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Thirty Tyrants (Roman)

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The Thirty Tyrants, or Thirty Pretenders (Latin: Tyranni Triginta) were a group of thirty men (some of whom were children) and two women listed by Trebellius Pollio in the Historia Augusta as having ostensibly been pretenders to the throne of the Roman Empire during the reign of the emperor Gallienus. Given the notorious unreliability of the Historia Augusta, the veracity of this list is debatable; there is a scholarly consensus that the author deliberately inflated the number of pretenders in order to parallel the Thirty Tyrants of Athens.

The Thirty Tyrants listed by the Historia Augusta were: Cyriades, Postumus, Postumus Junior, Laelianus, Victorinus, Victorinus Junior, Marius, Ingenuus, Regalianus, Aureolus, Macrianus, Macrianus Junior, Quietus, Odaenathus, Herodes, Maeonius, Balista, Valens, Valens Superior, Piso, Aemilianus, Saturninus, Tetricus Senior, Tetricus Junior, Trebellianus, Herennianus, Timolaus, Celsus, Zenobia, Victoria (or Vitruvia), Titus, and Censorinus. Notwithstanding the author's pretensions regarding the time during which these persons aspired to the throne, this list includes

nine pretenders roughly contemporary with Gallienus;
one pretender contemporary with Decius;
two pretenders contemporary with Claudius II and Aurelian;
two other persons of uncertain date;
three men who probably never held the imperial power;
four men who certainly never held the imperial power;
two women and six children who never held the imperial power;
three almost certainly fictitious names.

According to David Magie (the editor of the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Historia Augusta), the nine pretenders contemporary with Gallienus were: Postumus, Laelianus, Marius, Ingenuus, Regalianus, Aureolus, and Macrianus and his two sons, Macrianus Minor and Quietus. At least some of these men issued coins.