A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Valeria
VALERIA,
Daughter of the Emperor Dioclesian, who had abdicated the throne in 305, was married to Galerius, on his being created Caesar, about 292. Galerius became Emperor of Rome in 305, and died in 311. He recommended Valeria, and his natural son Candidien, whom he had caused Valeria to adopt, as he had no other, to Licinius, his friend, whom he had raised to be emperor. Valeria was rich and beautiful, and Licinius wished to marry her; but Valeria, to avoid this, fled from the court of Licinius, with her mother Prisca and Candidien, and took refuge with Maximin, one of the other emperors. He had already a wife and children, and as the adopted son of Galerius, had been accustomed to regard Valeria as his mother. But her beauty and wealth tempted him, and he offered to divorce his present wife if she would take her place. Valeria replied, "That still wearing the garb of mourning, she could not think of marriage, that Maximin should remember his father, the husband of Valeria, whose ashes were not yet cold; that he could not commit a greater injustice than to divorce a wife by whom he was beloved; and that she could not flatter herself with better treatment; in fine, that it would be an unprecedented thing for a woman of her rank to engage in a second marriage."
This reply roused Maximin's fury. He proscribed Valeria, seized upon her possessions, tortured some of her officers to death, and took the rest away from her, banished her and her mother, and caused several ladies of the court, friends of theirs, to be executed on a false accusation of adultery. Valeria, exiled to the deserts of Syria, found means to inform Dioclesian of her misery; and he sent to Maximin, desiring the surrender of his daughter, but in vain: the unhappy father died of grief. At length Prisca and Valeria went disguised to Nicomedia, where Licinias was, and mingled unknown among the domestics of Candidien. Licinius soon became jealous of him, and had him assassinated at the age of sixteen. Valeria and Prisca again fled, and for fifteen months wandered in disguise through different provinces. At length they were discovered and arrested in Thessalonica, in 815, and were condemned to death by Licinius, for no other crime than their rank and chastity. They were beheaded, amidst the tears of the people, and their bodies were thrown into the sea. Some authors assert that they were Christians.