Publius Aelius Aelianus was a senior officer in the Imperial Roman army in the mid-3rd century AD who rose from lowly origins to become the prefect of a legion under Emperor Gallienus.
The sum total of our knowledge of this man derives from five epigraph inscriptions from: (a) A fragment of an epigraphic inscription from Poetovio (now Ptuj in Slovenia) that indicates that one AEL...I (a Vir Egregius, presumed to be Aelianus) commanded vexillationes (detachments) of the four legions of Pannonia;[1] (b) A sarcophagus dedicated by one Aelianus to the memory of his parents found at Obuda, a district of modern Budapest on the west bank of the River Danube which was the site of Aquincum Castrum, Pannonia Inferior, the base of Legio II Adiutrix;[2] (c) An altar dedicated one Aelianus to Herculi Augusti - i.e. to the Majestic Hercules - from Szentendre, the site of Ulcisia Castra an auxiliary fortress 12 km north of Aquincum;[3] (d) A stone from Photike in the Roman province of Epirus, nowadays a province of Greece;[4] and (e) A stone from Zucchabar in Algeria, in the Roman province of Mauritania Caesaensis.
Nevertheless, the inscriptions cited make it clear beyond all doubt that Aelianus showed himself a highly capable soldier and probably a lucky one as well who prospered in the conditions of crisis that prevailed on Rome's northern frontiers in the middle years of the Third Century AD.
[9] Fitz also suggests that the inscription should be dated to the period 262-4 AD - i.e. he was put in post in 262 after the expulsion of the Roxolani who had ravaged Illyricum after they had defeated and killed the usurper Regalianus and removed when he was made Praefectus legionis at Aquincum in 264.
Agathe(a), Aelianus is likely to have been one of the earliest beneficiaries of Gallienus's policy of excluding senators from army commands in favour of professional equestrian officers who would, more often than not, have risen from the ranks.
Nagy argues that, as a non-senator, Aelianus would not have been given this posting prior to the Persian captivity in 260 AD of Gallienus's father and senior Augustus, the Emperor Valerian.
II Adjutrix that legion was brigaded with the Imperial field-army (comitatus) rather than serving with the provincial garrison of Pannonia Inferior - its usual station during High Empire period.
However, the use of this terminology - presumably a formula to ensure that the prefect had the legal authority of a legate - seems to throw doubt on the proposition advanced by many historians[12] that Gallienus had always intended the removal of senators from legionary commands as a permanent reform as opposed to an expedient resorted to in the crisis following the captivity of Valerian that was never reversed.
- but to make it possible for the Emperor to appoint equestrian officers to these positions thus broadening his powers choice at a time when the Empire was under particular pressure to find commanders with adequate military experience.
[15] However, the work of Brunt[16] has thrown doubt on the theory that the Roman principate ever had a highly structured equestrian administrative service such as that envisaged by Pflaum[17] and others and, in the light of this, it is possible to propose that Aelianus might have gone on from the command of a legion to a ducenarian procuratorship in the later 260s.
Furthermore, it would also fit in with the known tendency to appoint military men to governing posts in Africa from the later years of the Emperor Probus onwards to deal with increased restlessness on the part of the Berber tribes of the Mauretanian interior.
As Nagy observes, the Aelianus whose early experience of independent command had been against Sarmatian steppe nomads in Illyricum would have been well qualified to deal with Berber razzias in Rome's west African provinces.
For instance, not many years before in the 260s, as governor of the province of Pannonia Inferior, Lucius Flavius Aper had only had the status of vir egregius and the formula agens vice praesidis had been used to qualify his rank as though it was deemed necessary to emphasise that his governorship was only 'acting'.