The amount of silver in Roman currency falls below ten percent.

Valerian has vigorously renewed Decius' persecution of the Christians.

According to reports by Christian writers, his edict of 257 had ordered bishops and priests to sacrifice according to the pagan rituals, and prohibited Christians, under penalty of death, from meeting at the tombs of their deceased.

A second Imperial edict issued in 258 prohibits Christianity in the Roman Empire.

This edict divides Christians into four categories: priests, who are to be put to death; senators and equestrians, who are to be stripped of their positions and their property confiscated; nuns, who are to be exiled; and imperial civil servants, who are condemned to forced labor.

Valerian executes, among others, Bishop Xystus (Sixtus II) of Rome, together with six of his deacons, and Bishop Cyprian of Carthage in 258.

Novatian, the schismatic antipope, flees Rome and is probably martyred at this time, but the schismatic church that he has established will persist for several centuries.

After his death, the Novatianist sect will spread rapidly.

Those who ally themselves with the doctrines of Novatian will be called Novatianists; their own name for themselves is the katharoi, the pure, reflecting their claim not to be participants in the lax practices of the orthodox Christians by which they believe the church to have been corrupted.

They will go so far as to rebaptize their converts.

Emperor Valerian, who has taken charge of the empire's eastern frontiers, rushes to the aid of Doura-Europus, but he cannot remedy the situation.

The city, destroyed in the Persian siege, is abandoned completely.

Later in 259, ...

...the emperor moves to Edessa, but an outbreak of plague kills a critical number of legionaries, weakening the Roman position.

Shapur battles the Roman forces under to a standstill, encircling his army.

Desperate, the sixty-six-year-old emperor enters into peace negotiations with Shapur, during operations about which little is known.

Valerian’s son and co-emperor Gallienus fights a series of campaigns against the Goths on the Upper Rhine.

While Valerian is fighting against the Sassanid Empire and the Goths, who by this time have sacked Thrace and Asia Minor, Gallienus will be in charge of defending the Roman Empire's border.

In the Western half of the Empire, the situation is difficult.

The Danubian border resists continuous barbarian attacks.

Gallienus has to march with military reinforcements from Gaul towards Dacia and Moesia to fight the barbarians.

The situation is so severe that in 259, the legions of Pannonia and Moesia rebel and choose to make Ingenuus the emperor.

Gallienus reunites the Rhine, leaves a Roman legion their to defend it and goes off to do battle.

Within the borders of the Rhine and the Alps, a Germanic confederation, the Alamanni, who occupy a good part of the Agri Decumates (a region of the Roman Empire's provinces of Germania Superior and Raetia, covering the Black Forest, Swabian Jura, and Franconian Jura areas between the Rhine, Main, and Danube rivers), cross the Alps and attack the fertile plain of the Po river.

The sacking of the area instills terror in Rome, as the city remains unwalled.

The Senate of Rome hastily prepares a crowd of plebs for combat in an attempt to ensure that its shrinking army is capable of protecting the city.

Gallienus had just defeated the pretender Ingenuus when the news arrives of the invasion by the Alamanni.

He marches off with three legions to intercept the barbarians in Italy.

By then, according to the Byzantine historian Joannes Zonaras, the Alamanni had retreated before the unexpected resistance of the citizens of Rome and its Senate.

When Gallienus arrives in the valley of the Po, he finds the Alamanni in the vicinity of Mediolanum, present day Milan.

The victory is total: according to Zonaras three hundred thousand Alamanni fell that day and the emperor received the title Germanicus Maximus.

The Alamanni's success in reaching into the Roman Empire once more reveals the weakness of the centuries-old tradition of posting Rome's legions near the borders without providing for defense within the empire.

The battle of Mediolanum demonstrates to the Romans the value of swift, flexible military units.

Afterward, Gallienus enacts a major reform by introducing a highly mobile field army composed mainly of cavalry (vexillationes).

The main units are under the control of his general, Aureolus, and headquartered in Mediolanum, with the mission to protect Italy.

Finally, the invasion by the Alamanni demonstrates the vulnerability of Italy and especially Rome.

This later causes Emperor Aurelian to have a strong wall built to defend the capital of the Empire.

Bishop Fructuosus of Tarragona and his two deacons are put to death in Spain on January 21, 259.

As a whole, however, Valerian's persecutions of Christians are limited and are not particularly successful.

The Juthungi, an Alemannic tribe in the region north of the rivers Danube and Altmühl in the modern German state of Bavaria, invade Italy in the winter of 259–260, but on their way back they are defeated near Augsburg on April 24–25, 260 by Marcus Simplicinius Genialis (this is recorded on a Roman memorial stone found in 1992).

At this time the Roman Empire loses the Limes area in this region.

The Pannonias, with Valerian’s capture in the East, fall under grave threat from the Germanic tribes, and Regalianus, one of the usurpers proclaimed by the Pannonian legions, dies fighting the invaders.

The defense is concentrated around Sirmium and ...

...Siscia, the ancient fortresses that had been restored by Gallienus; many cities are burned.