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possession of the place without any difficulty. Joannes was seized and sent to Aquileia, where he was ignominiously put to death. Little is known of this usurper, but it is certain that the ecclesiastics were his enemies, for he attempted to destroy the privileges of the church; and as an instance, he compelled all ecclesiastics to submit to the jurisdiction of the civil judge.

In the meantime Aetius entered Italy with the Huns, and there was a bloody battle between him and Aspar, which was followed by a peace. The barbarians retired at the instance of Aetius and by the stronger persuasion of money; and Aetius was pardoned and raised to the dignity of Comes. The first measure of Valentinian, or rather of Placidia, who acted in his name, was to restore to the ecclesiastics all their privileges of which the usurper had deprived them. The same edict excluded Jews and Heathens from the practice of the law, and from all military rank. Manichaeans and other heretics and schismatics and astrologers were driven out of the towns. Placidia was zealous for the church.

On the 23rd of October, a. D. 425, Valentinian, who was then probably at Rome, received from his cousin Theodosius the imperial purple and the title of Augustus. Placidia also received the title of Augusta, and probably at the same time when her son was made Augustus. In this year Theodoric, king of the Goths, took several places within the limits of the empire, and laid siege to Arelate (Arles) in Gaul, but on the approach of Aetius the Goths retired with some loss. In January A. D. 426, Valentinian was at Rome, as appears from the date of the imperial constitutions, which contained various provisions against informers (delatores), for the maintenance of the privileges of senators and magistrates, and other matters. Some constitutions of this year, dated from Ravenna, were intended to maintain the Christian faith: Jews and Samaritans were prohibited from disinheriting their children because they had turned Christians.

Bonifacius, comes of Africa, had assisted the cause of Placidia and her son by refusing to acknowledge the usurper Joannes, while Aetius had supported him; and Bonifacius had received from Placidia during a visit to Italy testimonials of her gratitude. But on his return to Africa, Aetius, who was jealous of Bonifacius, accused him to Placidia of having a design to make himself independent in his province, and advised her to test his fidelity by summoning him to appear before her.

With double treachery, he at the same time warned Bonifacius not to come, because Placidia designed him no good, and Bonifacius, believing what he heard, disobeyed the summons of Placidia. Troops were sent against Bonifacius, and he called in to his aid (A. D. 428) the Vandals from Spain and their king Genseric. The subsequent history of Bonifacius is told elsewhere. [BONIFACIUS.]

Aetius, who had stirred up an enemy in Bonifacius, was employed at the same time in fighting against the Franks, whom he defeated A. p. 428, and recovered from them those parts on the Rhine, where they had settled. In the following year Aetius was made commander of the Roman armies, in place of Felix, and he defeated the Goths near Arles, and took prisoner their chief A taulphus. He also defeated the Juthongi, a German tribe near Rhaetia, and reduced the tribes of Noricum, which had revolted. Aetius

had with him in these campaigns Avitus, who was afterwards emperor. In A. D. 431 he also reduced the Vindelici, having the same enemies to contend against whom Tiberius and Drusus had subdued in the time of Augustus. In a. D. 432 Aetius was consul with Valerius; and in the same year apparently while Aetius was in Gaul, Bonifacius was recalled to Italy by Placidia, who had discovered the knavery of Aetius, and gave him the rank of master general of the forces. As early as A. D. 430 Placidia and Bonifacius knew the treachery of Aetius and were reconciled; and Bonifacius then attempted to check the formidable enemy whom he had invited. After maintaining himself against the Vandals for some time in Hippo Regius and losing a battle, he retired from Africa and was welcomed at the court of Ravenna. On hearing of the promotion of his rival, Aetius returned to Italy, and the two generals settled their quarrel by a battle, in which Aetius was defeated, and Bonifacius received a mortal wound from the spear of Aetius, who fled to the Huns in Pannonia; but he was soon pardoned and restored: he was too dangerous a man to make an enemy of.

In February A. D. 435 Valentinian made peace with Genseric; but at the same time disturbances broke out in Gaul, caused by the Bagaudae. The name first occurs in the time of Diocletian, and appears to have been adopted by the peasants themselves, who rose in arms, as it appears, against the oppression of their governors. (Eutropius, ix. 20, and the note in Verheyk's edition.) The Bagaudae were put down again, but they were not destroyed, for to destroy them it would have been necessary to remove the causes that called forth these bands of armed peasants, and the cause was the evils under which they groaned, heavy taxation, and all kinds of oppression. The picture of their sufferings, drawn by Salvianus, bears no small resemblance to the condition of the French peasantry before the revolution of 1789. In this year is also recorded a defeat of the Burgundians on the Rhine by the Romans, under Aetius.

The Western empire had enemies on all sides. The Goths who had been settled in Aquitania and the bordering countries since A. D. 419, broke out in hostilities in A. D. 436, and besieged the ancient Roman colony of Narbonne under their king Theodoric, the son of Alaric. The siege lasted some time, but the Goths finally abandoned the undertaking, when the town had received a supply of provisions through the vigor of some Hunnish auxiliaries, headed by Comes Litorius. At this time the western part of the Mediterranean and the shores of the ocean were infested by pirates, some of whom were Saxons.

On the 21st of October A. D. 437, Valentinian, being then eighteen years of age, came to Constantinople to celebrate his marriage with Eudocia, the daughter of Theodosius, who had been betrothed to him in a. D. 424. Valentinian surrendered to his father-in-law the western Illyricum, which had been already promised to the Eastern emperor by Placidia. He passed the winter with his wife at Thessalonica, and returned to Ravenna in the following year. By this marriage Valentinian had two daughters, Eudoxia and Placidia.

In A. D. 439 the Gothic war still continued, and Litorius was besieging Theodoric in Toulouse, who asked for peace, which Litorius refused. A battle

ensued in which Litorius was defeated, and the Goths carried him a prisoner into the city which he had hoped to take. Notwithstanding this success, Theodoric concluded a peace with Aetius, who threatened with a formidable army to dispute the further conquests of the Gothic king.

the expence both of the tax-payers and of the Fiscus. Oppressive taxation the symptom of vicious government and of the approaching ruin of a state.

Theodosius II. died on the 28th of July A. D. 450, and Marcianus succeeded him without waiting for the approbation of Valentinian, who, however, confirmed his election. On the 27th of November in the same year, Placidia, the emperor's mother, died at Rome just when hostilities were going to break out between Valentinian and Attila, king of the Huns. The result of this war was the defeat of Attila by Aetius, near Châlons sur Marne in the former French province of Champagne, in A. D. 451. [AETIUS; ATTILA.] The history of Valentinian's unfortunate sister Honoria is connected with that of Attila. [GRATA, No. 2.]

they were infected." Italy however seems to have been free from barbarians, though it contained many Goths under the name of confederates; and they were Arians too. The Visigoths, whose capital was Toulouse, had a new king in consequence of the death of Theodoric who fell in the great battle at Châlons, fighting on the side of the Romans. He was succeeded by his son Thorismond.

The Western empire was gradually losing its extreme possessions. Merida in Spain was taken by Richila, king of the Suevi; and Genseric seized Carthage by surprise on the 9th of October A. D. 439. This was the more unexpected as a treaty had heen made with him in A. D. 435. The capture of Carthage, which had been in the hands of the Romans for near six hundred years, destroyed the Roman power in a large part of western Africa; but Valentinian still retained the two provinces of Mauritania, and some other parts. Valentinian was at Rome in January and in The Western empire was in a deplorable state, March A. D. 440, as appears from the date of several overrun by barbarians who brought with them Novellae. In the month of June Genseric left" the detestable heresy of the Arians with which Carthage with a great fleet. He landed in Sicily, ravaged the country and laid siege to Palermo. Aetius was still in Gaul, where he restored tranquillity and set out for Italy. It was about this time that Salvianus wrote his work on the Judgment of God, in which he shows that the Romans had brought upon themselves, by their sins, the calamities under which they were then suffering. The grievous burden of taxation and the oppression of the powerful made the Romans prefer the form of servitude under the Franks, Huns, and Vandals, under which they enjoyed real liberty and paid no taxes, to the semblance of liberty under the Roman government whose exactions were intolerable. The barbarians were in possession of a large part of Gaul and a still larger part of Spain; Italy had been ravaged several times, Rome had been besieged, Sicily and Sardinia devastated, and Africa was in the hands of the Vandals. Trèves had been several times sacked, and yet, says Salvianus, while the place was reeking with the blood of the slain, the citizens still eagerly called for the games, which were exhibited in their amphitheatre, the ruins of which still exist on the site of the ancient city of the Treviri.

By a constitution of the 20th of February A. D. 441, the emperor made some regulations for making the property of the great dignitaries of the church and of the city of Rome liable to equal taxation with other property, and also liable for the repair of the roads and the walls of the towns and all other imposts. In A. D. 442 Valentinian made peace with the Vandals, who were left in undisturbed possession of part of Africa.

In A. D. 446, the Romans abandoned Britain. The Picts and Scots were ravaging the country, and the Britons in vain applied for help to Aetius who was then consul. A revolt took place in Armorica in A. D. 448 which was however soon settled.

Ravenna was the ordinary residence of the emperor; but he went to Rome early in A. D. 450 with his wife and mother, when by a constitution, dated the 5th of March, he remitted all the taxes that had become due up to the 1st of September A. D. 448; from which we may conclude that the people were unable to pay them. Sardinia and Africa were excepted from this indulgence. The emperor spoke of the exactions of the commnissioners who were sent into the provinces to prevent the exactions of others; they enriched themselves at

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In A. D. 452 Attila made a descent into Italy and spread consternation. Aetius had returned to Italy, and he and Valentinian sent Pope Leo to Attila to sue for peace, and the barbarian retired after he had devastated the north of Italy. [ATTILA.] A constitution of Valentinian of this year, which a zealous Roman Catholic writer calls scandalous law and altogether unworthy of a Christian prince," declares that the law does not allow bishops and priests to have jurisdiction in civil affairs, and that they can only take cognizance of matters pertaining to religion; and it requires even bishops to appear before the ordinary judges in all suits to which they were parties, unless the other party consented to submit to the judgment of the church. It also forbids ecclesiastics to traffic, or if they do, they are allowed no particular privilege.

Valentinian was relieved in A. D. 453 from a formidable enemy by the death of Attila, and in the same year Thorismond, king of the Visigoths, who was of a restless and warlike character, was murdered by his brothers, one of whom, Theodoric II., succeeded him.

The power and influence of Aetius had long excited the jealousy and fears of Valentinian, and the suspicious temper of the unwarlike and feeble emperor was encouraged by the calumnies of the eunuch Heraclius. Aetius was too powerful to be the subject of a contemptible master; and the betrothal of his son Gaudentius to Eudoxia, the daughter of Valentinian, may have excited his ambitious designs and awakened his treacherous disposition. His pride and insolence were shown in a hostile declaration against his prince, which was followed by a reconciliation and an alliance, the terms of which were dictated by Aetius. After this insult he had the imprudence to venture into the emperor's palace at Rome, in company with Boethius, Praefectus Praetorio, and to urge the marriage of the emperor's daughter with his son. In a fit of irritation the emperor drew his sword and plunged it into the general's body. The slaughter

was completed by the attendants of Valentinian, | and Boethius, the friend of Aetius, also shared his fate. (A. D. 454.) The principal friends of Aetius were singly summoned to the palace, and mur. dered. Thus the bravest man, the ablest commander of the age, the last great Roman soldier, perished by the treacherous hand of the most unwarlike of the Roman Caesars.

A grievous insult to Petronius Maximus is said to have been the immediate cause of Valentinian's death. Maximus had a handsome wife, who resisted the emperor's solicitations, but he got her within the palace by an artifice, and compelled her to yield to force what she had refused to persuasion. The injured husband resolved on the emperor's destruction, and he gained over some of the domestics of Valentinian who had been in the service of Aetius. While he was amusing himself in the field of Mars with some spectacle, two of these men fell upon him; and, after killing the guilty Heraclius, despatched the emperor without any | resistance from those who were about him, A. D. 455. This was the end of Valentinian III., a feeble and contemptible prince, the last of the family of Theodosius. He was ill brought up, and had all the vices that in a princely station disgrace a man's character. Even his zeal for the Catholic faith and the church is not allowed to have

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COIN OF VALENTINIANUS III.

VALENTINUS (Ovaλevtîvos), the celebrated Gnostic heresiarch of the second century, was a native of Egypt, whence he went to Rome, and there propagated his heresy, having seceded from the church, if we may believe Tertullian (c. Va lent. 4) in consequence of being disappointed in the hope of obtaining a bishopric. The chronographers fix the time at which he flourished in the reign of Antoninus Pius, from A. D. 140, when they represent him as coming to Rome, and onwards. (Euseb. Chron. s. a. 2155; Hieron. s. a. 2156; Syncell. p. 351, a.) Eusebius (H. E. iv. 11) also tells us, on the authority of Irenaeus, that Valentinus came to Rome in the episcopate of Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and survived till the episcopate of Anicetus, about A. D. 140-155. (Comp. Euseb. Chron. and Hieron., s. a. 2159.) Some writers assign to him an earlier date, chiefly on the authority of the tradition, preserved by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. vii. p. 764), that he had heard Theodas, a disciple of St. Paul: hence Cave places him at the year A. D. 120. The two opinions may be reconciled by supposing, with Clinton, that Valentinus did not begin to propagate his heresy till late in life; and, supposing him to have been seventy years of age in A. D. 150, the first year of Anicetus, he would be twenty-five in A. D. 105, when it was quite possible that a dis

ciple of St. Paul might be still alive. (Clinton, Fast. Rom. s. aa. 140, 144.)

Valentinus was one of the boldest and most influential heresiarchs of the Gnostic sect. A minute account of his doctrines, into which it is not consistent with the plan of this work to enter, will be found in the works quoted below: perhaps, for general readers, the brief but clear exposition of Valentinianism by Mosheim will be found the most useful.

There is also a good and brief account in Gieseler, which we extract, as the work is not so well known to the English reader, as that of Mosheim:

"From the great original (according to him, βυθός, προπάτωρ, προαρχή), with whom is the consciousness of himself (evvota, oryń), emanate in succession male and female acons (Nous or Mονογενής and ἀλήθεια, λόγος and ἀλήθεια, λόγος and Cwn, aveρwños and èккλŋola, &c.), so that 30 aeons together (distinguished into the 'Oybos, Δεκάς, and Δωδεκάς) form the πλήρωμα. From the passionate striving of the last aeon, the σopía, to unite with Bythos itself, arises an untimely being (ἡ κάτω σοφία, ἐνθύμησις, Ἀχαμώθ, κ. ε. in), which, wandering about outside the pleroma, communicates the germ of life to matter, and forms the Anuloupyós of psychical material, who immediately creates the world. In this three kinds of material are mixed, τὸ πνευματικών, Tò UXIKÓν, TÒ DλIKÓV. The result of the course of the world is, that the two first should be separated from the last, and that Tò veuμarixÓV should return to the pleroma, Tò ʊxikóv into the τόπος μεσότητος, where the Achamoth now dwells. In the mean time, two new aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, had arisen, in order to restore the disturbed harmony in the pleroma; then there emanated from all the aeons Jesus (σwriP), who, as future associate (rúgvyos) of the Achamoth, shall lead back into the pleroma this and the pneumatic natures. The owrhp united itself at the baptism with the psychical Messiah promised by the Demiurgus. Just so is the letter of the doctrines of Jesus for psychical men. On the other hand, the spirit introduced by the Soter or Saviour, is for the spiritual. These theosophic dreams were naturally capable of being moulded in many different ways; and, accordingly, among Valentine's disciples are found many departures from their teacher. The most important of his followers were Heracleon, Ptolemy, and Marcus." It must, however, be remembered that our knowledge of his system is derived almost entirely from the works of the writers against the heresies, whose expositions of their opponents' views are often very unfair. Nothing is extant of his own works, except a few insignificant fragments, quoted by the writers referred to. (Irenaeus, adv. Haeres. i. 1-7; Tertullian, c. Valentinianos; Clem. Alex. passim; Epiphanius, Haeres. 31; J. F. Buddeus, de Haeresi Valentin., appended to his Introd. in Hist. Philos. Hebr.; Cave, Hist. Litt. s. a. 120, pp. 50, 51, ed. Basil.; Mosheim, de Reb. Christ. unte Const. pp. 371-389, Eccl. Hist. B. i. cent. ii. pt. ii. c. 5. §§ 15-17, vol. i. pp. 191-193, ed. Murdock and Soames; Walch, Hist. d. Ketzereyen, vol. i. pp. 335–386; Schröckh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte, vol. ii. p. 359; Gieseler, Eccles. Hist. vol. i. pp. 140, 141, Davidson's transl.; Neander, Kirchengeschichte, vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 704 — 731.)

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even before the established period of mourning had expired. She was in consequence exposed to the brutal fury of the disappointed prince, stripped of her possessions, and banished along with her mother to the deserts of Syria; nor could the earnest entreaties of Diocletian, whose end is said to have been hastened by the misfortunes of his wife and child, procure any alleviation of their misery. Upon the death of their enemy in 314, they repaired in disguise to the court of Licinius, to whose care Valeria had been consigned by her husband with his dying breath; but far from obtaining at Nicomedia the protection and honour which they anticipated, they found themselves, after witnessing the murder of Candidianus and of Severianus, compelled to provide for their safety by a precipitate flight; and having wandered for many months over various provinces in a humble disguise, were at length discovered at Thessalonica, probably in the year A. D. 315, where they were both beheaded and their bodies cast into the sea. It has been conjectured that Valeria and Prisca must at one period have betrayed some favour for Christianity, for we are told that they were the first persons whom Diocletian required to offer sacrifice to the pagan deities when he commenced his persecution; and Tillemont seems to regard all their subsequent sufferings as a temporal punishment for their weak compliance with the commands of the emperor.

VALENTINUS, TU'LLIUS, a chieftain of the Treviri, who endeavoured to persuade the Gauls to join in the revolt of Civilis and Classicus (A. D. 70), but was unsuccessful, on account of the opposition of Julius Auspex and the Remi; so that only the Treviri and Lingones rebelled. Valentinus acted as the leader of the Treviri, but took more pains to secure their fidelity by harangues than their success by warlike preparations. When Cerealis passed the Alps, Valentinus joined Tutor in the attempt to oppose him. In his absence two legions, which had surrendered to Classicus at Novesium and Bonna some time before, and, after taking the oath to the empire of Gaul, had been marched to the city of Treviri, voluntarily took the oath to Vespasian, and on the return of Valentinus and Tutor after their defeat by Cerealis retired to the friendly state of the Mediomatrici. Valentinus and Tutor roused the Treviri anew to arms, and, in order to make them desperate, killed Herennius and Numisius, the legates of the above legions. Cerealis soon marched against them from Magontiacum, stormed the strong position of Valentinus at Rigodulum, and entered Treviri, where he harangued and pardoned the two legions just mentioned, as well as the Treviri and Lingones. Valentinus, who had been taken prisoner at Rigodulum, was sent into Italy, and was delivered up to Mucianus and Domitian, who were on their march to support Cerealis. He was condemned to death, and while undergoing his sentence, when some one taunted him with the misfortunes of his country, he replied that he accepted death as a solace for them. (Tac. Hist. iv. 69-74, 85). [P.S.]

VALENTINUS, VALERIUS, accused C. Cosconius under the Servilia lex (probably De Repetundis); and although the guilt of Cosconius was clear he was acquitted in consequence of an indecent verse of Valentinus being read in court. (Val. Max. viii. 1. abs. 8; comp. Festus, s. v. Tappulam, p. 363, ed. Müller.)

A. VALENTIUS, the Greek interpreter of Verres in Sicily, was one of his instruments of oppression in that province. (Cic. Verr. iii. 37, iv. 26.)

Our chief authority for the history of this unhappy lady is the writer of the treatise De Mortibus persecutorum [CAECILIUS] (cc. 12, 15, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 50, 51), whose notices have been collected, combined, and cast in an imposing form by Gibbon in the fourteenth chapter of his history.

VALERIA. 1. The sister of P. Valerius Publicola, is said to have advised the Roman matrons to ask Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, to go to the camp of Coriolanus in order to deprecate his resentment. (Dionys. viii. 39, foll.) Respecting her connection with the legend of Coriolanus, see Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 102, foll.

2. The last wife of Sulla, was the daughter of M. Valerius Messala. She attracted the notice of Sulla at the theatre, and he married her towards the end of his life. Soon after his death she bore a daughter. Plutarch calls her a sister of the orator Hortensius, but this is a mistake probably arising from the fact that the sister of Hortensius married a Valerius Messala. (Plut. Sull. 35, 37: Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. ii. p. 508.)

VALE'RIA, GALE'RIA, the daughter of Diocletian and Prisca, was upon the reconstruction of the empire in A. D. 292 [DIOCLETIANUS] united to Galerius, one of the new Caesars, by whom she had no offspring, but adopted his illegitimate son Candidianus. After the death of her husband in 311 Valeria rejected the proposals of his successor Maximinus, who, having become enamoured of her person and her wealth, sought to gain her hand

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VALE'RIA MESSALI'NA. [MESSALINA.] VALERIA POLLA. [POLLA, No. 1.] VALE'RIA GENS, patrician and afterwards plebeian also. The Valeria gens was one of the most ancient and most celebrated at Rome; and no other Roman gens was distinguished for so long a period, although a few others, such as the Cornelia gens, produced a greater number of illustrious men. The Valerii are universally admitted to have been of Sabine origin, and their ancestor Volesus or Volusus is said to have settled at Rome with Titus Tatius. (Dionys. ii. 46; Plut. Num. 5, Publ. 1.) One of the descendants of this Volesus, P. Valerius, afterwards surnamed Publicola, plays a distinguished part in the story of the expulsion of the kings, and was elected consul in the first year of the republic, B. c. 509. From this time forward down to the latest period of the empire, for nearly a thousand years, the name occurs more or less frequently in the Fasti, and it was borne by the emperors Maximinus, Maximianus, Maxentius, Diocletian, Constantius, Constantine the

Great and others. The Valeria gens enjoyed ex- | make known his own sentiments and wishes. The traordinary honours and privileges at Rome. Their house at the bottom of the Velia was the only one in Rome of which the doors were allowed to open back into the street. (Dionys. v. 39; Plut. Publ. 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 interment for that of burning the corpse, although they did not light the funeral pile on their buryingground, the bier was set down there, as a symbolical way of preserving their right. (Cic. de Leg. ii. 23; Plut. Publ. 23.) Niebuhr, who mentions these distinctions, conjectures that among the gradual changes of the constitution from a monarchy to an aristocracy, the Valeria gens for a time possessed 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 Sabine origin indicates (Hist. 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 Dict. of Antiq. s. v. Leges Valeriae.)

untimely fate of Decius saved the regulator of public morals from the embarrassment which must have attended the discharge of difficult and invidious duties, while at the same time he was admitted to the full confidence of Gallus, by whom he was employed to quell the rebellion of Aemilianus, and recall the legions of Pannonia and Moesia to their allegiance. While an army was forming in Noricum and Rhaetia, the rapid movements 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 advance his own. The sudden death, whether caused by disease or treachery, of his rival, whom he found encamped near Spoleto, prevented a hostile encounter. Valerian was chosen (A. D. 254) to fill the vacant throne, not, says the Augustan historians, by the rude clamours of a camp, nor by the disorderly shouts of a popular assembly, but in right of his merits, and, as it were, by the unanimous voice of the whole world. The new sovereign having assumed his eldest son Gallienus as an associate in the purple, prepared to repel, as best he might, the barbarian hosts which, gathering confidence 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 Babegan, by his crowning victory in Khorasan, overthrown 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. His schemes were baffled by the energy and valour of Severus, but the haughty and ambitious Sapor having at

The Valeria gens was divided into various families under the republic, the names of which are:- - CORVUS or CORVINUS, FALTO, FLACCUS, LAEVINUS, MAXIMUS, MESSALLA, POTITUS, PUBLICOLA, TAPPO, TRIARIUS, VOLUSUS. Besides these we meet with other cognomens of the Valerii under the republic, which are mostly the names of freedmen or clients of the Valeria gens. They are given below in alphabetical order, together with the surnames borne by the Valerii in the imperial period. [VALERIUS.] The few Valerii, who occur without any surname, are not of suf-length succeeded in subjugating Armenia, the ally ficient importance to require any notice. On the coins of the gens we find the cognomens Acisculus, Catullus, Flaccus, Barbatus.

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, and having called upon the senate to name the individual most worthy of such an office, 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 compliment 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 indication that the emperor, although he ostensibly left the election open, had contrived beforehand to

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 Antioch, 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, followed 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 stuffed 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 miserable fate, yet so imperfect, confused,

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