Valerian

Wow.

And then if we go a little bit later here, this is Valerian the f- and this is, so he, that's an interesting one.

It's still got a pretty high silver content, and he's a really interesting one because Valerian is the first Roman emperor to be captured alive.

Hmm.

Um, he's fighting against the Sassanid Persians and their King Shapur I. He's defeated, and Shapur uses him as a footstool to get on his horse the rest of his life.

Man, that's fascinating.

Now here is, not too far after, this is Aurelian, and he has the nickname Restutor Orbis or Restorer of the World.

And because Rome had broken into three pieces after Valerian died, and over a 15-year period he reunites them.

End footnote.

Valerianus.

Footnote.

Publius Licinius Valerianus was a brilliant military leader chosen by his troops to be emperor during a time of great anarchy.

He met his death in Persia, 260 AD.

And Dion.

Most sources suggest that he was martyred during the reign of Emperor Decius, who ruled from two forty-nine to two fifty-one and initiated a widespread persecution of Christians.

Others suggest that his martyrdom might have been during the reign of Valerian, who ruled from two fifty-three to two sixty and also persecuted Christians.

Still others suggest a later date.

Pope Fabian served as pope from two thirty-six to two fifty.

They mark the definite beginning of the church as a factor of essential importance in the Christian religion.

Then the persecution under Decius was followed by a persecution under Valerian.

The attack of Decius had been directed against all Christians.

The attack of Valerian was directed mainly against the clergy.

The idea was that if the leaders were taken away, the Christian societies would fall into confusion.

Thus, in Carthage, the storm fell on Cyprian.

Do we jump off or do we fragment, try to create our own thing? Like, tell me about the end days of it and what it probably felt like down on the ground.

Well, so there's a kind of a... couple times when things like that happen, so if you look one of the coins I had handed you earlier was a Emperor Valerian and Valerian is a pretty interesting guy because in 260 Rome and Persia had been back and forth over, you know, hundreds of years.

You know, Persia would disappear for a while.

You would get a new dynasty.

He's much more powerful than his father.

And he decides he's going to start encroaching on Roman land.

So then Valerian actually leads a Roman army against Shapur I, and he loses to the point that he's actually captured and then used as a footstool by Shapur for the rest of his life.

There's actually a statue of this in Tehran showing Shapur with his foot on the back of this Roman emperor, which I think modernly it's supposed to be like, we have our foot on the West.

Others had advanced into Greece and Macedonia and challenged the Roman navies for the possession of Crete.

Not only was Armenia lost, but the Parthians had passed the Euphrates, vanquished and taken prisoner the emperor Valerian, and surprised the city of Antioch while the inhabitants were idly gathered in the theatre.

Valerian, chained and robed in purple, was kept alive to act as Sapor's footstool.

When he died his skin was tanned and stuffed with straw and set to grace a Parthian temple.

Egypt was in the hands of a rebel who had cut off the grain supply.

Perhaps if we reckon them at a twelfth of the whole, we shall rather underestimate than overestimate their number, while in certain portions of Asia and Syria they were probably at least one in five.

Christianity had spread with amazing rapidity since the days of Domitian.

There had been spasmodic outbreaks of fierce persecution under Decius, that execrable beast, as Lactantius calls him, under Valerian and under Aurelian.

The two continued to amass power, claiming consular rank by 258, and in 259, Odenathus campaigned against the Persians, sacking the city of Nehadia on the Euphrates.

Ordonathus' greatest opportunity then came in Spring 260, when Emperor Valerian was captured by the Persians at the Battle of Edessa.

This is Rick Burgess from The Rick Burgess

Show.

A cascade of usurpers sprung up across the empire.

In the unstable frontier regions, ambitious men seized power, usually elected by the troops or the local aristocracy, greatly contributing to the erosion of imperial authority and the decline of its internal structures.

The populace suffered against incursions that were becoming increasingly difficult to check, most notably an Alemannic invasion of Italy that had already begun even before Valerian's capture and which Gallienus eventually crushed outside Milan.

as well as Herulian and Gothic raids that saw the sacking of numerous cities in Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor, including Byzantium, Argos, Corinth, Sparta, Olympia, and Athens, as well as the destruction of one of the wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

What do you do? Decius instituted this empire-wide aggressive persecution.

Valerian, the next emperor, keeps it up until 257.

They're often targeting the clergy now.

His successor, the emperor Gallienus, actually stops the persecution in 260.

There was a traditional accounts of the exchange between St. Cyprian and the Roman pro-consul Paternus and the governor Galerius prior to the Cyprian's death.

And during Cyprian's tenure as the Bishop of Carthage, the Emperor Valerian had issued an edict that forbade all assemblies of Christians and required bishops, priests, and deacons to take part in official state worship under pain of exile.

Saint Cyprian remained firm in his faith and disregarded this edict, thus refusing to engage in pagan idol worship and setting an example for his flock.

He was punished for a time by being exiled from his diocese, but was eventually brought back and placed on trial before the Roman proconsul, Paternus.