The First Golden Era of Sasanian Iran

[Semper Victor]

1. INTRODUCTION.

This thread is a continuation of my earlier thread, The Rise of the Sasanians. Originally, that was intended to be a single thread, but due to “popular demand”, I’ve decided to extend it from a thread telling the story of the appearance and ascent of the Sasanian dynasty to a full-fledged complete history of the Sasanian dynasty from Ardaxšir I until Yazdegerd III. Due to the lengthy time period to be covered and the complexity of the material, I’ve decided to spread it across several threads (I’m still undecided about how many).

Followers of the previous thread will be aware that it’s been at times more of a “tale of two empires” than a mere history of the Sasanian empire, because a central part of the history of the Sasanian empire is its struggle with the Roman empire across four centuries; that’s also influenced by the fact that the overwhelming majority of extant sources are in Latin, Greek, Syriac and Armenian, and necessarily they concentrate on events in the Middle East. Events within Ērānšāhr or along its extensive Central Asian and Indian borders are very poorly covered in the ancient sources, even if those events were as important to the Sasanian kings and the elites of their empire as their wars against Rome.

This thread will tell about the reign of six Sasanian kings who ruled during the IV century CE: Hormazd II (302 – 309 CE), Ādur Narsē (309 CE), Šābuhr II (309 – 379 CE), Ardaxšir II (379 – 383 CE), Šābuhr III (383 – 388 CE) and Bahrām IV (388 – 399 CE). The key character among these six kings is by far Šābuhr II the Great (as he’s known in the Pahlavi Books), the longest reigning Iranian monarch in history (and one of the longest reigning monarchs in world history too) who embarked in a bitter conflict against Rome that lasted 30 years until at the Second Peace of Nisibis in 363 CE he was able to reverse most of the losses that the Sasanians had suffered in the First Peace of Nisibis in 299 CE, while at the same time defending successfully the eastern borders of his empire against a new influx of incoming Central Asia nomads (the Kidarites) and the rising Indian empire of the Guptas. His three successors though were far less impressive in this respect and managed to lose all the eastern conquests that Ardaxšir I and Šābuhr I had won during the III century; this marked the beginning of a new era in Sasanian history in which the attention of the kings of the House of Sāsān would be fixated on the eastern borders for a century.

The reign of Šābuhr II is noteworthy also for being the first “golden era” of culture and arts in Sasanian Iran, and for the first serious attempt at a real centralization of the Zoroastrian religion and the establishment of a religious canon of the Zoroastrian sacred works which was probably inspired by the similar efforts that were happening at the same time in the Roman empire, with the first proposal of a Biblical canon by the Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria. The reign of Šābuhr II saw also the first well attested instance of a widespread persecution of Christians in the Sasanian empire; this was caused by a new phenomenon that was unknown for before the IV century CE: the use of religion as a political weapon in foreign relations, with Constantine I the Great writing to the young Šābuhr II appointing himself the defender of all the “Persian Christians”, which in turn only achieved to turn all the Christians of Ērānšāhr into potential traitors and spies to the eyes of Šābuhr II, who then proceeded ruthlessly against what he saw as a Roman “fifth column” within his kingdom. The conversion of the Roman empire, Armenia, Iberia and several Arab tribes to the Christian faith and the expansion of Christianity among the native Aramaic-speaking population of Asōrestān and Xuzestān would have lasting consequences in the political landscape of the Middle East.

The events in the Middle East during the IV century are exceptionally well documented in the extant sources in comparison to the III and V centuries CE; you’ll notice it immediately if you have a look at the Bibliography in Chapter III of this thread. This is a luxury that we won’t have for most of the rest of these threads. The long war between the Roman augusti Constantius II and Julian against the Sasanian šāhān šāh Šābuhr II in particular is very well documented thanks to a historical document of exceptional quality: the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman army officer who took part personally in all these events and who wrote this history after he retired to the city of Rome in the 370s CE after he left active duty.

The failed campaign of Julian against Šābuhr II really marks a watershed in Roman-Sasanian relations. The border that resulted from the Second Peace of Nisibis would remain fairly stable until the late VI century CE, bringing some political stability to the area, and after this war both empires turned their attention from each other to other borders. In 378 CE the eastern augustus Valens suffered a disastrous defeat against the Goths at Adrianople in Thrace and the long sequence of events that brought about the political disintegration of the western part of the Roman empire began. For the remainder of the IV century CE and all the V century CE the Romans concentrated their attention on their northern borders and on the internal conflicts caused by doctrinal discrepancies among several Christian sects. On the other part, the Sasanian kings would have to concentrate their efforts on their northeastern and eastern borders, where first the Kidarites and later the Hephtalites would pose an mortal danger to the very existence of Ērānšāhr.

 

[Semper Victor]

2. INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION.

2. INDEX

3. SOURCES.

3.1 PRIMARY SOURCES.
3.2 SECONDARY SOURCES.​

4. THE SUCCESSORS OF NARSĒ AND THE RISE OF THE GRANDEES.

4.1. THE REIGN OF HORMAZD II.
4.2. THE ROMAN EAST DURING THE REIGN OF HORMAZD II AND THE MINORITY OF ŠĀBUHR II.
​

5. ŠĀBUHR II AND CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.

5.1. THE REORGANIZATION OF THE ROMAN EAST BY CONSTANTINE.
5.2. ŠĀBUHR II’S COMING OF AGE AND THE SITUATION IN THE EASTERN BORDERS OF ĒRĀNŠAHR. THE HUNS IN CENTRAL ASIA.
5.3. ŠĀBUHR II’S ARAB CAMPAIGN.
5.4. ARMENIA, INDIA AND THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE I.
5.5. THE GOTHIC WAR OF CONSTANTINE I AND THE OUTBREAK OF WAR BETWEEN ROME AND ŠĀBUHR II.
​

6. ŠĀBUHR II’S FIRST WAR AGAINST CONSTANTIUS II, 337-350 CE.

6.1. THE SUCCESSION OF CONSTANTINE I, AND THE ROMAN ARMY AT THE START OF THE REIGN OF CONSTANTIUS II.
6.2 THE ARMY OF ŠĀBUHR II.
6.3 DESCRIPTION OF THE WAR THEATER AND LOGISTICS.
6.4 TACTICS.
6.5 THE ROMAN STRATEGY OF DEFENSE AGAINST THE SASANIAN STRATEGY OF OFFENSE.
6.6 THE FIRST SIEGE OF NISIBIS.
6.7 CONSTANTIUS II RETURNS TO THE EAST. ARMENIA, AND THE WAR OF ATTRITION AGAINST ŠĀBUHR II.
6.8 THE BATTLE OF SINGARA
6.9 THE SECOND AND THIRD SIEGES OF NISIBIS.
​

7. THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE HUNS IN CENTRAL ASIA, 350-359 CE.

7.1 THE EASTERN BORDERS OF ĒRĀNŠAHR. GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND DESCRIPTION OF MERV.
7.2 BACTRIA-ṬOḴĀRESTĀN.
7.3 THE AFGHAN HIGHLANDS.
7.4 GANDHĀRA.
7.5 HINDESTĀN.
7.6 BALUCHISTAN.
7.7 THE SĪSTĀN BASIN AND HERĀT.
7.8 THE SOGDIAN LANDS.
7.9 KHWARAZM.
7.10 THE CHIONITES.
​

8. THE FINAL WAR BETWEEN ŠĀBUHR II AND THE ROMANS.

8.1 THE RESTART OF OPEN HOSTILITIES BETWEEN ŠĀBUHR II AND THE ROMANS.
8.2 THE SIEGE OF AMIDA. THE APPROACH OF THE SASANIAN ARMY.
8.3 THE SIEGE OF AMIDA. THE SASANIAN ARMY INVESTS THE CITY.
8.4 THE SIEGE OF AMIDA. THE SASANIAN SIEGE AND THE FALL OF THE CITY.
8.5 THE SASANIAN CAMPAIGN OF 360 CE.
8.6 THE ROMAN COUNTERATTACK OF 360 CE.
8.7 THE DEATH OF CONSTANTIUS II AND THE PREPARATIONS AND PLANNING FOR JULIAN’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST ĒRĀNŠAHR.
8.8 THE MARCH OF JULIAN’S ARMY TO CTESIPHON (363 CE).
8.9 FROM THE BATTLE OF CTESIPHON TO THE BEGINING OF THE RETREAT.
8.10 THE ROMAN RETREAT, THE DEATH OF JULIAN AND THE SECOND PEACE OF NISIBIS.
​

9. THE END OF ŠĀBUHR II'S REIGN AND THE REIGNS OF HIS IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS.

9.1 THE ARMENIAN WAR.
9.2 THE RISE OF THE KIDARITES.
9.3 AN OVERVIEW OF THE OLD XIONGNU SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SYSTEM.
9.4 AN OVERVIEW OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SYSTEM OF THE EUROPEAN HUNS.
9.5 THE REIGNS OF ARDAXŠĪR II, ŠĀBUHR III AND WARAHRĀN IV.
9.6 INNER POLICIES AND IDEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN ĒRĀNŠAHR DURING THE IV CENTURY CE.​

 

[Semper Victor]

3.1 PRIMARY SOURCES.

As I wrote in the introduction, primary sources for the IV century CE in the Middle east are much more abundant than in the III century, and accordingly this chapter will be quite longer. I’ve also tried to be more methodical and comprehensive in this respect, as I deem it important in order to keep some pretense of historical rigor. This list remains open to further additions as the thread follows its course.

EXTANT LATIN SOURCES:

• Sextus Aurelius Victor (ca. 320 CE – ca. 390 CE) was a historian and politician who wrote a short history of the Roman empire, entitled De Caesaribus and covering the period from Augustus to Constantius II. The work was published in 361 CE.
• Festus (probably Festus of Tridentium, active in the IV century CE), was a historian and proconsul of Asia whose epitome Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani (Summary of the deeds of the Roman people, usually referred to as Breviarium) was commissioned by the eastern emperor Valens in preparation for his war against the Sasanians. It was completed about 370 CE. It covers the entire history of the Roman state from the foundation of the Urbs until 364 CE.
• The Itinerarium Alexandri ("The Journey of Alexander") is a IV century CE travel guide in the form of a listing of cities, villages and other stops, with the intervening distances given. The text describes Alexander the Great's journey of conquest across the Persian Empire. The book contains a description of Alexander's life from his ascendance to the Macedonian throne to his conquests in India. The content of the text draws heavily on the Anabasis of Alexander by the II century CE author Arrian and it has similarities to the anonymous Alexander Romance. This anonymous work was dedicated to the Roman Emperor Constantius II.
• Expositio totius mundi et gentium ("A description of all the world and its people") is the name of a brief "commercial-geographical" survey written by an anonymous citizen of the Roman empire who lived during the reign of Constantius II. The Greek original, written between 350 CE and 362 CE is now lost, but the text has survived in two Latin translations made during the VI century CE. The work is composed of three parts. The first describes lands east of the Roman empire and contains the most legendary and least accurate geographical information. The second part is the longest and describes the mainland provinces of the empire, while the third part describes its island provinces.
• Ammianus Marcellinus (ca. 330 CE – ca. 391/400 CE) was a Greek-speaking native from Syria (perhaps from Antioch) who served for many years in the Roman army of the East as well as in Gaul, where he followed Julian. He was a traditionalist pagan, and after his retirement from the army he settled in the city of Rome after 372 Ce where he wrote his historical work, the Res Gestae (the complete name is Rerum gestarum Libri XXXI) in thirty-one books of which the first thirteen have been lost. Exceptionally for a native Greek speaker, he wrote in Latin (having settled in Rome, he probably targeted the rich members of the Roman Senate as the main market for his work, with whom he shared his conservatism and pro-pagan views). His work was a continuation of Tacitus up until the battle of Adrianople in 378 CE. He’s by far the best extant source for military events in the East in the IV century, but his work is heavily biased in some points: he detested Constantius II and held Julian as his personal hero.
• Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (347 CE – 420 CE, acknowledged as a saint and a Doctor of the Church by the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican Churches) was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian. He is best known for his translation of the whole Bible into Latin (the Vulgata) but he also left also (among several other works) a Chronicle (also known as Chronicon or Temporum liber), written ca. 380 CE in Constantinople; this is a translation into Latin of the chronological tables which compose the second part of the Chronicon of Eusebius, with a supplement covering the period from 325 CE to 379 CE.
• Flavius Eutropius (active during the second half of the IV century CE) held the office of secretary (magister memoriae) at Constantinople, accompanied the Emperor Julian on his expedition against the Sasanians in 363 CE, and was alive during the reign of Valens (364 CE –378 CE), to whom he dedicated his Breviarium historiae Romanae which ends before Valens’ death. Eutropius was probably from Burdigala (Bordeaux), and was almost certainly a pagan, which he remained even under emperor Julian's successors.
• The Epitome de Caesaribus is a historical work written at the end of the IV century CE. It’s a brief account of the reigns of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Theodosius the Great. Although it’s been traditionally attributed to Aurelius Victor, it was written by an anonymous author who was probably a pagan. Its sources for the IV century are the lost Annales of Nichomachus Flavianus.
• Paulus Orosius (ca. 375 CE - after 418 CE) was a Gallaecian priest, historian and theologian, and a disciple of Augustine of Hippo (with whom he collaborated in the writing of the City of God). He wrote a total of three books, of which his most important is his Seven Books of History Against the Pagans (Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, usually referred to as Adversus Paganos), considered to be one of the books with the greatest impact on historiography during the period between antiquity and the Middle Ages.
• The Notitia Dignitatum is a document from the late IV or early V century CE which lists all the higher ranks of the administration and military in the late Roman empire. It was probably complied at separate times for the eastern and western parts of the empire, with both parts being later put together during the early V century. The date for the East is considered to be accurate for the time of the death of Theodosius I (395 CE), while the date for the West belong to a later time, around 420 CE. It’s the best extant source about the late Roman administration and military by far, as the quality of the late medieval copies which arrived to Renaissance times is excellent (they were copied with great care complete with their hundreds of illustrations).
• The Codex Theodosianus (“Theodosian Code”) was a compilation of the laws of the Roman empire issued by the Christian emperors since 312 CE. It was compiled by order of the eastern augustus Theodosius II and his western co-ruler Valentinian III on and it went into force in the eastern and western parts of the empire on 1 January 439 CE.
• Gennadius of Massilia (? - ca. 496 CE) was a Christian priest who wrote a collection of biographies known under the titles of De Viris Illustribus (“About Illustrious Men”) or sometimes Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (“Book about Church writers”). It’s usually considered to have been finished by 495 CE.
• Anonymus Valesianus (divided in two parts, Anonymi Valesiani I and II) is the conventional title of a compilation of two fragmentary chronicles in vulgar Latin, named for its XVII century editor, Henri Valois, or Henricus Valesius (1603–76), who published the text for the first time in 1636, together with his first printed edition of the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus. The Anonymus Valesianus I, sometimes given the separate conventional title Origo Constantini Imperatoris (“The Lineage of the Emperor Constantine") possibly dates from around 390 CE, and is generally regarded as being a reliable source. The Anonymus Valesianus II is sometimes referred to as the Pars Posterior and was written after 526 CE and probably between 540 and 550 CE. The text deals mostly with the reign of the Ostrogothic king of Italy, Theodoric the Great.
• De origine actibusque Getarum (About the Origins and Deeds of the Goths, usually referred to as Getica), by Jordanes.

LOST LATIN SOURCES:

• Virius Nicomachus Flavianus (334 CE – 394 CE) was a grammarian, historian and a politician. He was a pagan and a close friend of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, the head of the “pagan party” in the Roman Senate during the late IV century CE. A member of the Nicomachi, an influential family of senatorial rank, he was Praetorian Prefect of Italy in 390 - 392 CE and, under the usurper Eugenius (392 – 394 CE) he was again Praetorian Prefect (393 – 394 CE) and consul. After the defeat of Eugenius in the battle of the Frigidus river against Theodosius the Great, Flavianus committed suicide. He wrote a history of Rome entitled Annales ("Annals"), now lost; it was dedicated to Theodosius (probably when Flavianus was quaestor sacri palatii in the 380s) and written in annalist form; as the title suggests, it might have been a continuation of Tacitus’ Annales.

EXTANT GREEK SOURCES:

• Eusebius of Caesarea (Εὐσέβιος τῆς Καισαρείας, Eusébios tēs Kaisareías) was the most important historian of early Christianity. He lived between 260/265 CE and 339/340 CE and from 314 CE until his death he was bishop of Caesarea Maritima in Palestine. He wrote extensively, but of his historical works his Chronicle (Παντοδαπὴ Ἱστορία, Pantodapè Historía) which offered an epitome of universal history from the sources, arranged according to nations has been lost and only survives in (quite extensive) excerpts in quotations in later authors, especially Syncellus. His other great historical work was his Ecclesiastical History (Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία, Ekklēsiastikē Historía). Of great interest is also his panegyric dedicated to emperor Constantine I, titled Life of Constantine the great (Βίος Μεγάλου Κωνσταντίνου, Bíos Megálou Kōnstantínou; often referred to in its abbreviated Latin translation Vita Constantini). He was above all a Christian apologist and polemist, a fervent admirer of Constantine I and a ferocious enemy of anything that smelled of “paganism” or heresy; hence one can not expect for a lack of bias in his work.
• Athanasius of Alexandria (Ἀθανάσιος Ἀλεξανδρείας, Athanāsios Alexandreías; ca. 296/298 CE – 373 CE) was the Nicene Patriarch of Alexandria between 328 CE and 373 CE). He is considered as a saint and a Church Father by the Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic Churches. He was immensely important in the history of Christianity during the IV century CE and had an enormous influence among his contemporaries. He is mostly remembered for being the most implacable enemy of Arius and Arianism in general and the champion of Trinitarianism. Of interest to us in this thread among his many works is the History of the Arians (358 CE) which was a heavily political book/pamphlet in which Athanasius attacked the Arian emperor Constantius II, as well as his Apology against the Arians.
• Libanius of Antioch (Λιβάνιος, Libánios) was a teacher of rhetoric and a sophist who lived between ca. 314 CE and 392/3 CE. He remained a staunch defender of paganism to his death and was a fervent admirer of the emperor Julian. He’s left an enormous corpus of short works (amongst them 1,545 letters). In some of these works, especially in these speeches (for example the funerary oration of Julian) he has left valuable historical information. He was a close contemporary of (and was geographically close to) the events that happened in the East between Romans and Sasanians during the IV century CE.
• Themistius (Θεμίστιος, Thēmístios; 317 CE – ca. 390 AD was a statesman, rhetorician, and philosopher. His career spanned the reigns of Constantius II, Julian, Jovian, Valens, Gratian, and Theodosius I. He enjoyed the favor of all those emperors, notwithstanding their many differences, and the fact that he himself was not a Christian. He was admitted to the senate of Constantinople by Constantius II in 355 CE, and he was appointed prefect of the same city in 384 CE by Theodosius I. Of his many works, thirty-three of his orations have come down to us, as well as various commentaries and epitomes of the works of Aristotle.
• Gregory of Nazianzus (Γρηγόριος ὁ Ναζιανζηνός, Grēgórios ho Nazianzenós; ca. 329 CE –390 CE), also known as Gregory the Theologian or Gregory Nazianzen, was a IV century CE Patriarch of Constantinople and theologian. Apart from his theological works, he also wrote a large number of letters and speeches which have arrived to our day.
• Julian “the Apostate” (Latin: Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus, Greek: Φλάβιος Κλαύδιος Ἰουλιανὸς Αὔγουστος [Flábios Klaúdios Ioulianòs Aûgoustos], 331 CE – 363 CE) was Roman emperor between 361 and 363 CE. He wrote abundantly, and part of his works have survived. Some of them contain valuable historical information.
• Eunapius of Sardes (Εὐνάπιος, Eunápios) was born in 346 CE and died in an unknown date during the early V century CE. He was a staunch defender of paganism (in his later years he taught philosophy in Athens where he became a hierophant of the Eleusinian Mysteries). He wrote an extant Lives of Philosophers and Sophists, and a Universal History which was a continuation of the history of Dexippus. Only excerpts remain of this work, but large tracts from it were incorporated in the work of Zosimus. It consisted of a history of events in the Roman empire from 270 CE to 404 CE.
• Heliodorus of Emesa (Ἡλιόδωρος ὁ Ἐμεσηνός, Hiliódōros ho Emesēnós) was a Greek novelist about whom nothing is known for sure; some scholars think he could have lived under Julian (others place him in the middle III century CE). In his novel Aethiopica (Αἰθιοπικά, Aithiopiká) he gave a colorful description of a Sasanian army.
• John Chrysostom (Ἰωάννης ὁ Χρυσόστομος, Iōánnēs ho Chrisóstomos; ca. 349 – 407 CE) was a Christian cleric who was Patriarch of Constantinople between 397 CE and 405 CE. He is honored as a saint in the Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches, as well as in some others. He was also among the most prolific authors in the early Christian Church, exceeded only by Augustine of Hippo in the quantity of his surviving writings. His homilies and treatises contain valuable information about political and military events of the IV century CE.
• Philostorgius (Φιλοστόργιος, Filostórgios; 368 CE – ca. 439 CE) was an Arian cleric who wrote a history of the Arian controversy titled Church History (Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία, Ekklēsiastikē Historía). It was written between 425 Ce and 433 CE.
• Socrates of Constantinople or Socrates Scholasticus (Σωκράτης ὁ Σχολαστικός, Sōkrátēs ho Scholastikós; ca. 380 – after 439 CE) was a V century Ce Church historian who wrote a Church History (Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία, Ekklēsiastikē Historía) which was finished by 439 CE or soon thereafter.
• Theodoret of Cyrrhus (Θεοδώρητος Κύρρου, Theodōrētos Kyrrou; ca. 393 CE – ca. 458/466 CE) was a theologian, biblical commentator, and bishop of Cyrrhus in northern Syria (423 CE – 457 CE). Although he was mainly a theologian and a very active bishop, in his extensive work some important historical information can be found, especially in his Religious History and his Ecclesiastical History.
• Salminius Hermias Sozomenus (Σωζομενός, Sōzomenós; ca. 400 CE – ca. 450 CE), usually referred to as Sozomen was a church historian. He trained as a lawyer in Beirut and settled later in Constantinople, where he wrote his Church History (Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία, Ekklēsiastikē Historía) after 443 CE in two parts, of which the first one has been lost.
• Zosimus (Zōsimos, Ζώσιμος) was an East Roman historian active during the 490s-510s CE, he was probably an imperial functionary. He wrote a chronicle titled New History (Ἱστορία Νέα, Historía Néa) in eight books. He was a hardcore defender of paganism, and his agenda was to show how the abandonment of the old gods had led to the decadence and ruin of the Roman empire. For his book he made mostly use of works now lost to us. He’s generally considered not the most reliable of sources, due to his partisanship and his poor attention to detail and chronology.
• John Lydus (also “John the Lydian”, Ἰωάννης Λαυρέντιος ὁ Λυδός; Iōánnes Lavréntios ho Lydós; ca. 490 CE – after 565 CE) was a VI century east Roman bureaucrat and writer. He held high offices in the Praetorian Prefecture of the East under Anastasius and Justinian I. In 552 CE he fell into disfavor and was dismissed. During his retirement he occupied himself in the compilation of works on the antiquities of Rome, three of which have been preserved. De Ostentis (Περὶ Διοσημείων; Perì Diosēmeíōn), on the origins and evolution of the art of divination; De Magistratibus reipublicae Romanae (Περὶ ἀρχῶν τῆς Ῥωμαίων πολιτείας, Perì archōn tēs Hrōmaíōn politeías), especially valuable for the administrative details of the time of Justinian I and De Mensibus (Περὶ τῶν μηνῶν, Peri tōn mēnōn), a history of the different pagan festivals of the year. The chief value of these books consists in the fact that the author made use of the works (now lost) of old Roman writers on similar subjects. Lydus was also commissioned by Justinian I to compose a panegyric dedicated to him, and a history of his campaign against the Sasanian empire; but these, as well as some poetical compositions, are lost.
• John Malalas (Ἰωάννης Μαλάλας, Iōánnēs Malálas) was a chronicler from Antioch who lived between ca. 491 CE and 578 CE. He was probably a jurist, or maybe a rhetor and at some moment in life he moved to Constantinople. He wrote a Chronographia (Χρονογραφία, Chronografía) in eighteen books which has survived with some mutilations. This work covers from the mythical foundation of Egypt to 563 CE. Scholars consider it generally a low-quality source, full of mythical material interwoven in a random way with historical facts.
• Peter the Patrician (Πέτρος ὁ Πατρίκιος, Pétros ho Patríkios [also referred to in the Latin translation Petrus Patricius]; ca. 500 CE – 565 CE) was a senior east Roman official, diplomat, and historian. Trained as a lawyer, under Justinian I he was sent as an ambassador to the Ostrogothic kingdom and was later appointed as magister officiorum of the empire (a very senior post) for 26 years. He wrote three books, all of which survive only in fragments: a history of the first four centuries of the Roman empire, from the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE to the death of Emperor Constantius II in 361 CE, of which about twenty fragments are extant; a history of the office of magister officiorum from its institution under Constantine the Great to the time of Justinian, containing a list of its holders and descriptions of various imperial ceremonies, several of which are reproduced in chapters 84 to 95 of the first volume of the X century CE treaty De Ceremoniis of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913 – 959); and an account of his diplomatic mission to the Sasanian empire in 561 CE – 562 CE.
• Agathias or Agathias Scholasticus (Ἀγαθίας σχολαστικός, Agathías Scholastikós) ca. 530 CE – 582/594 CE was a Greek poet from the Aeolian city of Myrina in Mysia (western Asia Minor). He studied law (hence the appellation “scholasticus”) in Constantinople and had left some dozens of poems and two major historical chronicles: On the reign of Justinian and his Histories, where he offers important bits of information about pre-Islamic Iran. In this field, he is one of the best-informed Greek authors.
• Chronicon Paschale (the “Paschal” or “Easter Chronicle”) is the conventional name of an early VII century CE anonymous Christian chronicle of the world. Its name comes from its system of chronology based on the Christian paschal cycle; its author lived during the reigns of the eastern Roman emperors Maurice, Phocas and Heraclius and titled it originally Epitome of the ages from Adam the first man to the twentieth year of the reign of the most August Heraclius.
• John of Antioch was a VII century CE monk and chronicler, who lived during the reign of Heraclius. His chronicle (Ἱστορία Xρονικὴ, Historía Chronikè) is a universal history stretching from Adam to the death of emperor Phocas; it’s one among many adaptations and imitations of the better known chronicle of John Malalas. His sources include also Sextus Julius Africanus, Eusebius, and Ammianus Marcellinus. Only fragments remain.
• George Syncellus (Γεώργιος Σύγκελλος, Geōrgios Synkellos) was a Byzantine cleric who lived during the late VIII and early IX centuries CE and wrote an Extract of Chronography (Ἐκλογὴ Χρονογραφίας, Eklogē Chronografías). Of Syrian or Palestinian origins, his work is more a series of chronological tables than a proper chronicle; his main sources were Annianus of Alexandria and Panodorus of Alexandria, (through whom George acquired much of his knowledge of the history of Manetho) and he also relied heavily on Eusebius of Caesarea, Dexippus and Sextus Julius Africanus.
• Theophanes the Confessor (Θεοφάνης ὁ Ὁμολογητής, Theofánēs ho Homologētēs) 758/760 CE – 817/818 CE; acknowledged as a saint by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches) continued the chronicle of his friend George Synkellus in his Chronographia (Χρονογραφία, Chronografía) written between 810 and 815 CE. He covered events from the rise of Diocletian in 284 CE until 813 CE.
• The Suda (Σοῦδα, Soûda, usually referred to in the Latin form Liber Suda) is a large X century CE Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soúdas (Σούδας) or Souídas (Σουίδας) whose existence is now doubtful. It is an encyclopedic lexicon with 30,000 entries, many taken from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. Its historical value is incalculable, as it effectively gives us a canon of ancient Greek authors most of whose world has been now lost; the only references remaining now about them are the entries in this book.
• George Cedrenus (Γεώργιος Κεδρηνός, Geōrgios Kedrēnós) was a Byzantine historian active in the XI century CE. During the 1050s he wrote his Concise history of the world (Σύνοψις Ἱστοριῶν, Synopsis Historiōn).
• John Zonaras (Ἰωάννης Ζωναρᾶς, Iōánnēs Zōnarâs) was a Byzantine functionary and cleric who lived in the XII century and wrote a chronicle titled Extracts of History (Ἐπιτομὴ Ἱστοριῶν, Epitomè Historiōn), based on ancient authors, most of whom are now lost. Until the early III century CE, he followed mostly Cassius Dio, but for the rest of his book he resorted to sources now lost to us, but which have survived in an abbreviated form in his work.

LOST GREEK SOURCES:

• Magnus of Carrhae was an officer in the eastern Roman army who took part in Julian’s campaign against Šābuhr II and wrote a later a history of the Roman-Sasanian war under Constantius II and Julian which has been lost. This lost work was the main source used by John Malalas for events in the Middle East during the IV century CE. Some historians identify this authors with a certain “Magnus the tribune” who appears in Ammianus’ Res Gestae.

ARMENIAN SOURCES:

• Faustus of Byzantium (P’avstos Buzand in Armenian) was an Armenian historian of the V century CE. He wrote a six-volume history, of which the first two volumes are lost. As with other ancient Armenian historians, even his very existence has been put in doubt by some modern researchers along with many of the events and chronology of his chronicle and is considered in general quite unreliable.
• Moses of Chorene (Movses Khorenats’i in Armenian) was an Armenian bishop who lived during the V century CE. His History of the Armenians (Patmutyun Hayots) is the most important work of the ancient Armenian historiography, but some modern scholars hold the same reservations about his work as about Faustus of Byzantium’s. The work is strongly “nationalist” in its views, staunchly pro-Christian and decidedly anti-Sasanian, who are portrayed as enemies of the true faith who wanted to restore “paganism” in Armenia.
• Agathangelos is the alleged author of the History of Saint Gregory and the Conversion of Armenia. According to tradition, he lived between the III and IV centuries CE and was the secretary of king Tirdad III of Armenia. This is also a problematic source, because after studying the text scholars have arrived to the conclusion that it could not have been written before the V century CE, and it shows clear signs of having been heavily edited since its initial composition.

GEORGIAN SOURCES:

• The Georgian Chronicles is the conventional name for the principal compendium of medieval Georgian historical texts, known in Georgian as Kartlis Tskhovreba (literally "Life of Kartli", Kartli being a core region of ancient and medieval Georgia, known to the Classical and Byzantine authors as Iberia). They are also known as The Georgian Royal Annals, for they were essentially the official corpus of history of the Kingdom of Georgia. The Chronicles consist of a series of distinct texts dating from the IX to the XIV century CE. The dating of these works as well as the identification of their authors have been the subject of scholarly debates. The part of the Chronicles that covers events in the IV century CE is its first part, known as History of the Kings and Patriarchs of the Georgians, attributed by tradition to Leonti Mroveli and believed to have been written in the IX or XI centuries CE.

SYRIAC SOURCES:

• Aphrahat (ca. 280 CE - ca. 345 CE) was a Syriac Christian author of the third century from Adiabene in the Asōrestān province of the Sasanian Empire who wrote a series of twenty-three expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice. All his known works, the Demonstrations, come from the later part of his life. He was probably a monk, and he may have been a bishop. Later Syriac tradition places him at the head of the Mar Mattai monastery near Mosul in what is now northern Iraq.
• Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306 CE – 373 CE; acknowledged as a saint by the Syriac Orthodox Church) was a Syriac Christian deacon and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the IV century CE. He lived in Nisibis until the Romans ceded the city to the Sasanians in 363 CE, he moved then to Amida and finally to Edessa. Apart from his theological and religious works, he also wrote a history of the world from the Creation to the Crucifixion of Christ titled The Book of the Cave of Treasure.
• The Acts of Pusai or Martyrdom of Pusai is a Syriac narrative about the martyrdom of a Christian saint named Pusai, who was allegedly the descendant of Roman captives deported into the Sasanian empire. Pusai and his family had been relocated to the new settlement of Karka d'Ledan, near Susa in Xūzestān where according to tradition he was martyred in 341 CE during the persecution of Christians ordered by Šābuhr II.
• The Acts of the Martyrs of Bezabde is an anonymous work describing the martyrdom of the Christian inhabitants of Bezabde after the town fell to Šābuhr II in 359 CE.
• The anonymous Life of Saint Jacob the Recluse (? – 421 CE), written during the VIII century CE, contains some valuable references to IV century CE Mesopotamia.
• Joshua the Stylite is the attributed author of a chronicle that narrates the history of the war between the Roman and Sasanian empires between 502 CE and 506 CE. The work owes its preservation to having been incorporated in the third part of the Chronicle of Zuqnin. An elaborate dedication to the author’s friend, a priest and abbot called Sergius is followed by a brief recapitulation of events from the death of Julian in 363 CE and a fuller account of the reigns of the Sasanian kings Pērōz I (457 CE – 484 CE) and Walāxš I (484 CE – 488 CE), the writer enters upon his main theme: the history of the disturbed relations between the Persian and Roman Empires from the beginning of the reign of Kawād I (489 CE – 531 CE), which culminated in the great war of 502 CE – 506 CE.
• The Chronicle of 724 (also known under the Latin name Liber calipharum; “Book of the Caliphs”) is a Syriac chronicle the bulk of which was written down by 640 CE except for a short appendix which can be dated to 724 CE.
• Jacob of Edessa (ca. 640 CE – 708 CE) was a monk and bishop of Edessa (for the Miaphysite Syriac Orthodox Church). He wrote extensively about theology, biblical history, liturgy, philosophy (he was fluent in Greek and translated part of Aristotle’s works into Syriac), grammar and secular history. In this field, he wrote a Chronicle which was a continuation of Eusebius’ Chronicon and of which only 23 pages have survived (now in the British Library).
• The Chronicle of Zuqnin (previously called Chronicle of the Pseudo-Dyonisius of Tel Mahre, a name now not accepted by scholars) is an anonymous chronicle written in Syriac describing the events from Creation to ca. 775 CE. It consists of four parts. The first part covers from the Creation to the times of Constantine the Great and is in the mostly an epitome of the Chronicle of Eusebius. The second part reaches to Theodosius II and follows closely the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates of Constantinople; while the third, extending to the reign of Justin II, reproduces the second part of the History of John of Ephesus. The fourth part is not, like the others, a compilation but the original work of the author and reaches to the year 774-775 CE, apparently the date when he was writing.
• Michael the Syrian (ca. 1126 – 1199 CE) was the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1166 to 1199. He was the author of the longest surviving medieval Chronicle, which he composed in Syriac. This chronicle runs from Creation up to Michael's own times and it uses earlier ecclesiastical histories now lost to us. Its coverage of the Late Antique period relies mainly upon Dionysius of Tel Mahre.

LOST MIDDLE PERSIAN SOURCES:

• The Xwadāy-nāmag (“Book of Lords”) was an official history of Iran written originally during the VI century CE at the court of Xusrō I and expanded under his successors; in its final form it covered the history of Iran since the Creation until the death of the last Sasanian king Yazdegerd III. It has been lost, but during the VIII century CE the Iranian convert to Islam Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ translated it into Arabic. This translation has also been lost but it was extensively used by many later Islamic authors. In its original Middle Persian form it was also used as a source by Agathias.

NEW PERSIAN SOURCES:

• The Šāh-nāma (the Book of Kings) is the great epic poem of Persian literature and the national epic of Iran, written by Abu’l-Qāsem Ferdowsī (940 CE – 1019/25 CE). This is the longest poem ever written by a single author, and the work that was decisive in turning Middle Persian into the main language of culture in the Islamic Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia. Ferdowsī drew from a great variety of sources, from Ibn al-Muqaffa’s Arabic translation of the Xwadāy-nāmag to the works of previous authors like Abū Manṣūr Daqīqī and local lore of his native land of Khorasan in northeastern Iran.
• Abū ‘Alī Muhammad Bal'amī (Bal'amī, active during the X century CE) was an Iranian writer, historian and vizier at the Samanid court. He translated Tabarī’s History of the Prophets and Kings into New Persian and added many new details missing in Tabari’s original work. This New Persian version of the work is usually referred to as Tārikh-e Bal’ami.
• The Tārikh-e Sistān (History of Sistan) is an anonymous epic poem which covers the history of Sistān since its legendary pre-Islamic times until the year 1062 CE.

EXTANT ARABIC SOURCES:

• Abū Muhammad Abd-Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutaybah al-Dīnawarī al-Marwazī (Ibn Qutaybah, 828 CE – 889 CE) was an Islamic scholar, ulema and judge of Iranian origin (his father was from Marv) who lived in Iraq during the height of the Abbasid caliphate. He wrote extensively about multiple subjects; his historical work his compiled in the Kitāb ʿUyūn al-aḫbār (Book about the sources of information).
• Ābu Ḥanīfah Āḥmad ibn Dawūd Dīnawarī (Dīnawarī, 815 – 896 CE) was an Iranian polymathic of the Abbasid era. Native of the region of Dīnawar (in western Iran), he wrote about, astronomy, agriculture, botany (he’s considered the father of Islamic botany), metallurgy, geography, mathematics and history. Although he was born in Iran, his ethnicity is unclear. His historical work is contained in his Kitâb al-akhbâr al-tiwâl (General History).
• Ahmad ibn Abu Ya'qub ibn Ja'far ibn Wahb Ibn Wadih al-Ya'qubi (Ya'qubi, ? - 897/8 CE) was a Muslim geographer and perhaps the first historian of world culture during the golden era of the Abbasid Caliphate. His main works are Ta'rikh ibn Wadih (The History of ibn Wadih) and the Kitāb al-buldān (The Book of Countries, a geographical treaty).
• Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (Ṭabarī, 838 CE – 923 CE) was an Islamic ulema and scholar born in Iran (in Tabaristan, northern Iran) who wrote History of the Prophets and Kings (Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk). Probably the most important history book about the early medieval Islamic and pre-Islamic Middle East, it covers events in the Middle East since the Creation to 915 CE. He was one of the most erudite and prolific authors of his era, and he covered subjects on Qur'anic exegesis, Islamic jurisprudence, history, poetry, lexicography, grammar, ethics, mathematics, and medicine.
• The Chronicle of Se’ert is an ecclesiastical history written in Arabic by an anonymous Nestorian writer, at an unknown date between the IX and XI centuries CE. Scholars believe that there are persuasive reasons to believe that it is the work of the Nestorian author Ishoʿdnah of Basra, who was active in the second half of the IX century CE. Only part of the original text has survived. The surviving text consists of two long extracts, covering the years 251 - 422 CE and 484 - 650 CE respectively. The portion of the text covering events beyond the middle of the VII century CE has been lost. The Chronicle deals with ecclesiastical, social, and political issues of the Christian church in the Sasanian empire giving a history of its leaders and notable members. It details the growth of the Nestorian Church despite alternating periods of persecution and toleration under the Zoroastrian rulers of the House of Sāsān. The work then celebrates the triumph of the Muslim conquerors in the VII century CE as liberators from increasing Zoroastrian oppression.
• Eutychius of Alexandria (Sa'id ibn Batriq [or Bitriq]; 877 CE – 940 CE) was the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria from 932 CE to his death. He was one of the first Christian Egyptian writers to use the Arabic language. His writings include the historical chronicle Nazm al-Jauhar ("Row of Jewels"), also known by its Latin title Eutychii Annales ("The Annals of Eutychius"). He was not able to read in Greek, but he had access to Syriac translations of Greek works. The chronicle of Eutychius begins with the Creation and runs down to his own times. It’s a valuable source for events in Iran prior to the rise of Islam; for events after the rise of Islam, Eutychius made use of Islamic sources. He also drew on legendary and hagiographical material.
• Hamza ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Mu'addib al-Isfahani (Latin‎ transliteration from the New Persian version of his name: Ḥamza Eṣfahāni; ca. 893 CE - after 961 CE) was an Iranian philologist and historian. He was proud of Iranian traditions and held strong prejudices against Arabs. He wrote a history of his native city of Isfahan and a famous chronicle (ironically, in Arabic) of pre-Islamic and Islamic dynasties known as Taʾrīk̲h̲ sinī mulūk al-arḍ wa ’l-anbiyāʾ.
• Abu al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Masʿūdī (Masʿūdī, ca. 896 CE – 956 CE) was an Arab traveler, geographer and writer, sometimes referred to as “the Herodotus of the Arabs”. Mas‘udi combined history and scientific geography in his magnum opus The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems (Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawhar) which as a whole was a world history. A prolific author and a polymath, he was the author of over twenty works, which dealt with a wide variety of religious and secular subjects, including history (both Islamic and universal), geography, the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology. He was perhaps the greatest traveller of his era, and allegedly he travelled across the Middle East, Egypt, Iran, Armenia, Georgia and other Caspian regions, Arabia, eastern Africa and India.
• Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Miskawayh (Ibn Miskawayh, 932 CE – 1030 CE) was a chancery official of the Buyid era, and a philosopher and historian born in Parandak, Iran. He is mainly remembered for his philosophical works, but he also wrote the historical work Kitâb tajârib al-umam wa ta'âqib al-hemam (Book of the Experiences of Nations and their Consequences and Ambitions).
• Abu Manşūr 'Abd ul-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Isma'īl al-Tha'ālibī (Tha'ālibī, 961 CE – 1038 CE) was an Islamic writer born in Nishapur. It is not clear if he was ethnically Iranian or Arab. He wrote in verse and prose about many subjects and among his work there’s a book titled Kitāb laṭā'if al-ma'ārif (Book of curious and entertaining information), a recollection of historical anecdotes in ten chapters.
• Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Bīrūnī (New Persian: Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī; 973 CE – 1050 CE) was an Iranian scholar and polymath (he wrote about physics, mathematics, astronomy, geography, pharmacology, mineralogy, secular history, chronology, history of religions, anthropology, indology and philology), born in Khwarazm (Central Asia). He was one of the most interesting personalities of the so-called Islamic Golden Age, and among his very extensive works, we can mention the Kitāb al-āthār al-bāqiyah `an al-qurūn al-khāliyah (Book on the Remaining Signs of Past Centuries) a comparative study of calendars of different cultures and civilizations, interlaced with mathematical, astronomical, and historical information, exploring the customs and religions of different peoples.
• Ali 'Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir al-Jazari (Ibn al-Athir, 1233 CE – 1160 CE) was an Arab or Kurdish historian who was born in Cizre (now a Turkish city in northern Mesopotamia). Although he lived most of his live in Mosul, he accompanied sultan Saladin’s court in several campaigns. Among other works, he wrote the very extensive Al-Kāmil fī al-tārīkh (The Complete History) in eleven volumes.

CHINESE SOURCES:

• Sima Qian (145/135 BCE – ca. 86 BCE) was a high-level bureaucrat at the Han court who after displeasing emperor Wu of Han was condemned to castration. After suffering this humiliating punishment, Sima Qian chose to continue living at the Han court and devoted his life to his literary pursuits. Chief amongst them ranks the Shiji (Records of the Great Historian) which covers a 7,500-year time period (!) since the legendary times of the Yellow Emperor to the reign of emperor Wu of Han.
• The Hanshu (Book of Han or Book of the Former Han) is a historical work composed by the Han court official Ban Gu, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. It covers the time period between the rise to the throne of the first Han emperor Gaozu in 206 BCE until the Wang Mang rebellion in 5 CE which ended the rule of the Former (or Western) Han.
• The Weilüe (A Brief History of Wei) is a Chinese historical text written by Yu Huan between 239 CE and 265 CE; he was an official in the state of Cao Wei (220 CE – 265 CE) during the Three Kingdoms period (220 CE – 280 CE).
• The Wei Shu (Book of Wei) is a Chinese historical text compiled by Wei Shou between 551 CE and 554 CE describing the history of the Northern and Eastern Wei from 386 CE to 550 CE.
• The Hou Hanshu (Book of the Later Han) was compiled by the historian and politician Fan Ye during the V century CE under the Liu Song dynasty, using several earlier histories and documents as sources. It covers the period between 23 CE (uprising of the Red Eyebrows and restoration of the Han) until 220 CE (fall of the Later or Eastern Han dynasty).

 

[Semper Victor]

3.2 SECONDARY SOURCES.

As with the primary sources, this list remains open to further additions as the thread follows its course.

BOOKS:

• The Sasanian Era (part of the Idea of Iran series), a collection of scholarly essays edited by Vesta Sarkosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart.
• L’esercito romano tardoantico: persistenze e cesure dai Severi a Teodosio I, doctoral thesis by Marco Rocco.
• The Spirit of Zoroastrianism, by Prods Oktor Skjaervo.
• Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbors and Rivals, by Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter.
• The Roman Empire at Bay, 180-394, by David S. Potter.
• The Imperial Roman Army, by Yann Le Bohec.
• Histoire des guerres romaines, by Yann Le Bohec.
• Rome, the Greek World and the East, by Fergus Millar, Guy McLean Rogers and Hannah S. Cotton.
• Sasanian Society: I.Warriors II.Scribes III.Dehqans, by Ahmad Tafazzoli.
• Sasanian Persia: Portrait of a Late Antique Empire, by Touraj Daryaee.
• The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, AD 226-363, a collection of texts from ancient sources compiled and edited by Michael H.Dodgeon and Samuel N. C. Lieu.
• The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars: A Narrative Sourcebook, Part II AD 363-630, by Geoffrey Greatrex & Samuel N. C. Lieu. It's the continuation of the previous work.
  
• Ancient Persia, by Josef Wiesehöfer.
• ReOrienting the Sasanians, by Khodadad Rezakhani.
• Sasanian Persia: Between Rome and the Steppes of Eurasia, a collection of scholarly essays edited by Eberhard W. Sauer.
• Historia de las legiones romanas (2 vol.), by Julio Rodríguez González.
• The Sistani Cycle of Epics and Iran's National History: on the Margins of Historiography, by Saghi Gazerani.
• History of the Goths, by Herwig Wolfram.
• Rome’s Gothic Wars, by Michael S. Kulikowski.
• The Nisibis War: The Defence of the Roman East AD 337-363, by John Harrel.
  
• A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity, by Richard E. Payne.
• The Late Roman Army, by Karen R. Dixon & Pat Southern.
• Constantius II: Usurpers, Eunuchs and the Antichrist, by Peter Crawford.
• Constantine the Emperor, by David S. Potter.
  
• Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity, by Greg Fisher.
  
• Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, by Irfan Shahid.
• The Huns, by Hyun Jim Kim.
• Das Römerreich und seine Germanen, by Herwig Wolfram.
• Die Goten. Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts, by Herwig Wolfram.

PAPERS:

• "Hunnic" modified skulls: physical appearance, identity, and the transformative nature of migrations, by Suzanne Hakenbeck, in Mortuary Practices and Social Identities in the Middle Ages - Essays in Burial Archaeology in Honour of Heinrich Härke, University of Exeter Press, 2009.
• A study on the Kidarites: Reexamination on Documentary Sources, by Xian Wang. Published in Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi nº 19 (2012 edited by Th. T. Allsen, P. B. Golden, R. K. Kovalev, and A. P. Martinez.
• A view from Samarkand: the Chionite and Kidarite periods in the archaeology in Sogdiana (fourth to fifth centuries A.D.), by Frantz Grenet.
• Ammianus and Constantius: The Portrayal of a Tyrant in the Res Gestae, Master's Thesis by Sean Robert Williams (U. of Tennessee, 2009).
• Aristocratic Elites in the Xiongnu Empire as Seen from Historical and Archeological Evidence by Nicola Di Cosmo, in Nomaden und Sesshafte (2013).
• Barbarikon in the Maritime Trade Network of Early India, by Suchandra Ghosh.
• Constantine’s and Julian’s Strategic Surprise Against the Persians by Walter E. Kaegi, Athenaeum, Vol. 59, (1981), 209– 213.
• Crise et sortie de crise en Bactriane-Sogdiane aux IVe-Ve siècles: de l'héritage antique à l'adoption de modèles sassanides, by Frantz Grenet. Published in Atti dei Convegni Lincei no. 127, 1994.
• Das Königtum der Sasaniden: Strukturen und Probleme, by Henning Börm. Published in KLIO, No.90, 2008, pp.423-443.
• Des Chinois et des Hu: Migrations et integration des Iraniens orientaux en milieu chinois durant le haut Moyen Âge, by Étienne de la Vaissière & Éric Trombert, in Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 2004/5-6 (59th year), pp. 931-969.
• Early and Medieval Merv: A Tale of Three Cities, by Georgina Herrmann in Proceedings of the British Academy, 94, 1-43.
• Early medieval Central Asian population estimates, by Étienne de la Vaissière in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Volume 60, Issue 6 (2017).
• Ethnic and Territorial Boundaries in Late Antique and early Medieval Persia, by Touraj Daryaee.
• From the Sasanians to the Huns: New Numismatic Evidence from the Hindu Kush, by Michael Alram. The Numismatic Chronicle of the Royal Numismatic Society, Vol. 174 (2014).
• Historiography in Late Antique Iran, by Touraj Daryaee.
• Huns et Xiongnu, by Étienne de la Vaissière, in Central Asiatic Journal, 49 (2005).
• Iranian in Wusun? A tentative reinterpretation of the Kultobe inscriptions, by Étienne de la Vaissière, in Commentationes Iranicae. Vladimiro f. Aaron Livschits nonagenario donum natalicium, pp. 320–325 (2013).
• Is There a “Nationality of the Hephthalites”?, by Étienne de la Vaissière, in Bulletin of the Asia Institute New Series, Vol. 17 (2003), pp. 119-132.
• Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian and Kidarite Coins: A Catalogue of Coins From the American Numismatic Society, by David Jongeward, Joe Cribb & Peter Donovan. American Numismatic Society, New York 2014.
• Le Naarmalcha: à propos du tracé d'un canal en Mésopotamie Moyenne. Published in Syria. Vol. 55, Fasc. 3- 4, 1978. pp. 345-359 by François Paschoud.
• Merv, an archaeological case-study from the northeastern frontier of the Sasanian Empire, by St. John Simpson in Journal of Ancient History 2014; 2(2) pp.1–28.
• Military and Society in Sasanian Iran, by Scott McDonough.
• New Light on the Pāratarājas, by Pankaj Tandon.
• Nouvelles récherches sur le paysage monumental de Bactres, by Étienne de la Vaissière & Philippe Marquis, in Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 2013 (Juillet-Octobre); Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
• Numismatic Evidence of the Alchon Huns reconsidered by Klaus Vondrovec, in Beiträge zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte Mitteleuropas 50, 2008.
• Saansaan Pirosen: Ammianus Marcellinus and the Kidarites, by Khodadad Rezakhani. Published in The Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review (DABIR), Vol.1, No.3, 2017.
• Sasaniden, Kushan, Kushano-Sasaniden: Münzprägung, Propaganda und Identitäten zwischen Westiran und Ostiran, by Nikolaus Schindel. Published in Häller Münzblätter, Vol.VIII, March 2015.
• Scandinavia and the Huns: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Migration Era, by Lotte Hedeager, in Norwegian Archaeological Review, Vol. 000, No. 000, 2007.
• The Coins of the Pāratarājas: A Synthesis, by Pankaj Tandon.
• The Kidarites, The Numismatic evidence. With an Analytical Appendix by A. Oddy, by Joe Cribb in Coins, Art and Chronology II: The First Millennium C.E. in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands; Austrian Academy of Science Press.
• The Land behind Ctesiphon: The Archaeology of Babylon during the Period of the Babylonian Talmud, by St. John Simpson. Published in The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, edited by Markham J. Geller, 2015.
• The Location and Kings of Pāradān, by Pankaj Tandon; in Studia Iranica, Tome 41 (2012).
• The Making of Turan: The Fall and Transformation of the Iranian East in Late Antiquity, by Richard E. Payne, in Journal of Late Antiquity, Number 1, Spring 2016, pp. 4-41.
• The ossuary from Sangyr-tepe (Southern Sogdiana): Evidence of the Chionite Invasions, by Frantz Grenet and Mutalib Khasanov.
• The Parthian nobility: its social position and political activity, by Edward Dabrowa, published in Parthica, no.15 (2014).
• The Sasanian Eastern Wars in the 5th Century: The Numismatic Evidence by Nikolaus Schindel. Published in Antonio Panaino/Andrea Piras (editors), Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea. Volume I. Ancient & Middle Iranian Studies, Milan 2006.
• The Silk Road and the Iranian political economy in late antiquity: Iran, the Silk Road, and the problem of aristocratic empire, by Richard E. Payne; Bulletin of SOAS, 81, 2 (2018).
• The Site of Banbhore (Sindh-Pakistan); a joint Pakistani-French-Italian project. Current research in archaeology and history (2010-2014), by Niccolò Manassero & Valeria Piacentini Fiorani.
• The Site of Roman Bezabde, by Chris S. Lightfoot (British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Monograph. no. 5 - BAR International Series 156, 1983).
• The Steppe World and the Rise of the Huns, by Étienne de la Vaissière, in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila (2014).
• Two Curious Kidarite Coin Types from Kashmir, by Joe Cribb & Karan Singh. Published in Journal of the Oriental Numismatic Society no. 230, Winter 2017.

ONLINE RESOURCES:

• Āl-e Afrīḡ, by Charles Edmund Bosworth. Encyclopaedia Iranica, I/7, pp. 743-745; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/al-e-afrig
• Arachosia, by Rüdiger Schmitt. Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. II, Fasc. 3, pp. 246-247; available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/arachosia
• Ardašīr II, by Shapur Shahbazi. Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. II, Fasc. 4, pp. 380-381, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ardasir-ii-sasanian-king-of-kings-a
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• Bīšāpūr, by Edward J. Keall. Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. IV, Fasc. 3, pp. 287-289, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bisapur-town
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[Geriander]

What is the reason for the scarcity of Middle Persian sources? Were these not copied and passed on during the Islamic era or did they not exist in great number in the first place?

 

[Caspoi]

How likely was it that the Sasanian Empire would convert to Christianity during this time and how would it affect Roman-Persian relations and the Christians of Rome?

 

[Semper Victor]

What is the reason for the scarcity of Middle Persian sources? Were these not copied and passed on during the Islamic era or did they not exist in great number in the first place?

In the Rise of the Sasanians thread I addressed the issue of the scarcity of written sources in Middle Persian (in general, not only for the IV century CE). On one side, there's of course the issue of the cultural fracture of the Muslim conquest and the islamization of Iran, but that alone doesn't explain the scarcity of written sources. There's plenty of extant written sources written in Syriac, Coptic, Greek (that have only survived in the middle east, and not in Byzantine territories) and even Bactrian and Sogdian. Any of these languages boasts more texts dating from this era than Middle Persian, and all of them originated in lands that fell to the initial wave of Muslim conquests (until the fall of the Umayyads). So clearly, there must be something else.

Although Iran was islamized, it was never arabized (unlike Syria, Egypt or Iraq), and Middle Persian evolved into New Persian. And as the Sahnameh shows, the "national memory" of Iran was never lost: Iranians kept telling their old pre-Islamic myths and kept also the memory of their pre-Islamic kings. Islamic authors of the VIII to XI centuries CE made frequent use of pre-Islamic Middle Persian sources, and stated so in their works (like the translation of the Xwaday-Namag). Practically nothing of this original Middle Persian literature has survived, the only substantial parts to survive (with losses) are the Pahlavi Books which were preserved by the dwindling Zoroastrian minority within Iran and in India, and they comprised only religious texts (in a broader sense).

Through the study of later Islamic authors and the surviving texts (both religious and secular), modern scholars have been able to ascertain with a reasonable degree of certainty that all of them can be traced no longer back in time than the reign of Xusro I in the VI century CE, which is surprising. But all analysis point towards the same conclusion: prior to his reign, there's no traces of a significant written corpus in Middle Persian. That does not mean that Iranians were illiterate (the SKZ is proof enough for that, and the Pahlavi script originated under the first Arsacid kings). But for whatever reasons, ancient Iranians apparently saw writing merely in utilitarian terms: lists, letters, etc. But apart from the great inscriptions of Shapur I, Kirdir and other kings and grandees, there's absolutely no trace of a literary corpus before the VI century CE. This has led scholars to look for cultural explanations to explain this "phobia" against the written word (especially when there's lots of written historical texts written within the Sasanian empire in other languages before the VI century CE), and to speculate that maybe this could be due to the Zoroastrian tradition.

Several passages in the Pahlavi Books refer to the activity of writing as something fit for traders, which in the Zoroastrian view of the world was the lowest of human activities, as it was closely associated with the Lie. Recent philological research has also produced conclusive proof that the Avesta itself was not written down until the V century CE at the earliest, and probably only under pressure from the expanding new "religions of the book" like Christianity and Manicheism.

 

[Semper Victor]

How likely was it that the Sasanian Empire would convert to Christianity during this time and how would it affect Roman-Persian relations and the Christians of Rome?

Do you mean during the IV century CE? The probability was zero, as Shabuhr II made it abundantly clear that he was a Zoroastrian king, and with a penchant for bigotry. Plus he saw Christians as traitors and Roman spies, he would never have spent thirty years in a devastating war against Rome to end up converting to a "Roman" religion. It's quite probable that it was under him that the Zoroastrian clergy attained the zenith of its power and influence in the Sasanian empire. In later centuries though things changed. Yazdegerd I was quite friendly towards Christians (and probably because of this he's remembered as "the Sinner" in Iranian tradition and the Pahlavi Books, and met a violent death at the hands of the grandees), and one of the sons of Xusro I was a Christian who rebelled against his father with the help of other (supposedly also Christian) nobles. Xusro II was also very friendly towards Christians (his favorite wife Shirin and his prime minister were Christians) and he even presided over a Church Council at Ctesiphon.

 

[Caspoi]

Do you mean during the IV century CE? The probability was zero, as Shabuhr II made it abundantly clear that he was a Zoroastrian king, and with a penchant for bigotry. Plus he saw Christians as traitors and Roman spies, he would never have spent thirty years in a devastating war against Rome to end up converting to a "Roman" religion. It's quite probable that it was under him that the Zoroastrian clergy attained the zenith of its power and influence in the Sasanian empire. In later centuries though things changed. Yazdegerd I was quite friendly towards Christians (and probably because of this he's remembered as "the Sinner" in Iranian tradition and the Pahlavi Books, and met a violent death at the hands of the grandees), and one of the sons of Xusro I was a Christian who rebelled against his father with the help of other (supposedly also Christian) nobles. Xusro II was also very friendly towards Christians (his favorite wife Shirin and his prime minister were Christians) and he even presided over a Church Council at Ctesiphon.

I meant primarily earlier on, before Rome itself had converted.

 

[Semper Victor]

I meant primarily earlier on, before Rome itself had converted.

In my opinion, again zero possibilities. By then Christianity had only infiltrated somewhat the Aramaic-speaking local population of Mesopotamia. The largest influx of Christians was probably due to Shapur I's mass deportations from the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. But altogether that was an insignificant degree of expansion; as the Iran plateau proper and the Iranian-speaking populations in it and to the east were totally untouched by the expansion of the Christian faith. Christianity did not begin to really expand east of the Zagros until the V century CE, thanks to the benevolent policies of Yazdegerd I and his successors, that inaugurated a sort of "statu quo" with the Church of the East similar to the one that had been enjoyed for centuries by the Jewish communities within the empire.

 

[Caspoi]

In my opinion, again zero possibilities. By then Christianity had only infiltrated somewhat the Aramaic-speaking local population of Mesopotamia. The largest influx of Christians was probably due to Shapur I's mass deportations from the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. But altogether that was an insignificant degree of expansion; as the Iran plateau proper and the Iranian-speaking populations in it and to the east were totally untouched by the expansion of the Christian faith. Christianity did not begin to really expand east of the Zagros until the V century CE, thanks to the benevolent policies of Yazdegerd I and his successors, that inaugurated a sort of "statu quo" with the Church of the East similar to the one that had been enjoyed for centuries by the Jewish communities within the empire.

I see, what was it that made the Sasanian Empire so unlikely to convert to Christianity compared to the Roman Empire? Did the Romans not have as strong a connection to their own native faith as the Persians did and that is why foreign religions managed to become so influential? Was it due to geographic reasons or economical ones?

 

[Avernite]

I see, what was it that made the Sasanian Empire so unlikely to convert to Christianity compared to the Roman Empire? Did the Romans not have as strong a connection to their own native faith as the Persians did and that is why foreign religions managed to become so influential? Was it due to geographic reasons or economical ones?

I personally believe it's because (Pauline) Christianity spread to a large extent through the Greek cultural sphere by Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking missionaries; and while that includes some of Mesopotamia, it includes almost all of Rome (i.e. at least the Levant, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy).

 

[Semper Victor]

I see, what was it that made the Sasanian Empire so unlikely to convert to Christianity compared to the Roman Empire? Did the Romans not have as strong a connection to their own native faith as the Persians did and that is why foreign religions managed to become so influential? Was it due to geographic reasons or economical ones?

Apart from the cultural reasons exposed in the previous post by Avernite, there were also social and economic factors that hindered the spread of Christianity in the early Sasanian empire. Early Christianity was an urban phenomenon, which spread first inside and between the cities of the dense urban network of the Roman empire, which was interconnected by internal maritime routes and a sound infrastructure of roads and bridges. In the early Sasanian empire, the only areas of Iran remotely comparable to this were Mesopotamia and Khuzestan; precisely where Christianity first took roots. But on the Iranian plateau proper, things were very different. Large cities were practically non existant, and were rather small fortified towns either controlled by royal garrisons or feudal lords. Population density was low, and perhaps as much as 50% of the population were nomads.

Things did not begin to change until well into the V century CE, when thanks to two centuries of efforts by the Sasanian kings large cities began to appear (most of them royal foundations), and especially commercial cities like Bushehr in the Persian Gulf, Estakhr, Ardashir-Khwarrah/Gor, Nishapur, etc. By the V century CE Nestorian bishops are attested in most of this cities (and from there they went on to found bishoprics in Sogdiana and finally in China), but again the question remains open if the local Christian population in these cities was formed by "ethnic Iranians" or by colonies of foreign merchants (Aramaeans, Sogdians, Armenians, etc.) which only helped to alienate further the Iranian population from what was seen still then a "foreign" religion.

It's noteworthy though than in the Pahlavi Books (like the Denkard) Christianity is rarely (if ever) attacked with insults or derogatory names, while Muslims are systematically labelled as "followers of the Evil Religion" (in opposition to Zoroastrians, who were followers of the "Good Religion").

 

[Caspoi]

I personally believe it's because (Pauline) Christianity spread to a large extent through the Greek cultural sphere by Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking missionaries; and while that includes some of Mesopotamia, it includes almost all of Rome (i.e. at least the Levant, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy).

Apart from the cultural reasons esposed in the previous post by Avernite, there were also social and economic factors that hindered the spread of Christianity in the early Sasanian empire. Early Christianity was an urban phenomen, which spread first inside and between the cities of the dense urban network of the Roman empire, which was interconnected by easy maritime routes and a sound infrastructure of roads and bridges. In the early Sasanian empire, the only areas of Iran remotely comparables to this were Mesopotamia and Khuzestan precisely where Christianity first took roots. But on the Iran plateau proper, things were very different. Large cities were practically non existant, and were rather small fortified towns either controlled by royal garrisons or feudal lords. Population density was low, and perhaps as much as 50% of the population were nomads.

Things did not begin to change until well into the V century CE, when thanks to two centuries of efforts by the Sasanian kings large cities began to appear (most of them royal foundations), and especially commercial cities like Bushehr in the Persian Gulf, Estakhr, Ardashir-Khwarrah/Gor, Nishapur, etc. By the V century CE Nestorian bishops are attested in most of this cities (and from there they went on to found bishoprics in Sogdiana and finally in China), but again the question remains open if the local Christian population in these cities was formed by "ethnic Iranians" or by colonies of foreign merchants (Aramaeans, Sogdians, Armenians, etc.) which only helped to alienate further the Iranian population from what was seen still then a "foreign" religion.

It's noteworthy though than in the Pahlavi Books (like the Denkard) Christianity is rarely (if ever) attacked with insults or derogatory names, while Muslims are systematically labelled as "followers of the Evil Religion" (in opposition to Zoroastrians, who were followers of the "Good Religion").

I see, thank you.

 

[Barsoom]

How is it that this thread is interesting even before you've posted the first part of the history?

Subbed, of course.

 

[J66185]

Huh, what does one truly know about the value of life these days, indeed?

 

[Semper Victor]

4.1. THE REIGN OF HORMAZD II.

Narsē died in 302 CE and was succeeded by his son Hormazd, known to historians as Hormazd II. His reign was to be short and fraught with difficulties, and it saw the resurgence of the power of the wuzurgān and the Zoroastrian clergy at the expenses of the Sasanian monarchy. Very little is known with certainty about his reign due to the scarcity data in the ancient sources. Țabarī lists him correctly as Narsē’s son and successor in his History of the Prophets and Kings but gives practically no information about him or about the events that happened during his reign, noting that it allegedly started harshly before he turned mild, wise, and benevolent to the weak. In the investiture relief of Narsē at Naqš-e Rostam in Pārs, the figure standing behind the king probably represents Hormazd as the crown prince, since his headgear is shaped as an animal protome (maybe a horse?), a type that some scholars associate with Sassanian heirs (it should be said though that in recent times this sort of conclusions based on the headgear of Sasanian kings and princes has been questioned by some authorities).

In his coinage, Hormazd is portrayed with a crown very similar to that of Bahrām II. It represented the varəγna, the royal falcon (the bird symbolizing the god Verethraghna/Bahrām), supporting a pearl-studded globe (characteristic of Sasanian royal headgear) and holding a pearl in its beak.

Silver drahm of Hormazd II Šāhān Šāh.

According to the medieval Islamic chronicler Abu Rayḥān Biruni, he resumed the persecution of the Manicheans that his father had stopped, but the most interesting bit of news about his reign is provided by the X century Islamic historian and politician Abu Ali Muhammad Bal'ami. Bal’ami wrote that Hormazd II sent troops into Syria demanding tribute from the Ghassanid Arabs, who turned to Rome for support. The Ghassanid king was killed before Roman assistance could arrive; but then his men surprised Hormazd as he was hunting in the desert, fatally wounding him, and plundered the outskirts of Ctesiphon. Modern scholars believe this story to be a fabrication and that want really happened was that the wuzurgān found an opportunity and killed him in a remote area, because they wished to deprive his sons of the throne. The death of Hormazd II is dated by scolars to 309 CE.

Scholars believe that evidence for a civil war comes from a rock-relief left by Hormazd himself at Naqš-e Rostam in Pārs. It depicts him on horseback toppling with a long lance a mounted foe in full armor, whose helmet bears the family device of Pābag, a nobleman who had been the viceroy (bidaxš) of Albania (in the Caucasus) under Bahrām II and Narsē.

Rock-relief by Hormazd II at Naqš-e Rostam in Pārs. The king of kings is depicted unhorsing a miounted opponent dressed also in Iranian gear.

The XI century CE Arabic Chronicle of Se’ert asserts that Hormazd II waged a war against the Romans to avenge his father’s defeat; and the Syriac Chronicle of Arbela says that when Hormazd II observed the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor, he collected a large army, invaded Roman territory, and pillaged many cities. The Chronicle of Arbela though is a very problematic source (its very authenticity has been questioned by several scholars, who have denounced it as a fraud), and the report in the former is not corroborated elsewhere; one may only surmise that it is perhaps a reflection of Hormazd II’s alleged raid into Syria.

The problem with Bal’ami’s claim though is that the first time that the Ghassanids are quoted in a written source under that name happens in 473 CE, when their chief Amorkesos signed a treaty with the Eastern Roman empire acknowledging their status as foederati controlling parts of Palestine. More recent Arabic texts provide chronologies dating their origins as a tribe back to the late III century CE, but these texts were written well into the Islamic era and scholars dismiss them as unreliable. What’s more probable is that if there really was a war between Hormozd II and the Arabs he got to fight the Lakhmids. In the Paikuli inscription, the Lakhmid king of Hira 'Amr ibn Adi is listed among the vassal kings of Narsē, but it appears that after his death in 295 CE (perhaps as a result of Narsē’s disastrous defeat at the hands of Galerius?) his son and successor Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr switched allegiances. In his epitaph (the Namāra inscription dated to 328 CE) Imru' al-Qays calls himself “king of all the Arabs” (not all scholars agree with the translation, as the text is written in a strange sort of language, a mix of late Nabataean and early Arabic script, but I’m following here the opinion of Irfan Shahid) which is redolent of the ancient title of the kings of Hatra, and states clearly that at the moment of his death he was a Roman ally. What’s unclear is when did this switch of allegiances happen: if it took place under Hormazd II (quite improbable) or during the early years of Šābuhr II’s reign, which is quite more plausible as we’ll see in later posts.

In his 2017 book ReOrienting the Sasanians, Khodadad Rezakhani drops an interesting speculation, which although very suggestive lacks supporting evidence. According to his proposed chronology of kings of Kušanšahr (based mainly on numismatics), Hormazd 1 Kušanšāh was succeeded by Hormazd 2 Kušanšāh in 300 CE who reigned for three years and was then succeeded by Pērōz 2 Kušanšāh (303 – 330 CE). According to Rezakhani, Hormazd 2 Kušanšāh is depicted in Kushan coinage wearing a winged crown very similar to the one that appears in the Sasanian coins issued by Hormazd II Šāhān Šāh. Rezakhani speculates if it could be possible that Hormazd II was no other than Hormazd 2 Kušanšāh who after Narsē’s death would have succeeded him as šāhān šāh. There are two further elements that could support this theory:

• As we saw in one of the later posts of the Rise of the Sasanians thread, during the reign of Bahrām II Hormazd 1 Kušanšāh had begun to display in his coinage the title of “Kushan King of Kings”, which was quite an obvious act of defiance to the prestige of Bahrām II. Most scholars usually assume that this implied an ambition to grew more autonomous (perhaps even fully independent) by this Kušanšāh, but it could also have been the sign for something else: that the cadet branch of the House of Sāsān that ruled in Kušanšahr wanted to seize the throne in Ctesiphon. Rezakhani points out that with Pērōz 2 the kings of Kušanšahr dropped suddenly the title of “Kushan King of Kings” from their coinage and never again displayed it. Perhaps because Hormazd 2/II had already achieved the goal?
• If Hormazd II belonged to a cadet branch of the House of Sāsān which had managed to seize the throne in Ctesiphon perhaps without a general consensus of the nobility and the other princes and kings of the extended Sasanian family, that would explain the strong hints at civil war and internal unrest during the six or seven years of the reign of Hormazd II.

But the obvious problem with Rezakhani’s hypothesis is that in his inscriptions Šābuhr II described himself as “the son of Hormazd and the grandson of Narsē”, so unless Rezakhani considers that for the sake of keeping the fiction of dynastic continuity Šābuhr II deliberately lied in his inscription (and for a Zoroastrian king this was a serious issue), that’s quite an untenable theory in my opinion.

Map of the maximum extent of the Sasanian empire at the moment of Šābuhr I's death (without the losses of the First Peace of Nisibis). Sasanian direct rule north of the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus) is quite uncertain. Kušanšahr included the ancient territories of Bactria, Gandhara and perhaps Margiana, in what's today northern Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to Armenian historians, he gave his daughter Hormazduxt in marriage to the Armenian prince Vahan Mamikonian, which if true was perhaps an attempt to improve relations with Armenia. According to the (very problematic because of their unreliability) traditional Armenian sources, king Tirdad III of Armenia had converted to Christianity in 301 CE, which could have driven a wedge between Armenia and the Romans given that in 303 CE Diocletian launched his great persecution against Christians. In these circumstances it is possible that Tirdad could have tried to improve relations with the Sasanians. But all in all, Tirdad’s conversion worsened the political position of Armenia in the region in the long term even after the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine, because it divided the nobility of the kingdom into two opposing factions: those nobles who converted to Christianity and those who remained loyal to the old faith (the local Armenian version of Zoroastrianism). The Christian faction automatically turned towards Rome for help after Constantine’s rise to power, and the other faction obviously turned to the Sasanians for help. This weakened Armenia progressively along the IV century CE to the point of turning it into an ungovernable kingdom perpetually shaken by civil wars and unrest, fueled by the two neighboring empires.

Hormazd II was the Sasanian king who left more male heirs able to succeed him; extant texts record six of them:

• Ādur Narsē, who succeeded his father in 309 CE and ruled for a few months.
• Šābuhr, who would succeed his brother in 309 CE and reign for 70 years until 379 CE (longest reign of any Sasanian king).
• Ādurfrāzgird, governor of southern Arbāyistān under the reign of his brother Šābuhr II.
• Zāmāsp, governor of southern Arbāyistān under the reign of his brother Šābuhr II.
• Šābuhr, king of the Sakas (Sakān Šāh).
• Hormazd, who would later flee to the Roman empire and become a commander in the Roman army.
• Ardaxšir, who would eventually succeed his brother Šābuhr II as king in 379 CE.

Scholars believe that the succession of Hormazd II, beginning with his probable murder by the nobility, was a bloody and disputed affair. It seems quite probable that even official Sasanian royal records were tampered with to hid what really happened, because Țabarī, who is generally a reliable source, doesn’t even list Ādur Narsē as Hormazd II’s successor. But coins bearing his name have arrived to us, and he is named in two western sources:

John of Antioch:

Adarnases, then a child, was asked by his father Narses, the king of the Persians, if the tent which had been procured for him made out of Babylonian skins, was beautiful. But he replied that if he was governing the kingdom, he would make a more beautiful one out of human skins. When he came to power he was duly deprived of his kingship.

John Zonaras, Extracts of History:

For Narses had three sons from the foremost of his wives, Adarnases, Hormisdas and a third. Upon the death of Narses, the eldest of these three, Adarnases succeeded to the throne. But he happened to be exceedingly cruel and harsh and for that reason was hated by the Persians and was deprived of his throne.
Let me mention a proverbial example of his cruelty. A tent was once brought to his father from Babylon, rather cleverly made from the skins of the native animals. After Narses had seen it stretched out, he asked Adarnases, who happened to be still a child whether he liked the tent. But he answered that if he became king he would make a better one than that from the skins of men. Thus, he revealed his cruelty in his childhood.

The two western authors also mess up the order of succession, because Ādur Narsē was not Narsē’s son, but his grandson (that is, if Hormazd II was really Narsē’s son). Scholars have been able to reconstruct what probably happened with the help of these two fragments, together with other passages by John of Antioch, Zosimus, the Liber Suda and Zonaras. Ādur Narsē was killed by the grandees of his empire after a few months of succeeding his father, and the same conspirators blinded another of his brothers (the sources are unclear about his identity) and imprisoned Hormazd, while they chose as new king the youngest of the brothers, who is known in history as Šābuhr II. Hormazd managed to flee (the western sources mentioned above give quite novel-like descriptions of his flight) to the Roman empire, where he was granted asylum (the western sources say that he was accepted as a refugee by Constantine, but that’s quite improbable because he only became ruler over the eastern part of the Roman empire after defeating his rival Licinius in 324 CE, thirteen years after the death of Ādur Narsē). Under the Hellenized name “Hormisdas”, at the start of Julian’s reign he was living in a palace in Constantinople (known for centuries after as “the palace of Hormisdas”) and accompanied Julian in his ill-fated eastern campaign of 363 CE.

Šābuhr II must have been a very young child when the wuzurgān and the high priesthood put him on the throne, and a legendary story which was written down by the Islamic author Dīnawarī reflect this fact. According to him, when Ādur Narsē was killed by the nobility, Šābuhr II was not yet born, he was still an unborn infant inside his mother’s womb. And so, the wuzurgān and priests, wanting to have a regency as long as possible in order to be able to run the country as they pleased, decided to crown Šābuhr II while he was still in utero by putting the crown on his mother’s womb. This particular story seems to have originated already in Sasanian times, because it can be also found in the work of the VI century east Roman author Agathias:

But after them Shapur enjoyed his kingdom for by far the longest time, and his reign was as long as his life. For, while his mother was still carrying him, the royal succession summoned the unborn child to the throne. It was not known whether the child would be a boy or a girl. So, all the political leaders offered prizes and gifts to the Magi if they could foretell what would come to pass. So, they brought out a mare in foal that was very near her time, and told them to prophesy first about this, as they thought the result would be. In this way they reflected that they could know in a few days how their prophecies turned out and thus judge that whatever they prophesied about the woman would turn out in the same way. What they foretold about the mare I cannot say for sure, for I was not told all the details, except that everything came to pass exactly as they had predicted. The others, judging from this that the Magi were accurate at their craft, urged them to reveal what they thought would happen in the case of the woman too. And when they said that the child would be a boy, they waited no longer but held the crown over her stomach and proclaimed the embryo king, designating by this name a creature just formed and shaped just enough, I suppose, to move about and kick a little inside. And so, they changed what is naturally uncertain and unknown by their expectation into revealed certainty, yet even so, their hopes did not fail them; they actually achieved their aim, and even more than they had expected. For not long afterwards Shapur was born, at the same time as his kingdom, and he grew up with it and grew old with it, his life lasting for seventy years.

Obviously, this is just a legend, but it’s a reflection of how young Šābuhr II was when he became king. Tabarī’s rather more sober account confirms this:

Then there was born Sabur Dhu al-Aktaf, son of Hurmuz, son of Narsi, son of Bahram, son of Bahram, son of Sabur, son of Ardashir, who succeeded to the royal power by virtue of the testament of his father Hurmuz's appointment of him as his successor. The people rejoiced at his birth; they spread the news about it to the farthest lands, they wrote letters and the couriers of the postal and intelligence system conveyed news of it to the most distant regions and frontiers. The viziers and secretaries retained the official functions they had held during his father's reign. They continued in these positions until news about them (i.e. about these officials) spread, and there was disseminated on the distant frontiers of the land of the Persians [the news] that the people there had no king and that the Persians were merely waiting for a child, [at that time] in the cradle, not knowing how he would turn out. Hence the Turks and the Romans cast envious eyes on the lands of the Persians.

According to the reconstruction of events by Shapur Shahbazi, Šābuhr II had been born merely forty days after his father Hormazd II died, so considering that Ādur Narsē reigned only for a few months before being murdered, Šābuhr II was probably less than a year old when he became Šāhān Šāh Ērān ud Anērān, and so he got to reign for seventy years (and considering that he was succeeded by his brother Ardaxsīr II, longevity ran in the family).

The coronation of the child Šābuhr II, depicted in the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, XVI century.

The passage by Tabarī quoted above also hints that the neighbors of the Sasanian empire sought to take advantage of Šābuhr II’s long minority in order to make territorial gains at the expense of Ērānšahr. There’s absolutely no historical record other than Tabari’s describing troubles in the Central Asian borders of the empire (Tabarī’s use of the term “Turks” to describe the Central Asian nomadic neighbors of the Sasanian empire is an anachronism) at this age, but the events in the western borders are much better documented, and I will describe them in the next chapter.

 

[Barsoom]

But the obvious problem with Rezakhani’s hypothesis is that in his inscriptions Šābuhr II described himself as “the son of Hormazd and the grandson of Narsē”, so unless Rezakhani considers that for the sake of keeping the fiction of dynastic continuity Šābuhr II deliberately lied in his inscription (and for a Zoroastrian king this was a serious issue), that’s quite an untenable theory in my opinion.

The phrasing here (but not in some of the later sources you cite) allows for another possibility, namely that Sabuhr's mother was a daughter of Narse. If Hormazd was of the cadet branch, it would have made sense for him to strengthen his claim, or at least legitimize his heir, by marrying into the main line. There's precedent in Persia's own history, as Darius I pulled this off (while probably lying about his own descent).

 

[Semper Victor]

The phrasing here (but not in some of the later sources you cite) allows for another possibility, namely that Sabuhr's mother was a daughter of Narse. If Hormazd was of the cadet branch, it would have made sense for him to strengthen his claim, or at least legitimize his heir, by marrying into the main line. There's precedent in Persia's own history, as Darius I pulled this off (while probably lying about his own descent).

I hadn’t thought about that; it could certainly be a possibility.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.2. THE ROMAN EAST DURING THE REIGN OF HORMAZD II AND THE MINORITY OF ŠĀBUHR II.

The abdication of the augusti Diocletian and Maximian on May 1, 305 CE brought about a period of increasing instability and civil wars that ended with the rise of Constantine I the Great as sole augustus of the whole Roman empire in 324 CE. Immediately after the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian, Constantius (as augustus Iovius, or senior) and Galerius (as augustus Herculius, or junior) became augusti, and they took respectively as caesares their fellow Illyrian officers Severus and Maximinus Daia (Galerius’ nephew). Unlike under the previous augusti, the empire was now firmly divided in areas entrusted to each of the four tetrarchs. Constantius ruled over Hispania, Gaul and Britannia, Severus over Italy and North Africa, Galerius over the Balkans and Asia Minor and Maximinus Daia over Syria and Egypt.

But the new system clashed badly with the harsh reality of Roman social custom. Diocletian had no male sons, but both Constantius and Maximian had male heirs old enough to succeed them who were unhappy with the turn of events. Constantius was already very ill when he became augustus, and he died at the legionary base of Eburacum (modern York) on July 25, 306 CE. Immediately, the first serious crack in the foundations of the Tetrarchy appeared, because the comitatus of Constantius and the army of Britannia acclaimed as new augustus Constantine, Constantius’ son and refused to acknowledge Severus as augustus. The rest of the armies of the Rhine and Raetia followed their lead, and Constantine became the new de facto ruler over Gaul, Hispania and Britannia. Despite being furious at the situation, Galerius (now the senior augustus) was unable to react and chose to negotiate a settlement with Constantine. He offered Constantine to become Severus’ caesar, and Constantine accepted the demotion for the sake of gaining some legitimacy.

Aureus of Constantine I as caesar. On the obverse, CONSTANTINVS NOB(ilissimus) CAESAR. On the reverse, PRINCIP(is) IVVENTVTI.

Immediately on the heels of Constantine’s usurpation came another one by Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (Maximian’s son), who was proclaimed augustus at the city of Rome by the Praetorian Guard and the Urban cohortes on October 28, 306 CE. Maxentius managed to be recognized as augustus in central and southern Italy, the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, and the North African provinces. Northern Italy remained under the control of Severus, who resided in Mediolanum (Milan). Maxentius recalled his father Maximian out of retirement and proclaimed him as his co-augustus. When Severus attacked Rome to oust the usurpers, he was badly defeated and finally killed at Ravenna. Galerius could not intervene because he was fighting the Sarmatians in Pannonia at the time, but he refused to recognize Maximian and his father as augusti, and in late August of 307 CE he launched a large-scale invasion of Italy that ended in a complete disaster.

Aureus of Maxentius. On the obverse, MAXENTIVS P(ius) F(elix) AVG(ustus). Mint of Ostia.

Aureus of Severus. On the obverse, SEVERVS AVGVST(us). On the reverse, CONCORDIA AVG(usti) ET CAES(ares). Mint of Alexandria.

In the meantime, Constantine remained neutral and devoted his time to reforming the army, securing the borders and winning popularity among the soldiers and populace at large thanks to his victories against the Franks and Alamanni. The next act in the disintegration of the Diocletianic system came in April 308 CE, when Maximian rebelled against his own son Maxentius. The attempted rebellion failed due to lack of support among the troops and he was forced to flee Italy; Constantine offered him asylum and Maximian settled in Gaul for the time being. On November 11, 308 CE at a council assembled at Serdica (modern Sofia) with the approval of both Diocletian (who’d been asked to assist) and Maximian, Galerius appointed Gaius Valerius Licinianus Licinius (another Illyrian military officer) as Severus’ successor as augustus in the West. Maximian was once again forced into retirement and Constantine was denied the chance to become augustus (as he should’ve been according to Diocletian’s system). Licinius’ main mission was to end with Maxentius’ usurpation in Italy.

Bust of Gaius Valerius Licinianus Licinius Augustus.

Galerius gave Licinius the mission to crush Maxentius. Licinius took up residence at Sirmium while Galerius returned to his favourite capital Thessalonica. Constantine had been hoping that the elder augusti would accept him as augustus and there is no evidence that Constantine ever accepted the demotion. To make things worse,now Maximinus Daia was also displeased because he had been sidelined in the promotion. He thought that he should have been promoted instead of Licinius. Consequently, he demanded that he be proclaimed augustus too. Galerius had no other choice but to attempt to make him abide by the agreement. This did not satisfy Maximinus, as a result of which Galerius invented a new title; filii augustorum ("sons of the augusti") for both Constantine and Maximinus in an effort to placate them. Maximinus was apparently ready to accept this for the moment.

Aureus of Maximinus Daia as caesar. On the obverse, MAXIMINVS CAESAR. On the reverse, SOL INVICTO. Mint of Nicomedia.

It’s at this moment in time (308 - 309 CE) when the campaign of Hormazd II against the Roman eastern border or against Rome’s Arab allies allegedly took place, and if that really happened then it was Maximinus Daia who had to deal with it. There’s some evidence that could confirm this hazy Romano-Sassanian conflict (other than the shaky accounts of the Chronicle of Se’ert, Bal’ami and the Chronicle of Arbela). In 310 CE, all the “official” Tetrarchs (Galerius, Licinius, Maximinus Daia and Constantine) took the title of Persicus Maximus, so Maximinus must’ve achieved some sort of success against the Sasanians, but there’s absolutely no other evidence for this apart from what’s already been discussed.

Licinius failed to obtain any success against Maxentius because he had to face renewed troubles against the Sarmatians, but the spring of 310 CE was marked by Galerius falling severely ill. It was perhaps due to this illness of Galerius (which was to be fatal) and perhaps due to his supposed victory against the Sasanians that Maximinus Daia was acclaimed as augustus by his troops on May 1, 310 CE. At the end of that same year, Maximian rebelled against Constantine in Massilia and was swiftly defeated; it’s unclear if he committed suicide after his defeat or if Constantine had him executed (after initially sparing him). Either in late April or early May 311 CE, Galerius died. The death of Galerius precipitated a new round of civil wars; Maximinus Daia was the first to strike by invading Asia Minor (under the control of Licinius), but as he found himself unable to cross into Europe he reached a temporary truce with Licinius. Then it was Constantine who took the initiative and offered an allaiance to Licinius, together with his sister’s hand. Licinius accepted, and then it was Maximinus’ turn to strike an alliance with Maxentius.

As augustus, Galerius ordered the construction of a large fortified palace called Felix Romuliana (in honor of hius mother Romula) at his birthplace in the province of Dacia Ripensis (today Gamzigrad, in Serbia). Aerial view of the remains. It was here where Galerius spent his last months and died.

Scale model of Felix Romuliana.

Bust of Galerius in Egyptian red porphiry, found in the ruins of Romuliana.

At his deathbed, Galerius had repealed all the edicts against the Christians, but Maximinus had refused to accept this decision and continued with the persecution. This led to problems in the border with Armenia, where Rome controlled certain Armenian-populated areas that had been annexed from the kingdom of Armenia in past centuries (the Diocletianic province of Armenia Minor [“Lesser Armenia”], which was carved out of the older province of Cappadocia). Unsurprisingly, the Armenians revolted and sought to rejoin the Armenian kingdom, which in turn allied itself with the Sasanian empire. Consequently, the Armenians and Sasanians began to raid Roman territory, but Maximinus’ response was decisive. He invaded Armenia in late summer or autumn of 312 CE and defeated all the enemy forces he encountered. According to Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History:

In addition to this, (i.e. a painful disease), the tyrant (i.e. Maximinus Daia) had the further trouble of the war against the Armenians, men who from ancient times had been friends and allies of the Romans; but as they were Christians and exceedingly earnest in their piety towards the Deity, this hater of God (i.e. Maximinus Daia), by attempting to compel them to sacrifice to idols and demons, made of them foes instead of friends, and enemies instead of allies (…)

John Malalas also addressed the Armenian war of Maximinus Daia in his Chronographia:

At the same time the Persians allied themselves to the Armenians who were under attack and came with them against Roman territory and plundered the land. The same Maxentius campaigned against them and made war upon the Persians; and coming against them he destroyed them throughout Armenia, and he detached districts from the Persarmenians and brought them under the Romans. He called that land the Armenia Prima and Secunda of the Romans. While the same Maxentius was in Persarmenia, the Persians broke into Osrhoene and captured a city and burned it and dug up its foundations. And taking great booty they suddenly retired. The city captured by them was called Maximianoupolis. The same emperor Maxentius re-established it and also put up its walls and lavishing many benefits upon the survivors he relieved them of taxation for three years. And upon his return home he was killed at the age of fifty-three.

Malalas messes the names up, for Maxentius never ruled in the East, but he was writing in the VI century CE 200 years after the facts, he was probably confused by all the Tetrarchs ruling at once and bearing similar names (Maximian, Maxentius, Maximianus Galerius and Maximianus Daia). He’s also wrong about the date of creation of the Roman provinces of Armenia Prima and Armenia Secunda, as they came into existence later in the IV century CE, as a further division of the Diocletianic province of Armenia Minor.

These operations made it impossible for Maximinus to intervene on behalf of his ally Maxentius during the crucial year 312 CE. The Sasanians made a diversionary invasion into Oshroene and burned its capital Edessa, but this did not prevent Maximinus from completing his war successfully. As a result of his military success Maximinus was able to detach additional districts from Armenia as a punishment against the Armenians. Then he returned to home territory and rebuilt Edessa, renaming it Maximianopolis.

The Iberians also appear to have joined the Sasanians and Armenians in their campaign against Maximinus at this time. After this, in about 313 CE – 314 CE, king Mirian of Iberia conceded religious freedom to the Christians, (as stated in the Georgian Chronicles) probably trying to placate the new rulers of Rome, Constantine and Licinius. It is unsurprising that following this war both Armenia and Iberia would have sought good relationships with Licinius. According to Armenian tradition, Tirdad of Armenia and Licinius were personal friends, with a friendship that went back to the times when Tirdad had been an exile in Roman soil.

The passage in Tabarī about “the Turks and the Romans” casting “envious eyes on the lands of the Persians” could perhaps be situated within the frame of these alleged conflicts in 310 CE and 312 CE.

As usual, Constantine moved first against his rivals. In the spring of 312 CE he launched an invasion of Italy and after a string of victories, the he obtained a decisive victory against Maxentius at the Milvian bridge near Rome on October 28, 312 CE; Maxentius perished in the defeat. This victory would have momentous consequences for the history of the Roman empire and of the West in general; because after it Constantine publicly declared that his victory had been achieved thanks to the help of the Christian God, and he began acting publicly as a Christian, displaying Christian motives in his banners, insignia, coinage and public monuments, enacting laws favoring Christianity, acting as a patron and protector of the Christian Church and starting an impressive building program of Christian churches all across his domains, which after Maxentius’ demise included all of the western part of the empire, including Italy, North Africa and the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily.

Bust of Maxentius.

Head of the colossal statue of Constantine that originally stood at the Basilica of Maxentius in Rome. Today at the Museo dei conservatori, Rome.

Licinius and Constantine met at Mediolanum in the winter of 313 CE, and after that meeting Licinius had to rush back to Thrace because Maximinus had advanced with a large army from Anatolia and crossed the Straits in force. Both armies clashed in battle at the Plain of Ergenus in southeastern Thrace on April 30, 313 CE, and Licinius won a complete victory. In his flight, Maximinus reached Nicomedia on May 2, after which he continued to flee all the way up to the Cilician Gates, where he intended to stop Licinius. When Licinius’ men forced their way through, Maximinus fled to Tarsus where he committed suicide. Licinius was all the ruler of the eastern part of the Roman empire.

The extant titles prove that Licinius fought a campaign against the Persians in Cappadocia, Adiabene, Media and Armenia either in late 313 CE or in 314 CE. His old friend Tirdad seems to have eagerly sought alliance with him, which was probably received with hostility at the Sasanian court. Licinius’ positive attitude towards Christianity made the rapprochement possible. A council of bishops was convened at Caesarea in 314 CE to consecrate Gregory the Illuminator as Patriarch of Armenia. The alliance between Rome and Armenia effectively secured Mesopotamia’s northern flank for the Romans.

It was possibly also then that Licinius made a real coup on his Arabian frontier (following Timothy D. Barnes’s proposal here, Irfan Shahid puts it several years later in 317 CE). The Christian king of Hira, Imru' al-Qays, seems to have become a foederatus of the Roman Empire. The reason for the change of loyalties seems to be the fact that Imru’ had converted to Christianity and the new regime of Constantine and Licinius promised him advantages. There are several pieces of evidence for the conclusion of the foedus in 314 CE: firstly, from an inscription of Namara we know that he had become a foederatus by 328 CE; secondly, the Sasanians were too weak at the moment to protect the Lakhmids and they consequently needed new allies; and thirdly, there is an inscription set up by Flavius Terentianus who was praeses of Mauretania between 318 CE and 319 CE and which displays the title Arabicus for Constantine (and hence for Licinius too, as the augusti shared all their victory titles).

The threat posed by Licinius’ army at a time when no help from Ērānšahr would be forthcoming must have tilted the balance in favor of the Lakhmids becoming Roman foederati. It is in fact quite probable that the desertion of the Christian rulers Tirdad and Imru’ to the Roman side tilted the balance in the eastern border in favor of Licinius.

Under Roman protection and with Roman help, Imru' al-Qays managed to become extremely powerful and to extend his control of the Arabian tribes deep into the peninsula, reaching Yemen and the Indian ocean coast as we will see in later chapters, to the Romans’ benefit.

Aureus of Licinius, with Jupiter on the reverse. Mint of Nicomedia.

In 316 CE, war broke down between Constantine and Licinius, as the former accused the latter of having orchestrated an assassination attempt against him. Again showing his great leadership skills, Constantine attacked the first and exploiting the advantages of surprise and fast movement he engaged Licinius’ army at Cibalae (modern Vinkovci, eastern Croatia) on October 8, 316 CE (on September 29 Constantine was still at Verona and it was unusual for a campaign to be started so late in the year); and Constantine once again obtained a complete victory. Licinius fled east where he met with his general Aurelius Valerius Valens who commanded a fresh army (in order to secure his support, Licinius proclaimed Valens as augustus) and Constantine followed him and caught up with his adversary at Campus Ardiensis near Hadrianopolis in southeastern Thrace in January 317. Despite winning again the pitched battle, the dogged resistance of Byzantium allowed Licinius and Valens time to regroup and maneuver menacing Constantine’s rearguard. Constantine had to accept to enter negotiations with his adversaries.

The terms of the agreement stipulated that Licinius recognized Constantine as his superior and ceded to Constantine the Dioceses of Pannonia and Moesia. Constantine had also demanded that Licinius was to execute Valens, and Licinius felt compelled to agree to this in return for peace. This was a wise policy move for both parties to make. The removal of Valens secured the entire East for Licinius, while Constantine eliminated Licinius’ best commander. The treaty was concluded at Serdica on March 1, 317 CE.

Solidus of Constantine. On the obverse, CONSTANTINVS AVG(ustus). On the reverse, VICTORIAE LAETAE PRINC PERP. Mint of Rome, 315 CE.

Licinius transferred his capital to Nicomedia and soon after this started to purge Christians from his army and administration because he mistrusted their loyalty. However, he still tried to find a middle road between complete persecution and toleration of Christianity and ended up not pleasing anyone. The first step Licinius took was to expel Christians from the imperial palace. His aim was undoubtedly to remove potential spies and assassins from his immediate entourage. His next step was to force all members of the imperial administration and army to sacrifice to the gods or resign. He also legislated against Christians by forbidding Christian assemblies and councils of bishops, cancelled the tax advantages of the priests instituted by Constantine, and governors were once again allowed to punish Christians and so forth. The final war between the two rival augusti broke down in 324 CE. Constantine invaded Thrace and met Licinius’ army near Hadrianopolis in a costly battle fought for two days in June 3-4, 324 CE. Licinius was again defeated and he fled to Asia, hoping that the walls of the city of Byzantium and his fleet would stop Constantine’s pursuit and buy him time to rebuild his army.

Head of a bronze statue of Constantine. Rome, Musei Capitolini.

But Licinus’ hopes proved unfounded, because Constantine’s fleet, led by his eldest son the caesar Crispus obliterated the Licinian fleet in the naval battle of the Hellespont, after which Constantine’s army crossed into Bithynia unopposed. On September 18, 324 CE both armies met for a final time at the battle of Chrysopolis/Chalcedon. Once again, Constantine’s victory was complete and although Licinius surrendered to him, the victor had him executed. Constantine was now the sole ruler of the Roman world.

Solidus of Constantine. On the obverse, CONSTANTINVS MAX(imus) AVG(ustus). On the reverse, VICTORIA CONSTANTINI AVG(usti). Mint of Nicomedia. In the reverse of this coin, he's already displaying Christian iconography (the Chi-Ro sign).