Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus Africanus, the emperor known to history as Gordian I, was the focus of aspirations for a short-lived uprising in Africa against the emperor Maximinus Thrax early in the year 238. Little is reliably known about the life of Gordian I before he was proclaimed emperor. Although the uprising was crushed within a month and led to the more widespread revolt that caused the downfall of Maximinus later that year, the eventual success of the revolt and the ascendancy to the purple of his grandson Gordian III enabled Gordian I to be deified and reckoned among the legitimate emperors of Rome..
The future emperor Gordian I was born around the year 159 and he came from a well-to-do family,[[1]] though there is no reliable evidence that the family belonged to the highest levels of the senatorial elite.[[2]] By the end of his life, however, Gordian was said to be related to other prominent senators.[[3]] Gordian's praenomen and nomen (Marcus Antonius) suggest that the family received Roman citizenship in the late republic from Mark Antony. The unusual cognomen Gordianus suggests a family origin in Asia Minor, especially Galatia and Cappadocia. A woman named Sempronia Romana, the daughter of a one-time imperial secretary ab epistulis Graecis named Sempronius Aquila, erected an undated funerary inscription in Ankara to her husband (whose name is lost) who died as a praetor-designate (IGRR 3.188). The woman's names, mirrored in Gordian's cognomina, may indicate a connection to the future emperor's mother or grandmother.[[4]]
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