CELSUS (T. Cornelius), one of the Thirty Ty­rants enumerated by Trebellius Pollio. The Thirty Tyrants, or Thirty Pretenders (Latin: Tyranni Triginta) were a group of 32 people declared by the author of the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta, writing under the name Trebellius Pollio, to have been pretenders to the throne of the Roman Empire in the time of the legitimate emperor Gallienus. ... The Augustan History (Lat. ...

In the twelfth year of Gallienus, a. d. 265, when usurpers were springing up in every quarter of the Roman world, a certain Celsus, who had never risen higher in the service of the state than the rank of a military tribune, living quietly on his lands in Africa, in no way remark­able except as a man of upright life and command­ing person, was suddenly proclaimed emperor by Vibius Passienus, proconsul of the province, and Fabius Pomponianus, general of the Libyan fron­tier. So sudden was the movement, that the ap­propriate trappings of dignity had not been pro­vided, and the hands of Galliena, a cousin it is said of the lawful monarch, invested the new prince with a robe snatched from the statue of a goddess. Gallienus depicted on a lead seal. ... Events Wei Yuandi abdicates, end of the China. ... The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of Octavian (better known as Caesar Augustus). ... Categories: Historical stubs | Ancient Roman provinces ... For the Miocene ape, see Proconsul (genus) Under the Roman Empire a proconsul was a promagistrate filling the office of a consul. ...

The downfall of Celsus was not less rapid than his elevation : he was slain on the seventh day, his body was devoured by dogs, and the loyal inhabi­tants of Sicca testified their devotion to the reign­ing sovereign by devising an insult to the memory of his rival unheard-of before that time. The effigy of the traitor was raised high upon a cross, round which the rabble danced in triumph.

References

Taken from the Public Domain "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology" edited by William Smith

External Links

• Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology]