After the emperor Decius had fallen in the year 251 when fighting against the Goths in Europe, the government of the empire, if at that time there was still an empire and a government at all, left the East entirely to its fate. While the pirates from the Black Sea ravaged the coasts far and wide and even the interior, the Persian king Sapor again assumed the aggressive. While his father had been content with calling himself lord of Iran, he first designated himself--as did the succeeding rulers after his example--the great-king of Iran and non-Iran (p. 83, note), and thereby laid down, as it were, the programme of his policy of conquest. In the year 252 or 253 he occupied Armenia, or it submitted to him voluntarily, beyond doubt carried likewise away by that resuscitation of the old Persian faith and Persian habits; the legitimate king Tiridates sought shelter with the Romans, the other members of the royal house placed themselves under the banners of the Persian.[94] After Armenia thus had become Persian, the hosts of the Orientals overran Mesopotamia, Syria, and Cappadocia; they laid waste the level country far and wide, but the inhabitants of the larger towns, first of all the brave Edessenes, repelled the attack of enemies little equipped for besieging. In the West, meanwhile at least, a recognised government had been set up. The emperor Publius Licinius Valerianus, an honest and well-disposed ruler, but not resolute in character or equal to dealing with difficulties, appeared at length in the East and resorted to Antioch. Thence he went to Cappadocia, which the Persian roving hordes evacuated. But the plague decimated his army, and he delayed long to take up the decisive struggle in Mesopotamia. At length he resolved to bring help to the sorely pressed Edessa, and crossed the Euphrates with his forces. There, not far from Edessa, occurred the disaster which had nearly the same significance for the Roman East as the victory of the Goths at the mouth of the Danube and the fall of Decius--the capture of the emperor Valerianus by the Persians (end of 259 or beginning of 260).[95] As to the more precise circumstances the accounts are conflicting. According to one version, when he was attempting with a weak band to reach Edessa, he was surrounded and captured by the far superior Persians. According to another, he, although defeated, reached the beleaguered town, but, as he brought no sufficient help and the provisions came to an end only the more rapidly, he dreaded the outbreak of a military insurrection, and therefore delivered himself voluntarily into the hands of the enemy. According to a third, he, reduced to extremities, entered into negotiations with Sapor; when the Persian king declined to treat with envoys, he appeared personally in the enemy’s camp, and was perfidiously made a prisoner. [Sidenote: The East without an emperor.]