Flavius The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Its members are first mentioned during the last three centuries of the Republic. The first of the Flavii to achieve prominence was Marcus Flavius, tribune of the plebs in 327 and 323 BC; how ...

Olybrius (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: Ολύβριος ''fl''. 491-after 532) was an aristocrat of the

Eastern Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

and a

consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states thro ...

for the year 491. He is sometimes referred to as "Olybrius Junior" in the sources, probably referencing his young age. Olybrius was through his mother

Anicia Juliana Anicia Juliana (Greek: Ανικία Ίουλιανή, Constantinople, after 461 – 527/528) was a Late Antique Roman imperial princess, wife of the ''magister militum'' of the eastern Roman empire, Areobindus Dagalaiphus Areobindus, patron of ...

a descendant of the conjoined Valentinianic and Theodosian dynasties, and the grandson of the emperor

Olybrius Anicius Olybrius (died 2 November 472) was Roman emperor from July 472 until his death later that same year; his rule as ''Augustus (title), augustus'' in the western Roman Empire was not recognised as legitimate by the ruling ''augustus'' in t ...

() and the great-grandson of Western Roman Emperor

Valentinian III Valentinian III (; 2 July 41916 March 455) was Roman emperor in the Western Roman Empire, West from 425 to 455. Starting in childhood, his reign over the Roman Empire was one of the longest, but was dominated by civil wars among powerful general ...

(). He was also a potential ''

augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...

'' on the death of the Eastern Roman Emperor

Zeno Zeno may refer to: People * Zeno (name), including a list of people and characters with the given name * Zeno (surname) Philosophers * Zeno of Elea (), philosopher, follower of Parmenides, known for his paradoxes * Zeno of Citium (333 – 264 B ...

() of the

Leonid dynasty The Leonid dynasty or Thracian dynasty produced six Byzantine emperors during Late Antiquity, reigning over the Byzantine Empire from 457 to 518. The dynasty's patriarch was Leo I, who was made Byzantine emperor in 457. Leo's daughter Ariadne ...

Life

Areobindus presides over the games MNMA Cluny 13135 n02

Olybrius was the son of Areobindus Dagalaifus Areobindus,

magister militum (Latin for "master of soldiers"; : ) was a top-level military command used in the late Roman Empire, dating from the reign of Constantine the Great. The term referred to the senior military officer (equivalent to a war theatre commander, the e ...

from 503 to 504 and

in 506, and of

, the daughter of the Western Roman Emperor

and wife

Placidia Placidia () was a 5th-century Roman noblewoman and briefly empress in the Western Roman Empire. Her father was Valentinian III, Roman emperor in the West from 425 to 455. In 455, shortly after her marriage to Olybrius, she was captured by Gaiser ...

, who was the daughter of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III and wife Licinia Eudoxia. Alan Cameron explains, "It may be that, alone among the consuls here discussed, Olybrius was actually known as 'Olybrius the younger' in social as well as consular contexts. Nor is it hard to think of a reason why: he became consul as a mere child, barely ten years old, perhaps even less."Cameron, Alan (1984)
"Junior Consuls", ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik''
56, p. 162 He was appointed consul at a very young age in 491. Afterwards, Olybrius married Irene, the daughter of Paulus and niece of Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I (); Anastasius wanted to strengthen his rule through a bond with the Theodosian dynasty through this marriage. Olybrius and Irene had only daughters, including Proba. He was exiled in 532 by Eastern Roman Emperor

Justinian I Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

() after being implicated in a plot. His properties were seized, including the Church of St. Polyeuctus which his mother had commissioned and a great house which stood on an adjoining site to the church. He was eventually allowed to return sometime later and his seized properties were returned. Nothing is known about how he or his family fared after this.

Notes

References

* * * {{end 5th-century western Roman consuls Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown