Antonia Gordiana

Antonia Gordiana was the daughter of the Roman Emperor Gordian I, the sister of Emperor Gordian II and the mother of Emperor Gordian III ..

The ascribed to it in the Historia Augusta Name Maecia Faustina is rejected by modern historians as fictitious. The other information in the notoriously unreliable historical work on her biography should be treated with caution. Consequently, they grew up with her ​​older brother Gordian in the former house of Pompey in Rome, which had belonged later, among others Marcus Antonius and Tiberius. About her mother she should have been a great-granddaughter of Herod Atticus.

After 214 Gordiana married a senator bearing the (probably also invented) name Junius Balbus in the Historia Augusta and should have died before 238. This year it was raised to pressure from the population of the Senate emperors Pupienus and Balbinus to Caesar, and after their (perhaps instigated by Gordiana ) murder on 29 July Augustus 13 - year-old son.

In order to insure the favor of the Senate, took the young emperor, whose birth name is unknown, the name of Marcus Antonius Gordianus to the his grandfather and his uncle had worn. With the help of their former supporters Gordiana could take at the beginning of the reign of her son's influence on affairs of state.

241 married Gordiana her son with Furia Sabina Tranquillina, the daughter of the praetorian prefect Timesitheus, which thus rose to become de facto regent of the empire. It is unclear whether and how long they survived their 244 lost their lives in the Orient son and what circumstances they died.

Swell

• Historia Augusta, Vita Gordiani I, 4