Gordian III

Born 20 January 225, Gordian was the son of Maecia Faustina and Junius Balbus, who died before 238. His mother was the daughter of Emperor Gordian I and sister of Emperor Gordian II, binding him to a brief imperial dynasty. Almost nothing survives about his childhood before 238, when at age thirteen he was proclaimed emperor. He ruled the united Roman Empire until around February 244, when he died near the Persian frontier — circumstances murky, death likely violent. He was nineteen, maybe twenty.