Welcome to Totalus Rankium.

I am Jamie.

And I'm Rob ranking all the emperts from Augustus to Augustus,

and this is episode 65.

We're doing Valentinian's brother, Baylands.

Ooh, yes.

Heard about him last week.

Yes, yes, you did. But the story. Ooh, yes. Heard about him last week. Yes.

Yes, she did. But the story cut off, you refused to talk about him. Yes. To decide whether, oh, does he outlive his brother or... Ooh. Or what? What do you think? I think yes. Why? I've heard of Valens. One of our mutual friends, who's a big Roman emperor buff, who often went to university instead of the Roman, so he knows what he's talking about.

We were in a situation once where us three were talking about the Romans, and he mentioned named Valens, as perhaps one of the reasons for the fall of the Roman in the West, or something that encouraged it or exacerbated it, perhaps. Oh, you know what? I think I remember the conversation you were talking about that. That was almost two years ago, a year and a half ago. Yeah. I'm impressed. You remembered something. Well, I don't want to give it away, but yeah, you'll see why you think that before the end. Well, I've told it. I don't think I was remembering. Okay. You'll see why you remember that. Okay, great. Okay, good.

Okay, so Valens, let's go to his birth.

He was born in three to eight.

He's the younger brother of Valentinian, as we've said, and the son of Gratian, Daddy G. and Marina the Mermaid.

Ah.

We covered the story of Daddy G last week, so we're not going to go into that again.

However, the main difference is that Valentinian went off into the army to follow his father's footsteps.

Yes.

Whereas Valens did not.

No.

He stayed at home.

He didn't really do much for the first 30 odd years of his life.

Tax dodging lay about.

...