or Varahran.
He left no inscriptions, and it is doubted whether we possess any of his
coins.

Varahran I., whose reign lasted three years only, from A.D. 272 to 275,
is declared by the native historians to have been a mild and amiable
prince; but the little that is positively known of him does not bear out
this testimony. It seems certain that he put Mani to death, and probable
that he enticed him to leave the shelter of his castle by artifice, thus
showing himself not only harsh but treacherous towards the unfortunate
heresiarch. If it be true that he caused him to be flayed alive, we can
scarcely exonerate him from the charge of actual cruelty, unless indeed
we regard the punishment as an ordinary mode of execution in Persia.
Perhaps, however, in this case, as in other similar ones, there is no
sufficient evidence that the process of flaying took place until the
culprit was dead, the real object of the excoriation being, not the
infliction of pain, but the preservation of a memorial which could be
used as a warning and a terror to others. The skin of Mani, stuffed with
straw, was no doubt suspended for some time after his execution over one
of the gates of the great city of Shahpur; and it is possible that this
fact may have been the sole ground of the belief (which, it is to
be remembered, was not universal) that he actually suffered death by
flaying.

The death of the leader was followed by the persecution of his
disciples. Mani had organized a hierarchy, consisting of twelve
apostles, seventy-two bishops, and a numerous priesthood; and his sect
was widely established at the time of his execution. Varahran handed
over these unfortunates, or at any rate such of them as he was able
to seize, to the tender mercies of the Magians, who put to death great
numbers of Manichseans. Many Christians at the same time perished,
either because they were confounded with the followers of Mani,
or because the spirit of persecution, once let loose, could not be
restrained, but passed on from victims of one class to those of another,
the Magian priesthood seizing the opportunity of devoting all heretics
to a common destruction.

Thus unhappy in his domestic administration, Varahran was not much more
fortunate in his wars. Zenobia, the queen of the East, held for some
time to the policy of her illustrious husband, maintaining a position
inimical alike to Rome and Persia from the death of Odenathus in A.D.
267 to Aurelian's expedit