Gratianus
4. A usurper, who assumed the purple in Britain, on the murder of the previous usurper, Marcus. Of his history and condition before his elevation we know nothing more than is intimated by the term Municeps Britanniae, applied to him by Orosius and Bede, from which we may infer that he was a native of the island; and from his being the object of the soldiers' choice, it is probable he was a military man. He was murdered by the troops who had raised him to the purple about four months after his elevation (A. D. 407), and was succeeded by Constantine. [CONSTANTINUS, the tyrant, vol. I. p. 830.] (Olympiod. apud Phot. Bibl. Cod. 80; Zosim. 6.2; Oros. 7.40; Sozom. H. E. 9.11; Baeda, H. E. 1.11.)
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.