Valentinian III killed in the Campus Martius
The Chronicle of Marcellinus Comes records under the consulship of Valentinian (for the eighth time) and Anthemius (AD 455) that the emperor Valentinian, through the guile of the patrician Maximus, was cut down in the Campus Martius by Optila and Thraustila, retainers of Aetius, after the eunuch Heraclius had already been struck down.
What this does and does not establish
A Latin chronicle written at Constantinople c. 518-534, used through Mommsen's 1894 edition (MGH AA 11) as Internet Archive OCR text (page images not checked); the English is an AI working translation. The consular heading reads 'VALENTINIANI VHI' (OCR for VIII). The line-break hyphen 'Thrau- stilam' is read as Thraustilam. Mommsen's apparatus gives variant spellings of the two killers' names (e.g. 'ostilam' and 'traustilam' in S). His note at the foot of the page gives '455 = Iordanes R. 334', a parallel in Jordanes, who depends on Marcellinus; the parallel Greek column on the page also enters Valentinian's killing in Rome under this year.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- Europe
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- Indiction/consul heading (OCR line 7223): 'VHI.'
- How we use it
- Placed in the consular year under which Marcellinus enters it (as numbered by the editor). The listing uses year precision. Any finer dating belongs to the quoted passage; the chronicle can misplace events.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Consular year to AD 455 per the heading index marcellinus-headings.json (one indiction/consul heading per year in order, indiction expected 8, numeral not legible in the OCR line; placed by order), matching the AD years Mommsen prints in the margin.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon (Latin), ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH Auctores antiquissimi 11 (Chronica minora II), 1894
Marcellinus Comes (6th-century, Constantinople); critical edition by Theodor Mommsen (1894)
Quoted text (Latin)
1 Valentinianus princeps dolo Maximi
patricii, cuius etiam fraude Aetius perierat,
in campo Martio per Optilam et Thrau-
stilam Aetii satellites iam percusso Heraclio
spadone truncatus est. AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
1 The emperor Valentinian, through the guile of the patrician Maximus, by whose fraud Aetius too had perished, was cut down in the Campus Martius by Optila and Thraustila, retainers of Aetius, the eunuch Heraclius having already been struck down.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (1894), Internet Archive OCR text. English renderings are AI working translations from the Latin.
Exact source version
e805805fe7b68265bd53e46c3152420178fa7275b1ed420804dfd243bfc628c9Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1h_455_marc_1
Exact revision fingerprint
0abae993f8ea075b8b7fba713eb6c621b9f57a37f64e858b142f0e8d230f1abe