Olybrius (consul 526)

Flavius Olybrius iunior was a Roman politician. He was appointed consul for the year 526, which he held without a colleague.[1]

Biography

Olybrius comes probably from the family of Anicii. Following his tenure as consul, which was recognised both in the East and in the West, he held the rank of patricius.

On 17 December 546 Olybrius was in Rome when the Ostrogothic King Totila captured the city. Olybrius, Anicius Maximus (who had been consul in 523), Rufius Gennadius Probus Orestes (who had been consul in 530) and other patricii sought refuge in Old St. Peter's Basilica.[2] Captured and sent to Campania, he was still there when Narses conquered Rome in 552; the senators were preparing to return to Rome, but the Goths who guarded them, enraged by the death of Totila, killed them all.[3]

Notes

1. Inscriptions dated to his consulate include CIL V, 5405; CIL V, 5428; CIL VI, 8565; CIL IX, 5011.
2. Procopius, De Bello VII.20.16-19. Translated by H.B. Dewing, Procopius (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1979), vol. 4 p. 329
3. Procopius, De Bello VIII.34.5-6; translated by Dewing, Procopius vol. 5 pp. 399ff

Further reading

• Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, "Fl. Anicius Olybrius 7", Volume 2, 1980, p. 798.