This date belongs to the period of extreme depression which coincides with the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus. Valerian was a favourite lieutenant of the Emperor Decius, and seems to have been a man of high character and ability. But circumstances were too strong for him. Great as were the dangers that threatened the European provinces of the Empire, it was on the Asiatic frontier that he found his presence more imperatively demanded. A revolution in Parthia had restored the ancient dynasty of the Persian kings, or, at least, a family that claimed that character. The new line of kings was now represented by a certain Shapar, or, as the Romans spelt it, Sapor. Armenia, long a bone of contention between Rome and Parthia, was overrun; the garrisons on the Euphrates were forced to surrender. Valerian hastened to meet the new enemy, encountered him near Edessa, and suffered a crushing defeat. We know next to nothing of what happened except that the legions were led, by the folly of their chief or the treachery of those whom he trusted, into a hopeless situation; that their attempt to cut their way through the hosts of the enemy was repulsed with great loss; and that in the end Valerian had to surrender himself to Sapor, and that the legions laid down their arms. There was nothing now to stop the Parthian king. The splendid city of Antioch was taken and plundered or burnt. He even crossed the Taurus range, and captured the wealthy city of Tarsus. It is impossible to say where he would have stopped, had it not been for the courage and ability of Odenathus, the governor of Palmyra and his wife Zenobia. It was they, not the Roman arms that compelled the Parthians to make their way back to their own country. 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: [Footnote 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.]