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Valerian I – Roman Emperor: 253-260 A.D.
Bronze 27mm (14.22 grams) of Anazarbus in Cilicia
Dated CY (city year) 274, struck 253/254 A.D.
Reference: Ziegler 826 (Vs2/Rs1); SNG France 2155; SNG Levante 1516
AVT K Π ΛIK OVAΛЄPIANOC CЄ, laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right
ANAZAPBOY / ЄT•BOC T / A M K in exergue, Dionysos reclining left on lion or panther lying to right; Γ in high left field; Γ in low right field.
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 Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in Greek mythology. Alcohol, especially wine, played an important role in Greek culture with Dionysus being an important reason for this life style. His name, thought to be a theonym in Linear B tablets as di-wo-nu-so (KH Gq 5 inscription), shows that he may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500-1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks; other traces of the Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, “the god that comes”, and his “foreignness” as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. Dionysus was the last god to be accepted into Mt. Olympus. He was the youngest and the only one to have a mortal mother. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. Modern scholarship categorises him as a dying-and-rising god.
The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a mature male, bearded and robed. He holds a fennel staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth: the literature describes him as womanly or “man-womanish”. In its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession (thiasus) is made up of wild female followers (maenads) and bearded satyrs with erect penises. Some are armed with the thyrsus, some dance or play music. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers, and is sometimes attended by a bearded, drunken Silenus. This procession is presumed to be the cult model for the human followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. In his Thracian mysteries, he wears the bassaris or fox-skin, symbolizing a new life. Dionysus is represented by city religions as the protector of those who do not belong to conventional society and thus symbolizes everything which is chaotic, dangerous and unexpected, everything which escapes human reason and which can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods.
Also known as Bacchus, the name adopted by the Romans and the frenzy he induces, bakkheia. His thyrsus is sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey. It is a beneficent wand but also a weapon, and can be used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. He is also called Eleutherios (“the liberator”), whose wine, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subverts the oppressive restraints of the powerful. Those who partake of his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. His cult is also a “cult of the souls”; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.
In Greek mythology, he is presented as a son of Zeus and the mortal Semele, thus semi-divine or heroic: and as son of Zeus and Persephone or Demeter, thus both fully divine, part-chthonic and possibly identical with Iacchus of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Some scholars believe that Dionysus is a syncretism of a local Greek nature deity and a more powerful god from Thrace or Phrygia such as Sabazios or Zalmoxis.
Anazarbus was an ancient Cilician city. Under the late Roman Empire, it was the capital of Cilicia Secunda. It was destroyed in 1374. It was situated in Anatolia in modern Turkey, in the present Çukurova (or classical Aleian plain) about 15 km west of the main stream of the present Ceyhan River (or classical Pyramus river) and near its tributary the Sempas Su.
A lofty isolated ridge formed its acropolis. Though some of the masonry in the ruins is certainly pre-Roman, the Suda’s identification of it with Cyinda, famous as a treasure city in the wars of Eumenes of Cardia, cannot be accepted in the face of Strabo’s express location of Cyinda in western Cilicia.
It was founded by Assyrians. Under the early Roman Empire the place was known as Caesarea (Greek: Καισάρεια), and was the Metropolis (capital) of Late Roman province Cilicia Secunda. It was the home of the poet Oppian.
Rebuilt by the Eastern Roman emperor Justin I after an earthquake in the 6th century, it became Justinopolis (525); but the old native name persisted, and when Thoros I, king of Lesser Armenia, made it his capital early in the 12th century, it was known as Anazarva.
Valerian I – Augustus: A.D. 253-260 with Gallienus
Husband of Mariniana | Father of Gallienus | Grandfather of Valerian II and Saloninus
Publius Licinius Valerianus (c. 200 – after 260), commonly known in English as Valerian or Valerian I, was the Roman Emperor from 253 to 260.
Unlike the majority of the pretenders during the Crisis of the Third Centuryy, Valerian was of a noble and traditional senatorial family. Details of his early life are elusive, but for his marriage to Egnatia Mariniana, who gave him two sons: later emperor Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus and Valerianus Minor.
In 238 he was princeps senatus, and Gordian I negotiated through him for Senatorial acknowledgement for his claim as emperor. In 251, when Decius revived the censorship with legislative and executive powers so extensive that it practically embraced the civil authority of the emperor, Valerian was chosen censor by the Senate, though he declined to accept the post. Under Decius he was nominated governor of the Rhine provinces of Noricum and Raetia and retained the confidence of his successor, Trebonianus Gallus, who asked him for reinforcements to quell the rebellion of Aemilianus.
Rule and fall
Valerian’s first act as emperor was to make his son Gallienus his colleague. In the beginning of his reign the affairs in Europe went from bad to worse and the whole West fell into disorder. In the East, Antioch had fallen into the hands of a Sassanid vassal, Armenia was occupied by Shapur I (Sapor). Valerian and Gallienus split the problems of the empire between the two, with the son taking the West and the father heading East to face the Persian threat.
By 257, Valerian had already recovered Antioch and returned the province of Syria to Roman control but in the following year, the Goths ravaged Asia Minor. Later in 259, he moved to Edessa, but an outbreak of plague killed a critical number of legionaries, weakening the Roman position in Edessa which was then besieged by the Persians. At the beginning of 260, Valerian was defeated in the Battle of Edessa and he arranged a meeting with Shapur to negotiate a peace settlement. The ceasefire was betrayed by Shapur who seized him and held him prisoner for the remainder of his life. Valerian’s capture was a humiliating defeat for the Romans.
Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire describes Valerian’s fate:
The voice of history, which is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery, reproaches Sapor with a proud abuse of the rights of conquest. We are told that Valerian, in chains, but invested with the Imperial purple, was exposed to the multitude, a constant spectacle of fallen greatness; and that whenever the Persian monarch mounted on horseback, he placed his foot on the neck of a Roman emperor. Notwithstanding all the remonstrances of his allies, who repeatedly advised him to remember the vicissitudes of fortune, to dread the returning power of Rome, and to make his illustrious captive the pledge of peace, not the object of insult, Sapor still remained inflexible. When Valerian sunk under the weight of shame and grief, his skin, stuffed with straw, and formed into the likeness of a human figure, was preserved for ages in the most celebrated temple of Persia; a more real monument of triumph, than the fancied trophies of brass and marble so often erected by Roman vanity. The tale is moral and pathetic, but the truth of it may very fairly be called in question. The letters still extant from the princes of the East to Sapor are manifest forgeries; nor is it natural to suppose that a jealous monarch should, even in the person of a rival, thus publicly degrade the majesty of kings. Whatever treatment the unfortunate Valerian might experience in Persia, it is at least certain that the only emperor of Rome who had ever fallen into the hands of the enemy, languished away his life in hopeless captivity.
Valerian’s massacre of 258
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Valerian:
Pope Sixtus was seized on 6 August, 258, in one of the Catacombs and was put to death; Cyprian of Carthage suffered martyrdom on 14 September. Another celebrated martyr was the Roman deacon St. Lawrence. In Spain Bishop Fructuosus of Tarragona and his two deacons were put to death on 21 January, 259. There were also executions in the eastern provinces (Eusebius, VII, xii). Taken altogether, however, the repressions were limited to scattered spots and had no great success..
Death in captivity
An early Christian source, Lactantius, maintained that for some time prior to his death Valerian was subjected to the greatest insults by his captors, such as being used as a human footstool by Shapur when mounting his horse. According to this version of events, after a long period of such treatment Valerian offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, according to one version, Shapur was said to have forced Valerian to swallow molten gold (the other version of his death is almost the same but it says that Valerian was killed by being flayed alive) and then had the unfortunate Valerian skinned and his skin stuffed with straw and preserved as a trophy in the main Persian temple. It was further alleged by Lactantius that it was only after a later Persian defeat against Rome that his skin was given a cremation and burial. The role of a Chinese prince held hostage by Shapur I, in the events following the death of Valerian has been frequently debated by historians, without reaching any definitive conclusion.
The Humiliation of Emperor Valerian by Shapur I, pen and ink, Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1521
Some modern scholars believe that, contrary to Lactantius’ account, Shapur I sent Valerian and some of his army to the city of Bishapur where they lived in relatively good condition. Shapur used the remaining soldiers in engineering and development plans. Band-e Kaisar (Caesar’s dam) is one of the remnants of Roman engineering located near the ancient city of Susa. In all the stone carvings on Naghshe-Rostam, in Iran, Valerian is respected by holding hands with Shapur I, in sign of submission.
It is generally supposed that some of Lactantius’ account is motivated by his desire to establish that persecutors of the Christians died fitting deaths; the story was repeated then and later by authors in the Roman Near East “fiercely hostile” to Persia.
Other modern scholars tend to give at least some credence to Lactantius’ account.
Valerian and Gallienus’ joint rule was threatened several times by usurpers. Despite several usurpation attempts, Gallienus secured the throne until his own assassination in 268.
Owing to imperfect and often contradictory sources, the chronology and details of this reign are very uncertain.
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