Maximinus Thrax (c. 173–238 AD)

He never visited Rome. In three years as emperor, he never came close. The city that theoretically owed him allegiance was, to Maximinus Thrax, an abstraction - a source of resources to be extracted and senators to be ignored. He had spent forty years as a soldier and had no interest in pretending to be anything else.

His rise was without precedent. Born to a provincial family of obscure origins in Thrace, he entered the Roman army as a common soldier and spent decades ascending through sheer military ability and, by all accounts, extraordinary physical presence. When Severus Alexander was murdered by his own troops in 235 AD, Maximinus was proclaimed emperor on the spot - the first man in Roman history to reach the throne from neither the senatorial nor equestrian class, without ever holding civil office.

The Senate never accepted him. The provinces buckled under taxation that funded his relentless campaigns. Even the army, the only constituency he had ever cultivated, ran out of patience during a prolonged siege of Aquileia in 238 AD. His own troops killed him in his tent.

He reigned for three years, never saw Rome, and cracked open something that could not be closed again - the demonstration that the throne could be taken by military force alone, without birth, without office, without the Senate's consent. The Crisis of the Third Century followed directly in his wake.