A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

son of Eutropia, the half-sister of Constantine the Great [EUTROPIA; THEODORA], headed a rash enterprise whose object was to withstand the usurpation of Magnentius. Having collected a band of gladiators, runaway slaves, and similar desperadoes, he assumed the purple on the 3d of June 350, marched upon Rome, defeated and slew Anicius (or Anicetus), the new praetorian prefect, and made himself master of the city, which was deluged with blood by the excesses of contending factions. But after having enjoyed a confused shadow of royalty for twenty-eight days only, the adventurer was overpowered and put to death, along with his mother, by Marcellinus, who had been despatched by Magnentius to quell the insurrection, and many of the most noble and wealthy among the senators, by whom his pretensions had been admitted, shared a like fate. This Nepotianus is supposed to be the person who appears in the Fasti as the colleague of Facundus for the year 336, and it has been conjectured that his father was the Nepotianus who held the office of consul in 301. [MAGNENTIUS; MARCELLINUS.] (Julian. Orat. i. ii.; Aur. Vict. de Caes. 42, Epit. 42; Eutrop. 10.6; Zosim. 2.43; Chron. Alexandr.; Chron. Idat.)

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