Florianus, M. Annius
the brother, by a different father, of the emperor Tacitus, upon whose decease he at once assumed the supreme power, as if it had been a lawful inheritance. This boldness was to a certain extent successful, for his authority, although not formally acknowledged, was tolerated by the senate and the armies of the west. The legions in Syria, however, were not so submissive, but invested their own general, Probus, with the purple, and proclaimed him Augustus. A civil war ensued [PROBUS], which was abruptly terminated by the death of Florianus, who perished at Tarsus, either by the swords of his soldiers or by his own hands, after he had enjoyed the imperial dignity for about two months, from April to June or July, A. D. 276. (Zonar. 12.29; Zosim. 1.64; Aur. Vict. Caes. 36, 37, Epit. 36; Eutrop. 9.10; Vopisc. Florian.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.