Valeriani Duo

1. . . . To Sapor, king of kings, or to the sun:

If I knew that the Romans could ever be utterly conquered, I should rejoice with you over the victory which you proclaim. But because that nation has very great power, whether by fate or by valour, take care lest the fact that you have captured an aged emperor — and that indeed by treachery — turn out badly for you and for your descendants. Consider how many nations the Romans have made their own out of enemies, by whom they were often beaten. We have heard, to be sure, that the Gauls defeated them and burned that mighty city; yet the Gauls now serve the Romans. What of the Africans? Did they not conquer them? Yet they serve the Romans. Of more distant and perhaps lesser examples I say nothing. Mithridates of Pontus held all Asia; yet he was beaten, and Asia, to be sure, belongs to the Romans. If you ask my advice: seize the opportunity of peace and give Valerian back to his own people. I congratulate you on your good fortune — provided, however, that you know how to use it.

2. Velenus, king of the Cadusii, wrote thus:

I have gladly received the auxiliaries you sent back to me, whole and unharmed. But that you have captured Valerian, prince of princes, I do not congratulate you enough; I should congratulate you more, were he given back. For the Romans are more dangerous precisely when they are conquered. Act, then, as befits a prudent man, and do not let fortune inflame you, which has deceived many. Valerian has both a son who is emperor and a grandson who is Caesar; and what is all that Roman world to you, which will rise up against you to a man? Give Valerian back, then, and make peace with the Romans — a peace that will profit us too, on account of the nations of Pontus.

3. Artavasdes, king of the Armenians, sent to Sapor a letter of this kind:

I come to share in your glory, but I fear that you have not so much conquered as sown the seeds of wars. Valerian is demanded back by his son and by his grandson, by the Roman commanders, by all Gaul and all Africa and all Spain and all Italy, and by all the nations that are in Illyricum and in the East and in Pontus, which either are in agreement with the Romans or belong to the Romans. You have therefore captured one old man, but you have made all the nations of the world most hostile to you — and perhaps to us as well, who sent you auxiliaries, who are your neighbours, who are always made to suffer while you fight among yourselves.

4. The Bactrians and the Iberians and the Albanians and the Tauroscythians did not receive Sapor's letters, but wrote to the Roman commanders, promising auxiliaries to free Valerian from captivity. But while Valerian was growing old among the Persians, Odaenathus of Palmyra gathered an army and restored the Roman state nearly to its former condition. He seized the king's treasures; he seized too the concubines, whom the Parthian kings hold dearer than their treasures. For this reason Sapor, all the more in dread of the Roman commanders, and in fear of Ballista and of Odaenathus, withdrew quickly into his own kingdom; and this, for the time, was the end of the Persian war.

5. These are the things worth knowing about Valerian, whose life, praiseworthy through sixty years, had risen to such glory that, after all his offices and magistracies notably discharged, he was made emperor — not, as is usual, by a disorderly rush of the people, nor by the clamour of soldiers, but by right of his merits and as if by the single verdict of the whole world. In short, if the power had been given to all of declaring their judgement as to whom they wished for emperor, no other would have been chosen.

And that you may know how great was the force of Valerian's public merits, I shall set down the decrees of the Senate, by which all may observe what that most august body always judged concerning him. In the consulship of the two Decii, on the sixth day before the Kalends of November, when the Senate was being held in the Temple of Castor on account of letters from the emperor, and the votes of the individual members were being taken as to whom the censorship ought to be conferred upon — for the Decii had placed that matter in the power of the most august Senate — as soon as the praetor proclaimed, "What is your view, Conscript Fathers, concerning the choosing of a censor?" and had asked for the opinion of him who was then the leader of the Senate, Valerian being absent (for he was then serving in the field with Decius), all said with one voice, the customary order of giving opinions being broken off: "Valerian's life is itself a censorship. Let him judge of all, who is better than all; let him judge of the Senate, who has no fault; let him pass sentence on our life, against whom nothing can be charged. Valerian was a censor from his earliest boyhood. Valerian was, throughout his whole life, a censor: a prudent senator, a modest senator, a grave senator, a friend of good men, an enemy of tyrants, a foe of crimes, a foe of vices. This man we all accept as censor; this man we all wish to imitate — first in his family, noble in his blood, blameless in his life, distinguished in learning, singular in his character, a model of antiquity." And when these things had been said again and again, they added "all," and so the session was adjourned.

6. When Decius received this decree of the Senate, he summoned all the courtiers, and ordered that Valerian himself also be invited; and in the assembly of the highest men, when the decree of the Senate had been read aloud, he said: "Happy are you, Valerian, by the judgement of the whole Senate — nay, in the hearts and breasts of the whole human world. Take up the censorship which the Roman state has conferred upon you, which you alone deserve, you who shall judge the character of all, who shall judge our character. You shall determine who ought to remain in the Senate-house; you shall restore the equestrian order to its ancient standing; you shall set a measure to wealth; you shall confirm, distribute, and fix the revenues; you shall review the public affairs; to you shall be given the authority for writing laws; you must give judgement on the ranks of the soldiery; you shall oversee the armies; you shall judge of our Palace, of the judges, of the most eminent prefects. In short, excepting the prefect of the city of Rome, excepting the ordinary consuls and the King of the Sacred Rites and the chief virgin of the Vestals — provided she remain uncorrupted — you shall pass sentence upon all; and even those over whom you cannot sit in judgement will take pains to please you." Thus Decius. But Valerian's reply was of this kind: "Do not, I beg you, most holy emperor, bind me to this necessity, that I should sit in judgement over the people, over the soldiers, over the Senate, over judges and tribunes and commanders throughout the whole world. These are the very things on account of which you hold the name of Augustus; with you the censorship has come to rest; a private man cannot fulfil this. I ask, therefore, pardon from an honour to which my life is unequal, to which my self-confidence is unequal, against which the times so set themselves that the very nature of men does not call for a censorship."

7. I could bring forward many other decrees of the Senate and judgements of the emperors concerning Valerian, were it not that most of them are already known to you, and that I am ashamed to exalt too highly a man who was overcome by a kind of fated necessity. Now I shall return to the younger Valerian.

8. Valerian the younger, born of a different mother than Gallienus, conspicuous in his beauty, commendable in his modesty, distinguished in learning beyond his years, most agreeable in his character and far removed from his brother's dissoluteness, was named Caesar by his absent father and, as Caelestinus says, Augustus by his brother. He has nothing in his life worth proclaiming, except that he was nobly born, most excellently brought up, and pitiably slain.

And since I know that many err who, reading the title of "Valerian the emperor" upon his tomb, suppose that the body of that Valerian was returned who was captured by the Persians — so that no error may creep in, I have judged that it should be committed to writing that this Valerian was buried near Milan, with this title added by the order of Claudius: "Valerian the emperor." I do not think that anything more need be asked, either about the elder Valerian or about the younger. And since I fear that I may pass the proper limit of this volume if I were to join to this book Gallienus, the son of Valerian, about whom there has already been much — and perhaps too much — discussion by me in his own Life, or Saloninus, the son of Gallienus, who is called both Saloninus and Gallienus in the history of his own time, let us now pass to another volume, as we are bidden. For we have always given ourselves to you and to fame, to which we can deny nothing.