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VALERIUS MAXIMUS, Latin writer, author of a collection of historical anecdotes, flourished in the reign of Tiberius. Nothing is known of his personal history except that his family was poor and undistinguished, and that he owed everything to Sextus Pompeius (consul 14), proconsul of Asia, whom he accompanied to the East in 27. This Pompeius was a kind of minor Maecenas, and the centre of a literary circle to which Ovid belonged; he was also the intimate of the most literary prince of the imperial family, Germanicus. The style of Valerius’s writings seems to indicate that he was a professional rhetorician. In his preface he intimates that his work is intended as a commonplace book of historical anecdotes for use in the schools of rhetoric, where the pupils were trained in the art of embellishing speeches by references to history. According to the MSS., its title is Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings. The stories are loosely and irregularly arranged, each book being divided into sections, and each section bearing as its title the topic, most commonly some virtue or vice, or some merit or demerit, which the stories in the section are intended to illustrate. Most of the tales are from Roman history, but each section has an appendix consisting of extracts from the annals of other peoples, principally the Greeks. The exposition exhibits strongly the two currents of feeling which are intermingled by almost every Roman writer of the empire—the feeling that the Romans of the writer’s own day are degenerate creatures when confronted with their own republican predecessors, and the feeling that, however degenerate, the latter-day Romans still tower above the other peoples of the world, and in particular are morally superior to the Greeks.

VALET (Fr. valet; O. Fr. vaslet), a term now restricted in meaning to that of a gentleman’s personal servant. The origin of the word is debated. Du Cange (Glossarium, s. Valeti) explains it as the diminutive of vassallus, a vassal, the sons of vassalli being termed vasseleti (and so vasleti, valeti), on the analogy of domicelli (damoiseaux) for the sons of domini. This view is also taken by W. W. Skeat (Etym. Dict. s. “Varlet”); but Hatzfeld and Darmesteter (Dict. gén. de la langue française), dispute this derivation as phonetically impossible, preferring that from vassulittus from a hypothetical vassulus, diminutive of vassus, from which vassallus also is ultimately derived (see ). Just as vassus was in Merovingian times the Gallo-Roman word for “servitor,” which the Franks borrowed to designate the domestic soldiers of their kings, so “valet” retained this, its sole surviving sense, throughout the middle ages. Yet the phrase “gentleman’s gentleman,” commonly used of the modern valet, is more historical than may at first sight appear. For valet, like esquire (écuyer), long signified the apprentice stage of knighthood, at first with a certain difference, the esquire being mounted, the valet unmounted, but afterwards with scarce a shade of distinction. Later, “valet” became the usual term for gentlemen who were not knights. In England it was not till the early years of the 14th century that valletus in this sense was superseded by armiger, and that “valet” (valete, vadlete, verlet, varlet ) began to be applied to the class of free men below the rank of esquire. In France the word valet, though in Saintonge and Poitou it survived till the close of the 14th century, had elsewhere—like damoiseau—much earlier been replaced generally by écuyer as the designation of an unknighted gentleman.

At the outset, “valet” had meant no more than “youth” or “boy.” Thus Wace in the Roman de Rou (III. v. 2903), speaking of William the Conqueror, says: Guillaume fu vadlet petiz (“William was a little boy”). The various developments of the word are closely parallel with those of some of its synonyms. Youth suggested both strength and service, the qualifications for nobility in a primitive society, where service in arms was the title to rank. Puer (boy) was early used, as a synonym for vassus, of the soldiers of the Frankish bodyguard (pueri ad ministerium); the Greek  (“child”) is etymologically related to O.H. Ger. degan, M.H. and Mod. Ger. degen, “warrior,” A.S. thegn, “thane”; “child” itself was applied in the 13th and 14th centuries to young men of gentle birth awaiting knighthood, as a title of dignity, and was perhaps a translation of valet (see ), with which may be compared the Spanish infanzon and German junker. So, too, cniht (a “lad” or “servant”), becomes first a warrior and then develops into a title of dignity as “knight,” while in Germany the parallel word knecht remains as “servant.” But valet has also shared with other synonyms a downward development. Just as “knave” (cnafa) meant originally a boy (cf. Ger. knabe) or servant, and has come to mean a rogue, so valet in its English (15th century) form of “varlet” had decayed, before it became obsolete, from its meaning of “servant” to signify a “scoundrel” or “low fellow.”

VALHALLA (Old Norse Valhöll, i.e. “hall of the slain”), the name given by the heathen Scandinavians to the abode in which the god Odin received the souls of those who had fallen in battle. There are represented as spending their time in constant fighting and feasting in his service. See, ad fin.

VALKYRIES (Old Norse valkyriur, “choosers of the slain”), figures of Norse mythology, generally represented as divine (less frequently human) maidens who ride through the air on Odin’s service. Clad in full armour they are sent forth