Count Aelianus ( la, Aelianus

comes ''Comes'' ( ), plural ''comites'' ( ), was a Roman title or office, and the origin Latin form of the medieval and modern title "count". Before becoming a word for various types of title or office, the word originally meant "companion", either i ...

; grc, Κόμης Αιλιανός; died 359 AD) was the chief

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

officer in charge of the defense of Amida during the

siege A siege is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or a well-prepared assault. This derives from la, sedere, lit=to sit. Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characteriz ...

of 359 by

Shah Shah (; fa, شاه, , ) is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies.Yarshater, EhsaPersia or Iran, Persian or Farsi, ''Iranian Studies'', vol. XXII no. 1 (1989) It was also used by a variety of ...

Shapur II Shapur II ( pal, 𐭱𐭧𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭥𐭩 ; New Persian: , ''Šāpur'', 309 – 379), also known as Shapur the Great, was the tenth Sasanian King of Kings (Shahanshah) of Iran. The longest-reigning monarch in Iranian history, he reigne ...

. Very little is known about his life, except that he was noted by

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the ''Res Gestae ...

as being a member of the Portectors Domesticus in 348 when he led new recruits (the ''praeventores'' and the ''Superventores'') in an attack on the

Sassanids The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...

who were laying

to the Roman city of

Singara Singara (, ''tà Síngara'') was a strongly fortified post at the northern extremity of Mesopotamia, which for a while, as it appears from coins minted there, was occupied by the Romans as an advanced colony against the Persians. It was the camp o ...

. By 359 Aelianus had risen to the rank of ''comes rei militaris'' and was in command of the Roman Trans-Tigris forces. During the Siege of Amida he was in command of the defences of the fortress-city. After the capture and sack of Amida, he was

gibbet A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold). Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of cri ...

ed by the victorious Sassanians along with his

tribunes Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the ...

. He was mentioned in the earlier books of Ammianus Marcellinus (books 1-13), but these are lost.

References

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Aelianus (''comes'') 359 deaths Comites rei militaris Executed military personnel People executed by the Sasanian Empire People of the Roman–Sasanian Wars Roman historiography Year of birth unknown