Valerianus, proclaimed Emperor in Rhœtia, a.d. 254, was defeated in his campaign against the Persians, and treated with indignity alive and dead. After being made to crouch as a footstool for his conqueror to tread on when mounting on horseback, he was flayed alive, a.d. 260, and his tanned skin nailed in a Persian temple as a “memorial of his shame.” Cf. Const. Orat. xxiv. Gibbon’s catholic scepticism includes the humiliation of Valerianus. “The tale,” he says, “is moral and pathetic, but the truth of it may very fairly be called in question.” (Decline and Fall, Chap. X.). But the passage in the text, in which the allusion has not always been perceived, and the parallel reference in the Emperor’s oration, indicate the belief of a time little more than half a century after the event. Lactantius (de Morte Persecutorum V.), was probably about ten years old when Valerianus was defeated, and, if so, gives the testimony of a contemporary. Orosius (vii. 22) and Agathias (iv. p. 133) would only copy earlier writers, but the latter states that for the fact of Sapor’s thus treating Valerianus there is “abundant historical testimony.” Cf. Tillemont, Hist. Emp. iii. pp. 314, 315.