MAXIMINUS, GAIUS JULIUS VERUS, Roman emperor from A.D. 235 to 238, was born in a village on the confines of Thrace. He was of barbarian parentage and was brought up as a shepherd. His immense stature and enormous feats of strength attracted the attention of the emperor Septimius Severus. He entered the army, and under Caracalla rose to the rank of centurion. He carefully absented himself from court during the reign of Heliogabalus, but under his successor Alexander Severus, was appointed supreme commander of the Roman armies. After the murder of Alexander in Gaul, hastened, it is said, by his instigation, Maximinus was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers on the 19th of March 235. The three years of his reign, which were spent wholly in the camp, were marked by great cruelty and oppression; the widespread discontent thus produced culminated in a revolt in Africa and the assumption of the purple by Gordian (q.v.). Maximinus, who was in Pannonia at the time, marched against Rome, and passing over the Julian Alps descended on Aquileia; while detained before that city he and his son were murdered in their tent by a body of praetorians. Their heads were cut off and despatched to Rome, where they were burnt on the Campus Martius by the exultant crowd. Capitolinus, _Maximini duo_; Herodian vi. 8, vii., viii. 1-5; Zosimus i. 13-15. MAXIMINUS [MAXIMIN], GALERIUS VALERIUS, Roman emperor from A.D. 308 to 314, was originally an Illyrian shepherd named Daia. He rose to high distinction after he had joined the army, and in 305 he was raised by his uncle, Galerius, to the rank of Caesar, with the government of Syria and Egypt. In 308, after the elevation of Licinius, he insisted on receiving the title of Augustus; on the death of Galerius, in 311, he succeeded to the supreme command of the provinces of Asia, and when Licinius and Constantine began to make common cause with one another Maximinus entered into a secret alliance with Maxentius. He came to an open rupture with Licinius in 313, sustained a crushing defeat in the neighbourhood of Heraclea Pontica on the 30th of April, and fled, first to Nicomedia and afterwards to Tarsus, where he died in August following. His death was variously ascribed "to despair, to poison, and to the divine justice." Maximinus has a bad name in Christian annals, as having renewed persecution after the publication of the toleration edict of Galerius, but it is probable that he has been judged too harshly. See MAXENTIUS; Zosimus ii. 8; Aurelius Victor, _Epit_. 40.