The unprecedented event and his unknown fate generated a variety of different reactions and "new narratives about the Roman Empire in diverse contexts".

[4] Unlike many of the would-be emperors and rebels who vied for imperial power during the Crisis of the Third Century, Valerian was of a noble and traditional senatorial family.

In 251 AD, when Decius revived the censorship with legislative and executive powers so extensive that it practically embraced the civil authority of the emperor, Valerian was chosen censor by the Senate,[6] though he declined to accept the post.

[7] Under Trebonianus Gallus Valerian was appointed dux of an army probably drawn from the garrisons of the German provinces which seems to have been ultimately intended for use in a war against the Persians.

[6] Valerian and Gallienus split the problems of the empire between them, with the son taking the West, and the father heading East to face the Persian threat.

In 259, Valerian moved on to Edessa, but an outbreak of plague killed a critical number of legionaries, weakening the Roman position, and the town was besieged by the Persians.

It also required Christian senators and equites to perform acts of worship to the Roman gods or lose their titles and property, and directed that they be executed if they continued to refuse.

[15] Eutropius, writing between 364 and 378 AD, stated that Valerian "was overthrown by Shapur king of Persia, and being soon after made prisoner, grew old in ignominious slavery among the Parthians.

[18] According to the modern scholar Touraj Daryaee,[18] contrary to the account of Lactantius, Shapur I sent Valerian and some of his army to the city of Bishapur or Gundishapur where they lived in relatively good conditions.

According to the early Persian Muslim scholar Abu Hanifa Dinawari, Shapur settled the prisoners of war in Gundishapur and released Valerian, as promised, after the construction of Band-e Kaisar.

[21] It has been alleged that the account of Lactantius is coloured by his desire to establish that persecutors of the Christians died fitting deaths;[22] the story was repeated then and later by authors in the Roman Near East fiercely hostile to Persia.

Valerian also appears in Anthony Hecht's poem "Behold the Lilies of the Field" in the collection The Hard Hours, and in Harry Sidebottom's historical fiction series of novels Warrior of Rome.