Chap. V.

And presently Valerian also, in a mood alike frantic, lifted up his impious hands to assault God, and, although his time was short, shed much righteous blood. But God punished him in a new and extraordinary manner, that it might be a lesson to future ages that the adversaries of Heaven always receive the just recompense of their iniquities. He, having been made prisoner by the Persians, lost not only that power which he had exercised without moderation, but also the liberty of which be had deprived others; and he wasted the remainder of his days in the vilest condition of slavery: for Sapores, the king of the Persians, who had made him prisoner, whenever he chose to get into his carriage or to mount on horseback, commanded the Roman to stoop and present his back; then, setting his foot on the shoulders of Valerian, he said, with a smile of reproach, “This is true, and not what the Romans delineate on board or plaster.” Valerian lived for a considerable time under the well-merited insults of his conqueror; so that the Roman name remained long the scoff and derision of the barbarians: and this also was added to the severity of his punishment, that although he had an emperor for his son, he found no one to revenge his captivity and most abject and servile state; neither indeed was he ever demanded back. Afterward, when he had finished this shameful life under so great dishonour, he was flayed, and his skin, stripped from the flesh, was dyed with vermilion, and placed in the temple of the gods of the barbarians, that the remembrance of a triumph so signal might be perpetuated, and that this spectacle might always be exhibited to our ambassadors, as an admonition to the Romans, that, beholding the spoils of their captived emperor in a Persian temple, they should not place too great confidence in their own strength.  

Now since God so punished the sacrilegious, is it not strange that any one should afterward have dared to do, or even to devise, aught against the majesty of the one God, who governs and supports all things?  

V. Non multo post Valerianus quoque non dissimili furore correptus, impias manus in Deum intentavit; et multum, quamvis brevi tempore, justi sanguinis fudit. At illum Deus novo ac singulari poenae genere 0201B affecit, ut esset posteris documentum, adversarios 0202A Dei semper dignam scelere suo recipere mercedem. Hic captus a Persis, non modo imperium, quo fuerat insolenter usus, sed etiam libertatem, quam caeteris ademerat, perdidit, vixitque in servitute turpissime. Nam Rex Persarum Sapor, is qui eum ceperat, si quando libuerit aut vehiculum ascendere, aut equum, inclinare sibi Romanum jubebat, ac terga praebere, et imposito pede supra dorsum ejus, illud esse verum dicebat (triumphi genus) exprobrans ei cum risu, non quod in tabulis aut parietibus Romani pingerent. Ita ille dignissime triumphatus, aliquandiu vixit, ut diu barbaris Romanum nomen ludibrio ac derisui esset. Etiam hoc ei accessit ad poenam, quod 0202B cum filium haberet Imperatorem, captivitatis suae tamen 0203A ac servitutis extremae non invenit ultorem, nec omnino repetitus est. Postea vero quam pudendam vitam in illo dedecore finivit, direpta est ei cutis, et exuta visceribus pellis est infecta rubro colore, ut in templo barbarorum deorum ad memoriam clarissimi triumphi poneretur, legatisque nostris semper esset ostentus, ne nimium Romani viribus suis fiderent, cum exuvias capti principis apud deos suos cernerent. Cum igitur tales poenas de sacrilegis Deus exegerit, nonne mirabile est, ausum esse quemquam postea non modo facere, sed etiam cogitare adversus majestatem singularis Dei regentis et continentis universa?