He captured the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon, before sailing downriver to the Persian Gulf. With support from Maurice, Khosrau raised a rebellion against Bahram, and in 591 the combined forces of his supporters and the Romans defeated Bahram at the Battle of Blarathon and restored Khosrau II to power. [20] However, uprisings erupted in 115 AD in the occupied Parthian territories, while a major Jewish revolt broke out in Roman territory, severely stretching Roman military resources. John F. Haldon underscores that "although the conflicts between Persia and East Rome revolved around issues of strategic control around the eastern frontier, yet there was always a religious-ideological element present". The siege of the city proved to be a far more difficult enterprise than Kavadh expected; the defenders repelled the Persian assaults for three months before being defeated. Finally, in 64BC Pompey conquered the remaining Seleucid territories in Syria, extinguishing their state and advancing the Roman eastern frontier to the Euphrates, where it met the territory of the Parthians. as siege towers) where the terrain was unfavorable for machines.
GreatrexLieu (2002), II, 102; see H. Brm, "Der Perserknig im Imperium Romanum", Greatrex (2005), 489; Treadgold (1997), 211.
[49] With both empires preoccupied by barbarian threats from the north, in 384 or 387, a definitive peace treaty was signed by Shapur III and Theodosius I dividing Armenia between the two states. [141] The Roman army also gradually incorporated horse-archers (Equites Sagittarii), and by the 5th century AD they were no longer a mercenary unit, and were slightly superior individually in comparison to the Persian ones, as Procopius claims; however, the Persian horse-archer units as a whole always remained a challenge for the Romans, which suggests the Roman horse-archers were smaller in numbers. [66] Overt RomanPersian fighting had broken out in the Transcaucasus region and upper Mesopotamia by 526527. [51] In 502AD, he quickly captured the unprepared city of Theodosiopolis[52] and besieged the fortress-city of Amida through the autumn and winter (502503). In the following year he captured Bezabde and Singara, and repelled the counter-attack of Constantius II. In 582, Maurice won a battle at Constantia over Adarmahan and Tamkhusro, who was killed, but the Roman general did not follow up his victory; he had to hurry to Constantinople to pursue his imperial ambitions. They considered much of the land added to the Roman Empire in Parthian and early Sasanian times to rightfully belong to the Persian sphere. [102] In the spring of 578 the war in Mesopotamia resumed with Persian raids on Roman territory.
Historians point out that the stability of the frontier over the centuries is remarkable, although Nisibis, Singara, Dara and other cities of upper Mesopotamia changed hands from time to time, and the possession of these frontier cities gave one empire a trade advantage over the other. [174], The principal sources for the early Sasanian period are not contemporary.
In Judaea, Antigonus was ousted with Roman help by Herod in 37BC.
[39] His successor Numerian was forced by his own army to retreat, being frightened by the belief that Carus had died of a strike of lightning. In 163 a Roman counter-attack under Statius Priscus defeated the Parthians in Armenia and installed a favored candidate on the Armenian throne.
From the time of Constantine on, Roman emperors appointed themselves as the protectors of Christians of Persia. [83] In the wake of the Persian retreat, two Roman envoys, the newly appointed magister militum, Constantinus, and Sergius proceeded to Ctesiphon to arrange a truce with Khosrau.
[98] At a cost of 45,000solidi, a one-year truce in Mesopotamia (eventually extended to five years)[99] was arranged, but in the Caucasus and on the desert frontiers the war continued.
Over the following decade the Persians were able to conquer Palestine, Egypt,[116] Rhodes and several other islands in the eastern Aegean, as well as to devastate Anatolia. [7] When Lucullus invaded Southern Armenia and led an attack against Tigranes in 69BC, he corresponded with Phraates III to dissuade him from intervening. [13] Mark Antony had sent Ventidius to oppose Labienus, who had invaded Anatolia.
", Frye (1968), 130131; Southern (2001), 243, This page was last edited on 16 July 2022, at 12:25. [90] The truce that had been established in 545 was renewed outside Lazica for a further five years on condition that the Romans pay 2,000lb of gold each year.
His continuators Agathias and Menander Protector offer many important details as well. Khosrau besieged Edessa in 544 without success and was eventually bought off by the defenders. He was decisively defeated outside Antioch by Shahrbaraz and Shahin, and the Roman position collapsed. Khosrau, who now had to deal with the White Huns, renewed the truce in 557, this time without excluding Lazica; negotiations continued for a definite peace treaty. [129] Late in 627, Heraclius launched a winter offensive into Mesopotamia, where, despite the desertion of the Turkish contingent that had accompanied him, he defeated the Persians at the Battle of Nineveh. [6], Parthian enterprise in the West began in the time of Mithridates I and was revived by Mithridates II, who negotiated unsuccessfully with Lucius Cornelius Sulla for a RomanParthian alliance (c.105BC). The Parthian tactics gradually became the standard method of warfare in the Roman empire[145] and cataphractarii and clibanarii units were introduced into the Roman army;[146] as a result, heavily armed cavalry grew in importance in both the Roman and Persian armies after the 3rd century AD and until the end of the wars. According to Michael Whitby (2000), 310, "the eastern armies preserved the Roman military reputation through to the end of the 6th century by capitalizing on available resources and showing a capacity to adapt to a variety of challenges". A characteristic of the final phase of the conflict, when what had begun in 611612 as a raid was soon transformed into a war of conquest, was the pre-eminence of the Cross as a symbol of imperial victory and of the strong religious element in the Roman imperial propaganda; Heraclius himself cast Khosrau as the enemy of God, and authors of the 6th and 7th centuries were fiercely hostile to Persia.
For it yields very little and uses up vast sums; and now that we have reached out to peoples who are neighbor of the Medes and the Parthians rather than of ourselves, we are always, one might say, fighting the battles of those peoples. [177] The single most important source for Justinian's Persian wars up to 553 is Procopius. Although subdued for a time by the Seleucids, in the 2nd century BC they broke away, and established an independent state that steadily expanded at the expense of their former rulers, and through the course of the 3rd and early 1st century BC, they had conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, and Armenia.
[122] In 622, Heraclius left Constantinople, entrusting the city to Sergius and general Bonus as regents of his son. The prolonged and escalating warfare of the 6th and 7th centuries left them exhausted and vulnerable in the face of the sudden emergence and expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate, whose forces invaded both empires only a few years after the end of the last RomanPersian war. This was because the construction of new fortifications in the border zone by either empire had been prohibited by a treaty concluded some decades earlier. [154] Elephants were employed (e.g. In the early 250s, Philip was involved in a struggle over the control of Armenia; Shapur conquered Armenia and killed its king, defeated the Romans at the Battle of Barbalissos in 253, then probably took and plundered Antioch. When Kavadh II died only months after coming to the throne, Persia was plunged into several years of dynastic turmoil and civil war. [18] Roman forces overthrew Tiridates and replaced him with a Cappadocian prince, triggering an inconclusive war.
[12] After the Liberators' defeat, the Parthians invaded Roman territory in 40BC in conjunction with the Roman Quintus Labienus, a former supporter of Brutus and Cassius. [58] In 503 the Romans attempted an ultimately unsuccessful siege of the Persian-held Amida while Kavadh invaded Osroene, and laid siege to Edessa with the same results. Harried by the Persians, Julian was killed in the Battle of Samarra, during a difficult retreat along the Tigris.
[59], Finally in 504, the Romans gained the upper hand with the renewed investment of Amida, leading to the hand-over of the city.
The Persians agreed to evacuate Lazica and received an annual subsidy of 30,000nomismata (solidi). They swiftly overran the Roman province of Syria and advanced into Judea, overthrowing the Roman client Hyrcanus II and installing his nephew Antigonus. [62], In 505 Anastasius ordered the building of a great fortified city at Dara. Although initially different in military tactics, the armies of both sides gradually adopted from each other and by the second half of the 6th century, they were similar and evenly matched.[2].
[114] Having expelled the Persians from Anatolia in 612, Heraclius launched a major counter-offensive in Syria in 613. [169] The Roman quest for world domination was accompanied by a sense of mission and pride in Western civilization and by ambitions to become a guarantor of peace and order. [69] In 528 Belisarius tried unsuccessfully to protect Roman workers in Thannuris, undertaking the construction of a fort right on the frontier. [94] Both sides agreed not to build new fortifications near the frontier and to ease restrictions on diplomacy and trade. Failing to make progress against Parthian positions, the Romans withdrew with heavy casualties.
In the same year the Romans gained some forts in Armenia, while the Persians had captured two forts in eastern Lazica. Both sides attempted to justify their respective military goals in both active and reactive ways. Despite victory[46][47] at the Battle of Ctesiphon before the walls Julian was unable to take the Persian capital and retreated along the Tigris.
When the Roman and Parthian Empires first collided in the 1st century BC, it appeared that Parthia had the potential to push its frontier to the Aegean and the Mediterranean. [56] Although no further large-scale conflict took place during Anastasius' reign, tensions continued, especially while work proceeded at Dara. [140] In general, the Romans regarded the Sasanians as a more serious threat than the Parthians, while the Sasanians regarded the Roman Empire as the enemy par excellence. The Augustan History is neither contemporary nor reliable, but it is the chief narrative source for Severus and Carus. [143] The combined forces of horse archers and heavy cavalry inflicted several defeats on the Roman foot-soldiers, including those led by Crassus in 53BC,[144] Mark Antony in 36BC, and Valerian in 260AD. [97] Marcian's sudden dismissal and the arrival of troops under Khosrau resulted in a ravaging of Syria, the failure of the Roman siege of Nisibis and the fall of Dara.