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I propose going until the final peace treaty in 1453. I also propose you drop everything else so we could get more frequent updates!
Thank you for writing, I've loved every part of this series. The focus has been on internal Roman troubles for quite a while now, which helps understanding why the Persians could get so far in their wars, but it has distracted you from the original topic a bit. I'm actually more curious about the Sassanians, of whom I know relatively little, and most of that from general histories of Persia/Iran. If you restricted yourself to focus more on the Persians, would you be able and willing to continue a bit further than Shabuhr I?
I'm glad that you've enjoyed it so far. Actually continuing past Shabuhr I would be not too complicated, except for the matter of finding available time. The period I'm covering right now (the 260-270 CE time frame) is the "darkest" part of the III century because of the scarcity of sources, which has made researching it somewhat of a challenge. After 270 CE, and especially for the IV century CE, written sources become again reasonably plentiful, and so writing about historical events becomes easier. For the wars between Shabuhr II and Constantius II and Julian we even have the rare luxury of having the work of a man who took part personally in most of the conflict, like Ammianus Marcellinus and having it preserved in its integrity.
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I have immensely enjoyed your description of both 'sides' (Persian and Roman), especially since I know relatively little of both the Sasanians and later Roman Empire. However, if you do have to make a choice, I'd be in favour of focusing more on the Sasanians.
Whichever path you take, know that this is probably my favourite thread of all time, and something that continually brings me back to this forum.
Whichever path you take, know that this is probably my favourite thread of all time, and something that continually brings me back to this forum.
Thank you again. I think that I’ll finally let this thread continue until the 298 CE peace treaty between Diocletian and Narseh, and then perhaps I'll open a new thread dealing with the IV century CE I don't like threads that become too long as they become unreadable, and besides past that date it wouldn't be correct to refer to the "rise”of the Sasanians.
21.3. VALERIAN’S REIGN. THE APPEARANCE OF CONSOLIDATION AND THE ILLUSION OF STABILITY.
21.3. VALERIAN’S REIGN. THE APPEARANCE OF CONSOLIDATION AND THE ILLUSION OF STABILITY.
While Valerian was busy in the East trying to restore the shattered eastern defenses of Rome in the middle 250s CE, the Goths and their Borani allies began a new series of devastating sea raids against Rome’s Anatolian provinces. As I wrote in a previous post, they obtained the means to do so by their conquest of the Bosporan kingdom in the Crimea, which provided them with a large fleet manned by experienced sailors. Incredible as it could sound, Rome had no naval presence in the Black Sea (except for a very small squadron of light warships based at Byzantium), because until them it had been the navy of their vassal the Kingdom of Bosporus who had protected the Roman shores in this area. This would have disastrous consequences, because the Gothic naval raids would be able to even cross the straits of the Bosporus and Hellespont and enter the Aegean and the Mediterranean as far as the shores of Caria and Lycia. The Roman navy showed an extraordinary lack of ability to react to these raids, which can only be attributed to a conscious decision (or lack of reaction) by the ruling augusti to do nothing in this respect.
The deployment of the Roman fleet had not changed since the time of Augustus except in some minor details. More than half of it (perhaps as much as three quarters of its seaworthy ships) were concentrated in Italy, in the two praetorian fleets at Ravenna and Misenum. These two fleets were commanded by two equestrian officers with the rank of praefecti, who were appointed directly by the emperor. Apart from these two large fleets, the Romans had smaller squadrons at Alexandria, Carthage, Byzantium, the English Channel and perhaps another based at Cyrenaica or Tripolitania (although the existence of this squadron is a matter of debate). And then there were the two river flotillas of the Rhine and Danube. This deployment was obviously designed with two main goals in mind:
According to Zosimus, in 255 CE a force of Borani landed near the city of Pityus in Colchis (in the southwestern Caucasus coastline, in present-day Georgia, then part of the Roman province of Pontus). They attacked the city, which was then successfully defended by its small garrison under the leadership of its commander Successianus. Again according to Zosimus, upon hearing of this success, Valerian recalled Successianus to Samosata and appointed him as his Praetorian Prefect; Successianus would serve loyally as Valerian’s praefectus praetorio until the end.
But this decision by Valerian had its consequences: again according to Zosimus, the following year the Borani attacked Pityus again and this time they took the city and looted it. This defeat seems to have demoralized the Roman troops in the province of Pontus; assuming that there were many troops in the province to begin with, because usually in ”interior” provinces the Romans kept very small military forces (mostly to act in police duties). According to Zosimus, the fleet of the Borani then sailed westwards along the coast of Pontus until they reached the large city of Trebizond. Again according to Zosimus, the city was walled and had a substantial garrison, but when the Borani launched a surprise night attack against the walls the garrison panicked and fled, and the Borani captured and looted the city.
Valerian seems to have done nothing to defend the population in Pontus, probably because Šābuhr I had launched a new wave of attacks against the Roman eastern border; in 256 CE with mixed results. The Sasanians besieged Circesium without success and besieged and took once again Dura Europos (which they razed to the ground after a dramatic siege, the town became an uninhabited ruin and its dwellers were deported into Ērānšahr, to be settled as colonists in royal lands or to be sold as slaves).
The main attack though seems to have taken place in the traditional scenario of Roman-Sasanian conflicts in northern Mesopotamia, where according to Udo Hartmann and Andreas Goltz Valerian could have won a victory against the army of Šābuhr I; they speculate that perhaps the Sasanian king attacked once again the Roman-held cities of Carrhae and Edessa and Valerian reacted by massing his army and counterattacking with success. Their main proof for such assertion is that the following year the Roman mint of Antiochia issued coins with the legend VICTORIA PART(hica), and that local coins of Alexandria also boasted the Greek legend Nike (Victory). Obviously, this was far more important than defending some cities in northern Asia Minor and Valerian did not hesitate in abandoning their unlucky inhabitants to their fate.
Antoninianus of Valerian; on the reverse, RESTITVTOR ORIENTIS.
This victory seems to have given Valerian enough confidence that he’d finally secured the situation in the East that in the second half of 256 CE he left the East and returned to the West to meet with his son and grandsons and reinforce the image of unity of the imperial collegium (and his own position as senior augustus). Again this would not have been possible if he had not achieved some kind of success that allowed him to feel reasonably confident about leaving things secure in his absence, this reinforces Hartmann and Goltz’s hypothesis. His arrival into the West can be dated securely by an imperial rescript preserved in the Code of Justinian issued by Valerian and dated in the city of Rome on 10 October 256 CE. From Rome he then went to Gaul, where an epigraphic inscription attests to his presence in Colonia Ara Agrippinensis (Cologne) in August 257 CE.
Restitution of Colonia Ara Agrippinensis by the Freanch architect and archaeologist Jean-Claude Golvin.
While his father was in the East, Gallienus had not had en easy time in the West. On departing to the East, Valerian had taken with him large numbers of troops from the European armies, especially from the two Germanias and Raetia, weakening critically the defenses in this area, which included one of the weakest stretches of border in the West, the limes germanicus that ran from near Bonna (modern Bonn in Lower Germany) to near Castra Regina (modern Regensburg) in Raetia. But between 254 and 256/257 CE, his attention seems to have been concentrated on the middle Danubian border; there are very few coins minted in the two Germanias and Raetia but there’s a large number of issues from the mint at Viminacium in Upper Moesia. Apparently his operations there were successful, because already in 254 CE he issued coins with the legend VICTORIA GERM(anica), followed in the following months and years by the legends VICTORIAE, GERMANICUS MAX (imus) and VICTORIA II GERM (anica). Probably the “Germans”against whom Gallienus fought were the Marcomanni, and it’s in this context that Hartmann and Goltz locate the notice given by Aurelius Victor that Gallienus allowed the defeated Marcomanni to settle in Roman soil and took as concubine one of the daughters of their king. Aurelius Victor wrote about this ceremony in an outraged way, and this is just one of the many sources that show open hostility to Gallienus, both Greek and Latin ones; although the Latin senatorial tradition was to remain implacably hostile to the memory of Gallienus until the end.
Antoninianus of Gallienus; on the reverse VICTORIA GERMANICA.
After these successes Gallienus returned to Rome and his presence in this city is attested in September 257 CE, probably to wait for his father’s arrival. The reason for their meeting in the capital was that they wanted to celebrate a double triumph (Valerian’s successes in the East, and Gallienus’in the Danube) and take advantage of the festive and triumphal mood to further secure the future of the Licinian dynasty by raising Valerian the Younger to the rank of caesar. Still in Rome, on 1st January 257 CE, Valerian and Gallienus again took the joint consulship (Valerian’s third, Gallienus’ second) and the mint of Rome issued a series of coins with triumphalist legends like VIRTVS AVGG, VICTORIA PART (hica), VICTORIA GERMANICA, RESTITVTOR ORBIS and FELICITAS AVGG, as well as broadcasting the image of the new caesar.
It was at this time, when the fortunes of the Licinian dynasty appeared brighter than ever, that the two augusti took a controversial decision. Scholars have discussed the issue for decades, but I tend to agree with Hartmann and Goltz that this decision was probably Valerian’s and that Gallienus mainly followed in order to preserve the image of familiar harmony and not rock the boat that they had fought so hard to keep afloat. They issued a decree that was basically a renewal of Decius’ decree on sacrifices and which although it was not specifically targeted against the Christians turned them into its main victims. According to the Acts of the Martyrs, the first effects took place in the summer of 257 CE, so the decree was probably issued at Rome in spring while the two augusti were still residing there.
The summer of 257 CE saw also a renewal in the activities of the imperial family in the borders. Valerian the Younger was sent to the Danube (now that it had been apparently “pacified” by his father) with an encompassing command for the two Pannonias, the two Moesias and Dacia. As he was barely a teenager, his father and grandfather assigned him as a tutor (who was also probably to act as the real commander in the field) an experienced general named Ingenuus about whom practically nothing is known. Meanwhile, both augusti moved to Gaul and settled in Cologne in order to stabilize the situation in the Rhenish border where things had become critical.
The degree of seriousness of the situation can be judged by two means: archaeological evidence and written sources. Archaeology shows that by this time the long limes germanicus, which had been under growing pressure since the time of Severus Alexander finally broke down and most of its forts and watchtowers were destroyed; the Agri Decumates were flooded by the Alamanni and the Roman military presence west and north of the Rhine and Danube practically ceased to exist. The Alamanni were by now known adversaries of the Romans, but they were joined further north by yet another new confederation of Germanic peoples (the Franci, or Franks) in what was yet another disastrous geopolitical development for Rome.
Map of the limes in Upper Germany and Raetia by the end of the II century CE.
According to the IV century CE author Aurelius Victor the Franks crossed the lower Rhine in such numbers that the weakened Roman border garrisons were unable to stop them, and they raided deep and far into Gaul, even crossing the Pyrenées and reaching Hispania. The two augusti reacted by moving immediately into Gaul, where Gallienus apparently obtained some victories, and some coins were quickly issued with the legends GERMANICVS MAX(imus) V and RESTITVTOR GALLIARVM. But to which degree these were really decisive victories is another matter. Archaeological evidence confirms widespread destruction in Germania Superior and Germania Inferior, but further to the west and south the evidence is much more scattered and isolated; rather than layers of destruction what archaeology reveals for many cities in Gaul and Hispania at this time is a widespread and sudden fever for building new city walls, usually at top speed using whatever material were at hand: tombstones, and masonry from funerary monuments and even public buildings. What’s unsure is if this was a reaction to each city suffering a Frankish or Alamannic raid or simply the result of mass hysteria. Aurelius Victor wrote that Tarraco was sacked, but archaeological digs in the modern city show no signs of destruction by this time, but this did not stop nearby Barcino (modern Barcelona) from building a city wall that was totally out of proportion with the importance and size of the city: the pomerium of the town of Barcino had perhaps 1,000 inhabitants, but the wall that was built was the second tallest and strongest in the West after the Aurelian walls of Rome itself.
But things were going to get much worse. By the spring of 258 CE Gallienus was still in Gaul and issuing again a new series of coins with the legend VICT(oria) GERMANICA which scholars are unsure if they can be taken at face value. But at this time devastating news reached him: his son Valerian the Younger (his presumptive heir) had died of natural causes in the Danube. This left the Danube under the overall command of Ingenuus without an imperial presence (always a risky situation) and Gallienus reacted by raising his second son Saloninus to the rank of caesar, although as he was still very young he did not send the boy to the Danube and instead retained him in Gaul at his side.
While the situation in the West worsened by moments, Valerian returned to East, during the end of 257 CE or the start of 258 CE. Again, an imperial rescript preserved in the Code of Justinian attests to his presence in Antiochia in May 258 CE. Despite the worsening situation and the multiplication of foreign threats, Valerian did not abandon his religious policies, and in 258 CE (when he was probably already in the East) he issued a new edict, this time specifically targeted against Christians, who had showed themselves to be the most problematic ones with respect to the previous edict. This second edict targeted directly the hierarchies of the Christian Church (bishops, deacons and presbyters) and explicitly ordained death penalties in the case of refusal to sacrifice; Cyprian of Carthage was one amongst the many victims of this second edict. An interesting point in this edict is that it also ordered harsh punishments against Christian senators and members of the domus caesari (servants of the imperial household) which is a hint at the degree of expansion that the Christian religion had attained even at the top echelons of Roman society.
This time the reason for Valerian’s return to the East doesn’t seem to have been just another wave of Sasanian attacks, but also the increasing scale and severity of Gothic sea raids. According to Zosimus, after seeing the rich booty obtained by their Borani allies, the Goths decided to follow their example and set to the sea in Bosporan ships but with much larger forces. Most alarmingly, the large Gothic fleet managed to cross the Bosporus and land its troops in the Bythinian coast of the sea of Marmara. This Gothic army then proceeded to systematically pillage, burn and destroy all the large and rich cities of Bythinia: Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Kios and Prusa while Cyzicus was spared because torrential rains had turned the Rhyndakos river into barrier that the Goths could not cross. Most alarmingly, and again according to Zosimus (following the lost account of Chrysogonos of Nicomedia) the Goths found ample help by disaffected elements of the civilian population, which eased their task of finding easy goals and weak spots in the defenses.
Like Syria, Bythinia was one of the richest and more urbanized areas of the Roman empire, and it offered rich and easy pickings for the Goths. Of its many large cities, there are very few remans visible today as most of these cities have remained inhabited during the Byzantine and Ottoman eras, which has destroyed most archaeological remains. A great earthquake in 1999 cleared the way for archaeological surveys in the Çukurbağ district of İzmit (ancient Nicomedia) and they've brought to life interesting remains of Roman reliefs notable because they still preserve a sizeable part of their original polychromy. Archaeologists think on stylistical grounds that they were probably part of a monument raised in honour to the emperor Septimius Severus in the early III century CE.
Presumably, this large Gothic raid happened when Valerian had already arrived in Antioch. Unwilling to leave the endangered border with the Sasanian empire, Valerian sent a certain officer named Felix with the order to at least secure the city of Byzantium and prevent the Gothic fleet from sailing back. But apparently this was not enough, and in 259 CE he marched in person with most of the eastern army into the north of Anatolia to stabilize the situation. But his reaction had come too late: the Goths had already left, with a rich booty and large amounts of captives, and his army accomplished nothing except becoming affected by an epidemic that was raging in this devastated region; some scholars think that it could be another recurrence of the Plague of Cyprian.
Now that the Roman army and Valerian had departed and were distracted elsewhere (and in difficulties), Šābuhr I seized the opportunity and launched a new attack against Edessa and Carrhae in the spring of 260 CE. Upon receiving this alarming news, Valerian and his diseased army marched again rapidly south to meet this new attack.
While Valerian was busy in the East trying to restore the shattered eastern defenses of Rome in the middle 250s CE, the Goths and their Borani allies began a new series of devastating sea raids against Rome’s Anatolian provinces. As I wrote in a previous post, they obtained the means to do so by their conquest of the Bosporan kingdom in the Crimea, which provided them with a large fleet manned by experienced sailors. Incredible as it could sound, Rome had no naval presence in the Black Sea (except for a very small squadron of light warships based at Byzantium), because until them it had been the navy of their vassal the Kingdom of Bosporus who had protected the Roman shores in this area. This would have disastrous consequences, because the Gothic naval raids would be able to even cross the straits of the Bosporus and Hellespont and enter the Aegean and the Mediterranean as far as the shores of Caria and Lycia. The Roman navy showed an extraordinary lack of ability to react to these raids, which can only be attributed to a conscious decision (or lack of reaction) by the ruling augusti to do nothing in this respect.
The deployment of the Roman fleet had not changed since the time of Augustus except in some minor details. More than half of it (perhaps as much as three quarters of its seaworthy ships) were concentrated in Italy, in the two praetorian fleets at Ravenna and Misenum. These two fleets were commanded by two equestrian officers with the rank of praefecti, who were appointed directly by the emperor. Apart from these two large fleets, the Romans had smaller squadrons at Alexandria, Carthage, Byzantium, the English Channel and perhaps another based at Cyrenaica or Tripolitania (although the existence of this squadron is a matter of debate). And then there were the two river flotillas of the Rhine and Danube. This deployment was obviously designed with two main goals in mind:
- To protect the grain fleets that carried the grain annona from Egypt and Africa into Italy.
- To protect Italy and Rome from sea attacks and more importantly, to ensure that the central government had at any time total control over the fleet; in an empire which had an inner sea at its core this was of the utmost strategical importance, because it ensured that the government in Rome controlled the sea lanes which were the principal means of transportation of the Roman empire. We should only remember how the control over the two praetorian fleets of Ravenna and Misenum was key to the victory of the Senate against Maximinus Thrax in the civil war of 238 CE.
According to Zosimus, in 255 CE a force of Borani landed near the city of Pityus in Colchis (in the southwestern Caucasus coastline, in present-day Georgia, then part of the Roman province of Pontus). They attacked the city, which was then successfully defended by its small garrison under the leadership of its commander Successianus. Again according to Zosimus, upon hearing of this success, Valerian recalled Successianus to Samosata and appointed him as his Praetorian Prefect; Successianus would serve loyally as Valerian’s praefectus praetorio until the end.
But this decision by Valerian had its consequences: again according to Zosimus, the following year the Borani attacked Pityus again and this time they took the city and looted it. This defeat seems to have demoralized the Roman troops in the province of Pontus; assuming that there were many troops in the province to begin with, because usually in ”interior” provinces the Romans kept very small military forces (mostly to act in police duties). According to Zosimus, the fleet of the Borani then sailed westwards along the coast of Pontus until they reached the large city of Trebizond. Again according to Zosimus, the city was walled and had a substantial garrison, but when the Borani launched a surprise night attack against the walls the garrison panicked and fled, and the Borani captured and looted the city.
Valerian seems to have done nothing to defend the population in Pontus, probably because Šābuhr I had launched a new wave of attacks against the Roman eastern border; in 256 CE with mixed results. The Sasanians besieged Circesium without success and besieged and took once again Dura Europos (which they razed to the ground after a dramatic siege, the town became an uninhabited ruin and its dwellers were deported into Ērānšahr, to be settled as colonists in royal lands or to be sold as slaves).
The main attack though seems to have taken place in the traditional scenario of Roman-Sasanian conflicts in northern Mesopotamia, where according to Udo Hartmann and Andreas Goltz Valerian could have won a victory against the army of Šābuhr I; they speculate that perhaps the Sasanian king attacked once again the Roman-held cities of Carrhae and Edessa and Valerian reacted by massing his army and counterattacking with success. Their main proof for such assertion is that the following year the Roman mint of Antiochia issued coins with the legend VICTORIA PART(hica), and that local coins of Alexandria also boasted the Greek legend Nike (Victory). Obviously, this was far more important than defending some cities in northern Asia Minor and Valerian did not hesitate in abandoning their unlucky inhabitants to their fate.
Antoninianus of Valerian; on the reverse, RESTITVTOR ORIENTIS.
This victory seems to have given Valerian enough confidence that he’d finally secured the situation in the East that in the second half of 256 CE he left the East and returned to the West to meet with his son and grandsons and reinforce the image of unity of the imperial collegium (and his own position as senior augustus). Again this would not have been possible if he had not achieved some kind of success that allowed him to feel reasonably confident about leaving things secure in his absence, this reinforces Hartmann and Goltz’s hypothesis. His arrival into the West can be dated securely by an imperial rescript preserved in the Code of Justinian issued by Valerian and dated in the city of Rome on 10 October 256 CE. From Rome he then went to Gaul, where an epigraphic inscription attests to his presence in Colonia Ara Agrippinensis (Cologne) in August 257 CE.
Restitution of Colonia Ara Agrippinensis by the Freanch architect and archaeologist Jean-Claude Golvin.
While his father was in the East, Gallienus had not had en easy time in the West. On departing to the East, Valerian had taken with him large numbers of troops from the European armies, especially from the two Germanias and Raetia, weakening critically the defenses in this area, which included one of the weakest stretches of border in the West, the limes germanicus that ran from near Bonna (modern Bonn in Lower Germany) to near Castra Regina (modern Regensburg) in Raetia. But between 254 and 256/257 CE, his attention seems to have been concentrated on the middle Danubian border; there are very few coins minted in the two Germanias and Raetia but there’s a large number of issues from the mint at Viminacium in Upper Moesia. Apparently his operations there were successful, because already in 254 CE he issued coins with the legend VICTORIA GERM(anica), followed in the following months and years by the legends VICTORIAE, GERMANICUS MAX (imus) and VICTORIA II GERM (anica). Probably the “Germans”against whom Gallienus fought were the Marcomanni, and it’s in this context that Hartmann and Goltz locate the notice given by Aurelius Victor that Gallienus allowed the defeated Marcomanni to settle in Roman soil and took as concubine one of the daughters of their king. Aurelius Victor wrote about this ceremony in an outraged way, and this is just one of the many sources that show open hostility to Gallienus, both Greek and Latin ones; although the Latin senatorial tradition was to remain implacably hostile to the memory of Gallienus until the end.
Antoninianus of Gallienus; on the reverse VICTORIA GERMANICA.
After these successes Gallienus returned to Rome and his presence in this city is attested in September 257 CE, probably to wait for his father’s arrival. The reason for their meeting in the capital was that they wanted to celebrate a double triumph (Valerian’s successes in the East, and Gallienus’in the Danube) and take advantage of the festive and triumphal mood to further secure the future of the Licinian dynasty by raising Valerian the Younger to the rank of caesar. Still in Rome, on 1st January 257 CE, Valerian and Gallienus again took the joint consulship (Valerian’s third, Gallienus’ second) and the mint of Rome issued a series of coins with triumphalist legends like VIRTVS AVGG, VICTORIA PART (hica), VICTORIA GERMANICA, RESTITVTOR ORBIS and FELICITAS AVGG, as well as broadcasting the image of the new caesar.
It was at this time, when the fortunes of the Licinian dynasty appeared brighter than ever, that the two augusti took a controversial decision. Scholars have discussed the issue for decades, but I tend to agree with Hartmann and Goltz that this decision was probably Valerian’s and that Gallienus mainly followed in order to preserve the image of familiar harmony and not rock the boat that they had fought so hard to keep afloat. They issued a decree that was basically a renewal of Decius’ decree on sacrifices and which although it was not specifically targeted against the Christians turned them into its main victims. According to the Acts of the Martyrs, the first effects took place in the summer of 257 CE, so the decree was probably issued at Rome in spring while the two augusti were still residing there.
The summer of 257 CE saw also a renewal in the activities of the imperial family in the borders. Valerian the Younger was sent to the Danube (now that it had been apparently “pacified” by his father) with an encompassing command for the two Pannonias, the two Moesias and Dacia. As he was barely a teenager, his father and grandfather assigned him as a tutor (who was also probably to act as the real commander in the field) an experienced general named Ingenuus about whom practically nothing is known. Meanwhile, both augusti moved to Gaul and settled in Cologne in order to stabilize the situation in the Rhenish border where things had become critical.
The degree of seriousness of the situation can be judged by two means: archaeological evidence and written sources. Archaeology shows that by this time the long limes germanicus, which had been under growing pressure since the time of Severus Alexander finally broke down and most of its forts and watchtowers were destroyed; the Agri Decumates were flooded by the Alamanni and the Roman military presence west and north of the Rhine and Danube practically ceased to exist. The Alamanni were by now known adversaries of the Romans, but they were joined further north by yet another new confederation of Germanic peoples (the Franci, or Franks) in what was yet another disastrous geopolitical development for Rome.
Map of the limes in Upper Germany and Raetia by the end of the II century CE.
According to the IV century CE author Aurelius Victor the Franks crossed the lower Rhine in such numbers that the weakened Roman border garrisons were unable to stop them, and they raided deep and far into Gaul, even crossing the Pyrenées and reaching Hispania. The two augusti reacted by moving immediately into Gaul, where Gallienus apparently obtained some victories, and some coins were quickly issued with the legends GERMANICVS MAX(imus) V and RESTITVTOR GALLIARVM. But to which degree these were really decisive victories is another matter. Archaeological evidence confirms widespread destruction in Germania Superior and Germania Inferior, but further to the west and south the evidence is much more scattered and isolated; rather than layers of destruction what archaeology reveals for many cities in Gaul and Hispania at this time is a widespread and sudden fever for building new city walls, usually at top speed using whatever material were at hand: tombstones, and masonry from funerary monuments and even public buildings. What’s unsure is if this was a reaction to each city suffering a Frankish or Alamannic raid or simply the result of mass hysteria. Aurelius Victor wrote that Tarraco was sacked, but archaeological digs in the modern city show no signs of destruction by this time, but this did not stop nearby Barcino (modern Barcelona) from building a city wall that was totally out of proportion with the importance and size of the city: the pomerium of the town of Barcino had perhaps 1,000 inhabitants, but the wall that was built was the second tallest and strongest in the West after the Aurelian walls of Rome itself.
But things were going to get much worse. By the spring of 258 CE Gallienus was still in Gaul and issuing again a new series of coins with the legend VICT(oria) GERMANICA which scholars are unsure if they can be taken at face value. But at this time devastating news reached him: his son Valerian the Younger (his presumptive heir) had died of natural causes in the Danube. This left the Danube under the overall command of Ingenuus without an imperial presence (always a risky situation) and Gallienus reacted by raising his second son Saloninus to the rank of caesar, although as he was still very young he did not send the boy to the Danube and instead retained him in Gaul at his side.
While the situation in the West worsened by moments, Valerian returned to East, during the end of 257 CE or the start of 258 CE. Again, an imperial rescript preserved in the Code of Justinian attests to his presence in Antiochia in May 258 CE. Despite the worsening situation and the multiplication of foreign threats, Valerian did not abandon his religious policies, and in 258 CE (when he was probably already in the East) he issued a new edict, this time specifically targeted against Christians, who had showed themselves to be the most problematic ones with respect to the previous edict. This second edict targeted directly the hierarchies of the Christian Church (bishops, deacons and presbyters) and explicitly ordained death penalties in the case of refusal to sacrifice; Cyprian of Carthage was one amongst the many victims of this second edict. An interesting point in this edict is that it also ordered harsh punishments against Christian senators and members of the domus caesari (servants of the imperial household) which is a hint at the degree of expansion that the Christian religion had attained even at the top echelons of Roman society.
This time the reason for Valerian’s return to the East doesn’t seem to have been just another wave of Sasanian attacks, but also the increasing scale and severity of Gothic sea raids. According to Zosimus, after seeing the rich booty obtained by their Borani allies, the Goths decided to follow their example and set to the sea in Bosporan ships but with much larger forces. Most alarmingly, the large Gothic fleet managed to cross the Bosporus and land its troops in the Bythinian coast of the sea of Marmara. This Gothic army then proceeded to systematically pillage, burn and destroy all the large and rich cities of Bythinia: Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Kios and Prusa while Cyzicus was spared because torrential rains had turned the Rhyndakos river into barrier that the Goths could not cross. Most alarmingly, and again according to Zosimus (following the lost account of Chrysogonos of Nicomedia) the Goths found ample help by disaffected elements of the civilian population, which eased their task of finding easy goals and weak spots in the defenses.
Like Syria, Bythinia was one of the richest and more urbanized areas of the Roman empire, and it offered rich and easy pickings for the Goths. Of its many large cities, there are very few remans visible today as most of these cities have remained inhabited during the Byzantine and Ottoman eras, which has destroyed most archaeological remains. A great earthquake in 1999 cleared the way for archaeological surveys in the Çukurbağ district of İzmit (ancient Nicomedia) and they've brought to life interesting remains of Roman reliefs notable because they still preserve a sizeable part of their original polychromy. Archaeologists think on stylistical grounds that they were probably part of a monument raised in honour to the emperor Septimius Severus in the early III century CE.
Presumably, this large Gothic raid happened when Valerian had already arrived in Antioch. Unwilling to leave the endangered border with the Sasanian empire, Valerian sent a certain officer named Felix with the order to at least secure the city of Byzantium and prevent the Gothic fleet from sailing back. But apparently this was not enough, and in 259 CE he marched in person with most of the eastern army into the north of Anatolia to stabilize the situation. But his reaction had come too late: the Goths had already left, with a rich booty and large amounts of captives, and his army accomplished nothing except becoming affected by an epidemic that was raging in this devastated region; some scholars think that it could be another recurrence of the Plague of Cyprian.
Now that the Roman army and Valerian had departed and were distracted elsewhere (and in difficulties), Šābuhr I seized the opportunity and launched a new attack against Edessa and Carrhae in the spring of 260 CE. Upon receiving this alarming news, Valerian and his diseased army marched again rapidly south to meet this new attack.
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21.4. VALERIAN’S REIGN. THE BATTLE OF EDESSA.
21.4. VALERIAN’S REIGN. THE BATTLE OF EDESSA.
The battle of Edessa, although quite better documented than the battle of Barbalissos, is yet another study in confusion and contradictions between sources. In this post I’ll follow mainly the narrative offered by the Italian scholar Omar Coloru in his short book L’imperatore prigionero: Valeriano, la Persia e la disfatta di Edessa. According to Coloru, Valerian’s army probable took winter quarters in Cappadocia when they were marching back towards Syria from Bithynia and Pontus; he puts forward this hypothesis on the basis of some traces held in ancient accounts and Christian tradition about some troubles (including perhaps an armed uprising by a rich landowner) that happeend around this time and that Coloru suggests that could’ve been caused by the presence of a large body of troops quartered in the province’s cities (the main focus of trouble seems to have been Caesarea Mazaca -the provincial capital- and Tyana).
In the spring, Valerian’s army marched south crossing the Taurus mountains and arrived in northern Syria, where Valerian concentrated his forces on the western side of the Euphrates. The main Sasanian army was not far from there, right on the other side of the river besieging the two large fortified cities of Carrhae and Edessa (each of them located about 80 km east of the river). Coloru proposes that Valerian’s army probably concentrated around Zeugma, for it was the easiest point to cross the river in the immediate environs of the two cities under attack.
Finally though, apparently after some hesitations (according to some of the sources, as we’ll see later) Valerian decided to cross the river and engage Šābuhr I’s army in open battle in the flat plains between Edessa and Carrhae (Coloru proposes Batnae as the exact location for the battle). The battlefield couldn’t have been less suited to the Romans and better suited to the Iranians if Šābuhr I himself had chosen it: a completely flat plain of steppe terrain with hard ground, without boulders, ravines, rivers or hills. It was the perfect terrain for cavalry, and it was in this very same place or very near it where three hundred years earlier the Arsacid general Surena had inflicted a crushing defeat on Crassus’ legions. Now, history was about to repeat himself (by the way, this spot of land was really accursed for the Romans, because again in the 290s the tetrarch Galerius suffered yet another crushing defeat against the army of the Sasanian šāhānšāh Narseh; I know of no other place with such a baneful history for Roman arms).
Depiction of Sasanian cavalry at one of Šābuhr I 's triumphal rock reliefs at Bīšāpūr.
About the battle itself, the sources offer a bedazzling array of contradictory accounts. Let’s begin with the Iranian account, according to the ŠKZ:
As usual, Šābuhr I’s account is overly triumphalist (as befits a piece of royal propaganda) and emphasizes exclusively his own role in the event, even stating explicitly that he himself made Valerian prisoner “with our own hands”. Coloru dismisses the number of 70,000 men that the ŠKZ gives for Valerian’s army, but as I wrote in my post about Barbalissos, this number fits within what could have materially possible according to the Roman army in the East (for the complete reasoning, please see the aforementioned post); my only caveat is that perhaps Šābuhr I based his numbers on Roman units at full strength, which is dubious after their long trip into northern Asia Minor and back and the epidemic they’d possibly suffered there (according to Zosimus). It’s again interesting how (like in the case of Gordian III’s army) Šābuhr I gives a complete list of all the “exotic” (for an Iranian) origins of Valerian’s army. It’s clear that the contingents he originally took with him in 254 CE with him to the East from the two Germanias and Raetia were still with him, and that the army counted (like in the case of Gordian III’s army) with contingents of “barbarian” mercenaries, in this case Moors (probably as light cavalry) and Germanic warriors (notice the differentiation in the translation by N.Frye between “Germany” and “Germania”. Given that these lands are quoted in a logical geographical order (from west to east and from north to south, “Germany”refers to the Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Germania while “Germania”refers most probably to Germanic peoples who lived beyond the Danube (most probably Goths).
Rock relief at Naqš-e Rostam depicting the triumph of Šābuhr I over two Roman emperors. Philip the Arab is beging on his knees while Šābuhr I holds Valerian prisoner grasping him by his wrists.
Now let’s take a look at the western sources. As Coloru states, the most detailed and trustworthy source is (bizarrely enough) the XII century Byzantine chronicler John Zonaras. I think it’s interesting enough to quote the passage in its entirety, although it’s quite a long one:
As Zonaras wrote at a point much removed in time from the events and clearly had access to several sources, he chose to list two of these traditions in his own account of events. First Zonaras writes that the Sasanian army initially attacked and besieged Carrhae and Edessa, while Valerian hesitated on the western bank of the Euphrates. What according to Zosimus’ account convinced him to cross the river and attack the army of Šābuhr I was the news that the besieged garrison at Edessa was conducting a vigorous defense and was inflicting many losses on their foes through sorties. This made Valerian confident enough that the Sasanian forces had been weakened in morale and/or numbers and he engaged them in battle. According to Zosimus’ text this was a major blunder, for Šābuhr I’s army was much larger than his own and proceeded to surround and defeat the Romans, taking many of them as prisoners, including Valerian. Then Zosimus presents the other tradition as if it was a different one, although it’s just really a variant of the previous one: while Valerian “was in Edessa” his soldiers were beset by hunger and mutinous, and so Valerian went willingly to Šābuhr I in order to save his own hide. The obvious question to this second tradition is how did Valerian become trapped in Edessa with his army. This could very well have been a result of his defeat on a field battle against the Sasanian army, which forced him and the survivors of his army to take refuge in the besieged city. Quite probably, the city had not enough foodstuffs stored for such a large force and hunger made its appearance, with the soldiers blaming Valerian (rightly or not) for their current predicament.
Amongst the remaining western sources, the Epitome de Caesaribus, Eutropius, Festus, Orosius, Agathias and Evagrius Scholasticus all agree in general lines with the account of the ŠKZ, without adding further details. Evagrius account is particularly valuable, because he employed III century CE sources now lost to us, like Dexippus of Athens and Nikostratos of Trebizond.
The Historia Augusta and Aurelius Victor both state that Valerian was captured by Šābuhr I by means of treachery. According to Aurelius Victor:
And according to the SHA (beware, it’s a long quote and full of all the usual sorts of fabricated letters and quotes that the SHA were so fond of):
The treachery and deviousness of easterners (of which the “Persians” were the quintessential example) was a topoi of Greek and Roman writers since the V century CE, and so it’s abundantly employed in these western sources. As it couldn’t be otherwise, Zosimus also jumped in this bandwagon, and offers a similar account with some minor variations:
The important detail that appears in Zosimus’ account is that apparently Valerian’s army was afflicted by an epidemic. The surviving fragments of the lost work of the VI century CE Eastern Roman author Peter the Patrician also corroborate this version:
Peter the Patrician adds an important bit of information, that the Moorish light cavalry had been badly hit by the plague; we know by the ŠKZ that Valerian’s army did include forces from North Africa, which were probably numeri of Berber light cavalry.
Finally, there’s another group of western accounts that add an important twist to the story. They are all quite short, the longest one belonging to the IX century CE Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus:
The important detail in Syncellus’ account is that there were not one, but two battles. The first one in which the Romans were defeated and ended up being besieged in Edessa. And that after Valerian’s “betrayal”, the rest of his army fought a second battle to try to escape the Sasanian encirclement, which was a partial success. The accounts of Eutropius and Tabarī also corroborate that the battle and Valerian’s capture happened at different moments in time.
Another triumphal rock relief of Šābuhr I, this time at Bīšāpūr, depicting his triumph over three Roman emperors. Gordian III is shown dead under the hooves of the king's horse, while Philip the Arab is begging on his knees and Valerian is held prisoner by his wrists.
After taking into account all this mess of conflicting accounts, Coloru offers the following reconstruction of events, which I find quite reasonable: after an initial hesitation, upon hearing about the vigorous defense of Edessa by its Roman garrison, Valerian decided to cross the Euphrates to attack the besiegers. Both armies met probably near Batnae between Carrhae, Edessa and Euphrates. There, the Roman army suffered an enveloping maneuver by the army of Šābuhr I and was defeated, but it somehow managed to retreat into Edessa and take refuge behind its formidable fortifications; Valerian went along with the army. The went on for an indeterminate amount of time, with conditions growing increasingly dire for the besieged Romans. Edessa had enough foodstuffs to sustain a siege only for its normal garrison plus its usual inhabitants, but not for the extra mouths provided by Valerian’s defeated army. In addition, given the unsanitary conditions of a besieged city in the heat of the Mesopotamian summer crammed with so many men and beasts, an epidemic broke out which would have hit specially hard the light Moorish cavalry, which was a key element of Valerian’s army if he wanted to defeat the powerful Sasanian cavalry. As a result of this situation the trapped Roman troops began to adopt a mutinous attitude, and Valerian felt that his only way out of the mass was to try to negotiate a peace with the Sasanian king.
Coloru notes how this situation has several parallels in the previous history of conflicts between the Romans and the Iranian empires: after his defeat at Carrhae Crassus was also forced to negotiate with Surena by his own soldiers who threatened his life if he refused to do so, and it’s quite possible that the death of Gordian III happened in similar circumstances after his defeat at Misikhe.
But knowing full well that the situation of the besieged Romans was becoming desperate, Šābuhr I refused to talk with Valerian’s embassy and demanded that the augustus himself came to ask for peace in person. Valerian had no other options left, and went to meet Šābuhr I, and during this meeting, in unknown circumstances Valerian and his entire entourage were taken prisoners by Šābuhr I.
In broad lines, this reconstruction agrees both with the ŠKZ and with most Graeco-Roman sources. For the “Mazda-worshipping lord” Šābuhr I, writing a blatant lie in his great triumphal inscription would have been a delicate matter, but omissions and half-truths would’ve been another matter altogether, so probably, like with the account of his victory over Gordian III and Mishike sixteen years earlier, the šāhānšāh embellished things a bit without resorting to open lies. There was most probably a “great field battle” between his army and the Romans, in which Šābuhr I was victorious. And in according to Coloru’s reconstruction, the Sasanian king did take Valerian prisoner “with his own hand”, but the ŠKZ does to make explicit the exact circumstances in which this capture took place (it would have looked a bit bad for PR reasons, and so the text implies that Šābuhr I did the capture on his own heroically in the midst of the battle). And anyway, Šābuhr I probably reasoned that after all it was his victory in battle which had forced Valerian to come to ask him for peace terms, so what he was telling was “basically” the truth (again, a delicate matter for a Zoroastrian king).
On the other side, most western authors did focus their accounts exclusively on the “treachery”of the “perfidious” easterners, trying to sidestep the fact that the Roman army had been beaten yet again by Šābuhr I in open battle. It’s important to notice how this refusal to accept reality and call things by their name is again the same attitude that can be found in the (scarce) western accounts of Gordian III’s campaign and Barbalissos.
Cameo of Roman-Iranian facture preserved at the Cabinet des Medailles in Paris, depicting Valerian being captured in battle by Šābuhr I, "with his own hand". Notice how Šābuhr I doesn't even need to unsheath his sword to capture the hapless Roman emperor.
The blow and impact of Valerian’s capture was enormous, and without precedents in Roman history. Neither Abrittus nor Barbalissos can compare; this was the first (and only) time in history that a Roman augustus was captured alive and paraded around like a living trophy by a foreign enemy (well, there’s also the case of Romanos IV Diogenes after Manzikert) and the impact of this news fell like a thunderclap all across the roman empire (and probably its neighbors as well). The only other event in ancient Roman history that can be compared to Valerian’s capture in its wholesale impact was the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 CE; not even the Roman defeat at Adrianople came close.
It also marked the absolute nadir of Roman fortunes in the III century, and the beginning of the darkest decade of the long III century “crisis”, that saw the separation of two large parts of the empire (the Gallic empire and the Palmyrene empire) and the almost definitive disintegration of Rome as a political entity. A reign that had begun with such high hopes and that for a short moment had looked like it had succeeded in stabilizing the empire and containing the foreign threats ended in absolute disaster and utter humiliation.
Valerian’s capture at Edessa was a political catastrophe, but ironically from a purely military point of view, it was probably a lesser defeat than Barbalissos seven years earlier. Even the ŠKZ implies it, because this time it did not use to expression “annihilate” to refer to this battle, and used just the word “defeat”. Part of the Roman army of the East survived, as did some of Valerian’s high officials, and unlike in 253 CE, this time in his following invasion of the Roman eastern provinces the Sasanian king did encounter organized resistance by Roman military units.
But nevertheless, Šābuhr I’s victory was again mind-blowing. Along with Valerian, the ŠKZ states that the Sasanian king captured the praetorian prefect as well as “chiefs of the army” and “senators”. The praetorian prefect was probably Successianus, but about the rest of military commanders and senators scholars have no clue about their identities.
Valerian’s memory was tarnished forever for the dishonor he brought upon Rome by allowing himself to be captured alive, and most Graeco-Roman historical records fulminate against him for this reason, although there are some exceptions like Zosimus. And the reason why Zosimus did not criticize him too badly was the very same one why another (much larger) part of ancient chroniclers redoubled their criticism against Valerian: he had been a persecutor of Christians. Already in the early IV century CE, the Christian writer Lactantius wrote with glee about Valerian’s dishonor and his humiliating captivity in his work De mortibus persecutorum:
The V century CE Christian writer Orosius wrote about Valerian’s captivity in similar terms in his Adversus paganos:
And the VI century CE East Roman author Agathias also implied that Valerian suffered terrible humiliations at the hands of Šābuhr I:
Lactantius’ writing has caused rivers of ink to flow for the past two centuries amongst scholars. Some scholars think it’s merely Christian propaganda, while others see grounds for believing there’s some truth in it. What happened to Valerian after his capture? The ŠKZ is explicit: Valerian, his commanders, high officials and soldiers were all deported to Pārs, the homeland of the Sasanian dynasty. And both eastern accounts and archaeological evidence support this.
The X century CE Chronicle of Seert (an Arabic chronicle using older materials written in Aramaic dating from Sasanian times) written in Iraq (and so within the old lands of the Sasanian empire) state that the deportees were mainly settled in royal estates in Asōrestān and Xūzestān (contradicting the ŠKZ), but this tradition is also supported by Tabarī, according to whom Valerian and the rest of prisoners were settled in one of the new cities founded by Šābuhr I, Wēh-Andiyok-Šābuhr (literally, “the better Antioch of Šābuhr”), which in a short time became corrupted into Gondēšāpur. Tabarī also adds that Šābuhr I ordered Valerian to organize the construction of an irrigation dam in the environs of Šūštar, which is know still today as “Caesar’s dam” by the local population (Band-e Qayṣar, on the Kārūn river). The technical skills of Roman soldiers and engineers were much appreciated by successive Sasanian kings and is possible they always settled them in undeveloped royal estates to take advantage of said skills.
On another side, it’s also possible that according to the ŠKZ Valerian spent his captivity in Pārs; in this case the most likely place is the city founded by Šābuhr I as his capital city in his homeland (he did not use Ardaxšir-Xwarrah as his royal residence), the city of Wēh-Šābuhr (“Lord Šābuhr” in Middle Persian, which has become Bīšāpūr in New Persian). Here, Šābuhr I built a large complex with a palace and a temple to the goddess Anāhīd which shows clear signs of Roman influence.
Remains of the dam's bridge known as Band-e Qayṣar (Caesar's dam) at Šūštar in Khuzestan.
About the question of the treatment of Valerian during his captivity and after, I tend to agree with Coloru that there are enough grounds to believe that Lactantius’ account is not a mere fabrication born out of sectarian hatred. For starters, Firdawsī’s Šāh-nāmah states that king Šābuhr menaced Valerian with skinning him if he disobeyed his orders; afterwards he had his ears and nose cut and then he threw him into prison in chains. The story about Valerian’s mutilation is also found in Tabarī. In Achaemenid and Sasanian tradition, a man with deformities or a mutilated body could not be king (and the same was ready among the Romans, at least in Byzantine times, the story of Justinian II “Rhinotmetos” is conclusive enough). So, although it’s impossible to proof it one way or another, the story could have a firm basis in historical realities. The Epitome de Caesaribus adds the quite mysterious remark that after his capture Valerian was referred to as colobius. Linguistic research has come to the conclusion that this Latin words could be a direct transliteration of the Greek adjective kolobós, meaning “mutilated”.
A similar thing happens with his alleged function as a footstool for Šābuhr I when the king wanted to mount his horse. The Seleucid king Demetrios II was exhibited in chains across the Arsacid empire after his defeat by Mihrdād II the Great in 138 BCE, and in 293 CE the Sasanian king Narseh inflicted a similar punishment against the nobleman Wahnam (he was exhibited across the empire chained and mounted on a donkey). It’s possible that Valerian suffered a similar fate and that Lactantius twisted it a bit to give it a Biblical flavor, as stated by Psalm 110,1:
As for the skinning, it’s also probably true or at least with a strong basis in historical realities. A 2012 study by Robert Bolliger and Josef Wiesehöfer has brought into relief the continuity of skinning as a punishment among several near eastern and iranian dynasties across ancient times. It was a common punishment in Achaemenid times for very serious crimes (usurpation, rebellion, etc.), and in his Bīsotūn inscription Darius I stated that this was the punishment inflicted on the rebel Fravartiš (after being impaled) who had tried to become king of Media. This gruesome practice is first attested among the Assyrians, and most specifically under Sargon II, who executed a vassal king who had rebelled and then had the corpse skinned and the skin tanned in red color (the very same punishment described by Lactantius). In Sasanian times, the same fate was met by the prophet Mani under Bahrām I, by the Christian martyrs Barshebya and Simeon under Šābuhr II and by the army general Naxwaragān under Xusrō I (this time without the previous nicety of an execution, according to Agathias). Also, at least in the cases of Sargon II and Darius I, the skins of their defeated enemies were specially treated so that they would be preserved for a long time as a memory of what happened to rebels and usurpers.
The battle of Edessa, although quite better documented than the battle of Barbalissos, is yet another study in confusion and contradictions between sources. In this post I’ll follow mainly the narrative offered by the Italian scholar Omar Coloru in his short book L’imperatore prigionero: Valeriano, la Persia e la disfatta di Edessa. According to Coloru, Valerian’s army probable took winter quarters in Cappadocia when they were marching back towards Syria from Bithynia and Pontus; he puts forward this hypothesis on the basis of some traces held in ancient accounts and Christian tradition about some troubles (including perhaps an armed uprising by a rich landowner) that happeend around this time and that Coloru suggests that could’ve been caused by the presence of a large body of troops quartered in the province’s cities (the main focus of trouble seems to have been Caesarea Mazaca -the provincial capital- and Tyana).
In the spring, Valerian’s army marched south crossing the Taurus mountains and arrived in northern Syria, where Valerian concentrated his forces on the western side of the Euphrates. The main Sasanian army was not far from there, right on the other side of the river besieging the two large fortified cities of Carrhae and Edessa (each of them located about 80 km east of the river). Coloru proposes that Valerian’s army probably concentrated around Zeugma, for it was the easiest point to cross the river in the immediate environs of the two cities under attack.
Finally though, apparently after some hesitations (according to some of the sources, as we’ll see later) Valerian decided to cross the river and engage Šābuhr I’s army in open battle in the flat plains between Edessa and Carrhae (Coloru proposes Batnae as the exact location for the battle). The battlefield couldn’t have been less suited to the Romans and better suited to the Iranians if Šābuhr I himself had chosen it: a completely flat plain of steppe terrain with hard ground, without boulders, ravines, rivers or hills. It was the perfect terrain for cavalry, and it was in this very same place or very near it where three hundred years earlier the Arsacid general Surena had inflicted a crushing defeat on Crassus’ legions. Now, history was about to repeat himself (by the way, this spot of land was really accursed for the Romans, because again in the 290s the tetrarch Galerius suffered yet another crushing defeat against the army of the Sasanian šāhānšāh Narseh; I know of no other place with such a baneful history for Roman arms).
Depiction of Sasanian cavalry at one of Šābuhr I 's triumphal rock reliefs at Bīšāpūr.
About the battle itself, the sources offer a bedazzling array of contradictory accounts. Let’s begin with the Iranian account, according to the ŠKZ:
As usual, Šābuhr I’s account is overly triumphalist (as befits a piece of royal propaganda) and emphasizes exclusively his own role in the event, even stating explicitly that he himself made Valerian prisoner “with our own hands”. Coloru dismisses the number of 70,000 men that the ŠKZ gives for Valerian’s army, but as I wrote in my post about Barbalissos, this number fits within what could have materially possible according to the Roman army in the East (for the complete reasoning, please see the aforementioned post); my only caveat is that perhaps Šābuhr I based his numbers on Roman units at full strength, which is dubious after their long trip into northern Asia Minor and back and the epidemic they’d possibly suffered there (according to Zosimus). It’s again interesting how (like in the case of Gordian III’s army) Šābuhr I gives a complete list of all the “exotic” (for an Iranian) origins of Valerian’s army. It’s clear that the contingents he originally took with him in 254 CE with him to the East from the two Germanias and Raetia were still with him, and that the army counted (like in the case of Gordian III’s army) with contingents of “barbarian” mercenaries, in this case Moors (probably as light cavalry) and Germanic warriors (notice the differentiation in the translation by N.Frye between “Germany” and “Germania”. Given that these lands are quoted in a logical geographical order (from west to east and from north to south, “Germany”refers to the Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Germania while “Germania”refers most probably to Germanic peoples who lived beyond the Danube (most probably Goths).
Rock relief at Naqš-e Rostam depicting the triumph of Šābuhr I over two Roman emperors. Philip the Arab is beging on his knees while Šābuhr I holds Valerian prisoner grasping him by his wrists.
Now let’s take a look at the western sources. As Coloru states, the most detailed and trustworthy source is (bizarrely enough) the XII century Byzantine chronicler John Zonaras. I think it’s interesting enough to quote the passage in its entirety, although it’s quite a long one:
As Zonaras wrote at a point much removed in time from the events and clearly had access to several sources, he chose to list two of these traditions in his own account of events. First Zonaras writes that the Sasanian army initially attacked and besieged Carrhae and Edessa, while Valerian hesitated on the western bank of the Euphrates. What according to Zosimus’ account convinced him to cross the river and attack the army of Šābuhr I was the news that the besieged garrison at Edessa was conducting a vigorous defense and was inflicting many losses on their foes through sorties. This made Valerian confident enough that the Sasanian forces had been weakened in morale and/or numbers and he engaged them in battle. According to Zosimus’ text this was a major blunder, for Šābuhr I’s army was much larger than his own and proceeded to surround and defeat the Romans, taking many of them as prisoners, including Valerian. Then Zosimus presents the other tradition as if it was a different one, although it’s just really a variant of the previous one: while Valerian “was in Edessa” his soldiers were beset by hunger and mutinous, and so Valerian went willingly to Šābuhr I in order to save his own hide. The obvious question to this second tradition is how did Valerian become trapped in Edessa with his army. This could very well have been a result of his defeat on a field battle against the Sasanian army, which forced him and the survivors of his army to take refuge in the besieged city. Quite probably, the city had not enough foodstuffs stored for such a large force and hunger made its appearance, with the soldiers blaming Valerian (rightly or not) for their current predicament.
Amongst the remaining western sources, the Epitome de Caesaribus, Eutropius, Festus, Orosius, Agathias and Evagrius Scholasticus all agree in general lines with the account of the ŠKZ, without adding further details. Evagrius account is particularly valuable, because he employed III century CE sources now lost to us, like Dexippus of Athens and Nikostratos of Trebizond.
The Historia Augusta and Aurelius Victor both state that Valerian was captured by Šābuhr I by means of treachery. According to Aurelius Victor:
And according to the SHA (beware, it’s a long quote and full of all the usual sorts of fabricated letters and quotes that the SHA were so fond of):
The treachery and deviousness of easterners (of which the “Persians” were the quintessential example) was a topoi of Greek and Roman writers since the V century CE, and so it’s abundantly employed in these western sources. As it couldn’t be otherwise, Zosimus also jumped in this bandwagon, and offers a similar account with some minor variations:
The important detail that appears in Zosimus’ account is that apparently Valerian’s army was afflicted by an epidemic. The surviving fragments of the lost work of the VI century CE Eastern Roman author Peter the Patrician also corroborate this version:
Peter the Patrician adds an important bit of information, that the Moorish light cavalry had been badly hit by the plague; we know by the ŠKZ that Valerian’s army did include forces from North Africa, which were probably numeri of Berber light cavalry.
Finally, there’s another group of western accounts that add an important twist to the story. They are all quite short, the longest one belonging to the IX century CE Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus:
The important detail in Syncellus’ account is that there were not one, but two battles. The first one in which the Romans were defeated and ended up being besieged in Edessa. And that after Valerian’s “betrayal”, the rest of his army fought a second battle to try to escape the Sasanian encirclement, which was a partial success. The accounts of Eutropius and Tabarī also corroborate that the battle and Valerian’s capture happened at different moments in time.
Another triumphal rock relief of Šābuhr I, this time at Bīšāpūr, depicting his triumph over three Roman emperors. Gordian III is shown dead under the hooves of the king's horse, while Philip the Arab is begging on his knees and Valerian is held prisoner by his wrists.
After taking into account all this mess of conflicting accounts, Coloru offers the following reconstruction of events, which I find quite reasonable: after an initial hesitation, upon hearing about the vigorous defense of Edessa by its Roman garrison, Valerian decided to cross the Euphrates to attack the besiegers. Both armies met probably near Batnae between Carrhae, Edessa and Euphrates. There, the Roman army suffered an enveloping maneuver by the army of Šābuhr I and was defeated, but it somehow managed to retreat into Edessa and take refuge behind its formidable fortifications; Valerian went along with the army. The went on for an indeterminate amount of time, with conditions growing increasingly dire for the besieged Romans. Edessa had enough foodstuffs to sustain a siege only for its normal garrison plus its usual inhabitants, but not for the extra mouths provided by Valerian’s defeated army. In addition, given the unsanitary conditions of a besieged city in the heat of the Mesopotamian summer crammed with so many men and beasts, an epidemic broke out which would have hit specially hard the light Moorish cavalry, which was a key element of Valerian’s army if he wanted to defeat the powerful Sasanian cavalry. As a result of this situation the trapped Roman troops began to adopt a mutinous attitude, and Valerian felt that his only way out of the mass was to try to negotiate a peace with the Sasanian king.
Coloru notes how this situation has several parallels in the previous history of conflicts between the Romans and the Iranian empires: after his defeat at Carrhae Crassus was also forced to negotiate with Surena by his own soldiers who threatened his life if he refused to do so, and it’s quite possible that the death of Gordian III happened in similar circumstances after his defeat at Misikhe.
But knowing full well that the situation of the besieged Romans was becoming desperate, Šābuhr I refused to talk with Valerian’s embassy and demanded that the augustus himself came to ask for peace in person. Valerian had no other options left, and went to meet Šābuhr I, and during this meeting, in unknown circumstances Valerian and his entire entourage were taken prisoners by Šābuhr I.
In broad lines, this reconstruction agrees both with the ŠKZ and with most Graeco-Roman sources. For the “Mazda-worshipping lord” Šābuhr I, writing a blatant lie in his great triumphal inscription would have been a delicate matter, but omissions and half-truths would’ve been another matter altogether, so probably, like with the account of his victory over Gordian III and Mishike sixteen years earlier, the šāhānšāh embellished things a bit without resorting to open lies. There was most probably a “great field battle” between his army and the Romans, in which Šābuhr I was victorious. And in according to Coloru’s reconstruction, the Sasanian king did take Valerian prisoner “with his own hand”, but the ŠKZ does to make explicit the exact circumstances in which this capture took place (it would have looked a bit bad for PR reasons, and so the text implies that Šābuhr I did the capture on his own heroically in the midst of the battle). And anyway, Šābuhr I probably reasoned that after all it was his victory in battle which had forced Valerian to come to ask him for peace terms, so what he was telling was “basically” the truth (again, a delicate matter for a Zoroastrian king).
On the other side, most western authors did focus their accounts exclusively on the “treachery”of the “perfidious” easterners, trying to sidestep the fact that the Roman army had been beaten yet again by Šābuhr I in open battle. It’s important to notice how this refusal to accept reality and call things by their name is again the same attitude that can be found in the (scarce) western accounts of Gordian III’s campaign and Barbalissos.
Cameo of Roman-Iranian facture preserved at the Cabinet des Medailles in Paris, depicting Valerian being captured in battle by Šābuhr I, "with his own hand". Notice how Šābuhr I doesn't even need to unsheath his sword to capture the hapless Roman emperor.
The blow and impact of Valerian’s capture was enormous, and without precedents in Roman history. Neither Abrittus nor Barbalissos can compare; this was the first (and only) time in history that a Roman augustus was captured alive and paraded around like a living trophy by a foreign enemy (well, there’s also the case of Romanos IV Diogenes after Manzikert) and the impact of this news fell like a thunderclap all across the roman empire (and probably its neighbors as well). The only other event in ancient Roman history that can be compared to Valerian’s capture in its wholesale impact was the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 CE; not even the Roman defeat at Adrianople came close.
It also marked the absolute nadir of Roman fortunes in the III century, and the beginning of the darkest decade of the long III century “crisis”, that saw the separation of two large parts of the empire (the Gallic empire and the Palmyrene empire) and the almost definitive disintegration of Rome as a political entity. A reign that had begun with such high hopes and that for a short moment had looked like it had succeeded in stabilizing the empire and containing the foreign threats ended in absolute disaster and utter humiliation.
Valerian’s capture at Edessa was a political catastrophe, but ironically from a purely military point of view, it was probably a lesser defeat than Barbalissos seven years earlier. Even the ŠKZ implies it, because this time it did not use to expression “annihilate” to refer to this battle, and used just the word “defeat”. Part of the Roman army of the East survived, as did some of Valerian’s high officials, and unlike in 253 CE, this time in his following invasion of the Roman eastern provinces the Sasanian king did encounter organized resistance by Roman military units.
But nevertheless, Šābuhr I’s victory was again mind-blowing. Along with Valerian, the ŠKZ states that the Sasanian king captured the praetorian prefect as well as “chiefs of the army” and “senators”. The praetorian prefect was probably Successianus, but about the rest of military commanders and senators scholars have no clue about their identities.
Valerian’s memory was tarnished forever for the dishonor he brought upon Rome by allowing himself to be captured alive, and most Graeco-Roman historical records fulminate against him for this reason, although there are some exceptions like Zosimus. And the reason why Zosimus did not criticize him too badly was the very same one why another (much larger) part of ancient chroniclers redoubled their criticism against Valerian: he had been a persecutor of Christians. Already in the early IV century CE, the Christian writer Lactantius wrote with glee about Valerian’s dishonor and his humiliating captivity in his work De mortibus persecutorum:
The V century CE Christian writer Orosius wrote about Valerian’s captivity in similar terms in his Adversus paganos:
And the VI century CE East Roman author Agathias also implied that Valerian suffered terrible humiliations at the hands of Šābuhr I:
Lactantius’ writing has caused rivers of ink to flow for the past two centuries amongst scholars. Some scholars think it’s merely Christian propaganda, while others see grounds for believing there’s some truth in it. What happened to Valerian after his capture? The ŠKZ is explicit: Valerian, his commanders, high officials and soldiers were all deported to Pārs, the homeland of the Sasanian dynasty. And both eastern accounts and archaeological evidence support this.
The X century CE Chronicle of Seert (an Arabic chronicle using older materials written in Aramaic dating from Sasanian times) written in Iraq (and so within the old lands of the Sasanian empire) state that the deportees were mainly settled in royal estates in Asōrestān and Xūzestān (contradicting the ŠKZ), but this tradition is also supported by Tabarī, according to whom Valerian and the rest of prisoners were settled in one of the new cities founded by Šābuhr I, Wēh-Andiyok-Šābuhr (literally, “the better Antioch of Šābuhr”), which in a short time became corrupted into Gondēšāpur. Tabarī also adds that Šābuhr I ordered Valerian to organize the construction of an irrigation dam in the environs of Šūštar, which is know still today as “Caesar’s dam” by the local population (Band-e Qayṣar, on the Kārūn river). The technical skills of Roman soldiers and engineers were much appreciated by successive Sasanian kings and is possible they always settled them in undeveloped royal estates to take advantage of said skills.
On another side, it’s also possible that according to the ŠKZ Valerian spent his captivity in Pārs; in this case the most likely place is the city founded by Šābuhr I as his capital city in his homeland (he did not use Ardaxšir-Xwarrah as his royal residence), the city of Wēh-Šābuhr (“Lord Šābuhr” in Middle Persian, which has become Bīšāpūr in New Persian). Here, Šābuhr I built a large complex with a palace and a temple to the goddess Anāhīd which shows clear signs of Roman influence.
Remains of the dam's bridge known as Band-e Qayṣar (Caesar's dam) at Šūštar in Khuzestan.
About the question of the treatment of Valerian during his captivity and after, I tend to agree with Coloru that there are enough grounds to believe that Lactantius’ account is not a mere fabrication born out of sectarian hatred. For starters, Firdawsī’s Šāh-nāmah states that king Šābuhr menaced Valerian with skinning him if he disobeyed his orders; afterwards he had his ears and nose cut and then he threw him into prison in chains. The story about Valerian’s mutilation is also found in Tabarī. In Achaemenid and Sasanian tradition, a man with deformities or a mutilated body could not be king (and the same was ready among the Romans, at least in Byzantine times, the story of Justinian II “Rhinotmetos” is conclusive enough). So, although it’s impossible to proof it one way or another, the story could have a firm basis in historical realities. The Epitome de Caesaribus adds the quite mysterious remark that after his capture Valerian was referred to as colobius. Linguistic research has come to the conclusion that this Latin words could be a direct transliteration of the Greek adjective kolobós, meaning “mutilated”.
A similar thing happens with his alleged function as a footstool for Šābuhr I when the king wanted to mount his horse. The Seleucid king Demetrios II was exhibited in chains across the Arsacid empire after his defeat by Mihrdād II the Great in 138 BCE, and in 293 CE the Sasanian king Narseh inflicted a similar punishment against the nobleman Wahnam (he was exhibited across the empire chained and mounted on a donkey). It’s possible that Valerian suffered a similar fate and that Lactantius twisted it a bit to give it a Biblical flavor, as stated by Psalm 110,1:
As for the skinning, it’s also probably true or at least with a strong basis in historical realities. A 2012 study by Robert Bolliger and Josef Wiesehöfer has brought into relief the continuity of skinning as a punishment among several near eastern and iranian dynasties across ancient times. It was a common punishment in Achaemenid times for very serious crimes (usurpation, rebellion, etc.), and in his Bīsotūn inscription Darius I stated that this was the punishment inflicted on the rebel Fravartiš (after being impaled) who had tried to become king of Media. This gruesome practice is first attested among the Assyrians, and most specifically under Sargon II, who executed a vassal king who had rebelled and then had the corpse skinned and the skin tanned in red color (the very same punishment described by Lactantius). In Sasanian times, the same fate was met by the prophet Mani under Bahrām I, by the Christian martyrs Barshebya and Simeon under Šābuhr II and by the army general Naxwaragān under Xusrō I (this time without the previous nicety of an execution, according to Agathias). Also, at least in the cases of Sargon II and Darius I, the skins of their defeated enemies were specially treated so that they would be preserved for a long time as a memory of what happened to rebels and usurpers.
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Valerian probably expected to be ransomed. Do we know why Gallienus didn't even attempt to rescue his father?
Because he was in no position to do so; he was busy enough trying to keep his post and his life. The immediate consequence of Valerian's capture (just in the year 260 CE) were:
- The usurpation by Macrianus, probably the praefectus annonae of Valerian, who rallied around him the remnants of the eastern army commanded by their general Ballista (or Callistus, according to other sources) and had his two sons Macrianus the Younger and Quietus acclaimed as augusti.
- The usurpation by Regalianus in the Balkans.
- The usurpation by Ingenuus in the Balkans.
- A major invasion by Alamanni and Iuthungi (their first appearance) across the Agri Decumates, who managed to cross the Alps and reach the northern Italian plain; some isolated groups even reached the outskirts of Rome itself, where they were repulsed by an improvised militia organized by the Senate. Finally, Gallienus was able to defeat the invaders at the battle of Mediolanum.
- The usurpation by Postumus, commander of the Rhenish and Raetian armies, who murdered Gallienus' son Saloninus at Cologne, was acclaimed as augustus by his troops and seceded Gaul, Raetia, Britain and Hispania from the Roman empire to form a separate "Gallic empire".
In these circumstances, he's hardly to blame for failing to rescue his father. Plus, Shapur I was in no need for money; he wouldn't have let go of Valerian in exchange for any amount of gold.
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Thank you. I now understand better what you meant by the impact of Valerian's capture.
I guess maybe the return of Valerian could have been negociated against a favorable peace treaty or other concessions, not just gold, but of course with an usurper taking power in the east this was unthinkable.
I guess maybe the return of Valerian could have been negociated against a favorable peace treaty or other concessions, not just gold, but of course with an usurper taking power in the east this was unthinkable.
Yes, the capture of Valerian basically undid all what he and his son had achieved in seven years of constant fighting, and brought the empire to the brink of collapse; the Roman empire was in an even worse situation in 260 CE than it had been in 253 CE when Valerian rose to the purple. It's a veritable miracle and a testament to his military and political skills that Gallienus managed to cling to power for eight more years until he was finally murdered by a plot of his own officers in 268 CE. There are scholars who consider him one of the most underrated Roman emperors, and I tend to agree with them. He suffered from very bad press already in Antiquity, when sources like the SHA, Julian the Apostate or Zosimus accused him of "effeminacy" (even cross-dressing), cowardice, and any conceivable vice and weakness.
As for the situation in the East, just consider that Gallienus managed to defeat the usurpation of the Macriani thanks to the help of Odaenathus of Palmyra, who also managed to defeat the Sasanians and secure the eastern Roman border. By this time, Gallienus' position was so weak that he had to bow to reality and invest Odaenathus with the title corrector totius orientis, which basically made him the "viceroy" of the East, in order to at least preserve some semblance that Rome was still in control of the situation there, as Odaenathus was Gallienus' appointee when in fact he could very well have seceded the eastern provinces from Gallienus' central government and the emperor would've been absolutely unable to do anything about it. After Odaenathus' and Gallienus' deaths, Odaenathus' widow Zenobia finally took the decisive step but by then the central government had recovered its strength thanks to a series of military victories by Gallienus, Claudius and Aurelian, and Aurelian was able to smash the "Palmyrene empire" in a lightning campaign in 272-273 CE.
In these circumstances, any thought of ransoming or rescuing Valerian was just impossible.
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Do you have any more information on that cameo piece? What do you mean by 'of Roman-Iranian facture'?
Cameos were a typically Roman craft, and a very expensive one, usually reserved for the very upper strata of Roman society. A sizeable part of them contained motifs of imperial propaganda and were probably intended as prestige gifts from the emperor to important personalities, perhaps also as diplomatic gifts conveying the power of Rome and its emperor.
The cameo in question shows (according to experts in art history) all the stylistic signs of Graeco-Roman manufacture. Given that there were probably very few artisans within the Roman empire skilled in this craft, it was probably made by an artisan captured during one of Šābuhr I’s invasions of the Roman empire (probably in Antioch) and who was then deported into Ērānšāhr to work for the king of kings. The cameo, although showing traits of Hellenistic taste in its facture, shows a scene that is typical of Iranian art and follows Iranian artistic conventions (the combat of two mounted enemies, the torsos and faces depicted frontally with the legs in profile, etc.).
Some scholars even speculate if this cameo was not ordered by Šābuhr I for the same finality that cameos were used in the Roman empire, to be used as a diplomatic gift, and if the intended recipient was not Roman himself (perhaps Gallienus?).
22. THE AFTERMATH OF EDESSA. ŠĀBUHR I’S SECOND ONSLAUGHT AGAINST THE ROMAN EAST.
22. THE AFTERMATH OF EDESSA. ŠĀBUHR I’S SECOND ONSLAUGHT AGAINST THE ROMAN EAST.
The immediate aftermath of the battle of Edessa had two immediate consequences. The first one was that the victorious Sasanian army again crossed the Euphrates and pillaged the Roman eastern provinces to a much larger extent than it had done after Barbalissos. The second and for the Romans far more serious consequence was that it caused a political crisis in the Roman empire that almost led to its dissolution.
We’ll deal first with the immediate consequences for the Roman eastern provinces and after that we’ll deal with the effects for the Roman empire at large. As usual, I’ll start with the version of the facts as stated in the ŠKZ:
Again, a truly hair-rising list, and in this case with full corroboration by Graeco-Roman sources, much more than in the case of the aftermath of Barbalissos. This time, Syria Coele escaped relatively unscathed compared to seven years earlier (although Antioch was looted and burned a second time), but the main brunt of the Sasanian offensive was directed this time further north, against the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. Cappadocia and especially Cilicia were the main victims, but the Sasanian offensive reached further east, well into Lykaonia and even into Lycia and Pamphylia, the westernmost city in that list is Korykos on the southern Anatolian coast, which is located nearer to the Aegean sea than to Syria.
Detail from one of the triumphal rock reliefs of Šābuhr I at Bīšāpūr; looking at the figure standing on the left you can appreciate the long broadsword that was typical of early Sasanian cavalrymen. This was a heavy and contundent weapon, ideal for cavalry use. In the VI century CE it was abandoned in favor of lighter saber-like swords under Central Asian Turkic influence.
In order to bring about so much devastation, the armies of Šābuhr I must’ve had to be divided into several columns in order to cover as much ground as possible. But contrary to what had happened in 253 CE, this time the Romans had reserves relatively untouched by the defeat at Edessa and leaders who were disposed to rally them and fight back, and the Sasanian forces ended up suffering several minor setbacks during their looting spree which eventually forced the šāhānšāh to regroup his armies, cut his losses and return to his homeland. It’s also important to note that according to at least one ancient source Šābuhr I did not manage to take Edessa, and so he had to cope all the time (especially during his retreat) with the actions of the important Roman garrison stationed there.
The crossing of the Euphrates possibly happened at Zeugma, which was just 80 km west of Edessa and Carrhae and 40 km west of Batnae, which according to Coloru could’ve been the probable location of the battle. This time, the cities and towns destroyed by the armies of Šābuhr I are quoted in geographical order from east to west and from south to north, and so it’s more difficult to reconstruct the advance of the several Sasanian columns. But possibly, at Zeugma the army split in two, with one group heading north and looting Samosata while the other (probably under the command of the king of kings himself) again headed towards Antioch. According to Andreas Golz and Udo Hartmann, probably Mareades accompanied him again as he’d done in 253 CE. This time, the trick of having Mareades’ supporters open the doors from inside the city would not have worked (it’s hard to imagine the Antiochenes being very enthusiastic about repeating the experience of seven years earlier) and Šābuhr I would’ve been aware of that, so that if the city had to be besieged, the most logical thing would’ve been to take first at least its port of Seleucia in Pieria, and perhaps Alexandria ad Issum as well. According to several bits and snips of local Antiochene tradition which have arrived to us through the works of Libanius, Ammianus Marcellinus, John Malalas and Evagrius, this time the Sasanian forces stormed the city by surprise, thanks to the (for the Antiochenes) unfortunate fact that their walls were so absurdly long. According to a vividly written fragment by the IV century CE Antiochene author Ammianus Marcellinus, the Sasanian soldiers appeared suddenly descending from the steep slopes of the Silpius Mons while a good part of the population of Antioch was in the theater watching a play. The theater was built with its cavea excavated on the slopes of the mountain, and it was one of the actors on stage who first saw the approaching Sasanian soldiers (who presumably had infiltrated through some unguarded sector of the wall in the higher part of the mountain) and alerted the public, who began to flee as Sasanian arrows began to rain over them. This is the fragment of Ammianus’ Res Gestae where this story can be found:
Possibly this very column then continued along the coast to the northwest and entered the fertile and populous Cilician plain, where they proceeded to loot and burn all its great cities: Tarsus, Anazarbus, Mopsuestia, Neronias, Dometiopolis ... and then continued further east, one along the coast which kept advancing until it reached the city of Korykos in Pamphylia (the westernmost location quoted in the ŠKZ), while another probably headed north into Lykaonia and looted the important city of Iconium. As for the column that raided Samosata, either it rejoined the main army or it continued north and entered Cappadocia. Here it could have joined forces with the column that attacked Iconium, and these forces managed to take and destroy the provincial capital of Caesarea Mazaca and the important city of Tyana.
The ancient Roman city of Caesarea Mazaca lies under the modern Turkish city of Kayseri; which is still today like in ancient times dominated by the imposing mass of the volcanic Mount Erciyes (Mons Argaeus in Antiquity).
The Via Sebaste was built during Augustus' reign and runs along southern Anatolia from Lycia to Cilicia, and it would have been one of the main routes followed by the invading Sasanian forces.
While the armies of Šābuhr I were engaged in this orgy of destruction, the remaining Roman defenders were rallying their forces for a counterattack against the increasingly dispersed Sasanian columns. That not all the main officers of Valerian’s high command were captured at the disaster of Edessa is made clear by ancient sources. According to a fragment by the anonymous continuator of Dio Cassius (that some scholars identify with Peter the Patrician), on the western bank of the Euphrates had remained a certain Fulvius Macrianus, who was probably either the rationalis of Valerian (secretary in charge of financial affairs) or the praefectus anonnae in charge of supplies for the eastern army, or both. According to this fragment, Šābuhr I allowed Valerian to send an envoy to Macrianus to ask for ransom, but Macrianus refused to help:
Macrianus appears also in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History at the start of Valerian’s persecution as Prefect of Egypt (equestrian governor), and as a staunch supporter of Valerian’s religious policies. Probably due to this and to his administrative experience as governor of Egypt Valerian put him in charge of the key office of ensuring the supplying and payment of his armies. Macrianus was thus a civilian official, not a military commander, but he controlled the military purse, which in the power void that followed Valerian’s capture turned him into a very powerful figure. He was probably acknowledged as commander by the remaining Roman military commanders in northern Syria and Asia Minor, especially by Callistus, who managed to rally the Roman defenders in Anatolia and obtained some victories against the scattered Sasanian forces there (in some sources this commander is called Ballista, which some scholars consider that could have been his nickname among the soldiers, with Callistus being his real name). And the consequences were the usual ones: the Roman forces in this theater acclaimed Macrianus’ two sons (Titus Fulvius Iunius Macrianus, aka Macrianus the Younger, and Titus Fulvius Junius Quietus) as augusti. According to the ancient sources, Macrianus himself could not fill the post of augustus because he had a deformed leg.
Aureus of Titus Fulvius Iunius Macrianus (Macrianus the Younger). On the reverse, VICTORIA AVGG.
This unexpected resistance came as an unwelcome surprise to Šābuhr I. It’s been usually considered by scholars that this second invasion of the Roman empire by the Sasanian king was just a looting raid like the first one butt Andreas Golz and Udo Hartmann hypothesize that maybe this time Šābuhr I harbored (at least for a brief time) some notions of territorial conquest. They base their hypothesis on two aspects that appear in ancient sources. The first one is that according to their reconstruction of events the Sasanian king brought again Mareades with him, but that this time he installed him as governor or viceroy in Antioch (which would explain why in some sources he is named with the honorific name Kyriades, from the Greek kyriós, meaning “lord”). The second (and in my opinion much more substantial) hint is the rock inscription of the mowbed Kirdēr (aka Kartir, Kertir or Karder) at Naqš-e Rajab in Pārs abbreviated as KKZ. Kirdēr was probably the most important and influential Zoroastrian priest in Sasanian history. In this inscription (dating probably to the 280s) he boasted of his long career and successes; although the zenith of his power (according to the KKZ) happened under Šābuhr I’s successors Bahrām I and especially Bahrām II, his rise began already under Šābuhr I. This is somewhat suspicious because in the ŠKZ Šābuhr I gave an exhaustive list of the members of his court and Kirdēr doesn’t appear in it. Another suspicious fact is that according to many ancient sources Šābuhr I protected the prophet Mani, and in the KKZ Kirdēr proclaims himself as Mani’s enemy and as instrumental to his execution under Bahrām I. But anyway according to the KKZ Kirdēr accompanied Šābuhr I during this second invasion and he was entrusted with the task of protecting the “Zoroastrian” believers in the conquered territories and to bring to them the “correct” Zoroastrian doctrine and practice as it was understood in Sasanian Iran at the time:
The rock relief of the priest Kirdēr at Naqš-e Rajab, with the insciption in Middle Persian known as KKZ.
What does this mean? If the antiquity of Zoroastrianism has to be guessed by the oldest extant texts belonging to this religion, then the origins of Zoroastrianism can be dated at around 1000 BCE or earlier, which according to linguistic research is the estimated age in which the Gathas of Zoroaster (the oldest part of the Avesta) were composed. Thus, by the III century CE Zoroastrian tradition was already more than 1,200 years old. And most importantly, scholars agree that it would be improper to talk about a unified “Zoroastrian religion” during this time. What existed was a very diverse continuum of religious traditions that mixed very ancient Aryan polytheistic religion with Zoroastrian cultic practices. These traditions knew a great expansion under the Achaemenid empire, in which the Zoroastrian tradition was adopted by Indo-European peoples who were not of cultural Aryan stock: the Armenians and the peoples of Anatolia. These peoples became thus Iranicized in their religion and culture (hence the use of Iranian names as “Mithridates” or “Ariobarzanes” among Anatolian kings in Pontus or Cappadocia) but not in language.
When first the Macedonians and later the Romans annexed these lands, a new cultural layer was superimposed onto the two existing ones (the original indigenous one and the Iranian one) which became the new culture of the elites, but Iranian cultural and religious practices persisted amongst the common people, including cultic practices that revolved around the Aryan pantheon (the cult of the Roman Mithra originated in Asia Minor) and the worship of sacred fires.
The situation in Iran in Arsacid times had been somewhat similar, but here already some Arsacid kings in the second half of the I century CE had started religious “reforms” in order to “return” the popular religion to what they (and the priests that supported them) deemed to be the “pure and original” teachings of Zoroaster. With the rise of the House of Sāsān to the throne of Iran though, this idea of religious reform took a new impulse, due to the very active role that Ardaxšir I took in religious affairs, and to the extensive manipulation that the first Sasanian king did of the Zoroastrian religious tradition to suit his own political goals.
Šābuhr I seems to have continued with this trend of manipulating religion to suit his political agenda, but with an added twist: on one side he seems to have supported the “Zoroastrian reformation” led by the new hierarchical structure of mowbedān put in place by his father, but he also began toying with the idea of instituting a new, radical version of a “reformed Zoroastrianism” which is as he probably saw the teachings of Mani. Rivers of ink have poured over the question of Šābuhr I’s protection of Mani, but one thing seems clear: this king never embraced wholly the teachings of Mani, even if Mani even accompanied Šābuhr I in some of his military expeditions, as stated in the polemical text by Alexander of Lycopolis Contra Manichaei opiniones disputando:
If Šābuhr I harbored ideas of territorial annexations in the Roman East, then that would explain why did he direct his offensive towards Asia Minor, which is where “Zoroastrian” communities could be found, and this would lend credence to Kirdēr’s assertion that he was charged by the King of kings with the task of promoting “proper Zoroastrianism” among the inhabitants of these regions. Notice that, true to Zoroastrian tradition, he said nothing about proselytizing but about spreading the “true teachings” of the “Mazdean religion” among those who already followed it (more or less).
But the Roman resistance put a quick end to Šābuhr I’s ambitions. The dispersed Sasanian columns in the southern coast of Asia Minor became easy prey for the reorganized Roman forces led by Callistus/Ballista, who used the greater mobility provided by the Roman navy to surprise the isolated Sasanian columns. According to the IX century CE Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus:
And in another fragment by the XII century CE Byzantine chronicler John Zonaras:
Notice again the topoi of the easterners’ cruelty (the Sasanian king filling the gorge with corpses). In here appears also another factor that precipitated Šābuhr I’s retreat and which was probably much more dangerous than the resistance offered by the Macriani and Callistus: the activities of the Ras of Palmyra and vir consularis Septimius Odaenathus. This was the hour of Odaenathus, the moment when he really came to be the ultimate authority in the Roman Near East.
Meanwhile, in the West Gallienus was in a desperate situation. The defense of the East had crumbled again in a most spectacular way and his father had suffered the ultimate humiliation of being captured alive by the Sasanian king. This was an unprecedented blow to Roman prestige, and it obliterated in a moment all the political capital, credibility and goodwill that the Licinian dynasty had accumulated during the previous seven years. An usurpation attempt had already risen in the East under the Macriani, but as the news of the disaster of Edessa travelled west, several other commanders launched their own usurpation attempts all during the very same year of 260 CE. The exact sequence of events is very confused because there’s contradictions in the ancient sources; I will follow here the reconstructed sequence of events proposed by Udo Hartmann and Andreas Golz.
Gallienus had the longest reign of any of the emperors between Caracalla and Diocletian (253-268 CE). This bust is dated at the start of his reign, in it the artist portrayed a serene young man in the elegant and idealized Hellenistic classicizing style which had been typical of imperial portraits since the age of Augustus.
This other bust is dated towards the end of his reign. In it the artist depicted a mature man weighed down by the difficulties and troubles of his reign. Gone is also the Hellenistic style of the previous decade; this portrait announces what will be the Roman art of Late Antiquity, with its departure from the naturalism of the Classical tradition.
As we saw, the capture of Valerian happened probably during the spring or early summer of 260 CE. Last we saw, Gallienus was in Gaul, trying (and failing) to repeal the raids of the Franks and part of the Alamanni. He had his command post in Colonia Agrippina and he had with him his second son Saloninus. But in 260 CE, alarming news reached him: the upper Rhenish-upper Danubian limes had collapsed finally in 259-260 CE after years of sustained pressure by the Alamanni. This catastrophic development must’ve happened either slightly earlier or roughly at the same time as Valerian’s capture. The Alamanni had overrun the Agri Decumates, and together with the Iuthungi (probably a member or a spin-off of the Alamanni confederation, this is the first time that they appear in historical records) they crossed the Alps and entered northern Italy. Their advance was marked by the destruction of the city of Aventicum (modern Avenches) and they probably kept advancing south through the Allgäu in western Switzerland. By the summer of 260 CE, while the Alamanni devastated the north Italian plain, the Iuthungi advanced further south, besieged Ravenna without success and in Rome itself the Senate had to organize an improvised defense with the Urban cohorts, gladiators and armed members of the populace in order to fend off some of the boldest war bands of the Iuthungi. The situation was so alarming that Gallienus had to leave Gaul in a hurry taking part of the army with him and head towards northern Italy. There, he was able to defeat the Alamanni at the battle of Mediolanum that very summer and recover part of the booty and prisoners (it must’ve been an important victory, because the Alamanni stayed quiet for a decade after it), but he was unable to prevent that the Iuthungi crossed the Alpine passes loaded with loot and great numbers of captives to return to their lands. The Iuthungi were intercepted north of the Alps by the army of Raetia supported by the local militia, commanded by the provincial governor M. Simplicinius Genialis, who by this time had joined an usurpation against Gallienus. This victory was recorded in a votive altar built in the provincial capital of Raetia Augusta Vindelicorum (modern Augsburg) in which the battle against the Iuthungi is dated to the 24-25 July 260 CE, and in 253it the victorious Romans recorded the recovery of much booty and the liberation of “thousands” of Italian captives.
Reconstruction of Mediolanum (modern Milan) in the IV century CE. Mediolanum was one of the very few cities in the Roman West which grew in the course of the III century CE. Thanks to its strategic position, Gallienus chose it as the main base for his comitatus and as his main residence after Rome. After Gallienus, the city never lost its newly found strategic significance, and under the Tetrarchy it became one of the capitals of the Roman empire. Ink drawing by the Italian artist Francesco Corni.
In the Balkans the general Ingenuus, who had been the tutor of Valerian the Younger and who probably held the command of the whole Danube border was acclaimed as augustus at an uncertain date; some ancient sources date this revolt to 258 CE, but Hartmann and Golz link it without hesitation to the devastating impact of the news from the East. Probably, the whole Danubian army followed him. Gallienus reacted swiftly and decisively. He couldn’t leave northern Italy due to the Germanic danger and to the alarming new set of events that were happening in Gaul, so Gallienus entrusted part of his army to the cavalry commander Aureolus (who had a brilliant career ahead of him) who defeated Ingenuus decisively at Mursa by the late summer of 260 CE; the usurper was then murdered by his own guardsmen (probably in an attempt to endear themselves to the victors). But in the wake of the end of Ingenuus’ failed revolt, a new usurper arose in the Danube: the senatorial legate of Upper Pannonia P. C(assius?) Regalianus, who had been probably one of Ingenuus supporters and fearing retribution tried to launch a coup of his own. Once again, Gallienus acted swiftly, and his army, probably with him in command this time defeated Regalianus and besieged him in Sirmium. The revolt was finally crushed by the fall of 260 CE or at the end of this very same year at the latest. Taking advantage of the chaotic situation, the Roxolani Sarmatians and the Germanic Quadi crossed the middle Danube and devastated the Pannonian provinces while the Romans were busy fighting civil wars.
Antoninianus of P. c. Regalianus.
Given the catastrophic situation, Gallienus had deemed too risky to leave Gaul without imperial presence, and so he left his son Saloninus (still a child) at Cologne under the care of a tutor named Silvanus. As main commander of the Rhine army, he left Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus, who quickly proved himself disloyal to Gallienus. Apparently, Postumus had some success in dealing with the Frankish raiders, and recovered a sizable amount of booty from them, which he then intended to distribute among his men. But then Silvanus (perhaps in a misjudged attempt at establishing his own authority and also that of Saloninus’) ordered Postumus that the booty should be handed over to them. Postumus reacted by addressing his men and telling them that Silvanus and Saloninus wanted to deprive them of the booty that they had legitimately won with their sweat and blood, and the result was inevitable: the soldiers acclaimed Postumus as augustus and murdered Silvanus and Saloninus. He was acknowledged as such by the provinces in Gaul, Hispania and Britannia as well as Raetia, and proceeded to form a separate “Gallic Empire” that separated from the Roman empire, with its own consuls and magistracies.
Antoninianus of Saloninus.
Antoninianus of Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus.
But Gallienus’ situation was so desperate that he could not even contemplate avenging his son or recovering the lost western provinces. He had dealt with the Alamanni and two usurpers in the Balkans but there were still the Macriani left, who had formed an army led by Macrianus the Elder and Macrianus the Younger and crossed into Europe with the intention of marching against Italy (Quietus and Callistus remained in the East). The two sons of Macrianus had been raised to the purple in the late summer of 260 CE; the whole East acknowledged them. In Egyptian papyri they’re referred to as augusti between August 260 CE and October 261 CE (except in Alexandria, where coins were minted again naming Gallienus as augustus in the summer of 261 CE). By the early summer of 261 CE, the army of the Macriani had reached the Balkans, where parts of the Danubian army which had supported first Ingenuus and later Regalianus joined them. They met in battle against Gallienus’ field army led by Gallienus’ generals Aureolus and Domitianus in a disputed location; ancient sources differ between Illyricum and Pannonia. On the basis of the gravestones of two centurions from Legio VIII Augusta found at Sirmium, Hartmann and Golz propose the environs of Serdica (modern Sofia in Bulgaria) as the place for the battle. During the battle, most of the army pf the Macriani changed sides, and the two Macriani were either killed during the battle or executed shortly afterwards.
And there was still one more usurpation in the Balkans in this year: a certain Valens with the surname Thessalonicus revolted in Macedonia (perhaps he was one of the commanders of the army of the Macriani) as attested by the SHA, the Epitome de Caesaribus and Ammianus Marcellinus.
Aureolus was the first of a series of brilliant Illyrian commanders of very humble social origins that were promoted by Gallienus and who became the trusted commanders of his comitatus (the field army that Gallienus based at Mediolanum as a rapid reaction force), grouped together in the elite cavalry unit called Protectores, which became sort of a select gathering of talented officers; anybody who entered the Protectores could hope to raise to command legions and whole armies in a near future. Other members of this group were the future emperors Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian and probably also Probus, who were all exceptionally gifted generals; these were the men who would change for the better the fortunes of Roman arms.
Under this circumstances, it was impossible for Gallienus to do absolutely anything in the eastern theater, and so he did the only thing that could be done: he appointed Septimius Odaenathus as dux romanorum (thus appointing him as commander of all the Roman forces in the area) in the late summer of 260 CE. Odaenathus quickly attacked Quietus and Callistus (who had been probably been raised to the rank of Praetorian Prefect by the Macriani), who were besieged in Emesa. The Emesenes finally executed Quietus while Callistus was handed over to Odaenathus, who had him executed in November 261. After this victory, Gallienus appointed Odaenathus as corrector totius Orientis, an unprecedented title that turned him into the de facto supreme Roman civilian and military leader in the East (as a sort of viceroy, enjoying perhaps a status similar to the one that Priscus had enjoyed under Philip the Arab). This was obviously a desperate measure, because he was basically handing over command of the Roman East to a foreigner (a Romanized Arab dynast) who had his own base of power independent of Gallienus’ mandate (the kingdom of Palmyra and his control of most Arabian tribes in the Syrian and North Arabian deserts). The emperor knew perfectly well that Odaenathus was the new ultimate authority in the Roman East, and that he was basically de facto independent from Gallienus; by appointing him as his viceroy Gallienus tried to cover this uncomfortable reality with a veneer of legality (at least Odaenathus seemed to be acting as a Roman official, in the name of Rome and under nominal command of Gallienus augustus). And luckily for him, he sort of succeeded, at least while Odaenathus was still alive.
Bust of Septimus Odaenathus (Latinized version of his Arabic name Udhayna), Ras of Palmyra.
But as in the Balkans, this usurpation still dragged for some time: the Praefect of Egypt L. Mussius Aemilianus had sided with the Macriani, but in the summer of 261 CE he hurried himself back to Gallienus’ side as soon as news of the defeat of the Macriani in the Balkans reached him. But probably fearing reprisals for his disloyalty, he revolted in the winter of 261-262 CE and cut the grain supplies to Rome and to Gallienus’ armies. This was though a minor revolt, as no coins have been found where Aemilianus proclaimed himself as augustus. By early 262 CE Gallienus sent to Alexandria by sea his general Aurelius Theodotus (probably yet another Illyrian officer of humble origins, as his name seems to suggest) who by July/September 262 CE appears named in papyri as Praefect of Egypt. According to the ancient sources, Aemilianus was captured alive and sent to Gallienus in Rome, who executed him.
What’s surprising is that in the middle of all this chaos, Odaenathus still found the time and the resources to fight successfully against Šābuhr I, but all Graeco-Roman sources agree that he was very successful in his campaigns against the Sasanian king, although modern scholars are somewhat more skeptical about the alleged magnitude of his victories.
The main point that needs to be made in this respect is that despite the resistance and counterattacks by the Macriani/Callistus and Odaenathus, Šābuhr I still managed to retire back to Ērānšāhr in good order, with his army mostly unscathed, with an enormous booty and the most revealing detail of it all: that he managed to herd back with him thousands of Roman captives on a long journey crossing some difficult terrain (bordering on desert in some cases) with success. The ŠKZ boasts that Šābuhr I carried on mass deportations of Roman captives from Anērān into his empire, where he settled them in royal lands and even founded several new cities expressly for them. Archaeology is clear in this respect, with clear remains of Roman workmanship in buildings, mosaics and other artifacts in Xuzēstān and Pārs, and this is corroborated not only by western sources but also by eastern ones like the Chronicle of Seert. A fragment of the lost chronicle of Petrus Patricius is quite revealing about the ease with which the Sasanian army was able to return home bypassing the still existing Roman garrisons in Mesopotamia:
The festival that Petrus Patricius is referring to is probably the Iranian New Year (Nowruz), which usually falls on the spring equinox. This allows us to date the retreat of the Sasanian army to the winter of 260-261 CE, because if Šābuhr I wanted to be in is capital (in Ctesiphon or Bīšāpūr) by the environs of March 21, then he needed to have bypassed Edessa in late January at the very latest (loaded with captives and booty, the army would not have been able to move too quickly). In this context, what Odaenathus fought were probably harassing raids against the slow-moving and vulnerable Sasanian columns. The ancient source which is most exuberant in its praise for Odaenathus’ harassing of the retreating Sasanians is the HA, which is not exactly the most trustful of sources.
Also, the chaotic situation in the Roman empire makes highly plausible that the Romans, who were too busy fighting among themselves, did not bother too much the Sasanian army during its retreat.
But another thing altogether is that these sources all agree that later Odaenathus fought a campaign against the Sasanians in Mesopotamia with considerable success, and that this was probably the first victorious “Roman” counterattack against the Sasanian empire in a long time. By 262 CE, the situation within the empire had become somewhat more stabilized compared to what it was two years before. Now, the “only” problems were:
Restitution of Palmyra in the II century CE by the French archaeologist and architect Jean-Claude Golvin.
Restitution of the complex of the temple of the god Bel in Palmyra by the French archaeologist and architect Jean-Claude Golvin. Notice the eclectic mix of western and eastern styles in its design.
Šābuhr I died in 270 CE in Bīšāpūr in Pārs after ruling for 30 years as king of kings of the Iranians and non-Iranians. If we take into account that in the great victory relief of Ardaxšir I at Ardaxšir-Xwarrah he appears as a grown man, and that at the investiture relief of Ardaxšir I at Naqš-e Rajab he appears already with his eldest son Bahrām I as a small child, he must’ve been 18-20 years old at the time. By 260 CE, Šābuhr I must’ve been about 60 years old and probably not in a good enough physical condition to keep leading his armies in person as he’d always done. After his return from his last invasion in 260 CE and the invasion of Odaenathus, the almost frantic pace of Sasanian aggression against the Roman empire that had characterized eastern politics since the accession of Ardaxšir I ceased completely, which was an immense relief for Rome. The Sasanians had been instrumental in bringing Rome down to its darkest decade in 260-270 CE (perhaps they’d been the most important amongst the external factors that brought Rome to the brink of the abyss), but now that Rome was struggling to survive, the Sasanians just disappeared from the scene. During this last decade of his reign, apart from fighting against the “Odaenathus’ scare”, the only activities that can be reconstructed for Šābuhr I in the historical record is the carving of his great propagandistic rock reliefs and inscriptions and the building of his town and palace at Bīšāpūr. It’s almost as if the old king spent his last ten years reliving his past glories and making sure that they were recorded for posterity.
Šābuhr I has deservedly gone down in history as Šābuhr I the Great. In the picture, his colossal statue (6.70 meters tall) in the so-called "cave Šābuhr", located 6 km from Bīšāpūr in Pārs.
It’s difficult to explain this sudden eclipse of the Sasanians, but I’d venture and say that it was a combination of factors. First of all, the most important factor was a biological one: by now Šābuhr I was an old man, and so he was just unable to sustain the same degree of activity that he’d done since he was his father’s appointed successor. Another factor could be that simply put Šābuhr I felt that the objectives that he and his father had set up for themselves in the West had been attained: the Sasanians were now in firm control of Armenia and most of northern Mesopotamia, which together formed a defensive barrier against Roman attacks into the Iranian plateau, and equally important the Arsacids had been expelled from Armenia. This second factor though depends upon the consideration (which is nowadays the consensus amongst scholars) that the supposed goals of Ardaxšir I as stated by Dio Cassius and Herodian (the restoration of the Achaemenid empire) were merely a bluff in front of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander. This also implies that on the whole the Sasanian policy in the West against Rome had been altogether mainly a defensive one: Ardaxšir I and his son had sought only to secure a “cordon sanitaire” against Rome and to remove the danger that the Arsacids of Armenia represented for the internal stability of the new Sasanian regime in Iran. This would agree with the relative restraint by these two Sasanian kings in their annexations in the West, compared with the sweeping conquests that they made in the East.
And finally another factor could be a certain level of exhaustion: by 260 CE, the war against Rome had dragged on almost without cease (except for the 244-252 CE time frame) since 230 CE, and one key weakness of the ancient Iranian empires was the scarcity of their military manpower. Not only was Iran sparsely populated compared to the Roman Empire, but most importantly the Sasanians (as the Arsacids) depended to a disproportionate degree for their military successes on the small group of elite fighters represented by the Iranian nobility. Due to the Iranian social structure, this was a small, closed group which could only replenish its losses through generational replacement (although the kings could elevate commoners into the nobility, there are not many examples known of that, and given the attitudes and mores of the Iranian nobility, if the kings used this expedient on a massive scale, this would have caused serious trouble). Although the first two Sasanian kings had inflicted devastating defeats to Rome and had been a decisive factor in plunging their western foe into their deepest crisis in history, in the long run demographic and economic realities could not be ignored. And probably from an Iranian point of view, Rome in the decade of the 260s had ceased to be any serious danger, due to the internal chaos of the empire and the ongoing waves of invasions it was suffering from the mouths of the Rhine to the mouths of the Danube.
The immediate aftermath of the battle of Edessa had two immediate consequences. The first one was that the victorious Sasanian army again crossed the Euphrates and pillaged the Roman eastern provinces to a much larger extent than it had done after Barbalissos. The second and for the Romans far more serious consequence was that it caused a political crisis in the Roman empire that almost led to its dissolution.
We’ll deal first with the immediate consequences for the Roman eastern provinces and after that we’ll deal with the effects for the Roman empire at large. As usual, I’ll start with the version of the facts as stated in the ŠKZ:
Again, a truly hair-rising list, and in this case with full corroboration by Graeco-Roman sources, much more than in the case of the aftermath of Barbalissos. This time, Syria Coele escaped relatively unscathed compared to seven years earlier (although Antioch was looted and burned a second time), but the main brunt of the Sasanian offensive was directed this time further north, against the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. Cappadocia and especially Cilicia were the main victims, but the Sasanian offensive reached further east, well into Lykaonia and even into Lycia and Pamphylia, the westernmost city in that list is Korykos on the southern Anatolian coast, which is located nearer to the Aegean sea than to Syria.
Detail from one of the triumphal rock reliefs of Šābuhr I at Bīšāpūr; looking at the figure standing on the left you can appreciate the long broadsword that was typical of early Sasanian cavalrymen. This was a heavy and contundent weapon, ideal for cavalry use. In the VI century CE it was abandoned in favor of lighter saber-like swords under Central Asian Turkic influence.
In order to bring about so much devastation, the armies of Šābuhr I must’ve had to be divided into several columns in order to cover as much ground as possible. But contrary to what had happened in 253 CE, this time the Romans had reserves relatively untouched by the defeat at Edessa and leaders who were disposed to rally them and fight back, and the Sasanian forces ended up suffering several minor setbacks during their looting spree which eventually forced the šāhānšāh to regroup his armies, cut his losses and return to his homeland. It’s also important to note that according to at least one ancient source Šābuhr I did not manage to take Edessa, and so he had to cope all the time (especially during his retreat) with the actions of the important Roman garrison stationed there.
The crossing of the Euphrates possibly happened at Zeugma, which was just 80 km west of Edessa and Carrhae and 40 km west of Batnae, which according to Coloru could’ve been the probable location of the battle. This time, the cities and towns destroyed by the armies of Šābuhr I are quoted in geographical order from east to west and from south to north, and so it’s more difficult to reconstruct the advance of the several Sasanian columns. But possibly, at Zeugma the army split in two, with one group heading north and looting Samosata while the other (probably under the command of the king of kings himself) again headed towards Antioch. According to Andreas Golz and Udo Hartmann, probably Mareades accompanied him again as he’d done in 253 CE. This time, the trick of having Mareades’ supporters open the doors from inside the city would not have worked (it’s hard to imagine the Antiochenes being very enthusiastic about repeating the experience of seven years earlier) and Šābuhr I would’ve been aware of that, so that if the city had to be besieged, the most logical thing would’ve been to take first at least its port of Seleucia in Pieria, and perhaps Alexandria ad Issum as well. According to several bits and snips of local Antiochene tradition which have arrived to us through the works of Libanius, Ammianus Marcellinus, John Malalas and Evagrius, this time the Sasanian forces stormed the city by surprise, thanks to the (for the Antiochenes) unfortunate fact that their walls were so absurdly long. According to a vividly written fragment by the IV century CE Antiochene author Ammianus Marcellinus, the Sasanian soldiers appeared suddenly descending from the steep slopes of the Silpius Mons while a good part of the population of Antioch was in the theater watching a play. The theater was built with its cavea excavated on the slopes of the mountain, and it was one of the actors on stage who first saw the approaching Sasanian soldiers (who presumably had infiltrated through some unguarded sector of the wall in the higher part of the mountain) and alerted the public, who began to flee as Sasanian arrows began to rain over them. This is the fragment of Ammianus’ Res Gestae where this story can be found:
Possibly this very column then continued along the coast to the northwest and entered the fertile and populous Cilician plain, where they proceeded to loot and burn all its great cities: Tarsus, Anazarbus, Mopsuestia, Neronias, Dometiopolis ... and then continued further east, one along the coast which kept advancing until it reached the city of Korykos in Pamphylia (the westernmost location quoted in the ŠKZ), while another probably headed north into Lykaonia and looted the important city of Iconium. As for the column that raided Samosata, either it rejoined the main army or it continued north and entered Cappadocia. Here it could have joined forces with the column that attacked Iconium, and these forces managed to take and destroy the provincial capital of Caesarea Mazaca and the important city of Tyana.
The ancient Roman city of Caesarea Mazaca lies under the modern Turkish city of Kayseri; which is still today like in ancient times dominated by the imposing mass of the volcanic Mount Erciyes (Mons Argaeus in Antiquity).
The Via Sebaste was built during Augustus' reign and runs along southern Anatolia from Lycia to Cilicia, and it would have been one of the main routes followed by the invading Sasanian forces.
While the armies of Šābuhr I were engaged in this orgy of destruction, the remaining Roman defenders were rallying their forces for a counterattack against the increasingly dispersed Sasanian columns. That not all the main officers of Valerian’s high command were captured at the disaster of Edessa is made clear by ancient sources. According to a fragment by the anonymous continuator of Dio Cassius (that some scholars identify with Peter the Patrician), on the western bank of the Euphrates had remained a certain Fulvius Macrianus, who was probably either the rationalis of Valerian (secretary in charge of financial affairs) or the praefectus anonnae in charge of supplies for the eastern army, or both. According to this fragment, Šābuhr I allowed Valerian to send an envoy to Macrianus to ask for ransom, but Macrianus refused to help:
Macrianus appears also in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History at the start of Valerian’s persecution as Prefect of Egypt (equestrian governor), and as a staunch supporter of Valerian’s religious policies. Probably due to this and to his administrative experience as governor of Egypt Valerian put him in charge of the key office of ensuring the supplying and payment of his armies. Macrianus was thus a civilian official, not a military commander, but he controlled the military purse, which in the power void that followed Valerian’s capture turned him into a very powerful figure. He was probably acknowledged as commander by the remaining Roman military commanders in northern Syria and Asia Minor, especially by Callistus, who managed to rally the Roman defenders in Anatolia and obtained some victories against the scattered Sasanian forces there (in some sources this commander is called Ballista, which some scholars consider that could have been his nickname among the soldiers, with Callistus being his real name). And the consequences were the usual ones: the Roman forces in this theater acclaimed Macrianus’ two sons (Titus Fulvius Iunius Macrianus, aka Macrianus the Younger, and Titus Fulvius Junius Quietus) as augusti. According to the ancient sources, Macrianus himself could not fill the post of augustus because he had a deformed leg.
Aureus of Titus Fulvius Iunius Macrianus (Macrianus the Younger). On the reverse, VICTORIA AVGG.
This unexpected resistance came as an unwelcome surprise to Šābuhr I. It’s been usually considered by scholars that this second invasion of the Roman empire by the Sasanian king was just a looting raid like the first one butt Andreas Golz and Udo Hartmann hypothesize that maybe this time Šābuhr I harbored (at least for a brief time) some notions of territorial conquest. They base their hypothesis on two aspects that appear in ancient sources. The first one is that according to their reconstruction of events the Sasanian king brought again Mareades with him, but that this time he installed him as governor or viceroy in Antioch (which would explain why in some sources he is named with the honorific name Kyriades, from the Greek kyriós, meaning “lord”). The second (and in my opinion much more substantial) hint is the rock inscription of the mowbed Kirdēr (aka Kartir, Kertir or Karder) at Naqš-e Rajab in Pārs abbreviated as KKZ. Kirdēr was probably the most important and influential Zoroastrian priest in Sasanian history. In this inscription (dating probably to the 280s) he boasted of his long career and successes; although the zenith of his power (according to the KKZ) happened under Šābuhr I’s successors Bahrām I and especially Bahrām II, his rise began already under Šābuhr I. This is somewhat suspicious because in the ŠKZ Šābuhr I gave an exhaustive list of the members of his court and Kirdēr doesn’t appear in it. Another suspicious fact is that according to many ancient sources Šābuhr I protected the prophet Mani, and in the KKZ Kirdēr proclaims himself as Mani’s enemy and as instrumental to his execution under Bahrām I. But anyway according to the KKZ Kirdēr accompanied Šābuhr I during this second invasion and he was entrusted with the task of protecting the “Zoroastrian” believers in the conquered territories and to bring to them the “correct” Zoroastrian doctrine and practice as it was understood in Sasanian Iran at the time:
The rock relief of the priest Kirdēr at Naqš-e Rajab, with the insciption in Middle Persian known as KKZ.
What does this mean? If the antiquity of Zoroastrianism has to be guessed by the oldest extant texts belonging to this religion, then the origins of Zoroastrianism can be dated at around 1000 BCE or earlier, which according to linguistic research is the estimated age in which the Gathas of Zoroaster (the oldest part of the Avesta) were composed. Thus, by the III century CE Zoroastrian tradition was already more than 1,200 years old. And most importantly, scholars agree that it would be improper to talk about a unified “Zoroastrian religion” during this time. What existed was a very diverse continuum of religious traditions that mixed very ancient Aryan polytheistic religion with Zoroastrian cultic practices. These traditions knew a great expansion under the Achaemenid empire, in which the Zoroastrian tradition was adopted by Indo-European peoples who were not of cultural Aryan stock: the Armenians and the peoples of Anatolia. These peoples became thus Iranicized in their religion and culture (hence the use of Iranian names as “Mithridates” or “Ariobarzanes” among Anatolian kings in Pontus or Cappadocia) but not in language.
When first the Macedonians and later the Romans annexed these lands, a new cultural layer was superimposed onto the two existing ones (the original indigenous one and the Iranian one) which became the new culture of the elites, but Iranian cultural and religious practices persisted amongst the common people, including cultic practices that revolved around the Aryan pantheon (the cult of the Roman Mithra originated in Asia Minor) and the worship of sacred fires.
The situation in Iran in Arsacid times had been somewhat similar, but here already some Arsacid kings in the second half of the I century CE had started religious “reforms” in order to “return” the popular religion to what they (and the priests that supported them) deemed to be the “pure and original” teachings of Zoroaster. With the rise of the House of Sāsān to the throne of Iran though, this idea of religious reform took a new impulse, due to the very active role that Ardaxšir I took in religious affairs, and to the extensive manipulation that the first Sasanian king did of the Zoroastrian religious tradition to suit his own political goals.
Šābuhr I seems to have continued with this trend of manipulating religion to suit his political agenda, but with an added twist: on one side he seems to have supported the “Zoroastrian reformation” led by the new hierarchical structure of mowbedān put in place by his father, but he also began toying with the idea of instituting a new, radical version of a “reformed Zoroastrianism” which is as he probably saw the teachings of Mani. Rivers of ink have poured over the question of Šābuhr I’s protection of Mani, but one thing seems clear: this king never embraced wholly the teachings of Mani, even if Mani even accompanied Šābuhr I in some of his military expeditions, as stated in the polemical text by Alexander of Lycopolis Contra Manichaei opiniones disputando:
If Šābuhr I harbored ideas of territorial annexations in the Roman East, then that would explain why did he direct his offensive towards Asia Minor, which is where “Zoroastrian” communities could be found, and this would lend credence to Kirdēr’s assertion that he was charged by the King of kings with the task of promoting “proper Zoroastrianism” among the inhabitants of these regions. Notice that, true to Zoroastrian tradition, he said nothing about proselytizing but about spreading the “true teachings” of the “Mazdean religion” among those who already followed it (more or less).
But the Roman resistance put a quick end to Šābuhr I’s ambitions. The dispersed Sasanian columns in the southern coast of Asia Minor became easy prey for the reorganized Roman forces led by Callistus/Ballista, who used the greater mobility provided by the Roman navy to surprise the isolated Sasanian columns. According to the IX century CE Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus:
And in another fragment by the XII century CE Byzantine chronicler John Zonaras:
Notice again the topoi of the easterners’ cruelty (the Sasanian king filling the gorge with corpses). In here appears also another factor that precipitated Šābuhr I’s retreat and which was probably much more dangerous than the resistance offered by the Macriani and Callistus: the activities of the Ras of Palmyra and vir consularis Septimius Odaenathus. This was the hour of Odaenathus, the moment when he really came to be the ultimate authority in the Roman Near East.
Meanwhile, in the West Gallienus was in a desperate situation. The defense of the East had crumbled again in a most spectacular way and his father had suffered the ultimate humiliation of being captured alive by the Sasanian king. This was an unprecedented blow to Roman prestige, and it obliterated in a moment all the political capital, credibility and goodwill that the Licinian dynasty had accumulated during the previous seven years. An usurpation attempt had already risen in the East under the Macriani, but as the news of the disaster of Edessa travelled west, several other commanders launched their own usurpation attempts all during the very same year of 260 CE. The exact sequence of events is very confused because there’s contradictions in the ancient sources; I will follow here the reconstructed sequence of events proposed by Udo Hartmann and Andreas Golz.
Gallienus had the longest reign of any of the emperors between Caracalla and Diocletian (253-268 CE). This bust is dated at the start of his reign, in it the artist portrayed a serene young man in the elegant and idealized Hellenistic classicizing style which had been typical of imperial portraits since the age of Augustus.
This other bust is dated towards the end of his reign. In it the artist depicted a mature man weighed down by the difficulties and troubles of his reign. Gone is also the Hellenistic style of the previous decade; this portrait announces what will be the Roman art of Late Antiquity, with its departure from the naturalism of the Classical tradition.
As we saw, the capture of Valerian happened probably during the spring or early summer of 260 CE. Last we saw, Gallienus was in Gaul, trying (and failing) to repeal the raids of the Franks and part of the Alamanni. He had his command post in Colonia Agrippina and he had with him his second son Saloninus. But in 260 CE, alarming news reached him: the upper Rhenish-upper Danubian limes had collapsed finally in 259-260 CE after years of sustained pressure by the Alamanni. This catastrophic development must’ve happened either slightly earlier or roughly at the same time as Valerian’s capture. The Alamanni had overrun the Agri Decumates, and together with the Iuthungi (probably a member or a spin-off of the Alamanni confederation, this is the first time that they appear in historical records) they crossed the Alps and entered northern Italy. Their advance was marked by the destruction of the city of Aventicum (modern Avenches) and they probably kept advancing south through the Allgäu in western Switzerland. By the summer of 260 CE, while the Alamanni devastated the north Italian plain, the Iuthungi advanced further south, besieged Ravenna without success and in Rome itself the Senate had to organize an improvised defense with the Urban cohorts, gladiators and armed members of the populace in order to fend off some of the boldest war bands of the Iuthungi. The situation was so alarming that Gallienus had to leave Gaul in a hurry taking part of the army with him and head towards northern Italy. There, he was able to defeat the Alamanni at the battle of Mediolanum that very summer and recover part of the booty and prisoners (it must’ve been an important victory, because the Alamanni stayed quiet for a decade after it), but he was unable to prevent that the Iuthungi crossed the Alpine passes loaded with loot and great numbers of captives to return to their lands. The Iuthungi were intercepted north of the Alps by the army of Raetia supported by the local militia, commanded by the provincial governor M. Simplicinius Genialis, who by this time had joined an usurpation against Gallienus. This victory was recorded in a votive altar built in the provincial capital of Raetia Augusta Vindelicorum (modern Augsburg) in which the battle against the Iuthungi is dated to the 24-25 July 260 CE, and in 253it the victorious Romans recorded the recovery of much booty and the liberation of “thousands” of Italian captives.
Reconstruction of Mediolanum (modern Milan) in the IV century CE. Mediolanum was one of the very few cities in the Roman West which grew in the course of the III century CE. Thanks to its strategic position, Gallienus chose it as the main base for his comitatus and as his main residence after Rome. After Gallienus, the city never lost its newly found strategic significance, and under the Tetrarchy it became one of the capitals of the Roman empire. Ink drawing by the Italian artist Francesco Corni.
In the Balkans the general Ingenuus, who had been the tutor of Valerian the Younger and who probably held the command of the whole Danube border was acclaimed as augustus at an uncertain date; some ancient sources date this revolt to 258 CE, but Hartmann and Golz link it without hesitation to the devastating impact of the news from the East. Probably, the whole Danubian army followed him. Gallienus reacted swiftly and decisively. He couldn’t leave northern Italy due to the Germanic danger and to the alarming new set of events that were happening in Gaul, so Gallienus entrusted part of his army to the cavalry commander Aureolus (who had a brilliant career ahead of him) who defeated Ingenuus decisively at Mursa by the late summer of 260 CE; the usurper was then murdered by his own guardsmen (probably in an attempt to endear themselves to the victors). But in the wake of the end of Ingenuus’ failed revolt, a new usurper arose in the Danube: the senatorial legate of Upper Pannonia P. C(assius?) Regalianus, who had been probably one of Ingenuus supporters and fearing retribution tried to launch a coup of his own. Once again, Gallienus acted swiftly, and his army, probably with him in command this time defeated Regalianus and besieged him in Sirmium. The revolt was finally crushed by the fall of 260 CE or at the end of this very same year at the latest. Taking advantage of the chaotic situation, the Roxolani Sarmatians and the Germanic Quadi crossed the middle Danube and devastated the Pannonian provinces while the Romans were busy fighting civil wars.
Antoninianus of P. c. Regalianus.
Given the catastrophic situation, Gallienus had deemed too risky to leave Gaul without imperial presence, and so he left his son Saloninus (still a child) at Cologne under the care of a tutor named Silvanus. As main commander of the Rhine army, he left Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus, who quickly proved himself disloyal to Gallienus. Apparently, Postumus had some success in dealing with the Frankish raiders, and recovered a sizable amount of booty from them, which he then intended to distribute among his men. But then Silvanus (perhaps in a misjudged attempt at establishing his own authority and also that of Saloninus’) ordered Postumus that the booty should be handed over to them. Postumus reacted by addressing his men and telling them that Silvanus and Saloninus wanted to deprive them of the booty that they had legitimately won with their sweat and blood, and the result was inevitable: the soldiers acclaimed Postumus as augustus and murdered Silvanus and Saloninus. He was acknowledged as such by the provinces in Gaul, Hispania and Britannia as well as Raetia, and proceeded to form a separate “Gallic Empire” that separated from the Roman empire, with its own consuls and magistracies.
Antoninianus of Saloninus.
Antoninianus of Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus.
But Gallienus’ situation was so desperate that he could not even contemplate avenging his son or recovering the lost western provinces. He had dealt with the Alamanni and two usurpers in the Balkans but there were still the Macriani left, who had formed an army led by Macrianus the Elder and Macrianus the Younger and crossed into Europe with the intention of marching against Italy (Quietus and Callistus remained in the East). The two sons of Macrianus had been raised to the purple in the late summer of 260 CE; the whole East acknowledged them. In Egyptian papyri they’re referred to as augusti between August 260 CE and October 261 CE (except in Alexandria, where coins were minted again naming Gallienus as augustus in the summer of 261 CE). By the early summer of 261 CE, the army of the Macriani had reached the Balkans, where parts of the Danubian army which had supported first Ingenuus and later Regalianus joined them. They met in battle against Gallienus’ field army led by Gallienus’ generals Aureolus and Domitianus in a disputed location; ancient sources differ between Illyricum and Pannonia. On the basis of the gravestones of two centurions from Legio VIII Augusta found at Sirmium, Hartmann and Golz propose the environs of Serdica (modern Sofia in Bulgaria) as the place for the battle. During the battle, most of the army pf the Macriani changed sides, and the two Macriani were either killed during the battle or executed shortly afterwards.
And there was still one more usurpation in the Balkans in this year: a certain Valens with the surname Thessalonicus revolted in Macedonia (perhaps he was one of the commanders of the army of the Macriani) as attested by the SHA, the Epitome de Caesaribus and Ammianus Marcellinus.
Aureolus was the first of a series of brilliant Illyrian commanders of very humble social origins that were promoted by Gallienus and who became the trusted commanders of his comitatus (the field army that Gallienus based at Mediolanum as a rapid reaction force), grouped together in the elite cavalry unit called Protectores, which became sort of a select gathering of talented officers; anybody who entered the Protectores could hope to raise to command legions and whole armies in a near future. Other members of this group were the future emperors Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian and probably also Probus, who were all exceptionally gifted generals; these were the men who would change for the better the fortunes of Roman arms.
Under this circumstances, it was impossible for Gallienus to do absolutely anything in the eastern theater, and so he did the only thing that could be done: he appointed Septimius Odaenathus as dux romanorum (thus appointing him as commander of all the Roman forces in the area) in the late summer of 260 CE. Odaenathus quickly attacked Quietus and Callistus (who had been probably been raised to the rank of Praetorian Prefect by the Macriani), who were besieged in Emesa. The Emesenes finally executed Quietus while Callistus was handed over to Odaenathus, who had him executed in November 261. After this victory, Gallienus appointed Odaenathus as corrector totius Orientis, an unprecedented title that turned him into the de facto supreme Roman civilian and military leader in the East (as a sort of viceroy, enjoying perhaps a status similar to the one that Priscus had enjoyed under Philip the Arab). This was obviously a desperate measure, because he was basically handing over command of the Roman East to a foreigner (a Romanized Arab dynast) who had his own base of power independent of Gallienus’ mandate (the kingdom of Palmyra and his control of most Arabian tribes in the Syrian and North Arabian deserts). The emperor knew perfectly well that Odaenathus was the new ultimate authority in the Roman East, and that he was basically de facto independent from Gallienus; by appointing him as his viceroy Gallienus tried to cover this uncomfortable reality with a veneer of legality (at least Odaenathus seemed to be acting as a Roman official, in the name of Rome and under nominal command of Gallienus augustus). And luckily for him, he sort of succeeded, at least while Odaenathus was still alive.
Bust of Septimus Odaenathus (Latinized version of his Arabic name Udhayna), Ras of Palmyra.
But as in the Balkans, this usurpation still dragged for some time: the Praefect of Egypt L. Mussius Aemilianus had sided with the Macriani, but in the summer of 261 CE he hurried himself back to Gallienus’ side as soon as news of the defeat of the Macriani in the Balkans reached him. But probably fearing reprisals for his disloyalty, he revolted in the winter of 261-262 CE and cut the grain supplies to Rome and to Gallienus’ armies. This was though a minor revolt, as no coins have been found where Aemilianus proclaimed himself as augustus. By early 262 CE Gallienus sent to Alexandria by sea his general Aurelius Theodotus (probably yet another Illyrian officer of humble origins, as his name seems to suggest) who by July/September 262 CE appears named in papyri as Praefect of Egypt. According to the ancient sources, Aemilianus was captured alive and sent to Gallienus in Rome, who executed him.
What’s surprising is that in the middle of all this chaos, Odaenathus still found the time and the resources to fight successfully against Šābuhr I, but all Graeco-Roman sources agree that he was very successful in his campaigns against the Sasanian king, although modern scholars are somewhat more skeptical about the alleged magnitude of his victories.
The main point that needs to be made in this respect is that despite the resistance and counterattacks by the Macriani/Callistus and Odaenathus, Šābuhr I still managed to retire back to Ērānšāhr in good order, with his army mostly unscathed, with an enormous booty and the most revealing detail of it all: that he managed to herd back with him thousands of Roman captives on a long journey crossing some difficult terrain (bordering on desert in some cases) with success. The ŠKZ boasts that Šābuhr I carried on mass deportations of Roman captives from Anērān into his empire, where he settled them in royal lands and even founded several new cities expressly for them. Archaeology is clear in this respect, with clear remains of Roman workmanship in buildings, mosaics and other artifacts in Xuzēstān and Pārs, and this is corroborated not only by western sources but also by eastern ones like the Chronicle of Seert. A fragment of the lost chronicle of Petrus Patricius is quite revealing about the ease with which the Sasanian army was able to return home bypassing the still existing Roman garrisons in Mesopotamia:
The festival that Petrus Patricius is referring to is probably the Iranian New Year (Nowruz), which usually falls on the spring equinox. This allows us to date the retreat of the Sasanian army to the winter of 260-261 CE, because if Šābuhr I wanted to be in is capital (in Ctesiphon or Bīšāpūr) by the environs of March 21, then he needed to have bypassed Edessa in late January at the very latest (loaded with captives and booty, the army would not have been able to move too quickly). In this context, what Odaenathus fought were probably harassing raids against the slow-moving and vulnerable Sasanian columns. The ancient source which is most exuberant in its praise for Odaenathus’ harassing of the retreating Sasanians is the HA, which is not exactly the most trustful of sources.
Also, the chaotic situation in the Roman empire makes highly plausible that the Romans, who were too busy fighting among themselves, did not bother too much the Sasanian army during its retreat.
But another thing altogether is that these sources all agree that later Odaenathus fought a campaign against the Sasanians in Mesopotamia with considerable success, and that this was probably the first victorious “Roman” counterattack against the Sasanian empire in a long time. By 262 CE, the situation within the empire had become somewhat more stabilized compared to what it was two years before. Now, the “only” problems were:
- The secessionist Empire of Gaul led by Postumus.
- A revolt by Memor, commander of the Moorish cavalry troops quartered in Egypt which was quickly suppressed by Gallienus’ governor Theodatus.
- A major wave of social unrest in Sicily (a major slaves’ revolt, mass flight of the lands, and the formation of large gatherings of “brigands”).
- A mutiny of the garrison of the strategic city of Byzantium in the summer of 262 CE, which had to be suppressed by Gallienus himself.
- Another major Gothic invasion, according to the HA and the Getica, in which a large Gothic army led by the duces Gothorum Respa, Veduco and Thaurano crossed the lower Danube and marched across Lower Moesia and Thrace undisturbed, crossed the Straits on ships that had followed their path along the Black Sea coast and invaded Bithynia and Asia. The ease with which they were able to do this was probably connected to the mutiny of the Byzantium garrison. In the rich provinces of Bithynia and Asia, they looted and destroyed among many other towns and cities the major urban centers of Chalcedon, Ilium, Nicomedia and Ephesus, the largest and richest city in the whole province of Asia (and probably in the whole of Anatolia as well), where the Goths destroyed the great temple of Artemis, the Artemision, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Later the Goths dispersed into smaller war bands who raided deep inland into Lydia, Phrygia, Galatia and Cappadocia. And then the Goths could return home completely undisturbed following the very same route they’d used to invade the empire, taking with them an immense booty and large numbers of captives, amongst whom (according to the ecclesiastical historian Philostorgius) were many Christians, including the forebears of Wulfilas, who would be the apostle of the Goths in the IV century CE.
Restitution of Palmyra in the II century CE by the French archaeologist and architect Jean-Claude Golvin.
Restitution of the complex of the temple of the god Bel in Palmyra by the French archaeologist and architect Jean-Claude Golvin. Notice the eclectic mix of western and eastern styles in its design.
Šābuhr I died in 270 CE in Bīšāpūr in Pārs after ruling for 30 years as king of kings of the Iranians and non-Iranians. If we take into account that in the great victory relief of Ardaxšir I at Ardaxšir-Xwarrah he appears as a grown man, and that at the investiture relief of Ardaxšir I at Naqš-e Rajab he appears already with his eldest son Bahrām I as a small child, he must’ve been 18-20 years old at the time. By 260 CE, Šābuhr I must’ve been about 60 years old and probably not in a good enough physical condition to keep leading his armies in person as he’d always done. After his return from his last invasion in 260 CE and the invasion of Odaenathus, the almost frantic pace of Sasanian aggression against the Roman empire that had characterized eastern politics since the accession of Ardaxšir I ceased completely, which was an immense relief for Rome. The Sasanians had been instrumental in bringing Rome down to its darkest decade in 260-270 CE (perhaps they’d been the most important amongst the external factors that brought Rome to the brink of the abyss), but now that Rome was struggling to survive, the Sasanians just disappeared from the scene. During this last decade of his reign, apart from fighting against the “Odaenathus’ scare”, the only activities that can be reconstructed for Šābuhr I in the historical record is the carving of his great propagandistic rock reliefs and inscriptions and the building of his town and palace at Bīšāpūr. It’s almost as if the old king spent his last ten years reliving his past glories and making sure that they were recorded for posterity.
Šābuhr I has deservedly gone down in history as Šābuhr I the Great. In the picture, his colossal statue (6.70 meters tall) in the so-called "cave Šābuhr", located 6 km from Bīšāpūr in Pārs.
It’s difficult to explain this sudden eclipse of the Sasanians, but I’d venture and say that it was a combination of factors. First of all, the most important factor was a biological one: by now Šābuhr I was an old man, and so he was just unable to sustain the same degree of activity that he’d done since he was his father’s appointed successor. Another factor could be that simply put Šābuhr I felt that the objectives that he and his father had set up for themselves in the West had been attained: the Sasanians were now in firm control of Armenia and most of northern Mesopotamia, which together formed a defensive barrier against Roman attacks into the Iranian plateau, and equally important the Arsacids had been expelled from Armenia. This second factor though depends upon the consideration (which is nowadays the consensus amongst scholars) that the supposed goals of Ardaxšir I as stated by Dio Cassius and Herodian (the restoration of the Achaemenid empire) were merely a bluff in front of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander. This also implies that on the whole the Sasanian policy in the West against Rome had been altogether mainly a defensive one: Ardaxšir I and his son had sought only to secure a “cordon sanitaire” against Rome and to remove the danger that the Arsacids of Armenia represented for the internal stability of the new Sasanian regime in Iran. This would agree with the relative restraint by these two Sasanian kings in their annexations in the West, compared with the sweeping conquests that they made in the East.
And finally another factor could be a certain level of exhaustion: by 260 CE, the war against Rome had dragged on almost without cease (except for the 244-252 CE time frame) since 230 CE, and one key weakness of the ancient Iranian empires was the scarcity of their military manpower. Not only was Iran sparsely populated compared to the Roman Empire, but most importantly the Sasanians (as the Arsacids) depended to a disproportionate degree for their military successes on the small group of elite fighters represented by the Iranian nobility. Due to the Iranian social structure, this was a small, closed group which could only replenish its losses through generational replacement (although the kings could elevate commoners into the nobility, there are not many examples known of that, and given the attitudes and mores of the Iranian nobility, if the kings used this expedient on a massive scale, this would have caused serious trouble). Although the first two Sasanian kings had inflicted devastating defeats to Rome and had been a decisive factor in plunging their western foe into their deepest crisis in history, in the long run demographic and economic realities could not be ignored. And probably from an Iranian point of view, Rome in the decade of the 260s had ceased to be any serious danger, due to the internal chaos of the empire and the ongoing waves of invasions it was suffering from the mouths of the Rhine to the mouths of the Danube.
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@Semper Victor
Thanks to your post for the first time I'm considering the manpower issue when thinking about Iranian Wars especially against western adversaries like Romans who had access to the much higher source of manpower. Not only Iranian plateau had/has less population compared to European territories which was held by Romans but as you mentioned the very fact that the main force of the Sassanids came from Nobles made the manpower issue even worst. in gaming language it's like "Aristocratic military = -75% recruitable population"
I think every [old enough]Paradox gamer knows well how manpower can be tricky in times !
Thanks to your post for the first time I'm considering the manpower issue when thinking about Iranian Wars especially against western adversaries like Romans who had access to the much higher source of manpower. Not only Iranian plateau had/has less population compared to European territories which was held by Romans but as you mentioned the very fact that the main force of the Sassanids came from Nobles made the manpower issue even worst. in gaming language it's like "Aristocratic military = -75% recruitable population"
I think every [old enough]Paradox gamer knows well how manpower can be tricky in times !
@Semper Victor
Thanks to your post for the first time I'm considering the manpower issue when thinking about Iranian Wars especially against western adversaries like Romans who had access to the much higher source of manpower. Not only Iranian plateau had/has less population compared to European territories which was held by Romans but as you mentioned the very fact that the main force of the Sassanids came from Nobles made the manpower issue even worst. in gaming language it's like "Aristocratic military = -75% recruitable population"
I'm glad that you liked it
.
Fantastic, as usual!
What's mind boggling to me is how there were still people wanting to become the Roman emperor, considering that this office was tantamount to a death sentence.
What's mind boggling to me is how there were still people wanting to become the Roman emperor, considering that this office was tantamount to a death sentence.