James Baquet

The year was 260. Shapur I, the Persian Shahanshah (“King of Kings”) had made repeated incursions into Roman territory, even taking and plundering Antioch in Syria. The Roman Emperor Valerian came to quiet the “eastern provinces” of the empire, where his army was stricken with plague. While they were weakened, Shapur invaded northern Mesopotamia, at that time a province of Rome.

Valerian was accompanied by virtually the entire Roman army along with its Germanic allies, but was defeated at Edessa. As the Romans tell it, Shapur had guaranteed Valerian safe passage to negotiate peace, but reneged on the deal and arrested him. His army then surrendered.

What happened next is a matter of some debate. Some sources say that Valerian and some of his men were retired to Bishapur, a city (now in ruins) between Persepolis and Ctesiphon. There, they were kept in relative, if spartan, comfort. Other Roman soldiers were put to work on engineering projects; the remains of a bridge-cum-dam they built remain to this day.

Other sources say Shapur subjected Valerian to humiliation, stepping on his bent back to mount his horse. Supposedly, Valerian was caged and, when he died, he was skinned, and his carcass stuffed with straw for preservation in a Persian temple. (There is some speculation that these stories were fabricated by Christian historians to demonstrate the fate of those who, like Valerian, persecuted Christians.)

Shapur, meanwhile, continued his depredations, taking the city of Caesarea and others, until his defeat by the Romans somewhere west of the Euphrates.

Valerian’s defeat at Edessa was the catalyst for a number of revolts that temporarily fragmentated the Roman Empire, as various parties rushed into the power vacuum to claim the throne for themselves or their sons. In a most egregious example, a Roman governor named Postumus murdered Saloninus — Valerian’s grandson and second in line to the throne after Valerian’s son Gallienus — and took control of the Gallic Empire, composed of the Roman provinces of Germania (much of Northern Europe), Gaul (essentially, France), Britannia (the island of Great Britain), and Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula, now Spain and Portugal).

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. acts of destruction or robbery

2. body

3. went back on

4. a deadly contagious disease

5. with

6. made up

7. extraordinarily bad, flagrant

8. guesswork

9. an event that causes another

10. simple, austere