Valens

“ Valens himself perished upon the bloody field. How little can we imagine, seated by our peaceful firesides, the dimensions of that wail of misery ascending from a whole army perishing beneath the sabres and the battle-axes of merciless barbarians! This is indeed a lost world. Surely history proves that man is a depraved animal. How happy might this world have been had man been the friend, instead of the foe, of his brother-man!
For twelve years Valentinian was engaged in almost an incessant battle. The Picts and Scots were rushing down upon Britain from the mountains of Caledonia. ”

“ Jovian’s and Valentinian’s toleration are not understood, but their personal orthodoxy is in so far praised. Valens is looked at through the eyes of his two fierce Cappadocian assailants. His excellences are entirely ignored; the most inconsequent views are imputed to him while attempting to glorify Basil; in the sad story of the emperor’s dying son, that bishop appears as a brute in his treatment of the agonized father. The stories of heroism attributed to the orthodox are only examples of insufferable insolence; one must marvel at the patience of Valens, if there be any truth in them. ”

“ While Valens was engaged in these preparations, the emperor Valentinian, having favourably disposed the affairs of Germany, made provisions for the future security of the Celtic nations. With this view he levied among the Barbarians near the Rhine and the husbandmen in the countries under the Roman dominion a considerable number of young men. ”

“ A general named Maximus rose and reigned as Emperor in Britain, and Gratian had too much on his hands in the north to put him down.
In the meantime, a terrible wild tribe called Huns were coming from the West and driving the Goths before them, so that they asked leave from Valens to come across the Danube and settle themselves in Thrace. The reply was so ill managed by Valens' counsellors that the Goths were offended, and came over the river as foes when they might have come as friends; and Valens was killed in battle with them at Adrianople in 378. ”

“ So when the court was opened, and when the judges exhibited the decrees of the law, though, in accordance with the desire of the emperor, they moderated the severity of the charges brought before them, one general alarm seized all people. For Valens had now so wholly departed from justice, and had become so accomplished in the infliction of injury, that he was like a wild beast in an amphitheatre ”

“ Persecution by Valens.—From another peril the Edessenes were saved by their faith and constancy. In the days of their Bishop Barses (361–378) , the Arian Emperor Valens (364–378) , in the course of his persecution of the orthodox, approached the city and summoned the inhabitants to wait upon him in his camp and hear his pleasure there. ”

“ By the connivance of the officers of Valens, they were allowed to retain their arms. The avarice of corrupt imperial governors provoked them to revolt; and, in the battle of Adrianople, Valens was defeated. The house into which the wounded emperor was carried was set on fire, and he perished. Gratian, who, since the death of Valentinian I. (375) , had been the ruler of the West, summoned the valiant Theodosius from his estate in Spain, to which he had been banished, to sustain the tottering empire. Gratian made him regent in the East. ”

“ All around him stood his clergy in an attitude of fear and respect. At this imposing sight Valens stopped, as if suddenly seized with a sort of bewilderment. The service continued as though his presence had passed unperceived. At the offertory, he stepped forward to present the gift which he had prepared; but no hand was held out to receive it; nobody came forward to meet him. A cloud passed before his eyes ”

“ Valens himself perished in the awful catastrophe of Hadrianople, the battle in which the Visigoths utterly routed a great Roman army, the battle which first brought home to the minds of men the possibility of the collapse of the Roman empire. The nephew of Valens, the young and generous Gratian, looking round for some man who as partner of his throne might avert the menaced ruin, found none more suitable than the son and namesake of the murdered pacifier of Britain, and accordingly, in the year 379, Theodosius (whom historians have surnamed the Great) was hailed as Augustus at Constantinople. ”

“ While the events above mentioned were taking place in Gaul and Italy, a new campaign was being prepared in Thrace. For Valens, acting on the decision of his brother, by whose will he was entirely governed, marched against the Goths, having a just cause of complaint against them, because at the beginning of the late civil war they had sent assistance to Procopius. It will here be desirable to say a few words of the origin of this people, and the situation of their country. ”

“ Before many months had elapsed the Visigoths were in arms against the Empire, and under the leadership of their hereditary chiefs were wandering up and down through the provinces of Mœsia and Thrace, wresting from the terror-stricken provincials not only the food which the parsimony of Valens had failed to supply them with, but the treasures which centuries of peace had stored up in villa and unwalled town. In 378 they achieved a brilliant, and perhaps unexpected, Page 15 triumph, defeating a large army commanded by the Roman Emperor Valens in person, in a pitched battle near Adrianople. ”

“ Here Emperor Valens met the Goths as they were streaming down the Valley of the Maritza, and tried to stem the tide of barbarian invasion; but the Goths broke the trained legions of Rome, who for years after could not be brought to face that foe again, and Valens, the Emperor, was numbered among the slain. A few centuries later Bulgarians and Greeks met here, and again an Emperor fell; whereas the Goths contented themselves with slaying Valens in battle, the conquering Bulgarians made a drinking-vessel of the skull of Nicephorus I, vanquished at Adrianople. ”

“ In obedience to the wish of the soldiers that he should associate a colleague with himself, he conferred the title of Augustus upon his brother Valens, and the division of the empire was at last effected,—Valentinian became emperor of the West, Valens of the East. Valentinian maintained the integrity of the empire until his death (in 375) , which deprived the weaker Valens of a trusted counsellor and ally, and was followed by a serious crisis on the Danube. In 376 the Goths, hard pressed by their new foes from the eastward, the Huns, sought and obtained the protection of the Roman Empire. ”

“ Constantine received the mention of Valens with indignation and contempt. “It was not for such a purpose,” he sternly replied, “that we have advanced from the shores of the western ocean in an uninterrupted course of combats and victories, that, after rejecting an ungrateful kinsman, we should accept for our colleague a contemptible slave. The abdication of Valens is the first article of the treaty.” 91 It was necessary to accept this humiliating condition; and the unhappy Valens, after a reign of a few days, was deprived of the purple and of his life. ”

“ For if he, a man of rude manners, bitter temper, and a love of injuring people, had survived Valens's victory, having also great influence with Valens from the similarity of his disposition and the proximity of their birthplaces, he would have studied the secret inclinations of a prince always inclined to cruelty, and would have shed the blood of many innocent persons. ”

“ Chapter XXXII.—The Emperor Valens, appeased by the Oration of Themistius the Philosopher, abates his Persecution of the Christians.
In the meanwhile Valens, making his residence at Antioch, was wholly undisturbed by foreign wars; for the barbarians on every side restrained themselves within their own boundaries. Nevertheless, he himself waged a most cruel war against those who maintained the ‘homoousian’ doctrine, inflicting on them more grievous punishments every day ”

“ Moved by this apprehension, Valens, while he retained a few attendants whom adversity had not changed, sent on the infantry to Ariminum and ordered the cavalry to cover his rear. He then himself made his way to Umbria, and thence to Etruria, where, having learnt the issue of the battle of Cremona, he conceived a plan not wanting in vigour, and which, had it succeeded, would have had terrible results. This was to seize some ships, to land on some part of Gallia Narbonensis, to rouse Gaul with its armies as well as the tribes of Germany, and so to kindle a fresh war. ”

“ The Emperor Valens, who reigned in the East, which had been yielded to him by his Brother Valentinian, when he took him for his Collegue in the Empire, spared no Pains to reconcile this Sect with that of the Arians, which he greatly favoured. But, finding them no less averse to the Arians than the Orthodox themselves, he began in the Year 366. to persecute them with great Cruelty. To avoid this Persecution they resolved to recur to the Emperor Valentinian, and, embracing the Faith professed by him and the Western Bishops, to put themselves under his Protection. ”

“ Valens consented to grant their petition on condition that they should surrender their arms, give up their children as hostages, and all be baptized in the Christian faith. Their terror and despair led them to assent to these conditions. So the entire nation, numbering one million souls,—counting men, women, and children,—were allowed to cross the river. Several days and nights were consumed in the transport of the vast multitudes. The writers of the times liken the passage to that of the Hellespont by the hosts of Xerxes. ”

“ For previously in the reign of Julian, when Valentinian was a military tribune, and Valens held a command in the emperor’s guards, they both proved their zeal for the faith; for being constrained to sacrifice, they chose rather to give up their military rank than to do so and renounce Christianity. ”

“ Zonaras and Cedrinus record it also, that Valens to express his Resentment against the People of Chalcedon, for giving Protection to his Enemy Procopius, commanded the Walls of their City to be demolished, and an Aqueduct to be made of their Stones, which the former Historian sometimes calls the Aqueduct of Valens, and the latter sometimes the Aqueduct of Valentinian; and adds, among other Passages of the History before mentioned, that according to the Prophecy, the Barbarous Nations made their Incursions into Thrace, but were afterwards defeated. ”

“ While Valens was pushing forward with all speed, Procopius was using all his energy day and night, producing different persons who with cunning boldness pretended that they had arrived, some from the east, some from Gaul, and who reported that Valentinian was dead, and that everything was easy for the new and favoured emperor. ”

“ On the termination of this war, Valens retired to Nicæa, and finding himself in possession of profound tranquillity, he again began to molest those who differed from him in opinion concerning the Divine nature. ”

“ Valens acceded to their request upon the condition of their giving up their weapons. The reception and settlement of the Goths was entrusted to Roman officers who neglected to enforce the surrender of their arms, while they enriched themselves by extorting high prices from the immigrants for the necessities of life. Thereupon, threatened by starvation, the Goths rebelled, defeated the Romans, and began to plunder the country (377 A. D.) . The news of this peril summoned Valens from the East, but Gratian was hindered from coming to the rescue by an incursion of the Alemanni into Gaul. ”

“ But the host of the barbarians was continually increased by fresh reinforcements from beyond the Danube. Even their own ferocious enemies, Huns and Alans, were permitted to join their standard. Yet, in face of this fact, the folly and jealousy of the Emperor Valens led him to stake all on the chances of a battle which he made haste to rush into, when he learned that his nephew Gratian was marching to his assistance from the west. He coveted the sole honors of a victory; but death and infamy for himself and an overwhelming calamity to the empire were what he achieved. ”

“ Valentinian, born in the West, ... reserved the government of it to himself. He ceded to his brother a part of Illyricum on the Danube, and the whole of the East. He established universal toleration by law, and took no part in the sectarian controversies which divided Christendom. Valens adopted the Arian faith, and persecuted the orthodox party. The finances of the empire demanded a reform, which neither of the emperors was in a condition to undertake. They wanted money, and they were ignorant where to seek the long exhausted sources of public wealth. ”

“ Valens during the whole period of the sole reign of Constantius (and in fact until his own death about 375) was the heart and soul of the new and last phase of Arianism, namely of the formal attempt to impose an Arian creed upon the Church in lieu of that of Nicæa. But this could only be done by skilful use of less extreme men, and in the trickery and statecraft necessary for such a purpose Valens was facile princeps. His main supporter in the East was Acacius, who had succeeded to the bishoprick, the library, and the doctrinal position of his preceptor Eusebius of Cæsarea. ”