Aurelian - Lucius Domitius Aurelianus (ca. 207 - 275): Husband of Severina.

Mints: Cyzicus, Lugdunum, Mediolanum, Rome, Serdica, Siscia, Tripolis.

Biography: Lucius Domitius Aurelianus hailed from the province of Lower Moesia and was the son of a lower class family, but quickly pushed his way up the hierarchy. By 268 he was already a commander of a cavalry unit in Northern Italy; two years later he launched a successful bid for the throne, supported by his loyal troops in Sirmuim. Reluctantly hailed as emperor by the Senate, he embarked on a series of military campaigns crushing Vandals, Alamanni, and Marcommani within a year. Having learned the lesson the hard way, he then ordered the building of a new defense wall around Rome, a rampart designed to meet and keep at bay a quick barbarian incursion until the legions were engaged. Having seen the wall under construction, Aurelian than set off for the East, with the aim to suppress the recently contumacious Roman vassal state of Palmira. On the way to the Near East he passed through the Balkans and decided to strengthen the Roman limes by contracting the Empire to the river Danube, thus abandoning the entire Roman Dacia, a province that had become almost impossible to hold. After finishing off the Palmiran state, he then marched west to the Rhine and put an end to a break-away Gallo-Roman enclave there. His internal policies were no less successful than his pitched battles: he reorganized coinage, instituted measures to control food supply in Rome, and established a new massive cult of the Sol Invictus. His accomplishments are impressive. He arrested the slump into which the Empire had descended, and it was a real misfortune when he met his death at the hand of one of his praetorian guards after a conspiracy that his servant Eros hastily hatched out of fear that the Emperor would punish him for having caught him in a lie.

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