Derisively the Persians robed the captive emperor in imperial purple. He was compelled to kneel upon his hands and his feet in the mud, that Sapor, his conqueror, might use him as a block, putting his foot upon his back as he mounted his horse. For seven years, Valerian was kept as a slave in Persia. He was exposed to every indignity which pride and revenge could heap upon him. At last, with demoniac barbarity, they put out his eyes, and skinned him alive. His skin, dyed red, was stuffed, and preserved for ages in commemoration of Persia’s triumph over imperial Rome. Gallienus, upon the captivity of his father, was invested with the imperial sceptre. Appalled by the fate of Valerian, he dared not march to attack the barbarians. Sheltering himself in Rome, he endeavored to bribe the Goths and Vandals to cease their ravages. The barbarians accepted his bribes, despised his weakness, and continued their forrays. The Roman empire was in hopeless ruin. There was no longer recognized government or recognized law. In all directions, ambitious generals were rising in struggles for the crown. In the course of twelve years, more than thirty of these claimants appeared. The whole empire was swept by the blood-red surges of civil war. In those twelve years, it is estimated that the Roman empire, by civil war and barbaric invasion, lost one-half of its population. The sword, famine, and pestilence swept off a hundred and fifty millions of the inhabitants. These barbarians ravaged the empire in all directions, perpetrating horrors indescribable. Several times they flaunted their defiant flag within sight of the dome of the capitol at Rome. Aureolus, an insurgent general, marched upon Rome with an army from the Upper Danube. Gallienus advanced to meet him. In the tumult of a midnight battle, he was slain by one of his own soldiers. With his dying breath he named one of his most distinguished generals, Claudius, emperor. The senate accepted him. Claudius captured Aureolus, and put him to death. The barbarians now, in armaments more formidable than ever before, were crossing the frontiers in a line fifteen hundred miles in length, extending from the German Ocean to the waves of the Euxine. An immense army of Goths, numbering three hundred and twenty thousand men, in six thousand barges, descended the Dneister to the Black Sea. Hence, passing through the Bosphorus, they entered the Sea of Marmora, and swept resistlessly over all the provinces of ancient Greece. Claudius attacked them. In a momentary revival of the ancient Roman vigor, he drove them back to their forests. In the pursuit, Claudius died; and the sceptre passed to Aurelian, the son of a peasant, but one of Rome’s ablest generals. He pursued the Goths with astonishing energy, smiting them with a rod of iron. He drove them from France, Spain, and Britain, and then prepared to attack them in the Far East.