Lucius Aurelius Marcianus was a Roman soldier whose military career coincided with the period of crisis that characterized the middle decades of the Third Century AD – see Crisis of the Third Century. Probably of humble origins in one of the Illyrician provinces of the Empire he was one of the group of men from this region who chose a military career – or had it chosen for them – whose professional capabilities brought them to the fore of public life in those troubled times. Marcianus rose to the highest levels of the military hierarchy. The evidence suggests that he earned the trust of the Emperors Gallienus and Claudius II and, possibly, Marcus Aurelius Probus among their successors and that he was one of the principal commanders in the prolonged war against a coalition of what the late