Avienus (consul 501)

Flavius Avienus Iunior (floruit 501–509) was a Roman politician during the reign of Theodoric the Great. He held the consulship with Pompeius as colleague in 501.^[1]

He probably belonged to the gens Decia; he was the son of Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius (consul in 480), and brother of Albinus iunior (consul in 493), Theodorus (consul in 505) and Inportunus (consul in 509).^[2] John Moorhead argues that the brothers were on different sides of the Laurentian schism, with Albinus and Avienus supporting Symmachus and Theodore and Inportunus supporting Laurentius.^[3]

He was a correspondent of Magnus Felix Ennodius; one letter by Ennodius to Avienus has been preserved.^[4]

By 507/509, Avienus and his brother Albinus had already become patricii; around this time, but after the death of their father, they were asked to become patrons of the Greens and to appoint a pantomime.

Notes

1. CIL XII, 930.
2. Cassiodorus, Variae III.6.2
3. Moorhead, "The Decii under Theoderic", Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 33 (1984), p. 109
4. Ennodius, Epistulae, III.8.

Further reading

• Martindale, John R., "Fl. Avienus iunior 3", Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 577–581.