Revolt of the Gordians and the Year of the Six Emperors

Maximinus Thrax, a soldier raised to the throne by the army in 235, spent his reign at war on the northern frontiers and paid for his campaigns with heavy exactions. In 238 his procurator in Africa pressed the landowners of Thysdrus — then a flourishing centre of olive-oil production and export — with fines; young men of the local elite killed him and forced the proconsul Marcus Antonius Gordianus, about eighty years old and in office since 237, to accept the purple. Gordian made his son co-emperor and entered Carthage to popular acclaim, and the Senate in Rome recognised both.

Capelianus, the governor of neighbouring Numidia and a personal enemy of Gordian, stayed loyal to Maximinus and marched on Carthage with the Third Legion Augusta. The younger Gordian fell at the head of a hastily raised militia, and his father hanged himself; they had reigned for about three weeks — twenty or twenty-two days by different accounts — and troops loyal to Maximinus sacked Thysdrus. The Senate went on to elect two of its members, Pupienus and Balbinus, as emperors and made the thirteen-year-old grandson of Gordian I their heir. Maximinus invaded Italy but was halted at Aquileia and killed by his own soldiers; soon afterwards the praetorians murdered Pupienus and Balbinus, and Gordian III became sole emperor. Maximinus, the two Gordians, Pupienus, Balbinus and Gordian III gave the year its name. Gordian III disbanded the Third Legion Augusta for its part in the fall of his grandfather; it was re-formed only in the 250s.

The exact chronology of 238 is not recorded and is reconstructed differently by historians. The great amphitheatre of Thysdrus, built for about 35,000 spectators, is traditionally dated to these years, but who commissioned it is uncertain.