A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

one of the thirty tyrants of Trebellius Pollio. [AUREOLUS.] He was prefect of the praetorians under Valerian, whom he accompanied to the East. After the defeat and capture of that emperor, when the Persians had penetrated into Cilicia, a body of Roman troops rallied and placed themselves under the command of Balista. Led by him, they raised the siege of Pompeiopolis, cut off numbers of the enemy who were straggling in disorderly confidence over the face of the country, and retook a vast quantity of plunder. His career after the destruction of Macrianus, whom he had urged to rebel against Gallienus, is very obscure. According to one account, he retired to an estate near Daphne; according to another, he assumed the purple, and maintained a precarious dominion over a portion of Syria and the adjacent provinces for three years. This assertion is however based on no good foundation, resting as it does on the authority of certain medals now universally recognised as spurious, and on the hesitating testimony of Trebellius Pollio, who acknowledges that, even at the time when he wrote, the statements regarding this matter were doubtful and contradictory. Neither the time nor manner of Balista's death can be ascertained with certainty, but it is believed to have happened about 264, and to have been contrived by Odenathus. (Trebell. Pollio, Trig. Tyrann. xvii., Gallien. 2, &c.; see MACRIANUS, ODENATHUS, QUIETUS.)

[W.R]