and the provinces were on the same side Maximin and his son were declared enemies of their country; and all Italy rejoiced in throwing off the yoke of a tyrant. But the reign of the Gordians was brief; for the governor of Mauritania defeated the younger Gordian, the father put an end to his life, and Africa was exposed to the cruelty of a slave. After this the senate proclaimed Maximus and Albinus. Exasperated to madness by these events, the tyrant marched at once towards Rome and descended on Aquileia, which shut its gates and bravely defended itself against his army. In consequence of his savage temper breaking forth against officers and men, the rest were alarmed for their safety; so that a body of prætorians went to the tent of the emperor and his son and cut off their heads, which were exposed on poles on the fortifications of Aquileia and then forwarded to Rome, where they were burned in the Campus Martins amid the applauding shouts of the people. Thus in 238 the world was freed from the barbarities of a ferocious giant, of whose strength and appetite marvellous stories are related.—S. D.
MAXIMINUS II. (Caius Galerius Valerius), Roman emperor, originally called Daza, was the son of a sister of Galerius, born in Illyria, where he was a shepherd in his youth. He afterwards became a soldier and rose to the highest rank. On Diocletian's abdication, Galerius invested him with the purple, gave him the title of Cæsar and the government of Syria and Egypt. But though the emperor thus invested him with the vacant purple, giving him the higher rank of Cæsar and the provinces of Illyricum, Maximin was filled with envy and anger, and exacted from his uncle, almost by violence, the equal title of Augustus. When Valerius died, Maximin entered into an agreement with Licinius and received the provinces of Asia; those of Europe falling to the share of the latter, and their mutual boundary being the Hellespont and Thracian Bosphorus. Not content however with his position, he left Syria with an immense army, marched towards Bithynia, and took Byzantium after a siege of eleven days. Licinius hastened to meet him; and a decisive battle was fought, in which Maximin was defeated. He fled to Nicomedia, and thence to Tarsus, where he died a few months after, either of poison or despair, in 313. Maximin II. was a worthless, cruel, ferocious despot, without virtues or merit.—S. D.
MAXIMUS (Saint), called Homologetes, or the Confessor, an eminent Greek ecclesiastic of the seventh century, was born at Constantinople about the year 580. He was educated with great care, and was appointed by the Emperor Heraclius his chief secretary. Resigning this appointment about the year 625, he crossed the Bosphorus, and took the monastic habit at the monastery of Chrysopolis, where he soon rose to be abbot. Passing into Africa, he there engaged in vehement controversy with the monothelites. Upon the accession of Pope Martin I. Maximus went to Rome, and confirmed the pontiff in his zealous opposition to that heresy. Included by Constans in the order of arrest which removed the pope from the Lateran, Maximus was taken to Constantinople and afterwards to the Caucasus; his tongue was cut out, and his right hand lopped off; of which ill-usage he died in 662.—T. A.
MAXIMUS, surnamed the Greek, was born at Arta in Albania about the end of the fifteenth century, and was in a monastery at Mount Athos, when he was selected by the patriarch of Constantinople to go to Moscow for the purpose of arranging a great quantity of Greek manuscripts that had recently been discovered there. His ability and earnestness, however, excited envy and hatred, and his conscientious opposition to the czar's divorce ended in his disgrace and imprisonment at Twer, 1525. The severity of his confinement was mitigated by the next czar, and he was removed to the monastery of St. Sergius, where he died in 1556. As time passed by, justice was done to the memory of this brave and honest scholar, who was ultimately regarded as a holy man and a martyr.—W. J. P.
MAXIMUS, Magnus, a Roman soldier, who in the fourth century assumed the purple, was born in Spain, probably in a humble rank of life. He served in Britain with Theodosius, afterwards emperor; and in Britain he commenced the series of intrigues by which he gained the army to his cause. He appears to have repaired the walls of Severus and Agricola, and to have erected the intervening territory into a separate province called Valentia. In 383 he declared himself emperor of the West, and raised a numerous army to invade Gaul. Archbishop Usher estimates that he took thirty thousand soldiers and one hundred thousand followers, the flower of the youth of Britain. The Emperor Gratian was then at Paris, and fled before the usurper. Maximus was for the moment successful, was acknowledged emperor, and even declared his son his colleague. With Theodosius, emperor of the East, he entered into a treaty in which he agreed not to cross the Alps. But ambition getting the better of discretion, he invaded Italy; and Valentinian calling in the aid of Theodosius, Maximus was captured and slain. He is said to have been the first christian prince who shed christian blood for difference of opinion. One of his victims was Priscillian.
MAXIMUS, Marcus Clodius Pupienus, Emperor of Rome in 238. After having distinguished himself as a military commander in the wars against the Sarmatians and Germans, he was raised to the throne, along with Balbinus, on the death of the Gordians. The Thracian savage, Maximinus, who had been elected emperor by the prætorian guards in 235, was still at the head of an army, and Maximus hastened to meet him. But the cruelty of Maximinus had already caused disaffection in his own camp. A conspiracy was formed among the prætorian guards; he was assassinated in his tent; and the troops gave in their adherence to the new emperor. Maximus returned to Rome, where he was received with every demonstration of joy, and commenced to reign under circumstances unusually favourable. But little more than three months elapsed till he, in his turn, fell a victim to the violence of the same soldiery who had murdered his predecessor.—D. M.
MAXIMUS, Petronius Anicius, Emperor of Rome from March to June, 455. The Anician family, from which he was descended, was one of the most illustrious in Rome; and his great wealth and hospitality, combined as they were with a generous temper and pleasing manners, rendered him a favourite both with the court and the people. Under the Emperor Honorius he held the office of tribune. He was thrice prætorian prefect, and in 433 he held the consulship twice. He is known to have been implicated with Valentinian III. in the murder of Aëtius in 454; but before that year closed, his friendship for that emperor was converted into the most bitter enmity. By a disgraceful stratagem Valentinian succeeded in bringing the beautiful wife of Maximus to the imperial palace, and violated her person. She died soon after, leaving to her husband a legacy of revenge, which he executed by forming a conspiracy, in consequence of which the emperor was assassinated in the Campus Martins in March, 455. Maximus was raised to the throne, but his reign was short and unhappy. Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, whom he had forced to become his wife, entered into a secret correspondence with Genseric, king of the Vandals, the result of which was an invasion of Italy by that nation. No resistance was offered to the invaders, who put the timid Maximus to death, and sacked the city of Rome.—D. M.
MAXIMUS, Quintus Cornelius, a Roman lawyer, who lived about a century before the christian era, is known to have been the teacher of C. Trebatius Testa, to whom one of the satires of Horace is addressed. No extant writing of that age bears his name; but Alfenus Varus quotes him as having maintained, that in the bequest of a vineyard and its "instrumentum," the latter word denoted the stakes and implements used in the cultivation of the vines.—W. B.
MAXIMUS, Rutilius, a Roman jurist, whose name appears in the Florentine Index, is generally supposed to have lived in the third century. An extract which has been preserved shows that he wrote a commentary on the Lex Falcidia de Legatis, which provided that a testator must leave at least a fourth part of his property to the designated heir.—W. B.
MAXIMUS TYRIUS, a Greek orator belonging to the last half of the second century. Very little is known of his life: whether he was tutor to the Emperor Aurelius is matter of dispute. It is probable that Maximus, though a native of Tyre, passed the greater part of his life in Greece. He resided also at Rome, though perhaps for no considerable period. Suidas states he lived there in the time of Commodus; which Davis controverts. From the numerous places he had seen, he appears to have travelled extensively, visiting Phrygia, Cyprus, Arabia, Mount Olympus, &c. The year of his death, as well as that of his birth, is unknown. The only extant work of Maximus is called Διαλέξεις (Dissertationes), or Λόγοι (Sermones), forty-one in number, containing forty-one dissertations on theological, ethical, and philosophical subjects. A Latin version was first
