A Roman Emperor Is Taken Prisoner: Valerian and Shapur I
What happened
During the Crisis of the Third Century, Emperor Valerian marched a Roman army into Mesopotamia to fight the Sasanian Persian king Shapur I, but his forces were already weakened by plague when they arrived. After a defeat near Edessa in 260 CE, Valerian tried to negotiate peace terms directly with Shapur. The meeting was a trap: Shapur seized him and took him prisoner. Valerian spent the rest of his life in Persian captivity, and according to the accounts that survive, he was used as a human footstool, forced to kneel so Shapur could step on his back while mounting a horse, and after his death his skin was reportedly removed, dyed, and displayed in a Persian temple as a warning to visitors.
Why it matters
Valerian is the only Roman emperor ever captured alive by a foreign enemy in the empire's entire history, before or after. Shapur was proud enough of the feat that he had it carved into Persian royal monuments and recorded in his own official inscription, meaning this single humiliation is documented from both the Roman and the Persian side, unusual for events this old.
How we know
Shapur I commemorated the victory himself in the Res Gestae Divi Saporis, a trilingual inscription he had carved at Naqsh-e Rustam in Persia listing his military victories, independently confirming the capture from the Persian side. Roman-side accounts come from later historians, and rock reliefs at Naqsh-e Rustam also depict a kneeling, submissive Roman figure identified as Valerian before Shapur, giving a physical monument alongside the textual sources.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Valerian · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineAncient Rome30 events · From a legendary fratricide on the Palatine Hill to a teenage emperor's quiet deposition twelve centuries later, told through the battles, plagues, and one bridge-crossing that ended a republic.View all →