All corrections
Wikipedia August 5, 2026 at 05:28 AM

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallienus

4 corrections found

1
Claim
Saloninus (July 260)
Correction

This dates Saloninus's elevation too early. He was still Caesar in July 260 and is dated by academic and museum sources to have taken the title Augustus in autumn 260, at Cologne.

Full reasoning

The infobox labels Saloninus as a co-emperor in July 260, but the evidence I checked dates his assumption of the Augustus title later.

  • The University of Osnabrück chronology for Gallienus and Salonina states: "Herbst 260 Saloninus nimmt den Augustustitel in Köln an" (“Autumn 260 Saloninus takes the title of Augustus in Cologne”).
  • The Berlin Münzkabinett authority file likewise says: "In autumn of AD 260 Saloninus took the title of Augustus in Cologne."

Since "co-emperor" here means Augustus rather than Caesar, dating Saloninus to July 260 is incorrect; July 260 is associated with the opening phase of Postumus's revolt, not Saloninus's documented elevation to Augustus.

2 sources
2
Claim
Antoninianus issued to celebrate LEG VII MAC VI P VI F, "Legio VII Macedonica" six times faithful and loyal.
Correction

This caption misidentifies the legion and even the coin legend. The coin shown is for Legio V Macedonica and reads LEG V MAC, not LEG VII MAC.

Full reasoning

This caption appears to be a transcription error.

The actual Wikimedia Commons file used for this image identifies the coin as:

  • "LEG V MAC VI P VI F"
  • "Coin issued to celebrate Legio V Macedonica"

An independent coin listing from CoinArchives gives the same reverse legend and attribution:

  • "LEG V MAC VI P VI F"
  • "Legio V Macedonica"

So the article's caption is wrong in two ways: it writes VII instead of V in the legend, and it calls the legion Legio VII Macedonica instead of Legio V Macedonica.

2 sources
3
Claim
The capture of Valerian in the year 259
Correction

Valerian’s capture is normally dated to 260, not 259. Sources on Gallienus’s peace toward Christians place it after Valerian’s disappearance in autumn 260 or later.

Full reasoning

The date in this sentence is off by a year.

Modern historical summaries date Valerian's capture by Shapur at Edessa to 260 CE, not 259:

  • World History Encyclopedia states that Valerian ruled "until his capture in 260 CE" and says that at the Battle of Edessa, "In 260 CE ... Valerian met with Shapur ... [and] the meeting turned into a trap."
  • A standard reference text reproduced at Wikisource likewise says Gallienus reigned jointly with Valerian from 253 to 260, and that Valerian was taken prisoner "in 260."

The Christian evidence also places Gallienus's peace measure after Valerian's fall in autumn 260, not after a capture in 259. The CCEL edition of Dionysius of Alexandria says: "The persecution lasted till the autumn of 260, and was then, on the disappearance of Valerian, stayed by an edict of Peace issued by his son Gallienus."

So the article's phrase "the year 259" is not consistent with the standard dating of Valerian's capture or with the usual dating of Gallienus's toleration policy.

3 sources
4
Claim
the first to commission primarily cavalry units, the Comitatenses
Correction

This conflates Gallienus’s cavalry reform with the later comitatenses. Gallienus is credited with creating a mobile cavalry corps, but comitatenses were the later late-Roman field armies and were not primarily cavalry units.

Full reasoning

The problem here is terminological and substantive.

Gallienus is commonly credited with creating a mobile cavalry corps or "battlecavalry". But the comitatenses were a later category of late Roman field-army troops, not Gallienus's own primarily cavalry force.

Evidence:

  • A Durham University thesis specifically on Gallienus's reforms says his cavalry reform created a powerful body of cavalry, but that this "battlecavalry" was not the direct ancestor of the later comitatenses.
  • A modern overview of the late Roman army explains that by the 4th century CE there were different kinds of legions, including "Comitatenses or field armies", and describes them as field forces that included mixed troop types; it separately discusses cavalry units.
  • A general history of Gallienus from the same reference work describes his reform as the creation of "a cavalry corps of armored horsemen", not as the creation of the comitatenses.

So the article's wording is inaccurate because it identifies Gallienus's cavalry corps as the Comitatenses, when those are a later and broader field-army classification.

3 sources
Model: OPENAI_GPT_5 Prompt: v1.16.0