Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/851

Rh him with his vices. She was pious, sensible and witty, and had much genius for poetry. Died 1514. .

married to Galerius, on his being created CesarCæsar [sic], about 292; afterwards he became Emperor. On his death bed, 311, he recommended her, and his natural son Candidien, (whom he had caused her to adopt, having no children of her own,) to Licinius, his friend, whom he had raised to be emperor; intreating him to prove their protector and father. Her mother, Prisca, accompanied her in all her troubles, though Dioclesian was still living. Licinius was the slave of avarice and voluptuousness. Valeria was beautiful; he proposed himself to her in marriage, knowing the second husband would have great right over the heritage of the first. But insensible to love, and too proud to shock that propriety which would not permit an empress to yield to a second marriage, she fled from the court of Licinius, with Prisca, and Candidien, and sought refuge with Maximin, one of the other emperors. He had already a wife and children; and, as the adopted son of Galerius, had been accustomed to regard Valeria as a mother: but his brutal and passionate soul took fire even sooner than that of Licinius. Valeria was yet in the first year of her mourning; he solicited her favour by means of his confident, declaring he was ready to divorce his present wife, if she would consent to take her place: she answered, "that still wearing the garb of mourning, she could not think of marriage; that Maximin should remember the husband of Valeria was his father, whose ashes were not cold; that he could not commit a greater injustice than to