Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/1228

Rh 1216 VALERIANUS. Great and others. Tlie Valeria gens enjoyed ex- traordinary honours and privileges at Rome. Their house at the bottom of the Velia was the only one in Home of which the doors were allowed to open back into the street. (Dionys. v. 39 ; Pht. Fzibl. 20.) In the Circus a conspicuous place was set apart for them, where a small throne was erected, an honour of which there was no other example among the • Romans. (Liv. ii. .31.) They were also allowed to bury their dead within the walls, a privilege which was also granted to some other gentes ; and when they had exchanged the older custom of in- terment for that of burning the corpse, although they did not light the funeral pile on their burying- ground, the bier was set down there, as a sym- bolical way of preserving their right. (Cic. de Leg. ii. 23 ; Plut. PM. 23.) Niebuhr, who mentions these distinctions, conjectures that among the gra- dual changes of the constitution from a monarchy to an aristocracy, the Valeria gens for a time pos- sessed the right that one of its members should exercise the kingly power for the Tities, to which tribe the Valerii must have belonged, as their Sa- bine origin indicates (Jrlist. of Rome, vol. i. p. 538) ; but on this point, as on many others in early Roman history, it is impossible to come to any certainty. The Valerii in early times were always foremost in advocating the rights of the plebeians, and the laws which they proposed at various times were the great charters of the liberties of the second order. (See Did. of Antiq. s. v. Leges Valeriae.) The Valeria gens was divided into various families under the republic, the names of which are : — Coavus or Corvinus, Falto, Flaccus, Laevinus, Maximus, Messalla, Potitus, PuBLicoLA, Tappo, Triarius, Vqlusus. Be- sides these we meet with other cognomens of the Valerii under the republic, which are mostly the names cf freedmen or clients of the Valeria gens. They are given below in alphabetical order, toge- ther with the surnames borne by the Valerii in the imperial period. [Valerius.] The few Valerii, who occur without any surname, are not of suf- ficient importance to require any notice. On the coins of the gens we find the cognomens Adsculus, Catullus, Flaccus, Barlnitus. VALERIA'NUS, a friend of the younger Pliny, who has addressed three letters to him. {Ep. ii. 15, V. 4, 14.) VALERIA'NUS, Roman emperor, a. d. 253 — 260. P. LiciNius Valerianus, whose father's name was Valerius, traced his descent from an ancient and noble stock. After passing through various grades in the service of the state, he had risen to the highest honours at least as early as A. D. 237, for we find him styled a consular when despatched a year later by the Gordians to Rome. Decius having determined to revive the censorship, <ind having called upon the senate to name the in- dividual most worthy of such an ofiice, demanding the union of the most spotless integrity with the most sound discretion, the whole assembly with one voice fixed upon Valerian eagerly, extolling his accomplishments and worth. This singular unanimity, and the tone of hyperbolical compli- ment in which the choice was announced, must be received either as a proof of the surpassing merit of the personage thus distinguished, or as an in- dication that the emperor, although he ostensibly left the election open, had contrived beforehand to VALERIANUS. make knoAvn his own sentiments and wishes. The untimely fate of Decius saved the regulator of public morals from the embarrassment which must have attended the discharge of difficult and in- vidious duties, while at the same time he Avas ad- mitted to the full confidence of Gallus, by whom he was employed to quell the rebellion of Ae- milianus, and recall the legions of Pannonia and Moesia to their allegiance. While an army was forming in Noricum and Rhaetia, the rapid move- ments of the usurper and the murder of the prince completely changed the aspect of affairs, and Valerian, who had taken up arms to support the interests of another, now employed them to ad- vance his own. The sudden death, whether caused by disease or treachery, of his rival, whom he found encamped near Spoleto, prevented a hostile en- counter. Valerian was chosen (a. d. 254) to fill the vacant throne, not, says the Augustan his- torians, by the mde clamours of a camp, nor by the disorderly shouts of a popular assembl% but in right of his merits, and, as it were, by the unani- mous voice of the whole world. The new sovereign having assumed his eldest son Gallienus as an as- sociate in the purple, prepared to repel, as best he might, the barbarian hosts which, gathering con- fidence from the increasing weakness of the Roman dominion, were pressing forwards more and more fiercely on the various frontiers. But although the Franks were ravaging Gaul and Spain, although the Alemanni were making repeated descents upon the provinces of the Upper Danube, and threatening Italy itself, although the Goths were loading their boat fleets with the plunder of Asia and of Greece, yet the dismemberment of the empire seemed most imminent in Syria. Scarcely had Ardeschir Babe- gan, by his crowning victory in Khorasan, over- thrown the dynasty of the Arsacidae, and revived the ancient supremacy of Persia, when he vowed that he would drive the Western usurpers from the regions once swayed by his ancestors. Plis schemes were baffled by the energy and valour of Severus, but the haughty and ambitious Sapor having at length succeeded in subjugating Armenia, the ally and great outwork of the Roman power, thought that the time had now arrived for realising the mighty projects of his sire. Having driven the garrisons from the strongholds on the left bank of the Tigris, he overran Mesopotamia, then crossing the Euphrates, rushed like a torrent upon Syria, and bearing down all resistance, stormed Antiocli, the metropolis of the East. At this juncture Valerian assumed the command of the legions in person, and for a time his measures were both vigorous and successful. Antioch was recovered, the usurper Cyriades [Cyriades] was slain, and Sapor was compelled to fall back behind the Eu- phrates ; but the emperor, flushed by his good fortune, while his faculties were perhaps impaired by age, folloAved too rashly. He found himself, like a second Crassus, surrounded, in the vicinity of Edessa, by the countless horsemen of his active foe ; he was entrapped into a conference, taken prisoner, and passed the remainder of his life in captivity subjected to every insult which Oriental cruelty could devise. After death his skin was stuffijd and long preserved as a trophy in the chief temple of the nation. Although no doubts exist with regard to the leading facts connected with the career of Valerian and his misenible fate, yet so imperfect, confused.