With regard to the treatment that Valerian received at the hands of his conqueror, it is difficult to form a decided opinion.  The writers nearest to the time speak vaguely and moderately, merely telling us that he grew old in his captivity, and was kept in the condition of a slave.  It is reserved for authors of the next generation to inform us that he was exposed to the constant gaze of the multitude, fettered, but clad in the imperial purple; and that Sapor, whenever he mounted on horseback, placed his foot upon his prisoner’s neck.  Some add that, when the unhappy captive died, about the year A.D. 265 or 266, his body was flayed, and the skin inflated and hung up to view in one of the most frequented temples of Persia, where it was seen by Roman envoys on their visits to the Great King’s court.

It is impossible to deny that Oriental barbarism may conceivably have gone to these lengths; and it is in favor of the truth of the details that Roman vanity would naturally have been opposed to their invention.  But, on the other hand, we have to remember that in the East the person of a king is generally regarded as sacred, and that self-interest restrains the conquering monarch from dishonoring one of his own class.  We have also to give due weight to the fact that the earlier authorities are silent with respect to any such atrocities and that they are first related half a century after the time when they are said to have occurred.  Under these circumstances the scepticism of Gibbon with respect to them is perhaps more worthy of commendation than the ready faith of a recent French writer.

It may be added that Oriental monarchs, when they are cruel, do not show themselves ashamed of their cruelties, but usually relate them openly in their inscriptions, or represent them in their bas-reliefs.  The remains ascribed on good grounds to Sapor do not, however, contain anything confirmatory of the stories which we are considering.  Valerian is represented on them in a humble attitude, but not fettered, and never in the posture of extreme degradation commonly associated with his name.  He bends his knee, as no doubt he would be required to do, on being brought into the Great King’s presence; but otherwise he does not appear to be subjected to any indignity.  It seems thus to be on the whole most probable that the Roman emperor was not more severely treated than the generalty of captive princes, and that Sapor has been unjustly taxed with abusing the rights of conquest.

The hostile feeling of Odenathus against Sapor did not cease with the retreat of the latter across the Euphrates.  The Palmyrene prince was bent on taking advantage of the general confusion of the times to carve out for himself a considerable kingdom, of which Palmyra should be the capital.  Syria and Palestine on the one hand, Mesopotamia on the other, were the provinces that lay most conveniently near to him, and that he especially coveted.  But Mesopotamia had