Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/55

Rh V A L V A L 41 smell of this plant as of the true valerian, and will frequently roll on the plant and injure it. VALERIANUS, PTTBLIUS LICINIUS, Roman emperor from 253 to 260, was a man of ancient family and is first mentioned in the year 238 as princeps senatus. Some thirteen years later, when Decius restored the censorship and added to the office legislative and executive powers so extensive that it embraced the best part of the civil authority of the emperor, Valerian was chosen censor by the senate, to whom the appointment was committed. The death of Decius cut short this novel experiment in government, but Valerian retained the confidence of Gallus, who sent him to fetch troops to quell the rebellion of /Emilianus. The soldiers in Rhgetia, however, proclaimed Valerian emperor ; and marching slowly towards Rome he found both his rivals dead. Valerian was already an elderly man he is said to have been seventy years old at his death and had scarcely the vigour to confront with success the enemies that threatened every frontier of the empire, but he applied himself to his heavy task with diligence and goodwill. Taking his son Gallienus as col league, and leaving the wars in Europe to his direction, under which matters went from bad to worse and the whole West fell into disorder, Valerian chose for his own part the war in the East, where Antioch had fallen into the hands of a Persian vassal and Armenia was occupied by Shapur, while in 258 the Goths ravaged Asia Minor. Valerian recovered Antioch, fought in Mesopotamia with mixed success, and finally was taken captive (see PERSIA, vol. xviii. p. 608). His ultimate fate is unknown. VALERIUS, PUBLIUS, surnamed PUBLICOLA, the col league of Brutus in the consulship in the first year of the Roman republic. According to the legend represented by Livy and Plutarch (see ROME), he was a member of one of the noblest Roman families, being son of Volusus, a de scendant of a Sabine of that name who had settled in Rome along with King Tatius. He was one of those who witnessed the death of Lucretia, and joined in the oath to avenge her wrongs. He took a prominent part in the expulsion of the Tarquins, and though not originally chosen as the colleague of Brutus he soon afterwards took the place of Tarquinius Collatinus. On the death of Brutus, which left him alone in the consulship, the people began to fear that he was aiming at kingly power. To calm their apprehensions, he discontinued the building of a house which he had begun on the top of the Velian Hill, overlooking the Forum, and also gave orders that the fasces should henceforward be lowered whenever he appeared before the people. He introduced various laws further to protect the liberties of the citizens, one of these enacting that whosoever should attempt to make himself a king might be slain by any man at any time, and another providing an appeal to the people on behalf of any citizen condemned by a magistrate. For these ser vices the surname of Publicola or Poplicola was conferred on himself and on his descendants for ever. He was thrice re-elected to the consulship, and during his fourth term of office he received the honour of a triumph for his victory over the Sabines. He died in the following year (503 B.C.), and was buried at the public expense, the matrons mourn ing him for ten months. VALERIUS FLACCUS. See FLACCUS. VALERIUS MAXIMUS, Latin writer, author of a collection of historical anecdotes, published his work in the reign of Tiberius. Prefixed to many MSS. of the collection is a life of the author, but it is a late and worthless compilation, and the only trustworthy in formation concerning his career is drawn from a few passing allusions in the book itself. The family of Valerius was poor and undistinguished ; for the great Valerii Maxirni who are conspicuous in the annals of the early Roman republic cannot be traced lower than the Punic Wars. Valerius himself professes to have owed everything to Sextus Pompeius, who was descended from a paternal uncle of the great Pompey. 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. He took Valerius with him when he went to Asia as proconsul. Although Valerius does not state that his profession was that of a teacher of rhetoric, the fact is betrayed by every page of his writings. In his procemium he plainly intimates that he is putting forth a kind of commonplace book of historical anecdotes for use in the schools of rhetoric, where the pupils were severely trained in the art of embellishing speeches by references to history. The title for the work in the MSS. is &quot; Books of Memorable Deeds and Utterances.&quot; No ancient reader would have expected accuracy in such a book, and the indignation ex pressed by many modern scholars at its glaring historical errors has been much misplaced. The stories are very loosely and irregularly arranged in nine books, 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 in tended 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 cur rents 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 may take much comfort to themselves from their moral superiority to the Greeks. The range of authorities from whom the collection is drawn is un doubtedly narrow. It has even been maintained that Valerius used four authors only, Cicero, Livy, Sallust, and Pompeius Trogus ; there are, however, clear traces of others, as of Varro, Asinius Pollio, and Herodotus. By far the largest part of the material comes from Cicero and Livy, though each is only mentioned once by name. Valerius was neither a well-read nor an able man. His treat ment of his material was careless and unintelligent in the extreme ; but for all that he did not miss his aim. Even though in one tale Tanaquil be made the wife of Ancus Martius, and in another ^Eschy- lus be mistaken for Pericles, though the Scipios and the Catos be mingled in confusion, though conflicting versions of the same occurrence be given, and the most startling anachronisms presented, yet the excerpts are none the less apt illustrations, from the rhetori cian s point of view, of the circumstance or quality they were meant to illustrate. Scholars have long since ceased to corrupt the text of Valerius, as Pighius did, to save his character for historical accuracy, nor do they now, with Perizonius, distort his meaning for the pleasure of adding to the list of his sins. &quot;What, then, are his claims to the attention of modern students ? In the first place, the existing literary remains of the time in which he wrote are ex tremely scanty, and mere scarcity confers value on many articles which are in themselves poor. And even on the historical side we owe something to Valerius. He often used sources now lost to us, and where he touches on his own time he affords us some glimpses of the much debated and very imperfectly recorded reign of Tiberius. His attitude towards the imperial household has often been mis understood, and he has been represented as a mea n flatterer of the same type with Martial. But, if the references to the imperial administration be carefully scanned, they will be seen to be extra vagant neither in kind nor in number. Few will now grudge to Tiberius, when his whole action as a ruler is taken into account, such a title as &quot;salutaris princeps,&quot; which seemed to a former generation a specimen of shameless adulation. The few allusions to Cwsar s murderers and to Augustus hardly pass beyond the conventional style of the writer s day. The only passage which can fairly be called fulsome is a rhetorical pn?an over the death of Sejanus. But it is as a chapter in the history of the Latin language that the work of Valerius chiefly deserves study. Without it our view of the transition of classical into silver Latin would be much more imper fect than it is. Erasmus declared that Valerius is no more like XXIV. 6