Battle of Edessa and the capture of Valerian

Shapur I had already defeated Rome twice: in 244 he routed the army of Gordian III, which had invaded Mesopotamia, at Misiche, and in a campaign of the 250s he destroyed a Roman army at Barbalissos and sacked Antioch. Valerian came east to restore order, but plague struck his troops. In 260 Shapur laid siege to Carrhae and Edessa, and Valerian marched to relieve them. Few details of the battle survive; according to Zosimus, the emperor was seized when he went to negotiate. Shapur’s trilingual inscription on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht at Naqsh-e Rostam claims that Valerian led 70,000 men gathered from all over the empire and that “beyond Carrhae and Edessa” the Persians took “with our own hands Valerian Caesar” together with the praetorian prefect, senators and officers, and deported them all to Persis.

Christian writers turned the persecutor Valerian into an emblem of divine punishment: Lactantius says that Shapur used him as a footstool when mounting his horse and that after his death his skin was flayed and kept as a trophy. Modern historians treat such stories with caution. Shapur’s reliefs show the emperor submitting to him, and the Roman captives were settled in Persis, Parthia and Khuzestan, where they are credited with building the city of Bishapur and the dam of Band-e Kaisar near Shushtar.

In the Roman Empire the loss of the emperor shattered central authority: usurpers rose in the East, Postumus founded the Gallic Empire in the West, and Odaenathus of Palmyra, who struck at the Persians as they withdrew, became the real master of the Roman East.