Editing Balbinus (section)

== Reign ==
According to [[Edward Gibbon]] (drawing upon the narratives of [[Herodian]] and the ''[[Historia Augusta]]''):

<blockquote>Balbinus was an admired orator, a poet of distinguished fame, and a wise magistrate, who had exercised with innocence and applause the civil jurisdiction in almost all the interior provinces of the empire. His birth was noble, his fortune affluent, his manners liberal and affable. In him, the love of pleasure was corrected by a sense of dignity, nor had the habits of ease deprived him of a capacity for business.  (...)  The two colleagues [Pupienus and Balbinus] had both been consul (Balbinus had twice enjoyed that honourable office), both had been named among the twenty lieutenants of the senate; and, since the one was sixty and the other seventy-four years old, they had both attained the full maturity of age and experience.<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717 |title=The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireTable of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) |last1=Gibbon |first1=Edward |last2=Milman |first2=Henry Hart |date=2008-06-07 |editor-last=Widger |editor-first=David |volume=I |pages=225 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>

On the news of the Gordians' defeat, the Senate voted Pupienus and Balbinus as co-emperors in April 238, though they were soon forced to co-opt the child [[Gordian III]] as a colleague.<ref name="Handbook" /> Unlike the situation in 161, both emperors were elected as ''[[Pontifex Maximus|pontifices maximi]]'', chief priests of the official cults.<ref>{{cite book|author=Christer Bruun, J. C. Edmondson|title=The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z2bDBAAAQBAJ&dq=Pupienus+Balbinus+pontifex+maximus+shared&pg=PA191|year=2015|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|isbn=978-0-19-533646-7|page=191}}</ref> This would be unthinkable in Republican times. Balbinus was probably in his early seventies: his qualifications for rule are unknown, except presumably that he was a senior senator, rich and well-connected. While Pupienus marched to [[Ravenna]], where he oversaw [[Siege of Aquileia|the campaign against Maximinus]], Balbinus remained in Rome, but failed to keep public order. The sources suggest that after Pupienus's victorious return following Maximinus' death, Balbinus and Pupienus began to distrust each other. They were soon assassinated by disaffected elements of the [[Praetorian Guard]]; Pupienus attempted to warn Balbinus of the plot, but the latter thought that the guard would instead secure the throne for himself.<ref>''HA'', [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Maximus_et_Balbinus*.html# Life of Maximus and Balbinus]; [[Herodian]] [https://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodian-s-roman-history/herodian-8.8/#8.8.4 8.8.4]</ref>