CHAPTER X.

THE PERSECUTION OF VALERIAN.

I. I. THE EDICT AND ITS OCCASIONS.

'WE stood together linked in a band of love and peace against heretical wrong and Gentile pressure.'

This is Cyprian's reminiscence of the Council a year afterwards. It indicates that externally there had been difficulties in its way which have left no other trace in the correspondence. From indignant words of Pontius we must also infer that some relics of the plague and the gallant service of the Church had lasted through the Council up to the moment of Cyprian's banishment'. But it comes as a surprise to find Cyprian's next letter written from exile to exiled brothers of the Council.

A sudden blow has fallen upon a large proportion of the Christian population—a renewal of persecution under which some died early, the heads of the society were expelled, and the youth of neither sex was spared.

Dionysius the Great was already in exile too, sent to Kephron by Æmilian himself. Just when Africa was the least troubled part of the world, the success of the Third Council on Baptism seems to have been a prelude to destruction. We will shortly speak of the confused circumstances which attended the outbreak.

1 Pontii Vit. II.

2 The Acta Publica are quoted very fully by Dionysius ap. Euseb. H. E. vii.

II.

See Note on Kephron and the Lands of Kolluthion, p. 463.

The new persecuting phase of Valerian's life was ascribed to the influence of Macrian'. These were two remarkable men. Valerian's purity and dignity of character had endeared him to Decius. At Decius' fantastic revival of the censorship, the senate, even if primed to choose him, did it with such acclamations as 'Pattern of old times,' 'Censor all his life,' 'Censor from a boy.' Trebellius adds that he would have been elected imperator by universal suffrage if such voting power had existed. The Christian population honoured him. There were so many of themselves safe in his household, that they affectionately called it a Church of God. In spite of a languid temperament he had been always admired for a characteristic insight in selecting men for great posts. We have his own sketch of Macrian whom he chose to fill the closest place to himself3.

He was made Rationalis, Chancellor of the Imperial Exchequer. Though delicate in health, of luxurious habits, and perhaps crippled in person', Macrian was a man of the highest force of character and fertility of resource, of distinguished soldiership and influence with the armies in several countries, among them Africa, and of immense wealth. His martial sons were patterns of discipline. Like other agnostics of his time he was deeply impressed by the mysteries of the Egyptian 'Magi,' and is called by Dionysius their 'Archisynagogus,' which must at least mean an intimate and a patron3. The family had long kept up a kind of cultus of Alexander

1 Zonaras xii. 24 says his name was Macrinus and his son's Macrianus. But the coins with the old bearded head have MACRIANUS as well as those with the young smooth face.

Trebell. Pollio, ed. Peter, Valeriani duo, c. 5.

3 Dionvs. ap. Euseb. vii. 10. Treb. Poll. Regilianus. Nearly all his generals became emperors. 5 Treb. Poll. Macrianus.

6 ἐπὶ τῶν καθόλου λόγων βασιλέως (Dion. ap. Euseb. vii. 10), i.e. a

Rationibus or Rationalis.

7 ἀναπήρῳ τῷ σώματι, Dionysius ap. Euseb. vii. 10. Zonaras xii. 24 says θάτερον πεπήρωτο τῶν σκελῶν which perhaps is not a mere version of Dionysius as he has independent information about the family.

8 Dionysius, ap. Euseb. vii. 10, says he did not recognise any Divine рóvoια or κplois. As Dionysius was his contemporary and lived in Egypt he may have known what he was saying; which is very unlike Gibbon's version 'As

the Great, wearing his portrait in their embroideries and embossing it on their plate. As there was at Alexandria a ceremonial cultus of Alexander, this perhaps may indicate a traditional connection with Egypt. There was bitter war between the Magi' and the Christian Exorcists with their anti-dæmoniac powers. They enforced the common interpretation of the deepening calamities of the Empire, and Macrian prevailed on Valerian to be initiated in their mysteries'. His later effect on the reputation of Gallienus himself is compared rather stiltedly by Dionysius to that of a cloud hiding for awhile the sun2.

Valerian's son Gallienus, or the conception of him, was a terrible product of the times. A polished rhetorician, and elegant composer, devoted personally to Plotinus", a scientific gardener withal, and a portent of heartless frivolity and sin. His clever wicked face on the medals is in utter contrast to his father's clean massive head. Yet he had early received such impressions, strengthened possibly by a Christian marriage, that the language of Dionysius about him, immediately on the disappearance of Macrian, seems more than gratitude for his instant action in the repeal of Valerian's edict®.

The persecution thus begun by the virtuous and stayed by

Macrian was an enemy to the Christians, they charged him with being a magician.'

1 πроéμevos in Dion. Ep. ad Hermammon., ap. Euseb. vii. 23, means no other betrayal of Valerian by Macrian than the projecting him on the evil policy which led to his fall. The mistake arises from mixing up with it a spurious sentence in Trebellius ductu cujusdam sui ducis' and fancying Macrian to be meant. His other expression ὑπὸ τούτου προαχθείς (ap. Euseb. vii. 10) has the same sense; Syncellus quoting it has ὑπὸ θεοῦ προax eis. Ed. Dind. p. 719.

the infamous emperor fulfilled for Dionysius, by help of the key furnished in its exact apocalyptic duration of three and a half years', the vision of the Dragon's wrath against the Woman. To Optatus afterwards it seemed to be in connection so close with Decius' persecution that together they made up the terrific 'Lion' Vision of Daniel2.

It is not common to find so total a revulsion from a tolerant policy except towards the end of a career, or unless some strong personal influences concur with some public difficulty. We see both elements at work when without warning or inquiry edict and rescript fell upon the Church.

The calamities which Macrian explained in his own way were indeed appalling. In the first triennium of Valerian (254-257) were felt the first death-pangs of the Empire.

This was 'The Uprising of Nations, as Zonaras says truly,-raiders no more, but Peoples in irresistible advance. The confederate Franks who had been first met some years before by Aurelian at Mayence, and from there to the sea held all north of the Rhine, had streamed across Gaul, heeding no defeats, and were entering Spain. And now the whole vast moat of the Empire formed by Rhine and Danube, with Hadrian's wall and foss between them, then continued by the Black Sea and the Don, was overleapt and overswum at every point. The All-men' and the 'March-men' poured countlessly in, the former soon to reach Milan thirty thousand1

Hermammon, goes beyond official style. It is possible that Dionysius knew nothing of the personal life. It remains, I believe, problematical how far the scandalous chronicles of the emperors represent more than brutal popular imaginings.

1 Dr Peters, p. 574, thinks Dionysius is speaking only of the East and that there was no persecution there until the 'second edict' (? the rescript) in A.D. 258, and infers that therefore the Eastern persecution lasted until the

death of Macrian. It is most natural to suppose that Dionysius counts from the first edict' until Gallienus' edict of toleration, middle of 257 to end of 260. Besides, being himself banished to Kephron A. D. 257, he might fairly count the persecution to have begun by that time.

2 Optat. iii. 8.

3 Zonaras xii. 23 ...ἐθνῶν οὖν καὶ ἐπὶ τούτου γενομένης επαναστάσεως.... 4 Zonar. xii. 24.

A.D. 257.
A.U.C.

P. F. A.

Germ.

strong before any check came. The Goths imperilled Thessalonica1; a general defence of Greece had to be organized; Athens was refortified, the Isthmus walled across.

To Generals who mostly became Emperors in their day Gallienus committed Italy itself, Illyricum, and Thrace. These were infiltrated with tribes which left 'nothing unravaged' as they passed',-Borani, Gotthi, Carpi, Orugduni. He went himself to the protection of the Celtic tribes and found it expedient to marry a Teutonic chieftain's daughter, and to surrender part of Pannonia, making the first Roman cession' to Barbarism.

About the middle of 257 Valerian marched to the East; 1010. Coss. for the same enterprising otherwise unknown Borani, whose Imp. sole contribution to civilisation was the overthrow of the past, Cæsar P. Licinius came from the Dniester to Byzantium in flat boats which Egnatius Valerianus they there exchanged for Bosporan vessels, and scaring all the settlers of Pontus into the midlands and highlands struck straight for the rich city of Pityus. With all the resources of the great fort and harbour the baffling of them for a single year was a great feat on the part of Successianus. Next year they were to take it, and to take the populous Trapezus, to their Max. Dac. own amazement, and they were followed up by tribe after tribe bent only on the annihilation of 'all beauty and all greatness.'

Max. III.
Imp.
Cæsar P.

Licinius

Gallienus

P. F. A.
Germ.

Max. III.

From the East the Persians or Parthians were not like the Northerners driven on from behind, but with a spontaneous lust of rapine they swept Mesopotamia and Syria for captives and spoil.

Africa for all its Berber raids was the safest portion of the Roman world.

1 Zos. i. 29, Zonar. xii. 23, Sync. (Dindorf) p. 715. Whether the fortifi cation of Thermopyla was a fact seems to me questionable.

μέρος οὐδὲν τῆς Ἰταλίας ἢ τῆς Ἰλλυρίδος καταλιπόντες ἀδῄωτον..., Zosim. i. 31. 3 Sup. p. 300, n. 7.

4 Gallus in 252 had promised annual subsidies to the Goths (vréσxero, Zosim. i. 24; exaggerated into σrévôeraι by Zonar. xii. 21), but in 238 the Goths had already been receiving annual stipendia. See T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, (1892) vol. 1. pp. 46 sqq.