Valens Roman Emperor 364-378 A.D. Biography of
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Example of Authentic Ancient
Coin of:
Valens - Roman
Emperor: 364-378 A.D. -
Bronze AE3 Sirmium mint: 364-367A.D.
Reference: Sirmium RIC 6b
D N VALENS P F AVG, pearl diademed, draped & cuirassed bust right
RESTITVTOR REIP, emperor standing facing, head right, holding laburum &
Victory on globe, HSIRM in ex.
The Chi Rho is one of the earliest
christograms used by Christians. It is
formed by superimposing the first two letters in the Greek spelling of
the word
Christ (
Greek : "Χριστός" ), chi = ch and rho =
r, in such a way to produce the
monogram ☧. The Chi-Rho
symbol was also used by pagan Greek scribes to mark, in the margin, a
particularly valuable or relevant passage; the combined letters Chi and
Rho standing for chrēston, meaning "good."
Although not technically a cross, the Chi Rho invokes the crucifixion
of Jesus as well as symbolizing his status as the Christ. There is early
evidence of the Chi Rho symbol on Christian Rings of the third century.
The labarum (Greek:
λάβαρον) was a
vexillum (military standard) that
displayed the "Chi-Rho"
symbol, formed from the first two
Greek letters of the word "Christ"
(Greek:
ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, or Χριστός) — Chi (χ)
and Rho (ρ).
It was first used by the
Roman emperor
Constantine I. Since the vexillum
consisted of a flag suspended from the crossbar of a cross, it was
ideally suited to symbolize
crucifixion. The Chi-Rho symbol was
also used by Greek scribes to mark, in the margin, a particularly
valuable or relevant passage; the combined letters Chi and Rho standing
for chrēston, meaning "good."
Flavius Julius Valens (Latin:
FLAVIUS IVLIVS VALENS AVGVSTVS; 328 – 9 August 378) was
Roman Emperor (364-378), after he was
given the Eastern part of the empire by his brother
Valentinian I. Valens, sometimes known
as the
Last True Roman, was defeated and
killed in the
Battle of Adrianople, which marked the
beginning of the fall of the
Western Roman Empire.
Life
Appointment
to emperor
Valens and his brother
Flavius Valentinianus (Valentinian)
were both born 48 miles west of
Sirmium (modern
Sremska Mitrovica,
Serbia), in the town of Cibalae (Vinkovci,
Croatia) in 328 and 321, respectively.
They had grown up on estates purchased by their father,
Gratian the Elder, in Africa and
Britain. While Valentinian had enjoyed a successful military career
prior to his appointment as emperor, Valens apparently had not. He had
spent much of his youth on the family's estate and only joined the army
in the 360s, participating with his brother in the Persian campaign of
Emperor
Julian.
He restored some religious persecution, and was
Arian.
In February 364, reigning Emperor
Jovian, while hastening to
Constantinople to secure his claim to
the throne, was
asphyxiated during a stop at Dadastana,
100 miles east of
Ankara. Among Jovian's agents was
Valentinian, a tribunus scutariorum. He was proclaimed
Augustus on 26 February, 364.
Valentinian felt that he needed help to govern the large and troublesome
empire, and, on 28 March of the same year, appointed his brother Valens
as co-emperor in the palace of
Hebdomon. The two Augusti
travelled together through Adrianople and Naissus to
Sirmium, where they divided their
personnel, and Valentinian went on to the West.
Valens obtained the eastern half of the
Balkan Peninsula,Greece,
Egypt,
Syria and
Anatolia as far east as Persia. Valens
was back in his capital of Constantinople by December 364.
Revolt
of Procopius
Valens inherited the eastern portion of an empire
that had recently retreated from most of its holdings in
Mesopotamia and
Armenia because of a treaty that his
predecessor Jovian had made with
Shapur II of the
Sassanid Empire. Valens's first
priority after the winter of 365 was to move east in hopes of shoring up
the situation. By the autumn of 365 he had reached Cappadocian Caesarea
when he learned that a usurper had proclaimed himself in Constantinople.
When he died, Julian had left behind one surviving relative, a maternal
cousin named
Procopius. Procopius had been charged
with overseeing a northern division of Julian's army during the Persian
expedition and had not been present with the imperial elections when
Julian's successor was named. Though Jovian made accommodations to
appease this potential claimant, Procopius fell increasingly under
suspicion in the first year of Valens' reign.
After narrowly escaping arrest, he went into hiding
and reemerged at Constantinople where he was able to convince two
military units passing through the capital to proclaim him emperor on 28
September 365. Though his early reception in the city seems to have been
lukewarm, Procopius won favor quickly by using propaganda to his
advantage: he sealed off the city to outside reports and began spreading
rumors that Valentinian had died; he began minting coinage flaunting his
connections to the Constantinian dynasty; and he further exploited
dynastic claims by using the widow and daughter of
Constantius II to act as showpieces for
his regime. This program met with some success, particularly among
soldiers loyal to the Constantinians and eastern intellectuals who had
already begun to feel persecuted by the Valentinians.
Valens, meanwhile, faltered. When news arrived that
Procopius had revolted, Valens considered
abdication and perhaps even
suicide. Even after he steadied his
resolve to fight, Valens's efforts to forestall Procopius were hampered
by the fact that most of his troops had already crossed the
Cilician gates into
Syria when he learned of the revolt.
Even so, Valens sent two legions to march on Procopius, who easily
persuaded them to desert to him. Later that year, Valens himself was
nearly captured in a scramble near
Chalcedon. Troubles were exacerbated by
the refusal of Valentinian to do any more than protect his own territory
from encroachment. The failure of imperial resistance in 365 allowed
Procopius to gain control of the dioceses of
Thrace and Asiana by year's end.
Only in the spring of 366 had Valens assembled enough
troops to deal with Procopius effectively. Marching out from Ancyra
through
Pessinus, Valens proceeded into
Phrygia where he defeated Procopius's
general Gomoarius at the
Battle of Thyatira. He then met
Procopius himself at Nacoleia and convinced his troops to desert him.
Procopius was executed on 27 May and his head sent to Valentinian in
Trier for inspection.
War
against the Goths
The
Gothic people in the northern region
had supported Procopius in his revolt against Valens, and Valens had
learned the Goths were planning an uprising of their own. These Goths,
more specifically the Tervingi, were at the time under the leadership of
Athanaric and had apparently remained
peaceful since their defeat under Constantine in 332. In the spring of
367, Valens crossed the Danube and marched on Athanaric's Goths. These
fled into the
Carpathian Mountains, and eluded
Valens' advance, forcing him to return later that summer. The following
spring, a Danube flood prevented Valens from crossing; instead the
emperor occupied his troops with the construction of fortifications. In
369, Valens crossed again, from
Noviodunum, and attacked the
north-easterly Gothic tribe of Greuthungi before facing Athanaric's
Tervingi and defeating them. Athanaric pled for treaty terms and Valens
gladly obliged. The treaty seems to have largely cut off relations
between Goths and Romans, including
free trade and the exchange of troops
for tribute. Valens would feel this loss of military manpower in the
following years.
Conflict
with the Sassanids
Among Valens' reasons for contracting a hasty and not
entirely favorable peace in 369 was the deteriorating state of affairs
in the East. Jovian had surrendered Rome's much disputed claim to
control over Armenia in 363, and
Shapur II was eager to make good on
this new opportunity. The
Sassanid ruler began enticing Armenian
lords over to his camp and eventually forced the defection of the
Arsacid Armenian king,
Arsakes II, whom he quickly arrested
and incarcerated. Shapur then sent an invasion force to seize
Caucasian Iberia and a second to
besiege Arsaces' son,
Pap, in the fortress of Artogerassa,
probably in 367. By the following spring, Pap had engineered his escape
from the fortress and flight to Valens, whom he seems to have met at
Marcianople while campaigning against the Goths.
Already in the summer following his Gothic
settlement, Valens sent his general Arinthaeus to re-impose Pap on the
Armenian throne. This provoked Shapur himself to invade and lay waste to
Armenia. Pap, however, once again escaped and was restored a second time
under escort of a much larger force in 370. The following spring, larger
forces were sent under Terentius to regain Iberia and to garrison
Armenia near Mount Npat. When Shapur counterattacked into Armenia in
371, his forces were bested by Valens' generals Traianus and Vadomarius
at Bagavan. Valens had overstepped the 363 treaty and then successfully
defended his transgression. A truce settled after the 371 victory held
as a quasi-peace for the next five years while Shapur was forced to deal
with a
Kushan invasion on his eastern
frontier.
Meanwhile, troubles broke out with the boy-king Pap,
who began acting in high-handed fashion, even executing the Armenian
bishop
Narses and demanding control of a
number of Roman cities, including
Edessa. Pressed by his generals and
fearing that Pap would defect to the Persians, Valens made an
unsuccessful attempt to capture the prince and later had him executed
inside Armenia. In his stead, Valens imposed another Arsacid,
Varazdat, who ruled under the regency
of the
sparapet Musel
Mamikonean, a friend of Rome.
None of this sat well with the Persians, who began
agitating again for compliance with the 363 treaty. As the eastern
frontier heated up in 375, Valens began preparations for a major
expedition. Meanwhile, trouble was brewing elsewhere. In
Isauria, the mountainous region of
western
Cilicia, a major revolt had broken out
in 375 which diverted troops formerly stationed in the east.
Furthermore, by 377, the
Saracens under
Queen Mavia had broken into revolt and
devastated a swath of territory stretching from
Phoenicia and
Palestine as far as the
Sinai. Though Valens successfully
brought both uprisings under control, the opportunities for action on
the eastern frontier were limited by these skirmishes closer to home.
In 375, Valens' older brother Valentinian, while in
Pannonia had suffered a burst
blood vessel in his skull, which
resulted in his death on 17 November, 375.
Gratian, Valentinian's son and Valens'
nephew, had already been associated with his father in the imperial
dignity and was joined by his half-brother
Valentinian II who was elevated, on
their father's death, to
Augustus by the imperial troops in
Pannonia.
Gothic
War
Valens' plans for an eastern campaign were never
realized. A transfer of troops to the western empire in 374 had left
gaps in Valens' mobile forces. In preparation for an eastern war, Valens
initiated an ambitious recruitment program designed to fill those gaps.
It was thus not unwelcome news when Valens learned that the Gothic
tribes had been displaced from their homeland by an invasion of
Huns in 375 and were seeking asylum
from him. In 376, the
Visigoths advanced to the far shores of
the lower Danube and sent an ambassador to Valens who had set up his
capitol in
Antioch. The Goths requested shelter
and land in the
Balkan peninsula. An estimated 200,000
Gothic Warriors and altogether 1,000,000 Gothic persons were along the
Danube in
Moesia and the ancient land of
Dacia.
As Valens' advisers were quick to point out, these
Goths could supply troops who would at once swell Valens' ranks and
decrease his dependence on provincial troop levies — thereby increasing
revenues from the recruitment tax. Among the Goths seeking asylum was a
group led by the chieftain
Fritigern. Fritigern had enjoyed
contact with Valens in the 370s when Valens supported him in a struggle
against Athanaric stemming from Athanaric's persecution of Gothic
Christians. Though a number of Gothic
groups apparently requested entry, Valens granted admission only to
Fritigern and his followers. This did not, however, prevent others from
following.
When Fritigern and his Goths undertook the crossing,
Valens's mobile forces were tied down in the east, on the Persian
frontier and in Isauria. This meant that only
riparian units were present to
oversee the Goths' settlement. The small number of imperial troops
present prevented the Romans from stopping a Danube crossing by a group
of Goths and later by Huns and
Alans. What started out as a controlled
resettlement mushroomed into a massive influx. And the situation grew
worse. When the riparian commanders began abusing the Visigoths under
their charge, they revolted in early 377 and defeated the Roman units in
Thrace outside of Marcianople.
After joining forces with the Ostrogoths and
eventually the Huns and Alans, the combined barbarian group marched
widely before facing an advance force of imperial soldiers sent from
both east and west. In a
battle at Ad
Salices, the Goths were once again victorious, winning
free run of Thrace south of the
Haemus. By 378, Valens himself was able
to march west from his eastern base in Antioch. He withdrew all but a
skeletal force — some of them Goths — from the east and moved west,
reaching Constantinople by 30 May, 378. Meanwhile, Valens' councilors,
Comes
Richomeres, and his generals Frigerid,
Sebastian, and Victor cautioned Valens and tried to persuade him to wait
for Gratian's arrival with his victorious legionaries from Gaul,
something that Gratian himself strenuously advocated. What happened next
is an example of
hubris, the impact of which was to be
felt for years to come. Valens, jealous of his nephew Gratian's success,
decided he wanted this victory for himself.
Battle
of Adrianople and death of Valens
After a brief stay aimed at building his troop
strength and gaining a toehold in Thrace, Valens moved out to
Adrianople. From there, he marched
against the confederated barbarian army on 9 August 378 in what would
become known as the
Battle of Adrianople. Although
negotiations were attempted, these broke down when a Roman unit sallied
forth and carried both sides into battle. The Romans held their own
early on but were crushed by the surprise arrival of Visigoth cavalry
which split their ranks.
The primary source for the battle is
Ammianus Marcellinus. Valens had left a
sizeable guard with his baggage and treasures depleting his force. His
right wing, cavalry, arrived at the Gothic camp sometime before the left
wing arrived. It was a very hot day and the Roman cavalry was engaged
without strategic support, wasting its efforts while they suffered in
the heat.
Meanwhile Fritigern once again sent an emissary of
peace in his continued manipulation of the situation. The resultant
delay meant that the Romans present on the field began to succumb to the
heat. The army's resources were further diminished when an ill timed
attack by the Roman archers made it necessary to recall Valens'
emissary, Comes Richomeres. The archers were beaten and retreated in
humiliation.
Gothic cavalry under the command of Althaeus and
Saphrax then struck and, with what was probably the most decisive event
of the battle, the Roman cavalry fled. From here, Ammianus gives two
accounts of Valen's demise. In the first account, Ammianus states that
Valens was "mortally wounded by an arrow, and presently breathed his
last breath," (XXXI.12) His body was never found or given a proper
burial. In the second account, Ammianus states the Roman infantry was
abandoned, surrounded and cut to pieces. Valens was wounded and carried
to a small wooden hut. The hut was surrounded by the Goths who put it to
the torch, evidently unaware of the prize within. According to Ammianus,
this is how Valens perished (XXXI.13.14-6).
The church historian
Socrates likewise gives two accounts
for the death of Valens.
Some have asserted that he was burnt to death in
a village whither he had retired, which the barbarians assaulted and
set on fire. But others affirm that having put off his imperial robe
he ran into the midst of the main body of infantry; and that when
the cavalry revolted and refused to engage, the infantry were
surrounded by the barbarians, and completely destroyed in a body.
Among these it is said the emperor fell, but could not be
distinguished, in consequence of his not having on his imperial
habit.
When the battle was over, two-thirds of the eastern
army lay dead. Many of their best officers had also perished. What was
left of the army of Valens was led from the field under the cover of
night by Comes Richomer and General Victor.
J.B. Bury, a noted historian of the
period, provides specific interpretation on the significance the battle:
it was "a disaster and disgrace that need not have occurred."
For Rome, the battle incapacitated the government.
Emperor Gratian, nineteen years old, was overcome by the debacle, and
until he appointed
Theodosius I, unable to deal with the
catastrophe which spread out of control.
Legacy
Adrianople was the most significant event in Valens'
career. The battle of Adrianople was significant for yet another reason:
the evolution of warfare. Until that time, the Roman infantry was
considered invincible, and the evidence for this was considerable.
However, the Gothic cavalry completely changed all that. Although J.B.
Bury states that records are incomplete for the 5th century, all during
the 4th and 6th centuries, history shows that the cavalry took over as
the principal Roman weapon of war on land.
"Valens was utterly undistinguished, still only a
protector, and possessed no military ability: he betrayed his
consciousness of inferiority by his nervous suspicion of plots and
savage punishment of alleged traitors," writes
A.H.M. Jones. But Jones admits that "he
was a conscientious administrator, careful of the interests of the
humble. Like his brother, he was an ernest Christian." To have died in
so inglorious a battle has thus come to be regarded as the nadir of an
unfortunate career. This is especially true because of the profound
consequences of Valens' defeat. Adrianople spelled the beginning of the
end for Roman territorial integrity in the late empire and this fact was
recognized even by contemporaries. Ammianus understood that it was the
worst defeat in Roman history since the
Battle of Cannae (31.13.19), and
Rufinus called it "the beginning of
evils for the Roman empire then and thereafter."
Valens is also credited with the commission of a
short history of the Roman State. This work, produced by Valens'
secretary
Eutropius, and known with the name
Breviarium ab Urbe condita, tells the story of Rome from its
founding. According to some historians, Valens was motivated by the
necessity of learning Roman history, that he, the royal family and their
appointees might better mix with the Roman Senatorial class.
Struggles
with the religious nature of the empire
During his reign, Valens had to confront the
theological diversity that was beginning to create division in the
Empire.
Julian (361–363), had tried to revive
the pagan religions. His reactionary attempt took advantage of the
dissensions between the different factions among the
Christians and a largely Pagan
rank and file military. However, in
spite of broad support, his actions were often viewed as excessive, and
before he died in a campaign against the Persians, he was often treated
with disdain. His death was considered a sign from
God.
Like the brothers
Constantius II and
Constans, Valens and Valentinian I held
divergent theological views. Valens was an
Arian and
Valentinian I upheld the
Nicene Creed. When Valens died however,
the cause of Arianism in the Roman East was to come to an end. His
successor
Theodosius I would endorse the Nicene
Creed.
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