catur fired a shot that hit Barron in the thigh; Barron,
however, shot Decatur in the chest, a mortal wound. He
died in agony 12 hours later. He was initially buried in
the tomb of a friend, Joel Barlow, in Washington, but
his remains were removed to Philadelphia and laid to
rest there.
References: Mackenzie, Alexander Slidell, Life of Decatur,
a Commodore in the Navy of the United States (Boston: C.
C. Little and J. Brown, 1846); Crompton, Samuel Wil-
lard, “Decatur, Stephen,” in American National Biography,
24 vols., edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6:325–326;
Lewis, Charles Lee, The Romantic Decatur (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1937); Dunne, William
M. P., “Pistols and Honor: The James Barron-Stephen
Decatur Conflict, 1798–1807,” American Neptune 50,
no. 4 (1990): 245–259; Correspondence, between the Late
Commodore Stephen Decatur and Commodore James Bar-
ron, which led to the Unfortunate Meeting of the Twenty
Second of March (Boston: Russell & Gardner, 1820).
Decius, Gaius Messius Quintus Traianus (ca.
201–251) Roman emperor
It is possible that his short reign as emperor, combined
with his death in battle, accounts for why so little is
known of Gaius Decius. A Pannonian, he was appar-
ently born around a.d. 201 at Budalia, near Sirmium
(in, roughly, today’s Hungary; described by historian
William Hazlitt as “A city of Pannonia... on Savus flu-
men [“a flowing stream”], at its confluence with Bacun-
tius”). He had most likely been a member of the Roman
Senate for some time when, in 245, Emperor Philip
gave him the command of a military expedition to the
Danube. About 248 or 249, his troops, who loved him,
proclaimed him emperor against Philip, who, when the
news reached Rome, gathered his own military force to
end Decius’s “reign.” In 249, the two armies met near
Verona, in Italy, where Decius’s troops were victorious
and Philip was slain.
At the same time that he was ending Philip’s reign,
Decius was forced to deal with several rebellious threats
from outside forces. The most serious of these was from
the Goths, who marched westward on Rome. The de-
tails of the encounter are unfortunately lost to history.
It is known that Decius’s army faced the Goths at Abrit-
tus, near Dobruja, on the border of today’s Romania
and Bulgaria, in June 251. During the battle, Decius
and his son, Gaius Valens Hostilianus Messius Quintus
(called Herennius in one source), were both slain, and
the Goths overran the Roman army.
Decius was forgotten almost as soon as his death
was confirmed. Even his intended successor, Publius
Licinius Valerianus (Valerian), was tossed aside for an-
other, although later he served as Roman emperor from
253 to 260.References: Hazlitt, William, “Sirmium,” in The Classical
Gazetteer: A Dictionary of Ancient Geography, Sacred and
Profane (London: Whittaker & Son, 1851), 321; “De-
cius,” in The Penguin Dictionary of Ancient History, ed-
ited by Graham Speake (London: Penguin Books, 1995),
192–193; Wolfram, Herwig, History of the Goths (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1988); Bradley, Henry,
The Story of the Goths, from the Earliest Times to the End of
the Gothic Dominion in Spain (New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1888).de Clare, Richard FitzGilbert See clare,
richard fitzgilbert de, second earl of
Pembroke.Denikin, Anton Ivanovich (1872–1947)
Russian general
Born near Warsaw, Poland, then under Russian rule,
on 16 December 1872 (or 4 December 1872 [O.S.])
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was the son of a serf. He en-
tered military service in the Czar’s army, attending the
Junker School in Kiev and the Academy of the General
Staff, both important Russian military academies, and
rose rapidly from the rank of captain to colonel. He saw
service during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), a di-
sastrous campaign for the Russians, but he was consid-
ered a rising star in the Russian military. In 1914, when
the First World War broke out, Denikin, then serving
as chief of staff of the Kiev military district, was named
deputy chief of staff under General Alexei Alexseievich
brusiloV’s Eighth Army. A month after the war began,
he was made commander of the 4th Russian Rifle Bri-
gade and sent to Galicia in Poland. He subsequently
became the commander of the Russian VIII Corps and
served under Brusilov during the Brusilov Offensive
against Austrian troops in June 1916. Because of his ser-Denikin, Anton ivAnovich