Shapur I captures Emperor Valerian at the Battle of Edessa
- Date
- 260 CE
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Mesopotamia (Edessa, modern Sanliurfa)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
Near Edessa in northern Mesopotamia, the Sasanian king Shapur I decisively defeated a Roman army under the emperor Valerian and captured the emperor himself, along with much of his staff.
It was the first time a reigning Roman emperor had been taken prisoner in battle, an unprecedented humiliation that Shapur commemorated in monumental rock reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam. Valerian died in Persian captivity; later Christian writers such as Lactantius circulated lurid accounts of his treatment. The disaster came amid plague and simultaneous pressure on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, and it shattered Roman prestige in the east. In the aftermath the empire fragmented, with the Gallic Empire breaking away in the west and the city of Palmyra, under Odaenathus and later Zenobia, assuming control of much of the eastern provinces. The capture of Valerian thus stands as the nadir of the Crisis of the Third Century and a vivid demonstration of the renewed power of Sasanian Persia, Rome's most formidable rival, whose rise reshaped the balance of power across western Asia.
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Empires active in 260 CE
- Roman Empire27 BCE – 476 CE
- Kingdom of Funan50 CE – 550 CE
- Sassanid Empire224 CE – 651 CE
- Kushan Empire30 CE – 375 CE
- Teotihuacan100 BCE – 750 CE
- Zapotec State of Monte Albán500 BCE – 800 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Yellow Turban Rebellion weakens the Han184 CE
- Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army9 August 378 CE
- Bar Kokhba revolt and the renaming of Judaea to Syria Palaestina132–135 CE
- Roman Empire reaches its greatest territorial extent under Trajan117 CE
- Visigoths under Alaric sack Rome24 August 410 CE
- Battle of Actium ends the Hellenistic age2 September 31 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
The standard accessible introduction to Sasanian Iran.
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