112 - Captured Alive

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Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 112, Captured Alive. In the autumn of 253 AD, the troops supporting short-lived Emperor Aemilius Aemilianus abandoned the man they had so recently elevated to the purple, and defected en masse to Valerian. I think we can forgive the Romans for at first not investing too much emotional energy in this new newly appointed emperor, because, after all, in the 18 years since the assassination of Alexander Severus, the empire had seen 11 different men claim the title Augustus. There was absolutely no reason to believe that the new emperor would not simply come and go along with all the rest.

But when Valerian descended from the Alps, he wound up bringing with him 15 years of relative stability at the top of the political pyramid, at least in a sense. Sure, the western provinces of Gaul, Britannia, Hispania, Germania Superior, Germania Inferior, and Rhaetia would break away in 260, losses that would be matched in that year when Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and most of Asia Minor came under the control of the city of Palmyra. But the middle of the empire, Greece and the Balkans and Italy, would, from 253 to 268, be the domains of Valerian and his son, Publius Licinius Ignatius Gallienus, and their reign will form the bridge between the old empire of Augustus and Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, and the coming empire of Diocletian and Constantine and Theodosius. Now whether the fractured stability of Gallienus was more dangerous than the unified political anarchy that preceded him is a question scholars still debate today.

As soon as Valerian's claim to power was recognized by the Senate in October 253, he wasted no time inducing them to further elevate his son Gallienus to the rank of co-Augustus. Having two emperors was a critical part of Valerian's plan for the empire, and indeed, the rapidity with which he began to pursue that plan have left some questioning whether or not the new emperor had dragged his feet a little getting out of Germany. That maybe, after receiving the distress call from Gallius, that Valerian decided to simply let Gallius and Aemilianus fight it out, which would allow him to sweep down and brush aside whoever was left standing after the showdown. But whether he was actively planning for what he would do when he became emperor, or whether he just had an idea of what he would do if he became emperor, there was very little separating Valerian's elevation to the throne and the announcement that he was heading to Syria to reassert Roman power in the east.

The main point of rising up Gallienus was so that Valerian could be sure that the western empire was left in loyal hands while he focused on the eastern front. This division of the empire followed the previous division of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus a century before, though this time it was the senior Augusti who went east, with his junior partner remaining in Rome.

One of the big problems we have in dealing with the crisis of the third century is that establishing a definitive chronology through the chaos is almost impossible. What sources we have are contradictory and full of biases and outright fabrications. For example, even when we deal with a momentous event like Aurelian's evacuation of Dacia, all we can say is that it happened sometime between 271 and 274. Everything else is just guesswork. We can make good guesses, but they are nonetheless still guesses. Just how crossed up the history of the mid third century can get begins to really become apparent during the joint reign of Valerian and Gallienus. For the next little while, dates are going to fall in ranges, and a lot of question marks are going to surround where people were and when they were there. We know basically what happened, and basically what order it happened in, but sometimes, well, we really don't.

That all being said, probably by early 254, Valerian was headed to Syria to survey the damage wrought by the recent Sassanid invasion. Gallienus, meanwhile, headed up north to the Rhine on a mission to repel Germanic incursions that had begun the minute Valerian picked up the legions guarding the border and marched them to Italy.

The pattern of these northern invasions would become a familiar one over the next twenty odd years, and highlight the cyclical nature of the third century crisis. Anytime border troops were called elsewhere to deal with some emergency, barbarians beyond the frontier would invade the under-garrisoned territory left behind, forcing troops from elsewhere to be called in and plug the gap, leading to invasions in whatever territory those troops had just left behind, and so on and so on. Then, whatever territory was left holding the bag would have to look to their local commander to engineer a defense, and if he succeeded, despite imperial aid, his troops would generally hail him as emperor, precipitating a civil war, forcing the existing emperor to come put down the uprising, and then the cycle would start all over again.

Valerian's withdrawal of the Rhine legions to help him win power in Italy precipitated the beginning of one of these long cycles. Germanic tribes took the opportunity to pour across the border and raid the wealth of Gaul. The junior emperor's arrival in country seems to have brought an end to the pillaging, and between 253 and 255, Gallienus seems to have won a number of, if they can't quite be called battles, then at least significant skirmishes, that forced the various tribes to withdraw back across the Rhine.

Valerian, meanwhile, passed through the Balkans and marched across Asia Minor on his way to Syria. While he was on the move, the Goths, and other associated tribes beyond the Danube, appear to have prudently waited for the imperial army to pass before they renewed their forays into Roman territory. As soon as Valerian was gone, though, various independent Gothic groups once again began descending south in search of the great wealth of the Roman Empire.

Valerian, though, had much bigger things on his plate than the Goths, who, though they had done damage to the Empire's ego, were still small potatoes compared to the truly existential threat posed by the Sassanids. Where the Goths were a dangerous rabble, the Sassanids were a well-organized rival civilization in the fullest sense of the word. And their attacks on the east threatened not just the rich provinces of Syria and Asia Minor which accounted for a great deal of imperial tax revenue, but also the all-important province of Egypt and its critical grain supply.

Valerian planted his court at Antioch, and for the next few years, he rebuilt the Syrian capital and the infrastructure of the surrounding countryside. At some point, he retook the border city of Nisbis, and by 257, things were mostly back to the way they had been before Sharapur's great raid of 253. The Sassanid king could only sit back and watch the Romans regroup, as the presence of the emperor and his army were enough to make him think twice about simply repeating his invasion of a few years before.

Of course, with Valerian in Syria, and Gallienus in Gaul, the Danube frontier became the odd man out, and, as I just said, Gothic armies began to once again pour south across the river. Sometime around 255, this new invasion forced Gallienus to march in from the west and reinforce the Middle Empire. With the emperor on the scene, or should I say, with the resources the emperor brought with him on the scene, the Romans were able to once again plug the northern leak and push the Goths back across the river.

But as Gallienus campaigned in the Middle Empire, the west inevitably slid back into chaos, forcing the junior emperor to head back to Gaul. Hoping to keep everyone in line after he was gone, Gallienus elevated his son, Valerian II, to the rank of Caesar and left the young man as the figurehead of record for all the Danube provinces. Actual administration of the provinces, though, was, critically, left in the hands of a general by the name of Ingenus, who we will have cause to deal with in just a moment.

The invasion Gallienus rushed back to deal with eventually became serious enough to draw all three members of the imperial tripartite to the lower Rhine. Valerian took a gamble that he would be able to leave the east in the hands of subordinates without triggering an invasion by Sharapur, and, with Syria mostly rebuilt, he headed to Gaul in 257 to personally oversee the situation. That gamble would not pay off. As soon as Valerian left, the Sassanids were once again on the move.

Obviously, this raises the question, what in the world could have been so serious that it brought Valerian all the way back from Syria to face? The answer lies in a super-confederation of Germanic tribes making their first, but certainly not last appearance in the history of Rome, the Franks. The Franks, who in time would become the reason why we call France France and not Gaul, were, as I just said, formed out of a collection of Germanic tribes who lived primarily along the lower Rhine. Likely included among their number were the Batavians, who, you'll recall, revolted against Roman rule while the empire was occupied with the year of the four emperors, the Chatti, who Domitian so successfully propagandized victories over, and elements of the Cherusci, the tribe Arminius had led to victory in the Teutoburg Forest.

This new confederation was formed gradually over the years, as the various Germanic leaders realized that they were getting nowhere fighting amongst themselves. The new Frankish supergroup was by no means a unified whole at this point, and the various barbarian kings still exercised a great deal of autonomy. But this new spirit of Germanic cooperation would in time become one of the answers to the question, why did the West fall when it did? As long as Rome was able to keep the tribes politically and militarily fractured, they had very little to fear. But once they joined forces, well, let's just say that there is a reason we call France France and not Gaul.

In 257, Valerian Gallienus and Valerian II all appear to have been in the modern city of Cologne along the lower Rhine, dealing with the sudden Frankish onslaught. Though the Franks were pushed back like all the other invaders of the mid-250s AD, at least one group kept moving forward, and eventually crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, sacking the undefended coast towns of the deep interior. But with all three emperors posted on the Rhine, the rest of the empire began to slip quickly back into what was becoming its natural state, chaos.

In the north, a Gothic tribe hit upon a novel idea that their compatriots would use to great effect in the years to come, constructing a fleet to carry them down the Black Sea coast on a raid of Asia Minor. With the Franks mostly contained, Valerian left Gallienus in charge of Gaul, while he himself headed east. But the emperor wound up having no time to pause on this new Gothic invasion, and instead replanted Valerian II as imperial figurehead along the Danube while he continued on to Syria. He was forced to keep moving, because word had reached him that far from leaving well enough alone, Sharpor was attacking Roman territory with renewed vigor.

The next two years get really tricky for historians trying to cobble together a chronological narrative, as Valerian chose this moment to revive Roman persecutions of the Christians, leading eventually to the death of St. Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, in 258. Cyprian was a voluminous writer, and his collected correspondence has proved to be an invaluable resource to head to when we want to double-check when an event happened or whether it happened at all. Cyprian's writings act as a tiny little lighthouse in the distance, helping us navigate our way through the historical fog. But then the Romans went and killed him, leaving us with only random inscriptions, some coins, and gut instinct to lead us the rest of the way. So thanks for that.

There are three big things that happen during this two-year period that we have trouble dating and putting in order. The Battle of Edessa and Valerian's subsequent capture by the Sassanids, the death of his grandson Valerian II, and the revolt of Ingenus along the Danube. Some sources claim that Valerian II died of natural causes and that when Ingenus heard that Valerian had been captured, he decided that the imperial family was now weak enough to revolt against. Others claim that the ambitious Ingenus decided to revolt simply because Gallienus and Valerian were both occupied elsewhere, that he killed Valerian II to kick off his campaign, and only later learned of Valerian's capture. Finally, we have the common version whereby it was the news of Valerian's capture that led Ingenus to kill Valerian II and revolt against Gallienus.

I don't have a good answer for which of these versions is actually correct, and I don't think anyone else does either. But a consensus seems to have grown up around the idea that Valerian II died under suspicious circumstances in 258, right around the time news reached the Danube that Valerian had joined the Sassanids in battle. In this telling, it is the news of war in the east that got Ingenus' imagination running wild rather than the news of the emperor's defeat. In this telling, there is a bit of a lag between the death of Valerian II and the official beginning of Ingenus' revolt, but that when the commander on the Danube did have himself declared emperor, that Gallienus rushed over from the Rhine to put down the revolt before word of his father's capture reached the west.

This all leaves 260 AD as the watershed year when the empire really melted down, with news reaching Gallienus almost simultaneously that the Sassanids had captured his father and that his own withdrawal from the Rhine had triggered a new invasion by the Germans. The defeat of Valerian at Edessa in the east and the Germanic invasions in the west were, of course, the two events that led directly to the empire breaking into thirds, a state of affairs that would persist for more than a decade until Lucius Domitius Aurelianus, the unconquered restorer of the world, put the pieces back together again in the early 270s.

To deal with poor Valerian I, we must follow the emperor east in 258 after dropping Valerian II off in Pannonia. The emperor probably passed through Antioch on his way to the city of Edessa in northern Mesopotamia, where he planned to stage his coming counteroffensive. But this counteroffensive would never really get off the ground, as a nasty bout of the Cyprian plague broke out amongst the legions in 259, and Valerian's forces were left thin and weak as a result.

Sharpwer decided to take advantage of the situation by marching on Edessa and challenging the emperor directly. Though we know very little about the details of the battle, it is reported that despite the toll taken on the legions, they still outnumbered the Sassanids by an almost two to one ratio, leaving Valerian confident that he would still be able to steamroll Sharpwer's forces. But, for whatever reason, in the battle that commenced on the plains outside Edessa, the Romans were utterly routed, and practically the entire army Valerian had brought with him were either killed or captured.

We don't know how exactly Valerian fell into Sharpwer's custody, but the traditional Roman version has it that after the battle, Valerian arranged for a meeting with Sharpwer to hammer out the terms of a settlement, and after arriving at the Sassanid court, the emperor was seized by the treacherous Persian king and taken prisoner. The alternative is that Valerian was simply tracked down during the battle and seized, making it easy to see why the Romans would prefer a version of events that allows the humiliating capture of their emperor to be painted as a result of a double cross rather than trying to explain how an honorable Roman could have allowed himself to be taken alive.

As with just about everything to do with this period, there are two versions of what happened next. The boring version is that Valerian and his senior officers were treated well by Sharpwer, and lived out the rest of their days as comfortable, if involuntary guests of the Sassanids until the emperor's death in 264. The more salacious version is that the no good wicked Persian king took every opportunity to humiliate the captured Valerian and used the Roman emperor daily as a stepping school to get in and out of his royal litter. Then, when Valerian finally died, his body was flayed and stuffed and posted in the Persian court as a trophy for all of the East to mock and gloat over. Once again, it is easy to see why the Romans would prefer to paint the Sassanid king in the worst possible light. But barring a time machine, we'll never know the true fate of Valerian.

We do know that he died in Persian custody and that for a variety of reasons, no attempt was ever made to rescue him or pay a ransom for his return. He was in his mid-sixties when he died and had ruled the empire for seven years. Those variety of reasons why nobody came looking for him had to do mostly with the fact that while the eastern empire was going to hell in a handbasket, the middle of the empire was going to hell in a handbasket, and the western empire was going to hell in a handbasket. In the final calculation, the life of one captured emperor was simply not worth the time and expense, not with so much hell being crammed into so many handbaskets.

When news reached Gallienus that Ingenus was in revolt, he was forced to immediately withdraw a significant portion of the Rhine troops from the border to help him put down the rebellion. As he had previously done with Valerian II, Gallienus left his second son, Salonius in Cologne as imperial figurehead, under the protection of the commander, Marcus Cassianus Latinus Posthumus, and sped off to the Danube.

Leading the suppression effort was a man who, at this point, Gallienus had supreme confidence in, but whose own ambitions would in time lead to his master's death, the general Aureolus. As commander of the imperial cavalry, Aureolus led the charge into Pannonia, where the sudden appearance of Gallienus' army took the wind out of Ingenus' sails, and the usurper either died in battle, was killed by his own troops, or committed suicide after realizing that his cause was hopeless.

The upshot of all this, as I just mentioned, was that Gallienus' new position on the Danube led to a significant invasion of Germanic tribes along the Rhine. Along the lower portion of the river, the Franks poured across the frontier as Posthumus scrambled to hold them off with what forces he had been left with. Meanwhile, a huge group of Alamanni, a tribal super-confederation similar to the Franks operating along the upper Rhine, poured through the under-garrison gap between the Danube and the Rhine, but rather than making for Gaul as would have been expected, they instead decided to head directly into Italy.

Obviously, this invasion of the home province was Gallienus' top priority. He ignored calls to go avenge his father in the east, who he just learned had been defeated and captured, reinforce Posthumus in the west, or stay put on the Danube and hold off the Goths. He chose instead to make with all haste to Milan in northern Italy, a city that, with Gallienus' help, was about to become one of the most important cities in the empire.

The Alamanni crossed the Alps into Italy before Gallienus could get in their way, and they apparently raided all the way down to Rome itself before being turned back by a hastily raised militia. Not necessarily needing to embroil themselves in a prolonged siege of the imperial capital after having grabbed so much of northern Italy's wealth, the Alamanni turned around, but on their way back north they were met by Gallienus, who beat them decisively outside of Milan. One independent faction of the Germanic invaders escaped back through the Alps with their captured treasure, but the rest were stopped short, and those who survived the battle headed back home empty-handed.

Though in the end it turned out to have no long-term ill effects, the invasion of the Alamanni was nonetheless a significant psychic blow to a population of Romans already dealing with a lot of bad news. But I guess that to say that the invasion had no long-term effects is misstating the case a bit. Yes, the invaders were beaten and driven off, but the time, energy, and manpower required to do so left every other region of the empire feeling like they had been abandoned by the emperor.

In the east, the shattered legions were facing down a Sasanian army they could not hope to contain. In the west, Posthumus was being overwhelmed by the Franks, and in the middle, a Danube army just weakened by the battle between Ingenus and Gallienus, stared across the river at a host of tribes itching to take advantage of the emperor's recent withdrawal to Italy. With each of these regions left on their own, the various legionary commanders had to take it upon themselves to organize and direct local defenses, leading their troops naturally to give their commanders a rank befitting men who were now wielding supreme authority over their respective provinces, imperator.

Rather than receiving congratulations from his generals then for having driven the Alamanni out of Italy, Gallienus spent the weeks after his victory instead receiving notes that each of them had been proclaimed emperor by their troops. On the eve of his battle with the Germans, Gallienus had ruled an empire that stretched from Gibraltar to the Euphrates and from the Sahara to Scotland. The next morning, he found himself barely in control of Italy.

Next week, we will watch the empire split into thirds. Though Gallienus was able to reassert his dominion over the Balkans, he had neither the money nor the manpower to do much about the east or the west, and they quickly devolved into autonomous political territories of their own. But this was not all bad news for Gallienus and Rome. Posthumus' Gallic Empire and the about to be established Palmyrene Empire were far more concerned with repelling foreign invasion than they were with domestic squabbles, and it turns out that they were both so successful at fighting off the Germans and Sassanids respectively, that it is hard to see how Gallienus himself could have ever done a better job. Ironically, the temporary breakup of the empire was perhaps one of the key reasons it was able to survive at all.