Valerian was never released from captivity. Stories—whether true or no it is impossible to say—were told of the humiliations to which he was subjected by the Persian king. Whenever Sapor mounted his horse, he used to put his foot on the neck of his captive. And when the unhappy man was released by death, his skin was stuffed with straw, and the figure preserved in one of the Persian temples, "a more real monument of triumph," remarks Gibbon, "than the fancied trophies of brass and marble so often erected by Roman vanity." Whatever may be the truth about this or that fact, it is certain that this period witnessed the infliction of two unprecedented humiliations on the dignity of Rome, one Emperor slain in battle, another kept in a dishonourable captivity.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] It is remarkable that the most philosophic of the "Good Emperors" departed from the rule of adoption which had apparently been so beneficial to Rome, and left the succession to his son, of whose real character he could hardly have been ignorant. Gibbon, however, thinks that the want of the hereditary principle was one of the great causes of the troubles of the Empire.
[44] In 165 the legions returning from the East are said to have brought the Oriental plague into Europe.
[45] Gibbon reduces the number to nineteen.
[46] The Eastern division of the province.
II
A CENTURY OF REVIVAL
An observer of the calamities and disgraces which overtook the Empire in what I have called "A Century of Disgrace," might have supposed that the end was at hand. But an ancient institution does not perish so easily. The Empire still possessed a great prestige, an organisation of government which had been worked out by a succession of able statesmen and rulers, and an army with numberless traditions of victory. Given an able leader, there would certainly be a revival of vigour, or, to say the least, a check to the progress of decay. A better time began with the death of Gallienus, the son of Valerian, in A.D. 268. He perished, it is doubtful whether by treachery or accident, in one of the numberless conflicts that occurred during this period between the possessor of the imperial throne and the numerous pretenders who aspired to it. His successor was a soldier of humble origin, though he bore the old patrician name of Claudius. He had soon an opportunity of showing his qualities as a soldier. In the year after his accession to the throne a huge army of Goths and of other tribes who were accustomed to fight under their standard invaded the provinces south of the Danube. Claudius hastened to encounter them, and fought a great battle at Nissa in Servia in which 50,000 of the barbarians are said to have perished. Little is known of the details of this or indeed of any of the conflicts of the time; the chronicles of the age are wanting in the power of description and, indeed, in all literary gift, but we gather that the legions were beginning to give way when Claudius brought up reinforcements to their help. These fresh troops fell upon the barbarian rear, and wholly changed the fortunes of the day. But the victory of Nissa did not put an end to the war. Nor, indeed, did Claudius live to finish it. He did enough, it is true, to win the title of Gothicus, and to deserve it better than was sometimes the case with Emperors who were similarly honoured.[47] But he died—the victim, it was said, of a plague which had originated in the barbarian camp—after a reign of little more than two years, and left the completion of the war to his successor Aurelian.
Aurelian's reign was but little longer than that of Claudius. It began in August, 270, and was ended in March, 275, by assassination; but this brief period was crowded with great achievements. In dealing with the Goths he showed that he was a statesman as well as a soldier. After conclusively proving to them that he could vanquish them in the field, he turned them, by a seasonable generosity, from enemies into friends. It had become evident that the province which Trajan had added to the Empire could no longer be held with advantage; Dacia, accordingly, was given up to the Goths, and a tribe associated with them, of whom we shall hear again, the Vandals. The Goths remained loyal to Rome, till, as we shall see, they were forced into hostility. They even furnished a body of auxiliary cavalry to the imperial army.