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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Magnus Maximus, post: 2500460, member: 73473&quot;]Maximus certainly was ambitious but saying he was a bloody tyrant is a bit of a stretch. The problem is we just don&#039;t know much about the Western Empire after Valentinian&#039;s death until the late 380&#039;s. What we do know is that Gratian was not popular with the legions for numerous reasons, one is that he dressed as a barbarian (an alan)&nbsp; and praised his barbarian guards at the cost of his actual soldiers. Again though, the troops in Britain would never have experienced this as we have no evidence that Gratian visited the province. So what caused them to revolt and acclaim Maximus as Emperor then? I don&#039;t know nor claim to know why.</p><p><br /></p><p>What we do know is that Maximus crossed over the channel and attacked Gratian in northern Gaul. Gratian&#039;s men (who likely outnumbered Maximus by a substantial margin) defected en masse. This shows that Gratian must have really ticked off his men as they didn&#039;t even fight a battle before they abandoned him. Sadly we probably will never know what Gratian did to elicit this type of behavior from them.</p><p>Gratian was killed by Maximus&#039;s Magister Militum but we know of no purges and executions of Gratian&#039;s court afterwards. Fun fact: Martin of Tours, who actually met Maximus, claimed that Maximus&#039;s rebellion was relatively bloodless.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now taxes were high in Maximus&#039;s territories but this is due to relative poverty in those areas compared to Italy and the Eastern Empire, not because he was a greedy SOB.The government needed all the money it could get to maintain the army and Bureaucracy, both of which were a necessity at this point in Roman history. Evidence of Maximus&#039;s fiscal problems can be found in his coins; Siliquae minted in the first few years of his reign usually weigh over two grams, by 385 the weight dropped to under two grams, and by 388 it isn&#039;t uncommon to find coins of his around 1.35 grams.</p><p><br /></p><p>Maximus is rightly criticized for the murder of a christian bishop named Priscillian and a number of his followers. This is clearly wrong nor would I or any same person in 2016 defend him for this action. Though the reasons for the killings are a bit more complex than most think. Maximus confiscated the dead bishop&#039;s property and added the money to the treasury, this leads me to believe that the whole affair was exacerbated by the shortages in his treasury. Not that it justifies the affair.</p><p>Maximus&#039;s was an Orthodox Christian but he didn&#039;t go around killing pagans and smashing temples. In fact he censured a number of christians for their destruction of a Jewish Synagogue in northern Italy in 387. He also got along well with the mostly Pagan Senate and was praised by the late Roman Senator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus who was a staunch pagan writer and historian.</p><p>I&#039;m not claiming Magnus Maximus was the reincarnation of Antoninus Pius or Trajan, but I don&#039;t agree with calling him a bloodthirsty tyrant. Like most men in history he falls on a complex spectrum.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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