260 · Mesopotamia (Edessa) Theater
260
Marching east to halt the resurgent Sasanian Persians, the emperor Valerian was defeated and — after his army was broken by plague and the enemy near Edessa — captured alive by King Shapur I during a parley. He spent the rest of his life in humiliating captivity, used, by legend, as Shapur's living footstool, and after death his flayed and stuffed skin was hung as a trophy in a Persian temple.
Commanders