Valerianus

• a Roman emperor, A. D. 253-260, father of the emperor Gallienus, Treb. Poll. Val. 1 sqq.; after him were named Valeriani aurei, Treb. Claud. 17.

a friend of the younger Pliny, who has addressed three letters to him. (Ep. 2.15, 5.4, 14.)

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 make known his own sentiments and wishes. The 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 length succeeded in subjugating Armenia, the ally 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 Euphrates ; 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, and contradictory are the records of this period, that it is impossible to arrange the events in regular order, or to speak with any certainty of the details. We should have imagined that little difficulty could have been found in fixing the precise date of the capture and sack of Antioch, the destruction of its edifices, and the massacre of its population, a catastrophe which must have caused a profound sensation throughout the civilised world, yet we cannot decide whether these things happened during the reign of Gallus, of Valerian, or of Gallienus. In like manner it is hard to decide in what year Valerian was made prisoner, although the weight of evidence is in favour of A. D. 260. (Trebell. Poll. Frag. Vit. Valerian. ; Aurel. Vict. de Caes. xxxii., Epit. xxxii.; Eutrop. 9.6; Amm. Marc. 23.5; Zosim. 1.27, foll. 3.32; Zonar. 12.23; Eckhel, vol. vii. p. 387.)

[W.R]

a son of the emperor Valerianus, but not by the same mother as Gallienus. He was remarkable for the beauty of his person, the modesty of his address, the high cultivation of his mind, and the purity of his morals in which he exhibited a marked contrast to his dissolute brother, along with whom he perished at Milan in A. D. 268. [Gallienus.] Trebellius Pollio affirms that he received the title of Caesar from his father, and of Augustus from Gallienus, but this assertion is not supported by the Fasti nor by any other historical evidence, while Eckhel has adduced many weighty arguments to prove that he never could have enjoyed either of these appellations, and that all the coins ascribed to him belong in reality to his nephew Saloninus. (Trebell. Poll. Valerian. jun. ; Eutrop. 9.8; Zonar. 12.24, according to whom young Valerianus was slain not at Milan, but at Rome, along with the son of Gallienus, after the death of the latter. See also Eckhel, vol. vii. pp. 432, 436, and the dissertation of Brequigny in the Mémoires de L'Academie de Sciences et Belles Lettres, vol. xxxii. p. 274.) [W.R]

[Saloninus.] [W.R]

with the title Episcopus Cemeliensis. Works De Bono Disciplinae

Valerianus is the name attached in a single MS. to a discourse De Bono Disciplinae, frequently printed among the works of St. Augustine, but no author bearing this designation has been commemorated by Gennadius, by Isidorus, nor by any other compiler of ecclesiastical biographies. Cemelium was a village in the neighbourhood of Nice, the episcopate of which was, by a decree of Pope Leo the Great, conjoined with that of Nice, so that after that period it did not form an independent diocese -- a fact which determines one limit with regard to the age of Valerianus. He is believed to be identical with the Valerianus to whom, in common with other bishops of southern Gaul, a letter was addressed by Leo touching the ordination of the bishop of Vaison (Episcopus Vasensis), and he is further believed to be the Valerianus who assisted at the councils of Ries (A. D. 439) and Arles (A. D. 455), but these and other suppositions rest upon no basis more stable than simple conjecture. Editions

The Sermo de Bono Disciplinae was first published as the work of Valerianus by Melchior Goldastus, 8vo. Gen. 1601. Nineteen other discourses and an Epistle

Ten years afterwards Sirmond discovered in a MS. belonging to the monastery of Corvey on the Weser nineteen discourses, together with an Epistola ad Monachos de Virtutibus et Ordine Doctrinae Apostolicae, purporting to be the production of Valerianus Episcopus. Although the codex in question did not contain the homily De Bono Disciplinae, nor indicate the site of the bishopric of this Valerianus, Sirmond concluded from the style that the whole of these pieces must unquestionably be ascribed to Valerianus Ceemeliensis. Editions

Sirmond printed an octavo volume at Paris in 1612 with the title Sancti Valeriani Episcopi Cemeliensis Homiliae XX. Item Epistola ad Monachos de Virtutibus et Ordine Doctrinae Apostolicae. Omnia primum praeter uncam Homiliam post annos plus minus millc ducentos in lucem edita a Jacobo Sirmondo Societatis Jesu Presbytero anno M.DCXII. These tracts will be found also in the collected works of Sirmond, vol i. p. 604. fol. Paris, 1696, in the Bibliotheca Patrum Maxima, vol. viii. p. 498, fol. Lugd. 1677, and under their best form in the Bibliotheca Patrum of Galland, vol. x. p. 123, fol. Venet. 1774. Further Information

Schoenemann, Biblioth. Patrum Lat. vol. 2.38. [W.R]

one of the many victims of the suspicious cruelty of Elagabalus (D. C. 79.4.) [W.R]

a physician, whose date is unknown, who died at the early age of twenty-two, and whose name is preserved in a Latin inscription found at Como. (Gruter, Inscr. 1.635.) Works Medicinae Plinianae Libri Quinque

To him is attributed (but apparently without any very good reason) a Latin medical work entitled Medicinae Plinianae Libri Quinque, which is supposed to have been written about the fourth century after Christ. It is a book on domestic medicine, compiled from Pliny, Dioscorides, Galen, Alexander Trallianus, and others, and is not of much value. The first three books treat of different diseases, beginning with the head and descending to the feet, and contain an account of a great number of medicines, taken partly from Pliny and partly from later writers. The fourth book treats of the properties of plants, and is in a great measure taken from Galen; and the fifth, which is almost entirely taken from Alexander Trallianus, treats of the diet suitable to different diseases. Editions

The work was first published at Rome 1509, fol., edited by Th. Pighlinuccius. There is (according to Haller) a much more accurate edition, published Bonon. 1516, fol. It is also inserted in Alban Thorer's (Torinus) Collection, Basil. 1528, fol., and in the Aldine Collection of Medici Antiqui, Venet. 1547, fol. There is a learned dissertation by J. G. Günz (which the Writer has never seen), entitled De Auctore Operis de Re Medica, vulgo Plinio Valeriano adscripti, Lips. 1736, 4to, in which the author tries to prove that the work in question was written by Siburius. Further Information

See Fabricius, Bibl. Lat. ; Haller, Bibl. Med. Pract. ; Choulant, Handb.der Bücherkunde für die Aeltere Medicin; Penny Cyclop. [W.A.G]

(1) P. Licinius, a Roman emperor, A.D. 253-260. He was entrapped into a conference by the Persians, taken prisoner (260) by Sapor, and passed the remainder of his life in captivity, subjected to every insult which Oriental cruelty could devise. His skin was stuffed after his death and hung in one of the Persian temples for many years.

(2) A son of the preceding, who perished along with Gallienus at Milan in 268. See Gallienus.