Decimus Terentius Gentianus

Decimus Terentius Gentianus was a Roman senator of the 2nd century AD who held a number of offices in the imperial service, as well as serving as suffect consul for the nundinium of July to September 116 with Lucius Co[...] as his colleague.[1] His origins may be in Gallia Narbonensis, and Gentianus may have been the son of Decimus Terentius Scaurianus, one of Trajan's generals.

There is evidence that he may have traveled to Roman Egypt: in the 14th century was seen the first six lines of a poem inscribed on one of the Pyramids of Giza, addressed to "a most sweet brother" named "Decimus Gentianus".[2] Hermann Dessau, and others after him, identify that person with this Gentianus, although Dessau may be wrong in further identifying the author of the poem as his sister.[3]

Gentianus' cursus honorum is known in frustratingly incomplete detail from a fragmentary inscription in Sarmizegetusa.[4] Prior to acceding to the consulate, Gentianus held the usual posts of military tribune, quaestor, plebeian tribune, praetor, then governor of an imperial province; however, the portions of the inscription which identifies which legion he was tribune of and the name of the province he governed are both missing.

However the inscription from Sarmizegetusa attests Gentianus was admitted to the College of Pontiffs. He also supervised the census of the public province of Macedonia.

More information is available about his death. According to the Historia Augusta, during the reign of Hadrian, Gentianus had become highly esteemed by his fellow Senators. In spite of this, or because of it, towards the end of his reign Hadrian came to dislike him, although the emperor had considered making Gentianus his successor. The Historia Augusta strongly implies that Terentius Gentianus was one of many put to death "either openly or by craft".[5]