Gratian (usurper)

Gratian (* in the 4th century, † 407 ) was a late ancient Roman usurper in Britain, was charged by the troops there in the year 407, the Roman emperor.

He was raised as a successor of the usurper Marcus, about whom nothing is known except that he was a soldier and was proclaimed by disaffected troops to the emperor. Marcus apparently did not meet the expectations of the soldiers and was assassinated after only a very short time. Gratian himself, however, was only for about four months in power ( Olympiodorus, frg. 12).

After Orosius Gratian said to have been a native Briton and have come from the local, urban aristocracy, not a member of the military. On December 31, 406 various Germanic tribes, including the Vandals, Burgundians, Suevi, and the Iranian Alans, the Rhine had crossed at Mainz and thus broke into the Roman Empire (see Rhine crossing of 406). The Roman troops in Britain supposedly wanted to come to the aid ( Zosimus 6.3 ), but Gratian ordered that they should stay in the province. The soldiers then murdered Gratian and raised Constantine III. to the emperor, who actually went to Gaul to fight against the Germans. This, however, he bared Britain also of the last units of the Army and thus accelerated the collapse of the Roman administration order on the island.

Gratian might appear as Gracianus Municeps in the medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae whose.

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