Gaudentius was the son of Flavius Aetius

Flavius Aëtius

Flavius Aëtius , dux et patricius, was a Roman general of the closing period of the Western Roman Empire. He was an able military commander and the most influential man in the Western Roman Empire for two decades . He managed policy in regard to the attacks of barbarian peoples pressing on the Empire...

. F.M. Clover has persuasively argued that his mother was Pelagia

Pelagia

Pelagia can refer to:* Saint Pelagia, of Antioch, who leapt to her death from a housetop* Pelagia of Tarsus, who was burnt to death* Pelagia was the secular name of Marina the Monk* Sister Pelagia, heroine of novels by Boris Akunin...

, a Gothic

Goths

The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....

 noblewoman and the widow of Bonifacius

Bonifacius

Comes Bonifacius was a Roman general and governor of the Diocese of Africa. Along with his rival, Flavius Aëtius, he is sometimes termed "the last of the Romans."...

.

He was born in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, probably in 440

440

Year 440 was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Valentinianus and Anatolius...

, and was baptized before his first birthday. Scholars identify him as the unnamed subject of a poem of Flavius Merobaudes

Flavius Merobaudes

Flavius Merobaudes was a 5th-century Latin rhetorician and poet, probably a native of Baetica in Spain.He was the official laureate of Valentinian III and Aetius...

. In 454

454

Year 454 was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aetius and Studius...

 his father and emperor Valentinian III

Valentinian III

-Family:Valentinian was born in the western capital of Ravenna, the only son of Galla Placidia and Flavius Constantius. The former was the younger half-sister of the western emperor Honorius, and the latter was at the time Patrician and the power behind the throne....

 arranged a marriage alliance, which included the marriage between Gaudentius and Placidia

Placidia

Placidia was the wife of Olybrius, Western Roman Emperor. Her full name is uncertain. The Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: The reign by reign record of the rulers of Imperial Rome by Chris Scarre gives her name as Galla Placidia Valentiniana or Galla Placidia the Younger, based on Roman naming...

, but that year his father was killed by Valentinian himself. In 455

455

Year 455 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Valentinianus and Anthemius...

, the Vandals

Vandals

The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Vandals under king Genseric entered Africa in 429 and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics....

 sacked Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

; Gaundentius was one of the countless thousands made a prisoner and brought back to Africa. Gaiseric claimed that his following attacks to Italy were to recover Gaudentius' legacy.

Further reading

• Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, John Robert Martindale, John Morris, "Gaudentius 7", The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 1980, ISBN 0521201594, p. 494.