Career

He was a soldier in Roman Britain who was proclaimed emperor by the army there some time in 406. He may have risen to power as a reaction to the increasing raids from abroad at a time when the Empire was withdrawing troops from its distant provinces like Britain to protect its heartland. There were too few troops capable of defending Britain at the time, as raiders such as the Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, and records of raiders like Niall of the Nine Hostages

Niall of the Nine Hostages

Niall Noígíallach , or in English, Niall of the Nine Hostages, son of Eochaid Mugmedón, was an Irish king, the eponymous ancestor of the Uí Néill kindred who dominated Ireland from the 6th century to the 10th century...

 show. Local troops, with ties to their home garrisons, are likely to have resisted being redeployed to Italy at a time of such instability in Britain; Marcus' elevation may have been a result of this or some other, unrecorded crisis. It has been conjectured that the revolt in Britain was aimed principally at Stilicho

Stilicho

Flavius Stilicho was a high-ranking general , Patrician and Consul of the Western Roman Empire, notably of Vandal birth. Despised by the Roman population for his Germanic ancestry and Arian beliefs, Stilicho was in 408 executed along with his wife and son...

, the Emperor Honorius

Honorius (emperor)

Honorius , was Western Roman Emperor from 395 to 423. He was the younger son of emperor Theodosius I and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla, and brother of the eastern emperor Arcadius....

’s magister militum

Magister militum

Magister militum was a top-level military command used in the later Roman Empire, dating from the reign of Constantine. Used alone, the term referred to the senior military officer of the Empire...

, who responded by allowing the Vandals and other Germanic tribes to cross the Rhine frontier in December 406.

All that is known of his rule is that he did not please the army, and was soon killed by them and replaced with another short-lived usurper, Gratian

Gratian (usurper)

-Career:Following the death of the usurper Marcus, Gratian was acclaimed as emperor by the army in Britain in early 407. His background, as recorded by Orosius, was that he was a native Briton and one of the urban aristocracy...

. In his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae

Historia Regum Britanniae

The Historia Regum Britanniae is a pseudohistorical account of British history, written c. 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the kings of the Britons in a chronological narrative spanning a time of two thousand years, beginning with the Trojans founding the British nation...

, Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur...

 tells of a Gracianus Municeps

Gracianus Municeps

Gracianus Municeps was a legendary King of the Britons, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, a fictional account of British history...

 who takes the throne of Britain away from King Dionotus

Dionotus

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, whose account of the rulers of Britain is based on ancient Welsh sources disputed by many historians, Dionotus was a "legendary" King of the Britons during the campaigns in Gaul led by Emperor Magnus Maximus...

; it is possible he based his characters on the historical Gratian and Marcus.

Primary sources

• Zosimus
  Zosimus
  Zosimus was a Byzantine historian, who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I . According to Photius, he was a comes, and held the office of "advocate" of the imperial treasury.- Historia Nova :...
  
  , "Historia Nova", Book 6 Historia Nova

Secondary sources

• Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin
  Arnold Hugh Martin Jones
  Arnold Hugh Martin Jones — known as A.H.M. Jones — was a prominent 20th century British historian of classical antiquity, particularly of the later Roman Empire.-Biography:...
  
  , John Robert Martindale, John Morris
  John Morris (historian)
  John Robert Morris was an English historian who specialised in the study of the institutions of the Roman Empire and the history of Sub-Roman Britain...
  
  , The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN ISBN 0521201594
• Bury, J. B., A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene, Vol. I (1889)