Valerian (emperor)

• 1. Introduction

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  Valerian ruled Rome as emperor from 253 to 260. His reign ended at the battle of Edessa, in a way no Roman emperor had experienced before. He was captured alive by the Persian emperor Shapur I, becoming the first Roman emperor ever taken captive in battle. The defeat at Edessa sent shock through the Roman Empire, an empire already unsettled by what is known as the Crisis of the Third Century. Rumors spread about the humiliation Valerian suffered at Shapur's hands. Those rumors helped produce what one account calls "new narratives about the Roman Empire in diverse contexts." What actually happened to him afterward, in Persian hands, remains one of the more disputed episodes in Roman history.

• 2. Rise of a Senator

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  Valerian was born around the year 199 into an old and traditional senatorial family. That set him apart from most rivals who seized power during the Crisis of the Third Century. He married Egnatia Mariniana, and the couple had two sons, Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus and Licinius Valerianus.

  Valerian served as consul for the first time either before 238 or in that year itself. In 238 he also held the position of princeps senatus. As princeps senatus, he became the go-between when Gordian I sought the Senate's acknowledgment of his claim to the throne.

  In 251, the emperor Decius revived the office of censor, granting it legislative and executive powers nearly equal to his own authority. The Senate chose Valerian to fill that revived post, but he declined to accept it. When Decius left Rome for his final campaign in Illyricum, Valerian stayed behind in charge of affairs in the capital. Trebonianus Gallus later appointed Valerian dux of an army drawn largely from garrisons in the German provinces, apparently meant for a war against Persia.

  In 253, Trebonianus Gallus faced a rebellion led by Aemilianus and called on Valerian for help putting it down. Valerian marched south, but arrived too late. Gallus's own troops killed him and joined Aemilianus before Valerian reached them. The Raetian soldiers under Valerian's command then proclaimed him emperor instead, and continued marching toward Rome. When Valerian reached the city in September, Aemilianus's legions defected, killed their own emperor, and proclaimed Valerian in his place. The Senate in Rome quickly acknowledged him. That vote made Valerian the latest man to hold Rome's throne, but he would not sit on it alone for long.

• 3. An Empire Split in Two

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  Valerian's first act as emperor was to name his son Gallienus Augustus, making him co-emperor. Early in his reign, the whole western half of the empire fell into disorder. In the East, Antioch had fallen under the control of a Sassanid vassal, and Armenia was occupied by Shapur I. Valerian and Gallienus split the empire's problems, with Gallienus taking the West and Valerian heading East to face the Persian threat.

  In 254, 255, and 257, Valerian served again as Consul Ordinarius. By 257 he had recovered Antioch and restored the province of Syria to Roman control. The following year, the Goths ravaged Asia Minor. In 259, Valerian advanced to Edessa, where an outbreak of plague killed a critical number of his legionaries and weakened the Roman position. Persian forces then besieged the town, and in 260, probably in June, Valerian was decisively defeated at the Battle of Edessa. The defeat proved catastrophic for Rome, and Valerian was held prisoner for the rest of his life. The joint rule Valerian had built with his son would be tested again and again by usurpers in the years ahead.

• 4. Two Letters Against Christians

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  In 257, while still fighting the Persians, Valerian sent the Senate a letter ordering Christian clergy to sacrifice to the Roman gods or face banishment. A second letter, issued the following year, ordered the execution of Christian leaders. It also demanded that Christian senators and equites worship the Roman gods or lose their titles and property, with execution awaiting those who kept refusing. Roman matrons who refused were to lose their property and be banished. Christian civil servants and members of the imperial household faced enslavement on imperial estates instead. That such a wide range of ranks appeared in the decree suggests Christians were already well established in Roman society, including in high positions.

  Saint Prudent was executed at Narbonne in 257. The following year, Pope Sixtus II was executed on the 6th of August. Saint Romanus Ostiarius was executed three days later, on the 9th. Saint Lawrence was executed the following day, on the 10th of August. Also executed in 258 were Saint Denis in Paris, Saint Pontius in Cimiez, Cyprian and others in Carthage, and Eugenia in Rome. In 259, Saint Patroclus was killed at Troyes and Saint Fructuosus at Tarragona. The persecution ended the moment Gallienus became emperor in 260, when he rescinded his father's decree.

• 5. Captive of Persia

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  Eutropius, writing sometime between 364 and 378, recorded that Shapur, king of Persia, overthrew Valerian and took him prisoner. Valerian, in Eutropius's words, grew old in "ignominious slavery" among the Parthians. Lactantius, an early Christian writer hostile to Persia over its persecution of Christians, offered a harsher account. He described Valerian being forced to serve as a human footstool whenever Shapur mounted his horse. According to this account, Valerian eventually offered Shapur a huge ransom for his freedom. Shapur is said to have responded by forcing Valerian to swallow molten gold, or, in another version, by having him flayed alive. Either way, his skin was reportedly stuffed with straw and kept as a trophy in a Persian temple. It was only cremated and buried after Persia later suffered a defeat against Rome. Historians have debated the captivity and death of Valerian for a long time without reaching any firm conclusion.

  The modern scholar Touraj Daryaee offers a different picture. He argues that Shapur actually sent Valerian and part of his army to live at Bishapur or Gundishapur, in relatively good conditions. Shapur put the remaining Roman soldiers to work on engineering and development projects. One surviving example is the Band-e Kaisar, or Caesar's Dam, located near the ancient city of Susa. Stone carvings at Naghshe-Rostam in Iran show Valerian holding hands with Shapur, a gesture read as a sign of submission. The early Persian Muslim scholar Abu Hanifa Dinawari wrote that Shapur settled the prisoners at Gundishapur. Valerian was released, as promised, once the dam's construction was finished. Some historians argue that Lactantius shaped his account to show that persecutors of Christians met fitting deaths. Later writers in the Roman Near East, hostile to Persia, kept repeating that same story.

  Valerian's other son, Licinius Valerianus, became consul in 265, but was probably killed by usurpers sometime before Gallienus's own assassination in 268. Gallienus's death in 268 ended the dynasty his father had begun by marching east to face Persia. It also left later writers arguing over how that father had actually died.

• 6. Echoes in Literature

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  Joseph of Anchieta's 1587 play Auto de São Lourenço casts Valerian as one of its central characters. In Act III, Valerian is killed for his role in persecuting and executing Saint Lawrence in 258. Anthony Hecht placed Valerian in his poem "Behold the Lilies of the Field," part of the collection The Hard Hours. Valerian also appears in Harry Sidebottom's historical fiction series Warrior of Rome. That series still places Valerian's fall at the center of stories about Rome's collision with Persia, centuries after his reign ended.