Gomoarius (; ) was an Alemannic warrior who served in the

Roman army The Roman army () served ancient Rome and the Roman people, enduring through the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC–AD 1453), including the Western Roman Empire (collapsed Fall of the W ...

. In 350 AD, under the usurper

Vetranio Vetranio (died ) was briefly an imperial usurper and emperor in the Roman Empire in 350, during which time he controlled Illyricum between the rival emperors Magnus Magnentius and Constantius II, eventually capitulating to the latter. Life ...

, Gomoarius was a ''tribunus notariorum scutariorum''. In 359 AD he was raised by

Constantius II Constantius II (; ; 7 August 317 – 3 November 361) was Roman emperor from 337 to 361. His reign saw constant warfare on the borders against the Sasanian Empire and Germanic peoples, while internally the Roman Empire went through repeated civ ...

to the title ''magister armorum''. Two years later he was removed from office by

emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

Julian. In 365, he served under Agilo, the

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 ...

under the usurper

Procopius Procopius of Caesarea (; ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; ; – 565) was a prominent Late antiquity, late antique Byzantine Greeks, Greek scholar and historian from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman general Belisarius in Justinian I, Empe ...

. Gomoarius later defected from Procopius to the rightful emperor

Valens Valens (; ; 328 – 9 August 378) was Roman emperor from 364 to 378. Following a largely unremarkable military career, he was named co-emperor by his elder brother Valentinian I, who gave him the Byzantine Empire, eastern half of the Roman Em ...

, helping the latter to his victory at the Battle of Thyatira in 366 AD.Hartmut Leppin: Gomoarius. In: Der Neue Pauly (DNP). Band 4, Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, , Sp. 1143.

Sources

4th-century Germanic people Alemannic warriors Ancient Roman generals {{AncientRome-mil-bio-stub