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self was responsible for the murder). His brief reign was spent entirely in the east, where military setbacks eroded his power-base until eventually he was defeated by supporters of the fourteen- year-old Heliogabalus, grandson of Caracalla’s aunt, Julia Maesa. mantua, marquis of Francesco Gonzaga (1466–1519). Vic- torious mercenary commander of the forces of the League of Venice against Charles VIII of France at the battle of Fornovo in 1495. marcus aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180), Roman emperor (161–180). A Stoic philosopher, his work Medi- tations, written in Greek while campaigning with his army, is still considered a masterpiece. A successful reformer in domestic policy, he faced serious military threats from Parthia and from various tribes in Germany and Gaul. He died of natural causes and was immediately deified. maximilian (1459–1519) Habsburg ruler of the Holy Roman Empire (1486–1519). Maximilian aimed to unify the empire’s heterogeneous possessions by centralizing the administration. He also hoped to recover the empire’s dominant position in Italy and to become leader of the Christian world by launching a crusade against Islam. While his domestic reforms enjoyed a certain amount of success, his foreign policies were confused and ineffect- ive and led to the loss of Switzerland, which became an indepen- dent confederation in 1499. Although Maximilian hoped to regain territory from Venice, he was constantly thwarted by the need to give precedence to countering French expansionism in the peninsula. In 1495 he joined the League of Venice, which aimed to expel the French from Italy, but gained nothing from participation. In 1496 he was invited by the Duke of Milan (his wife’s uncle) to send an army to meet the threat of a French invasion, but France did not attack. Persuaded to move south to help Pisa resist the Florentines, the imperial army surprisingly failed to save the town. In 1507 he began a long-drawn-out attempt to take territory from Venice, but without making sig- nificant progress. In 1512 Maximilian joined the Holy League to push the French out of Italy. When Francis I once again took Milan for the French in 1515, Maximilian became involved in yet another, this time unsuccessful, attempt to keep France north