Valerian
c. 199 CE–c. 260 CE · Rome
Valerian (c. 199–260 CE), Roman emperor from 253, is remembered as the only Roman emperor taken prisoner by a foreign power, captured by the Sasanian Persian king Shapur I after the Battle of Edessa in 260 and held in captivity until his death. In edicts of 257 and 258 he ordered an empire-wide persecution of Christians, requiring clergy to sacrifice to the Roman gods and then ordering the execution of Christian leaders; among those martyred were Pope Sixtus II and Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, both killed in 258. The persecution lapsed after his capture, when his son Gallienus issued an edict of toleration.
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RomeרומאItaly
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About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Valerian’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Valerian’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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