronia gens and the Theodosian dynasty, serving during the Low Roman Empire and late antiquity periods. His father was Anicius Probinus, and he was married to Licinia Eudoxia, with whom he had a son named Palladius.

Maximus held the positions of Roman consul and Praefectus urbi. He died in Rome, with records indicating dates of April 22, 0455, and May 31, 0455. His manner of death was homicide, specifically by stoning. He is described in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary.

Synthesized by Vinony from 27 facts across 4 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

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Encyclopedic overview

Petronius Maximus (c. 397 – 31 May 455) was Roman emperor of the West for two and a half months in 455. A wealthy senator and a prominent aristocrat, he was instrumental in the murders of the Western Roman magister militum, Aëtius, and the Western Roman emperor, Valentinian III.

After the assassination of Aëtius and the subsequent death of Valentinian III, Maximus secured the support of the Senate and utilized bribery to gain the favor of palace officials, enabling him to ascend to power. He strengthened his position by forcing Licinia Eudoxia, Valentinian's widow, to marry him and forcing her daughter Eudocia to marry his son, cancelling her betrothal to the son of the Vandal king Genseric. This infuriated both Eudocia and Genseric, who sent a fleet to Rome. Maximus failed to obtain troops from the Visigoths and he fled as the Vandals arrived, became detached from his retinue and bodyguard in the confusion, and was killed by fellow Romans. The Vandals thoroughly sacked Rome in their retaliatory invasion.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Petronius Maximus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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