Tiberius Claudius Maximus

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Tiberius Claudius Maximus (died after AD 117) was a cavalryman in the Imperial Roman army who served in the Roman legions and Auxilia under the emperors Domitian and Trajan in the period AD 85–117. He is noted for presenting Trajan with the head of Dacian king Decebalus, who had committed suicide after being surrounded by Roman cavalry at the end of Dacian Wars (AD 106).

Maximus served in the emperor Trajan's Dacian Wars (101–2 and 105–6). It was probably during these that Maximus was promoted by Trajan out of the legionary cavalry, whose role was limited to escort and communications, into the alae, the elite combat cavalry of the Auxilia corps. Maximus was gazetted as a double-pay man, a junior officer in the regiment Ala II Pannoniorum. This move probably resulted in a significant pay-rise for Maximus.

In AD 106, in the closing stage of the conquest of Dacia, Maximus, serving as an explorator (scout) with his unit, was involved in the pursuit of the defeated Dacian king Decebalus, by then a fugitive with only his personal bodyguard of Dacian noblemen left to him (the rest of the Dacian nobility had surrendered to Trajan). It appears that Maximus and his men cornered Decebalus in a mountainous location. However, before Maximus could reach him, Decebalus committed suicide by cutting his own throat, an incident shown on Trajan's Column. Maximus severed Decebalus' head and presented it to the emperor Trajan at his campaign-base at Ranisstorum. As reward, Trajan decorated Maximus and promoted him to the rank of decurion, the cavalry equivalent of centurion in the infantry.

Maximus later served in Trajan's Parthian War (114–6) and was again decorated for valour by the emperor. Probably Maximus was already a volunteer in this time, like he describes himself at his subsequent missio, because his contracted term of service (25 years) should have expired some years before 110 AD.

Maximus was finally granted an honourable discharge (honesta missio) in AD 116–7 by Decimus Terentius Scaurianus, one of Trajan's top generals and then commander of Roman forces in the newly established (and soon relinquished) province of Mesopotamia Nova.

He died after 117 AD. While still alive, he designed his own tombstone, which was found at Philippi in Greece.