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The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7: The Sassanian or New Persian Empire

by George Rawlinson · English · Gutenberg #16167 · 901,873 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7: The Sassanian or New Persian Empire

Author: George Rawlinson


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #16167]
                Most recently updated: December 11, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16167

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN GREAT MONARCHIES OF THE ANCIENT EASTERN WORLD, VOL 7: THE SASSANIAN OR NEW PERSIAN EMPIRE ***




Produced by David Widger





THE SEVEN GREAT MONARCHIES

OF THE

ANCIENT EASTERN WORLD;


OR,


THE HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND ANTIQUITIES OF CHALDAEA, ASSYRIA

BABYLON, MEDIA, PERSIA, PARTHIA, AND SASSANIAN,

OR NEW PERSIAN EMPIRE.


BY

GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A.,

CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD



IN THREE VOLUMES.



VOLUME III.



WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS



THE SEVENTH MONARCHY


HISTORY OF THE SASSANIAN OR NEW PERSIAN EMPIRE.


[Illustration: MAP]




CHAPTER I.


_Condition of the Persians under the Successors of Alexander--under
the Arsacidce. Favor shown them by the latter--allowed to have Kings
of their own. Their Religion at first held in honor. Power of their
Priests. Gradual Change of Policy on the part of the Parthian Monarchs,
and final Oppression of the Magi. Causes which produced the Insurrection
of Artaxerxes._


“The Parthians had been barbarians; they had ruled over a nation
far more civilized than themselves, and had oppressed them and their
religion.”

Niebuhr, Lectures on Roman History, vol. iii. p. 270.


When the great Empire of the Persians, founded by Cyrus, collapsed under
the attack of Alexander the Great, the dominant race of Western Asia did
not feel itself at the first reduced to an intolerable condition. It
was the benevolent design of Alexander to fuse into one the two leading
peoples of Europe and Asia, and to establish himself at the head of a
Perso-Hellenic State, the capital of which was to have been Babylon. Had
this idea been carried out, the Persians would, it is evident, have lost
but little by their subjugation. Placed on a par with the Greeks, united
with them in marriage bonds, and equally favored by their common ruler,
they could scarcely have uttered a murmur, or have been seriously
discontented with their position. But when the successors of the great
Macedonian, unable to rise to the height of his grand conception, took
lower ground, and, giving up the idea of a fusion, fell back upon
the ordinary status, and proceeded to enact the ordinary role, of
conquerors, the feelings of the late lords of Asia, the countrymen of
Cyrus and Darius, must have undergone a complete change. It had been the
intention of Alexander to conciliate and elevate the leading Asiatics
by uniting them with the Macedonians and the Greeks, by promoting social
intercourse between the two classes of his subjects and encouraging them
to intermarry, by opening his court to Asiatics, by educating them in
Greek ideas and in Greek schools, by promoting them to high employments,
and making them feel that they were as much valued and as well cared for
as the people of the conquering race: it was the plan of the Seleucidae
to govern wholly by means of European officials, Greek or Macedonian,
and to regard and treat the entire mass of their Asiatic subjects as
mere slaves. Alexander had placed Persian satraps over most of the
provinces, attaching to them Greek or Macedonian commandants as checks.
Seloucus divided his empire into seventy-two satrapies; but among his
satraps not one was an Asiatic--all were either Macedonians or Greeks.
Asiatics, indeed, formed the bulk of his standing army, and so far were
admitted to employment; they might also, no doubt, be tax-gatherers,
couriers, scribes, constables, and officials of that mean stamp; but
they were as carefully excluded from all honorable and lucrative offices
as the natives of Hindustan under the rule of the East India Company.
The standing army of the Seleucidae was wholly officered, just as was
that of our own Sepoys, by Europeans; Europeans thronged the court,
and filled every important post under the government. There cannot be
a doubt that such a high-spirited and indeed arrogant people as the
Persians must have fretted and chafed under this treatment, and have
detested the nation and dynasty which had thrust them down from their
pre-eminence and converted them from masters into slaves. It would
scarcely much tend to mitigate the painfulness of their feelings that
they could not but confess their conquerors to be a civilized
people--as civilized, perhaps more civilized than themselves--since the
civilization was of a type and character which did not please them
or command their approval. There is an essential antagonism between
European and Asiatic ideas and modes of thought, such as seemingly
to preclude the possibility of Asiatics appreciating a European
civilization. The Persians must have felt towards the Greco-Macedonians
much as the Mohammedans of India feel towards ourselves--they may have
feared and even respected them--but they must have very bitterly hated
them. Nor was the rule of the Seleucidae such as to overcome by its
justice or its wisdom the original antipathy of the dispossessed lords
of Asia towards those by whom they had been ousted. The satrapial
system, which these monarchs lazily adopted from their predecessors,
the Achaemenians, is one always open to great abuses, and needs the
strictest superintendence and supervision. There is no reason to believe
that any sufficient watch was kept over their satraps by the
Seleucid kings, or even any system of checks established, such as
the Achaemenidae had, at least in theory, set up and maintained. The
Greco-Macedonian governors of provinces seem to have been left to
themselves almost entirely, and to have been only controlled in the
exercise of their authority by their own notions of what was right or
expedient. Under these circumstances, abuses were sure to creep in; and
it is not improbable that gross outrages were sometimes perpetrated by
those in power--outrages calculated to make the blood of a nation boil,
and to produce a keen longing for vengeance. We have no direct evidence
that the Persians of the time did actually suffer from such a misuse of
satrapial authority; but it is unlikely that they entirely escaped the
miseries which are incidental to the system in question. Public opinion
ascribed the grossest acts of tyranny and oppression to some of the
Seleucid satraps; probably the Persians were not exempt from the common
lot of the subject races.

Moreover, the Seleucid monarchs themselves were occasionally guilty of
acts of tyranny, which must have intensified the dislike wherewith
they were regarded by their Asiatic subjects. The reckless conduct
of Antiochus Epiphanes towards the Jews is well known; but it is not
perhaps generally recognized that intolerance and impious cupidity
formed a portion of the system on which he governed. There seems,
however, to be good reason to believe that, having exhausted his
treasury by his wars and his extravagances, Epiphanes formed a general
design of recruiting it by means of the plunder of his subjects. The
temples of the Asiatics had hitherto been for the most part respected by
their European conquerors, and large stores of the precious metals
were accumulated in them. Epiphanes saw in these hoards the means of
relieving his own necessities, and determined to seize and confiscate
them. Besides plundering the Temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem, he made a
journey into the southeastern portion of his empire, about B.C. 165, for
the express purpose of conducting in person the collection of the sacred
treasures. It was while he was engaged in this unpopular work that a
spirit of disaffection showed itself; the East took arms no less than
the West; and in Persia, or upon its borders, the avaricious monarch was
forced to retire before the opposition which his ill-judged measures had
provoked, and to allow one of the doomed temples to escape him. When he
soon afterwards sickened and died, the natives of this part of Asia saw
in his death a judgment upon him for his attempted sacrilege.

It was within twenty years of this unfortunate attempt that the dominion
of the Seleucidae over Persia and the adjacent countries came to an end.
The Parthian Empire had for nearly a century been gradually growing in
power and extending itself at the expense of the Syro-Macedonian; and,
about B.C. 163, an energetic prince, Mithridates I., commenced a series
of conquests towards the West, which terminated (about B.C. 150) in
the transference from the Syro-Macedonian to the Parthian rule of Media
Magna, Susiana, Persia, Babylonia, and Assyria Proper. It would seem
that the Persians offered no resistance to the progress of the new
conqueror. The Seleucidae had not tried to conciliate their attachment,
and it was impossible that they should dislike the rupture of ties which
had only galled hitherto. Perhaps their feeling, in prospect of the
change, was one of simple indifference. Perhaps it was not without some
stir of satisfaction and complacency that they saw the pride of the
hated Europeans abased, and a race, which, however much it might differ
from their own, was at least Asiatic, installed in power. The Parthia
system, moreover, was one which allowed greater liberty to the subject
races than the Macedonian, as it had been understood and carried out by
the Seleucidae; and so far some real gain was to be expected from the
change. Religious motives must also have conspired to make the Persians
sympathize with the new power, rather than with that which for centuries
had despised their faith and had recently insulted it.

The treatment of the Persians by their Parthian lords seems, on the
whole, to have been marked by moderation. Mithridates indeed, the
original conqueror, is accused of having alienated his new subjects by
the harshness of his rule; and in the struggle which occurred between
him and the Seleucid king, Demetrius II., Persians, as well as
Elymseans and Bactrians, are said to have fought on the side of the
Syro-Macedonian. But this is the only occasion in Parthian history,
between the submission of Persia and the great revolt under Artaxerxes,
where there is any appearance of the Persians regarding their masters
with hostile feelings. In general they show themselves submissive and
contented with their position, which was certainly, on the whole, a less
irksome one than they had occupied under the Seleucidae.

It was a principle of the Parthian governmental system to allow the
subject peoples, to a large extent, to govern themselves. These peoples
generally, and notably the Persians, were ruled by native kings, who
succeeded to the throne by hereditary right, had the full power of life
and death, and ruled very much as they pleased, so long as they paid
regularly the tribute imposed upon them by the “King of Kings,” and sent
him a respectable contingent when he was about to engage in a military
expedition. Such a system implies that the conquered peoples have
the enjoyment of their own laws and institutions, are exempt from
troublesome interference, and possess a sort of semi-independence.
Oriental nations, having once assumed this position, are usually
contented with it, and rarely make any effort to better themselves. It
would seem that, thus far at any rate, the Persians could not complain
of the Parthian rule, but must have been fairly satisfied with their
condition.

Again, the Greco-Macedonians had tolerated, but they had not viewed with
much respect, the religion which they had found established in Persia.
Alexander, indeed, with the enlightened curiosity which characterised
him, had made inquiries concerning, the tenets of the Magi, and
endeavored to collect in one the writings of Zoroaster. But the
later monarchs, and still more their subjects, had held the system
in contempt, and, as we have seen, Epiphanes had openly insulted the
religious feelings of his Asiatic subjects. The Parthians, on the other
hand, began at any rate with a treatment of the Persian religion which
was respectful and gratifying. Though perhaps at no time very sincere
Zoroastrians, they had conformed to the State religion under the
Achaemenian kings; and when the period came that they had themselves to
establish a system of government, they gave to the Magian hierarchy
a distinct and important place in their governmental machinery. The
council, which advised the monarch, and which helped to elect and (if
need were) depose him, was composed of two elements---the _Sophi_,
or wise men, who were civilians; and the _Magi_, or priests of the
Zoroastrian religion. The Magi had thus an important political status in
Parthia, during the early period of the Empire; but they seem gradually
to have declined in favor, and ultimately to have fallen into disrepute.
The Zoroastrian creed was, little by little, superseded among the
Parthians by a complex idolatry, which, beginning with an image-worship
of the Sun and Moon, proceeded to an association with those deities of
the deceased kings of the nation, and finally added to both a worship
of ancestral idols, which formed the most cherished possession of each
family, and practically monopolized the religious sentiment. All the old
Zoroastrian practices were by degrees laid aside. In Armenia the Arsacid
monarchs allowed the sacred fire of Ormazd to become extinguished; and
in their own territories the Parthian Arsacidae introduced the practice,
hateful to Zoroastrians, of burning the dead. The ultimate religion of
these monarchs seems in fact to have been a syncretism wherein Sabaism,
Confucianism, Greco-Macedonian notions, and an inveterate primitive
idolatry were mixed together. It is not impossible that the very names
of Ormazd and Ahriman had ceased to be known at the Parthian Court, or
were regarded as those of exploded deities, whose dominion over men’s
minds had passed away.

On the other hand, in Persia itself, and to some extent doubtless among
the neighboring countries, Zoroastrianism (or what went by the name)
had a firm hold on the religious sentiments of the multitude, who viewed
with disfavor the tolerant and eclectic spirit which animated the Court
of Ctesiphon. The perpetual fire, kindled, as it was, from heaven, was
carefully tended and preserved on the fire-altars of the Persian holy
places; the Magian hierarchy was held in the highest repute, the kings
themselves (as it would seem) not disdaining to be Magi; the ideas--even
perhaps the forms--of Ormazd and Ahriman were familiar to all;
image-worship was abhorred; the sacred writings in the Zend or most
ancient Iranian language were diligently preserved and multiplied; a
pompous ritual was kept up; the old national religion, the religion of
the Achaemenians, of the glorious period of Persian ascendency in Asia,
was with the utmost strictness maintained, probably the more zealously
as it fell more and more into disfavor with the Parthians.

The consequence of this divergence of religious opinion between the
Persians and their feudal lords must undoubtedly have been a certain
amount of alienation and discontent. The Persian Magi must have been
especially dissatisfied with the position of their brethren at Court;
and they would doubtless use their influence to arouse the indignation
of their countrymen generally. But it is scarcely probable that this
cause alone would have produced any striking result. Religious sympathy
rarely leads men to engage in important wars, unless it has the support
of other concurrent motives. To account for the revolt of the Persians
against their Parthian lords under Artaxerxes, something more is needed
than the consideration of the religious differences which separated the
two peoples.

First, then, it should be borne in mind that the Parthian rule must have
been from the beginning distasteful to the Persians, owing to the rude
and coarse character of the people. At the moment of Mithridates’s
successes, the Persians might experience a sentiment of satisfaction
that the European invader was at last thrust back, and that Asia had
re-asserted herself; but a very little experience of Parthian rule was
sufficient to call forth different feelings. There can be no doubt that
the Parthians, whether they were actually Turanians or no, were, in
comparison with the Persians, unpolished and uncivilized. They showed
their own sense of this inferiority by an affectation of Persian
manners. But this affectation was not very successful. It is evident
that in art, in architecture, in manners, in habits of life, the
Parthian race reached only a low standard; they stood to their Hellenic
and Iranian subjects in much the same relation that the Turks of the
present day stand to the modern Greeks; they made themselves respected
by their strength and their talent for organization; but in all that
adorns and beautifies life they were deficient. The Persians must,
during the whole time of their subjection to Parthia, have been sensible
of a feeling of shame at the want of refinement and of a high type of
civilization in their masters.

Again, the later sovereigns of the Arsacid dynasty were for the most
part of weak and contemptible character. From the time of Volagases
I. to that of Artabanus IV., the last king, the military reputation
of Parthia had declined. Foreign enemies ravaged the territories
of Parthian vassal kings, and retired when they chose, unpunished.
Provinces revolted and established their independence. Rome was
entreated to lend assistance to her distressed and afflicted rival, and
met the entreaties with a refusal. In the wars which still from time
to time were waged between the two empires Parthia was almost uniformly
worsted. Three times her capital was occupied, and once her monarch’s
summer palace was burned. Province after province had to be ceded to
Rome. The golden throne which symbolized her glory and magnificence was
carried off. Meanwhile feuds raged between the different branches of
the Arsacid family; civil wars were frequent; two or three monarchs at a
time claimed the throne, or actually ruled in different portions of the
Empire. It is not surprising that under these circumstances the bonds
were loosened between Parthia and her vassal kingdoms, or that the
Persian tributary monarchs began to despise their suzerains, and to
contemplate without alarm the prospect of a rebellion which should place
them in an independent position.

While the general weakness of the Arsacid monarchs was thus a cause
naturally leading to a renunciation of their allegiance on the part of
the Persians, a special influence upon the decision taken by Artaxerxes
is probably to be assigned to one, in particular, of the results of that
weakness. When provinces long subject to Parthian rule revolted, and
revolted successfully, as seems to have been the case with Hyrcania, and
partially with Bactria, Persia could scarcely for very shame continue
submissive. Of all the races subject to Parthia, the Persians were the
one which had held the most brilliant position in the past, and which
retained the liveliest remembrance of its ancient glories. This is
evidenced not only by the grand claims which Artaxorxes put forward
in his early negotiations with the Romans, but by the whole course of
Persian literature, which has fundamentally an historic character, and
exhibits the people as attached, almost more than any other Oriental
nation, to the memory of its great men and of their noble achievements.
The countrymen of Cyrus, of Darius, of Xerxes, of Ochus, of the
conquerors of Media, Bactria, Babylon, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, of the
invaders of Scythia and Greece, aware that they had once borne sway
over the whole region between Tunis and the Indian Desert, between the
Caucasus and the Cataracts, when they saw a petty mountain clan, like
the Hyrcanians, establish and maintain their independence despite the
efforts of Parthia to coerce them, could not very well remain quiet. If
so weak and small a race could defy the power of the Arsacid monarchs,
much more might the far more numerous and at least equally courageous
Persians expect to succeed, if they made a resolute attempt to recover
their freedom.

It is probable that Artaxerxes, in his capacity of vassal, served
personally in the army with which the Parthian monarch Artabanus carried
on the struggle against Rome, and thus acquired the power of estimating
correctly the military strength still possessed by the Arsacidae, and of
measuring it against that which he knew to belong to his nation. It
is not unlikely that he formed his plans during the earlier period of
Artabanus’s reign, when that monarch allowed himself to be imposed upon
by Caracallus, and suffered calamities and indignities in consequence
of his folly. When the Parthian monarch atoned for his indiscretion
and wiped out the memory of his disgraces by the brilliant victory of
Nisibis and the glorious peace which he made with Macrinus, Artaxerxes
may have found that he had gone too far to recede; or, undazzled by the
splendor of these successes, he may still have judged that he might
with prudence persevere in his enterprise. Artabanus had suffered great
losses in his two campaigns against Rome, and especially in the three
days’ battle of Nisibis. He was at variance with several princes of his
family, one of whom certainly maintained himself during his whole reign
with the State and title of “King of Parthia.” Though he had fought
well at Nisibis, he had not given any indications of remarkable military
talent. Artaxerxes, having taken the measure of his antagonist during
the course of the Roman war, having estimated his resources and formed
a decided opinion on the relative strength of Persia and Parthia,
deliberately resolved, a few years after the Roman war had come to an
end, to revolt and accept the consequences. He was no doubt convinced
that his nation would throw itself enthusiastically into the struggle,
and he believed that he could conduct it to a successful issue. He felt
himself the champion of a depressed, if not an oppressed, nationality,
and had faith in his power to raise it into a lofty position. Iran,
at any rate, should no longer, he resolved, submit patiently to be the
slave of Turan; the keen, intelligent, art-loving Aryan people should no
longer bear submissively the yoke of the rude, coarse, clumsy Scyths. An
effort after freedom should be made. He had little doubt of the result.
The Persians, by the strength of their own right arms and the blessing
of Ahuramazda, the “All-bounteous,” would triumph over their impious
masters, and become once more a great and independent people. At the
worst, if he had miscalculated, there would be the alternative of
a glorious death upon the battle-field in one of the noblest of all
causes, the assertion of a nation’s freedom.




CHAPTER II.


_Situation and Size of Persia. General Character of the Country and
Climate. Chief Products. Characteristics of the Persian People, physical
and moral. Differences observable in the Race at different periods._


Persia Proper was a tract of country lying on the Gulf to which it has
given name, and extending about 450 miles from north-west to south-east,
with an average breadth of about 250 miles. Its entire area may be
estimated at about a hundred thousand square miles. It was thus larger
than Great Britain, about the size of Italy, and rather less than half
the size of France. The boundaries were, on the west, Elymais or Susiana
(which, however, was sometimes reckoned a part of Persia); on the north,
Media; on the east, Carmania; and on the south, the sea. It is nearly
represented in modern times by the two Persian provinces of Farsistan
and Laristan, the former of which retains, but slightly changed, the
ancient appellation. The Hindyan or Tab (ancient Oroatis) seems towards
its mouth to have formed the western limit. Eastward, Persia extended
to about the site of the modern Bunder Kongo. Inland, the northern
boundary ran probably a little south of the thirty-second parallel, from
long. 50° to 55°. The line dividing Persia Proper from Carmania (now
Kerman) was somewhat uncertain.

The character of the tract is extremely diversified. Ancient writers
divided the country into three strongly contrasted regions. The first,
or coast tract, was (they said) a sandy desert, producing nothing but a
few dates, owing to the intensity of the heat. Above this was a fertile
region, grassy, with well-watered meadows and numerous vineyards,
enjoying a delicious climate, producing almost every fruit but the
olive, containing pleasant parks or “paradises,” watered by a number
of limpid streams and clear lakes, well wooded in places, affording an
excellent pasture for horses and for all sorts of cattle, abounding
in water-fowl and game of every kind, and altogether a most delightful
abode. Beyond this fertile region, towards the north, was a rugged
mountain tract, cold and mostly covered with snow, of which they did not
profess to know much.

In this description there is no doubt a certain amount of truth; but it
is mixed probably with a good deal of exaggeration. There is no reason
to believe that the climate or character of the country has undergone
any important alteration between the time of Nearchus or Strabo and the
present day. At present it is certain that the tract in question answers
but very incompletely to the description which those writers give of it.
Three regions may indeed be distinguished, though the natives seem now
to speak of only two; but none of them corresponds at all exactly to the
accounts of the Greeks. The coast tract is represented with the nearest
approach to correctness. This is, in fact, a region of arid plain, often
impregnated with salt, ill-watered, with a poor soil, consisting either
of sand or clay, and productive of little besides dates and a few
other fruits. A modern historian says of it that “it bears a greater
resemblance in soil and climate to Arabia than to the rest of Persia.”
 It is very hot and unhealthy, and can at no time have supported more
than a sparse and scanty population. Above this, towards the north, is
the best and most fertile portion of the territory. A mountain tract,
the continuation of Zagros, succeeds to the flat and sandy coast region,
occupying the greater portion of Persia Proper. It is about two hundred
miles in width, and consists of an alternation of mountain, plain,
and narrow valley, curiously intermixed, and hitherto mapped very
imperfectly. In places this district answers fully to the description
of Nearchus, being, “richly fertile, picturesque, and romantic almost
beyond imagination, with lovely wooded dells, green mountain sides, and
broad plains, suited for the production of almost any crops.” But it is
only to the smaller moiety of the region that such a character attaches;
more than half the mountain tract is sterile and barren; the supply of
water is almost everywhere scanty; the rivers are few, and have not much
volume; many of them, after short courses, end in the sand, or in small
salt lakes, from which the superfluous water is evaporated. Much of the
country is absolutely without streams, and would be uninhabitable were
it not for the _kanats_ or _kareezes_--subterranean channels made by art
for the conveyance of spring water to be used in irrigation. The
most desolate portion of the mountain tract is towards the north and
north-east, where it adjoins upon the third region, which is the worst
of the three. This is a portion of the high tableland of Iran, the great
desert which stretches from the eastern skirts of Zagros to the Hamoon,
the Helmend, and the river of Subzawur. It is a dry and hard plain,
intersected at intervals by ranges of rocky hills, with a climate
extremely hot in summer and extremely cold in winter, incapable of
cultivation, excepting so far as water can be conveyed by _kanats_,
which is, of course, only a short distance. The fox, the jackal, the
antelope, and the wild ass possess this sterile and desolate tract,
where “all is dry and cheerless,” and verdure is almost unknown.

Perhaps the two most peculiar districts of Persia are the lake basins
of Neyriz and Deriah-i-Nemek. The rivers given off from the northern
side of the great mountain chain between the twenty-ninth and
thirty-first parallels, being unable to penetrate the mountains, flow
eastward towards the desert; and their waters gradually collect into two
streams, which end in two lakes, the Deriah-i-Nemek and that of Neyriz,
or Lake Bakhtigan. The basin of Lake Neyriz lies towards the north. Here
the famous Bendamir, and the Pulwar or Kur-ab, flowing respectively from
the north-east and the north, unite in one near the ruins of the ancient
Persepolis, and, after fertilizing the plain of Merdasht, run eastward
down a rich vale for a distance of some forty miles into the salt lake
which swallows them up. This lake, when full, has a length of fifty or
sixty miles, with a breadth of from three to six. In summer, however,
it is often quite dry, the water of the Bendamir being expended in
irrigation before reaching its natural terminus. The valley and plain of
the Bendamir, and its tributaries, are among the most fertile portions
of Persia, as well as among those of most historic interest.

The basin of the Deriah-i-Nemek is smaller than that of the Neyriz, but
it is even more productive. Numerous brooks and streams, rising not far
from Shiraz, run on all sides into the Nemek lake, which has a length
of about fifteen and a breadth of three or three and a half miles. Among
the streams is the celebrated brook of Hafiz, the Rocknabad, which still
retains “its singular transparency and softness to the taste.” Other
rills and fountains of extreme clearness abound, and a verdure is the
result, very unusual in Persia. The vines grown in the basin produce
the famous Shiraz wine, the only good wine which is manufactured in the
East. The orchards are magnificent. In the autumn “the earth is covered
with the gathered harvest, flowers, and fruits; melons, peaches, pears,
nectarines, cherries, grapes, pomegranates; all is a garden, abundant in
sweets and refreshment.”

But, notwithstanding the exceptional fertility of the Shiraz plain
and of a few other places, Persia Proper seems to have been rightly
characterized in ancient times as “a scant land and a rugged.” Its area
was less than a fifth of the area of modern Persia; and of this space
nearly one half was uninhabitable, consisting either of barren stony
mountain or of scorching sandy plain, ill supplied with water and often
impregnated with salt. Its products, consequently, can have been at no
time either very abundant or very varied. Anciently, the low coast tract
seems to have been cultivated to a small extent in corn, and to have
produced good dates and a few other fruits. The mountain region was, as
we have seen, celebrated for its excellent pastures, for its abundant
fruits, and especially for its grapes. Within the mountains, on the
high plateau, assafoetida (silphium) was found, and probably some other
medicinal herbs. Corn, no doubt, could be grown largely in the plains
and valleys of the mountain tract, as well as on the plateau, so far as
the _kanats_ carried the water. There must have been, on the whole, a
deficiency of timber, though the palms of the low tract, and the oaks,
planes, chenars or sycamores, poplars, and willows of the mountain
regions sufficed for the wants of the natives. Not much fuel was
required, and stone was the general material used for building. Among
the fruits for which Persia was famous are especially noted the peach,
the walnut, and the citron. The walnut bore among the Romans the
appellation of “royal.”

Persia, like Media, was a good nursery for horses. Fine grazing grounds
existed in many parts of the mountain region, and for horses of the Arab
breed even the Deshtistan was not unsuited. Camels were reared in some
places, and sheep and goats were numerous. Horned cattle were probably
not so abundant, as the character of the country is not favorable
for them. Game existed in large quantities, the lakes abounding with
water-fowl, such as ducks, teal, heron, snipe, etc.; and the wooded
portions of the mountain tract giving shelter to the stag, the wild
goat, the wild boar, the hare, the pheasant, and the heathcock, fish
were also plentiful. Whales visited the Persian Gulf, and were sometimes
stranded upon the shores, where their carcases furnished a mine of
wealth to the inhabitants. Dolphins abounded, as well as many smaller
kinds; and shell-fish, particularly oysters, could always be obtained
without difficulty. The rivers, too, were capable of furnishing
fresh-water fish in good quantity, though we cannot say if this source
of supply was utilized in antiquity.

The mineral treasures of Persia were fairly numerous. Good salt was
yielded by the lakes of the middle region, and was also obtainable upon
the plateau. Bitumen and naphtha were produced by sources in the low
country. The mountains contained most of the important metals and a
certain number of valuable gems. The pearls of the Gulf acquired early a
great reputation, and a regular fishery was established for them before
the time of Alexander.

But the most celebrated of all the products of Persia were its men. The
“scant and rugged country” gave birth, as Cyrus the Great is said to
have observed,  to a race brave, hardy, and enduring, calculated not
only to hold its own against aggressors, but to extend its sway and
exercise dominion over the Western Asiatics generally. The Aryan
family is the one which, of all the races of mankind, is the most
self-asserting, and has the greatest strength, physical, moral, and
intellectual. The Iranian branch of it, whereto the Persians belonged,
is not perhaps so gifted as some others; but it has qualities which
place it above most of those by which Western Asia was anciently
peopled. In the primitive times, from Cyrus the Great to Darius
Hystaspis, the Persians seem to have been rude mountaineers, probably
not very unlike the modern Kurds and Lurs, who inhabit portions of
the same chain which forms the heart of the Persian country. Their
physiognomy was handsome. A high straight forehead, a long slightly
aquiline nose, a short and curved upper lip, a well-rounded chin,
characterized the Persian. The expression of his face was grave and
noble. He had abundant hair, which he wore very artificially arranged.
Above and round the brow it was made to stand away from the face in
short crisp curls; on the top of the head it was worn smooth; at the
back of the head it was again trained into curls, which followed each
other in several rows from the level of the forehead to the nape of the
neck. The moustache was always cultivated, and curved in a gentle sweep.
A beard and whiskers were worn, the former sometimes long and pendent,
like the Assyrian, but more often clustering around the chin in short
close curls. The figure was well-formed, but somewhat stout; the
carriage was dignified and simple. [PLATE XI, Fig. 1.]


[Illustration: PLATE 11.]


Simplicity of manners prevailed during this period. At the court there
was some luxury; but the bulk of the nation, living in their mountain
territory, and attached to agriculture and hunting, maintained the
habits of their ancestors, and were a somewhat rude though not a coarse
people. The dress commonly worn was a close-fitting shirt or tunic of
leather, descending to the knee, and with sleeves that reached down to
the wrist. Round the tunic was worn a belt or sash, which was tied in
front. The head was protected by a loose felt cap and the feet by a sort
of high shoe or low boot. The ordinary diet was bread and cress-seed,
while the sole beverage was water. In the higher ranks, of course, a
different style of living prevailed; the elegant and flowing “Median
robe” was worn; flesh of various kinds was eaten; much wine was
consumed; and meals were extended to a great length; The Persians,
however, maintained during this period a general hardihood and bravery
which made them the most dreaded adversaries of the Greeks, and enabled
them to maintain an unquestioned dominion over the other native races of
Western Asia.

As time went on, and their monarchs became less warlike, and wealth
accumulated, and national spirit decayed, the Persian character by
degrees deteriorated, and sank, even under the Achaemenian kings, to
a level not much superior to that of the ordinary Asiatic. The Persian
antagonists of Alexander were pretty nearly upon a par with the races
which in Hindustan have yielded to the British power; they occasionally
fought with gallantry, but they were deficient in resolution, in
endurance, in all the elements of solid strength; and they were
quite unable to stand their ground against the vigor and dash of the
Macedonians and the Greeks. Whether physically they were very different
from the soldiers of Cyrus may be doubted, but morally they had fallen
far below the ancient standard; their self-respect, their love of
country, their attachment to their monarch had diminished; no one showed
any great devotion to the cause for which he fought; after two defeats
the empire wholly collapsed; and the Persians submitted, apparently
without much reluctance, to the Helleno-Macedonian yoke.

Five centuries and a half of servitude could not much improve or elevate
the character of the people. Their fall from power, their loss of wealth
and of dominion did indeed advantage them in one way: it but an end to
that continually advancing sloth and luxury which had sapped the virtue
of the nation, depriving it of energy, endurance, and almost every manly
excellence. It dashed the Persians back upon the ground whence they had
sprung, and whence, Antseus-like, they proceeded to derive fresh vigor
and vital force. In their “scant and rugged” fatherland, the people of
Cyrus once more recovered to a great extent their ancient prowess and
hardihood--their habits became simplified, their old patriotism revived,
their self-respect grew greater. But while adversity thus in some
respects proved its “sweet uses” upon them, there were other respects
in which submission to the yoke of the Greeks, and still more to that of
the Parthians, seems to have altered them for the worse rather than
for the better. There is a coarseness and rudeness about the Sassanian
Persians which we do not observe in Achaemenian times. The physique of
the nation is not indeed much altered. Nearly the same countenance meets
us in the sculptures of Artaxerxes, the son of Babek, of Sapor, and of
their successors, with which we are familiar from the bas-reliefs of
Darius Hystapis and Xerxes. There is the same straight forehead, the
same aquiline nose, the same well-shaped mouth, the same abundant hair.
The form is, however, coarser and clumsier; the expression is less
refined; and the general effect produced is that the people have, even
physically, deteriorated. The mental and aesthetic standard seems still
more to have sunk. There is no evidence that the Persians of Sassanian
times possessed the governmental and administrative ability of Darius
Hystapis or Artaxerxes Ochus. Their art, though remarkable, considering
the almost entire disappearance of art from Western Asia under the
Parthians, is, compared with that of Achaemenian times, rude and
grotesque. In architecture, indeed, they are not without merit though
even here the extent to which they were indebted to the Parthians, which
cannot be exactly determined, must lessen our estimation of them; but
their mimetic art, while not wanting in spirit, is remarkably coarse and
unrefined. As a later chapter will be devoted to this subject, no more
need be said upon it here. It is sufficient for our present purpose to
note that the impression which we obtain from the monumental remains of
the Sassanian Persians accords with what is to be gathered of them from
the accounts of the Romans and the Greeks. The great Asiatic revolution
of the year A.D. 226 marks a revival of the Iranic nationality from the
depressed state into which it had sunk for more than five hundred years;
but the revival is not full or complete. The Persians of the Sassanian
kingdom are not equal to those of the time between Cyrus the Great
and Darius Codomannus; they have ruder manners, a grosser taste, less
capacity for government and organization; they have, in fact, been
coarsened by centuries of Tartar rule; they are vigorous, active,
energetic, proud, brave; but in civilization and refinement they do
not rank much above their Parthian predecessors. Western Asia gained,
perhaps, something, but it did not gain much, from the substitution of
the Persians for the Parthians as the dominant power. The change is the
least marked among the revolutions which the East underwent between the
accession of Cyrus and the conquests of Timour. But it is a change, on
the whole, for the better. It is accompanied by a revival of art, by
improvements in architecture; it inaugurates a religious revolution
which has advantages. Above all, it saves the East from stagnation. It
is one among many of those salutary shocks which, in the political as in
the natural world, are needed from time to time to stimulate action and
prevent torpor and apathy.




CHAPTER III.


_Reign of Artaxerxes I. Stories told of him. Most probable account of
his Descent, Rank, and Parentage. His Contest with Artabanus. First War
with Chosroes of Armenia. Contest with Alexander Severus. Second War
with Chosroes and conquest of Armenia. Religious Reforms. Internal
Administration and Government. Art. Coinage. Inscriptions._


Around the cradle of an Oriental sovereign who founds a dynasty there
cluster commonly a number of traditions, which have, more or less, a
mythical character. The tales told of the Great, which even Herodotus
set aside as incredible, have their parallels in narratives that were
current within one or two centuries with respect to the founder of the
Second Persian Empire, which would not have disgraced the mythologers
of Achaemenian times. Artaxerxes, according to some, was the son of a
common soldier who had an illicit connection with the wife of a Persian
cobbler and astrologer, a certain Babek or Papak, an inhabitant of the
Cadusian country and a man of the lowest class. Papak, knowing by his
art that the soldier’s son would attain a lofty position, voluntarily
ceded his rights as husband to the favorite of fortune, and bred up as
his own the issue of this illegitimate commerce, who, when he attained
to manhood, justified Papak’s foresight by successfully revolting from
Artabanus and establishing the new Persian monarchy. Others said that
the founder of the new kingdom was a Parthian satrap, the son of a
noble, and that, having long meditated revolt, he took the final plunge
in consequence of a prophecy uttered by Artabanus, who was well skilled
in magical arts, and saw in the stars that the Parthian empire was
threatened with destruction. Artabanus, on a certain occasion, when he
communicated this prophetic knowledge to his wife, was overheard by one
of her attendants, a noble damsel named Artaducta, already affianced to
Artaxerxes and a sharer in his secret counsels. At her instigation
he hastened his plans, raised the standard of revolt, and upon the
successful issue of his enterprise made her his queen. Miraculous
circumstances were freely interwoven with these narratives, and a result
was produced which staggered the faith even of such a writer as Moses of
Chorene, who, desiring to confine himself to what was strictly true and
certain, could find no more to say of Artaxerxes’s birth and origin
than that he was the son of a certain Sasan, and a native of Istakr, or
Persepolis.

Even, however, the two facts thus selected as beyond criticism by Moses
are far from being entitled to implicit credence. Artaxerxes, the son
of Sasan according to Agathangelus and Moses, is the same as Papak
(or Babek) in his own and his son’s inscriptions. The Persian writers
generally take the same view, and declare that Sasan was a remoter
ancestor of Artaxerxes, the acknowledged founder of the family, and not
Artaxerxes’ father. In the extant records of the new Persian Kingdom,
the coins and the inscriptions, neither Sasan nor the gentilitial term
derived from it, Sasanidae, has any place; and though it would perhaps
be rash to question on this account the employment of the term Sasanidae
by the dynasty, yet we may regard it as really “certain” that the father
of Artaxerxes was named, not Sasan, but Papak; and that, if the term
Sasanian was in reality a patronymic, it was derived, like the term
“Achaemenian,” from some remote progenitor whom the royal family of the
new empire believed to have been their founder.

The native country of Artaxerxes is also variously stated by the
authorities. Agathangelus calls him an Assyrian, and makes the Assyrians
play an important part in his rebellion. Agathias says that he was born
in the Cadusian country, or the low tract south-west of the Caspian,
which belonged to Media rather than to Assyria or Persia. Dio Cassius,
and Herodian, the contemporaries of Artaxerxes, call him a Persian;
and there can be no reasonable doubt that they are correct in so doing.
Agathangelus allows the predominantly Persian character of his revolt,
and Agathias is apparently unaware that the Cadusian country was no part
of Persia. The statement that he was a native of Persepolis (Istakr) is
first found in Moses of Chorene. It may be true, but it is uncertain;
for it may have grown out of the earlier statement of Agathangelus, that
he held the government of the province of Istakr. We can only affirm
with confidence that the founder of the new Persian monarchy was a
genuine Persian, without attempting to determine positively what Persian
city or province had the honor of producing him.

A more interesting question, and one which will be found perhaps to
admit of a more definite answer, is that of the rank and station in
which Artaxerxes was born. We have seen that Agathias (writing ab. A.D.
580) called him the supposititious son of a cobbler. Others spoke of
him as the child of a shepherd; while some said that his father was “an
inferior officer in the service of the government.” But on the other
hand, in the inscriptions which Artaxerxes himself setup in the
neighborhood of Persepolis, he gives his father, Papak, the title of
“King.” Agathangelus calls him a “noble” and “satrap of Persepolitan
government;” while Herodian seems to speak of him as “king of the
Persians,” before his victories over Artabanus. On the whole, it is
perhaps most probable that, like Cyrus, he was the hereditary monarch
of the subject kingdom of Persia, which had always its own princes under
the Parthians, and that thus he naturally and without effort took the
leadership of the revolt when circumstances induced his nation to rebel
and seek to establish its independence. The stories told of his humble
origin, which are contradictory and improbable, are to be paralleled
with those which made Cyrus the son of a Persian of moderate rank, and
the foster-child of a herdsman. There is always in the East a tendency
towards romance and exaggeration; and when a great monarch emerges from
a comparatively humble position, the humility and obscurity of his first
condition are intensified, to make the contrast more striking between
his original low estate and his ultimate splendor and dignity.

The circumstances of the struggle between Artaxerxes and. Artabanus are
briefly sketched by Dio Cassius and Agathangelus, while they are related
more at large by the Persian writers. It is probable that the contest
occupied a space of four or five years. At first, we are told, Artabanus
neglected to arouse himself, and took no steps towards crushing the
rebellion, which was limited to an assertion of the independence of
Persia Proper, or the province of Fars. After a time the revolted
vassal, finding himself unmolested, was induced to raise his thoughts
higher, and commenced a career of conquest. Turning his arms eastward,
he attacked Kerman (Carmania), and easily succeeded in reducing that
scantily-peopled tract under his dominion. He then proceeded to menace
the north, and, making war in that quarter, overran and attached to
his kingdom some of the outlying provinces of Media. Roused by these
aggressions, the Parthian monarch at length took the field, collected
an army consisting in part of Parthians, in part of the Persians who
continued faithful to him, against his vassal, and, invading Persia,
soon brought his adversary to a battle. A long and bloody contest
followed, both sides suffering great losses; but victory finally
declared itself in favor of Artaxerxes, through the desertion to him,
during the engagement, of a portion of his enemy’s forces. A second
conflict ensued within a short period, in which the insurgents were even
more completely successful; the carnage on the side of the Parthians
was great, the loss of the Persians small; and the great king fled
precipitately from the field. Still the resources of Parthia were equal
to a third trial of arms. After a brief pause, Artabanus made a final
effort to reduce his revolted vassal; and a last engagement took place
in the plain of Hormuz, which was a portion of the Jerahi valley, in the
beautiful country between Bebahan and Shuster. Here, after a desperate
conflict, the Parthian monarch suffered a third and signal defeat;
his army was scattered; and he himself lost his life in the combat.
According to some, his death was the result of a hand-to-hand conflict
with his great antagonist, who, pretending to fly, drew him on, and then
pierced his heart with an arrow.

The victory of Hormuz gave to Artaxerxes the dominion of the East; but
it did not secure him this result at once, or without further struggle.
Artabanus had left sons; and both in Bactria and Armenia there were
powerful branches of the Arsacid family, which could not see unmoved the
downfall of their kindred in Parthia. Chosroes, the Armenian monarch,
was a prince of considerable ability, and is said to have been set
upon his throne by Artabanus, whose brother he was, according to
some writers. At any rate he was an Arsacid; and he felt keenly the
diminution of his own influence involved in the transfer to an alien
race of the sovereignty wielded for five centuries by the descendants
of the first Arsaces. He had set his forces in motion, while the contest
between Artabanus and Artaxerxes was still in progress, in the hope of
affording substantial help to his relative. But the march of events was
too rapid for him; and, ere he could strike a blow, he found that the
time for effectual action had gone by, that Artabanus was no more,
and that the dominion of Artaxerxes was established over most of the
countries which had previously formed portions of the Parthian Empire.
Still, he resolved to continue the struggle; he was on friendly terms
with Rome, and might count on an imperial contingent; he had some hope
that the Bactrian Arsacidae would join him; at the worst, he regarded
his own power as firmly fixed and as sufficient to enable him to
maintain an equal contest with the new monarchy. Accordingly he took the
Parthian Arsacids under his protection, and gave them a refuge in the
Armenian territory. At the same time he negotiated with both Balkh and
Rome, made arrangements with the barbarians upon his northern frontier
to lend him aid, and, having collected a large army, invaded the new
kingdom on the north-west, and gained certain not unimportant successes.
According to the Armenian historians, Artaxerxes lost Assyria and the
adjacent regions; Bactria wavered; and, after the struggle had continued
for a year or two, the founder of the second Persian empire was obliged
to fly ignominiously to India! But this entire narrative seems to be
deeply tinged with the vitiating stain of intense national vanity, a
fault which markedly characterizes the Armenian writers, and renders
them, when unconfirmed by other authorities, almost worthless. The
general course of events, and the position which Artaxerxes takes in
his dealings with Rome (A.D. 229-230), sufficiently indicate that any
reverses which he sustained at this time in his struggle with Chosroes
and the unsubmitted Arsacidae must have been trivial, and that they
certainly had no greater result than to establish the independence
of Armenia, which, by dint of leaning upon Rome, was able to maintain
itself against the Persian monarch and to check the advance of the
Persians in North-Western Asia.

Artaxerxes, however, resisted in this quarter, and unable to overcome
the resistance, which he may have regarded as deriving its effectiveness
(in part at least) from the support lent it by Rome, determined (ab.
A.D. 229) to challenge the empire to an encounter. Aware that Artabanus,
his late rival, against whom he had measured himself, and whose power he
had completely overthrown, had been successful in his war with Macrinus,
had gained the great battle of Nisibis, and forced the Imperial State to
purchase an ignominious peace by a payment equal to nearly two millions
of our money, he may naturally have thought that a facile triumph was
open to his arms in this direction. Alexander Severus, the occupant of
the imperial throne, was a young man of a weak character, controlled
in a great measure by his mother, Julia Mamaea, and as yet quite
undistinguished as a general. The Roman forces in the East were known
to be licentious and insubordinate; corrupted by the softness of the
climate and the seductions of Oriental manners, they disregarded the
restraints of discipline, indulged in the vices which at once enervate
the frame and lower the moral character, had scant respect for their
leaders, and seemed a defence which it would be easy to overpower
and sweep away. Artaxerxes, like other founders of great empires,
entertained lofty views of his abilities and his destinies; the monarchy
which he had built up in the space of some five or six years was far
from contenting him; well read in the ancient history of his nation, he
sighed after the glorious days of Cyrus the Great and Darius Hystaspis,
when all Western Asia from the shores of the AEgean to the Indian
desert, and portions of Europe and Africa, had acknowledged the sway
of the Persian king. The territories which these princes had ruled he
regarded as his own by right of inheritance; and we are told that he
not only entertained, but boldly published, these views. His emissaries
everywhere declared that their master claimed the dominion of Asia as
far as the AEgean Sea and the Propontis. It was his duty and his
mission to recover to the Persians their pristine empire. What Cyrus
had conquered, what the Persian kings had held from that time until the
defeat of Codomannus by Alexander, was his by indefeasible right, and he
was about to take possession of it.

Nor were these brave words a mere _brutum fulmen_. Simultaneously with
the putting forth of such lofty pretensions the troops of the Persian
monarch crossed the Tigris and spread themselves over the entire Roman
province of Mesopotamia, which was rapidly overrun and offered scarcely
any resistance. Severus learned at the same moment the demands of his
adversary and the loss of one of his best provinces. He heard that his
strong posts upon the Euphrates, the old defences of the empire in this
quarter, were being attacked, and that Syria daily expected the passage
of the invaders. The crisis was one requiring prompt action; but the
weak and inexperienced youth was content to meet it with diplomacy, and,
instead of sending an army to the East, despatched ambassadors to his
rival with a letter. “Artaxerxes,” he said, “ought to confine himself to
his own territories and not seek to revolutionize Asia; it was unsafe,
on the strength of mere unsubstantial hopes, to commence a great
war. Every one should be content with keeping what belonged to him.
Artaxerxes would find war with Rome a very different thing from the
contests in which he had been hitherto engaged with barbarous races like
his own. He should call to mind the successes of Augustus and Trajan,
and the trophies carried off from the East by Lucius Verus and by
Septimius Severus.”

The counsels of moderation have rarely much effect in restraining
princely ambition. Artaxerxes replied by an embassy in which he
ostentatiously displayed the wealth and magnificence of Persia; but,
so far from making any deduction from his original demands, he now
distinctly formulated them, and required their immediate acceptance.
“Artaxerxes, the Great King,” he said, “ordered the Romans and their
ruler to take their departure forthwith from Syria and the rest of
Western Asia, and to allow the Persians to exercise dominion over Ionia
and Caria and the other countries within the AEgean and the Euxine,
since these countries belonged to Persia by right of inheritance.” A
Roman emperor had seldom received such a message; and Alexander,
mild and gentle as he was by nature, seems to have had his equanimity
disturbed by the insolence of the mandate. Disregarding the sacredness
of the ambassadorial character, he stripped the envoys of their
splendid apparel, treated them as prisoners of war, and settled them as
agricultural colonists in Phrygia. If we may believe Herodian, he even
took credit to himself for sparing their lives, which he regarded as
justly forfeit to the offended majesty of the empire.

Meantime the angry prince, convinced at last against his will that
negotiations with such an enemy were futile, collected an army and began
his march towards the East. Taking troops from the various provinces
through which he passed, he conducted to Antioch, in the autumn of A.D.
231, a considerable force, which was there augmented by the legions of
the East and by troops drawn from Egypt and other quarters. Artaxerxes,
on his part, was not idle. According to Soverus himself, the army
brought into the field by the Persian monarch consisted of one hundred
and twenty thousand mailed horsemen, of eighteen hundred scythed
chariots, and of seven hundred trained elephants, bearing on their backs
towers filled with archers; and though this pretended host has been
truly characterized as one “the like of which is not to be found in
Eastern history, and has scarcely been imagined in Eastern romance,”
 yet, allowing much for exaggeration, we may still safely conclude that
great exertions had been made on the Persian side, that their forces
consisted of the three arms mentioned, and that the numbers of each
were large beyond ordinary precedent. The two adversaries were thus not
ill-matched; each brought the flower of his troops to the conflict; each
commanded the army, on which his dependence was placed, in person;
each looked to obtain from the contest not only an increase of military
glory, but substantial fruits of victory in the shape of plunder or
territory.

It might have been expected that the Persian monarch, after the high
tone which he had taken, would have maintained an aggressive attitude,
have crossed the Euphrates, and spread the hordes at his disposal over
Syria, Cappadocia, and Asia Minor. But it seems to be certain that he
did not do so, and that the initiative was taken by the other side.
Probably the Persian arms, as inefficient in sieges as the Parthian,
were unable to overcome the resistance offered by the Roman forts upon
the great river; and Artaxerxes was too good a general to throw his
forces into the heart of an enemy’s country without having first secured
a safe retreat. The Euphrates was therefore crossed by his adversary
in the spring of A.D. 232; the Roman province of Mesopotamia was easily
recovered; and arrangements were made by which it was hoped to deal the
new monarchy a heavy blow, if not actually to crush and conquer it.

Alexander divided his troops into three bodies. One division was to
act towards the north, to take advantage of the friendly disposition
of Chosroes, king of Armenia, and, traversing his strong mountain
territory, to direct its attack upon Media, into which Armenia gave a
ready entrance. Another was to take a southern line, and to threaten
Persia Proper from the marshy tract about the junction of the Euphrates
with the Tigris, a portion of the Babylonian territory. The third and
main division, which was to be commanded by the emperor in person, was
to act on a line intermediate between the other two, which would conduct
it to the very heart of the enemy’s territory, and at the same time
allow of its giving effective support to either of the two other
divisions if they should need it.

The plan of operations appears to have been judiciously constructed,
and should perhaps be ascribed rather to the friends whom the youthful
emperor consulted than to his own unassisted wisdom. But the best
designed plans may be frustrated by unskilfulness or timidity in the
execution; and it was here, if we may trust the author who alone
gives us any detailed account of the campaign, that the weakness of
Alexander’s character showed itself. The northern army successfully
traversed Armenia, and, invading Media, proved itself in numerous small
actions superior to the Persian force opposed to it, and was able to
plunder and ravage the entire country at its pleasure. The southern
division crossed Mesopotamia in safety, and threatened to invade Persia
Proper. Had Alexander with the third and main division kept faith
with the two secondary armies, had he marched briskly and combined his
movements with theirs, the triumph of the Roman arms would have been
assured. But, either from personal timidity or from an amiable regard
for the anxieties of his mother Mamsea, he hung back while his right and
left wings made their advance, and so allowed the enemy to concentrate
their efforts on these two isolated bodies. The army in Media, favored
by the rugged character of the country, was able to maintain its ground
without much difficulty; but that which had advanced by the line of the
Euphrates and Tigris, and which was still marching through the boundless
plains of the great alluvium, found itself suddenly beset by a countless
host, commanded by Artaxerxes in person, and, though it struggled
gallantly, was overwhelmed and utterly destroyed by the arrows of the
terrible Persian bowmen. Herodian says, no doubt with some exaggeration,
that this was the greatest calamity which had ever befallen the Romans.
It certainly cannot compare with Cannae, with the disaster of Varus, or
even with the similar defeat of Crassus in a not very distant region.
But it was (if rightly represented by Herodian) a terrible blow. It
absolutely determined the campaign. A Caesar or a Trajan might have
retrieved such a loss. An Alexander Severus was not likely even to make
an attempt to do so. Already weakened in body by the heat of the climate
and the unwonted fatigues of war, he was utterly prostrated in spirit by
the intelligence when it reached him. The signal was at once given for
retreat. Orders were sent to the _corps d’ armee_ which occupied Media
to evacuate its conquests and to retire forthwith upon the Euphrates.
These orders were executed, but with difficulty. Winter had already set
in throughout the high regions; and in its retreat the army of Media
suffered great losses through the inclemency of the climate, so that
those who reached Syria were but a small proportion of the original
force. Alexander himself, and the army which he led, experienced less
difficulty; but disease dogged the steps of this division, and when its
columns reached Antioch it was found to be greatly reduced in numbers by
sickness, though it had never confronted an enemy. The three armies
of Severus suffered not indeed equally, but still in every case
considerably, from three distinct causes--sickness, severe weather, and
marked inferiority to the enemy. The last-named cause had annihilated
the southern division; the northern had succumbed to climate; the main
army, led by Severus himself, was (comparatively speaking) intact, but
even this had been decimated by sickness, and was not in a condition to
carry on the war with vigor. The result of the campaign had thus
been altogether favorable to the Persians, but yet it had convinced
Artaxerxes that Rome was more powerful than he had thought. It had shown
him that in imagining the time had arrived when they might be easily
driven out of Asia--he had made a mistake. The imperial power had proved
itself strong enough to penetrate deeply within his territory, to ravage
some of his best provinces, and to threaten his capital. The grand
ideas with which he had entered upon the contest had consequently to be
abandoned; and it had to be recognized that the struggle with Rome was
one in which the two parties were very evenly matched, one in which
it was not to be supposed that either side would very soon obtain any
decided preponderance. Under these circumstances the grand ideas were
quietly dropped; the army which had been gathered together to enforce
them was allowed to disperse, and was not required within any given time
to reassemble; it is not unlikely that (as Niebuhr conjectures) a peace
was made, though whether Rome ceded any of her territory by its terms is
exceedingly doubtful. Probably the general principle of the arrangement
was a return to the _status quo ante bellum_, or, in other words, the
acceptance by either side, as the true territorial limits between Rome
and Persia, of those boundaries which had been previously held to divide
the imperial possessions from the dominions of the Arsacidse.

The issue of the struggle was no doubt disappointing to Artaxerxes; but
if, on the one hand, it dispelled some illusions and proved to him
that the Roman State, though verging to its decline, nevertheless still
possessed a vigor and a life which he had been far from anticipating,
on the other hand it left him free to concentrate his efforts on the
reduction of Armenia, which was really of more importance to him,
from Armenia being the great stronghold of the Arsacid power, than the
nominal attachment to the empire of half-a-dozen Roman provinces. So
long as Arsacidae maintained themselves in a position of independence
and substantial power so near the Persian borders, and in a country of
such extent and such vast natural strength as Armenia, there could not
but be a danger of reaction, of the nations again reverting to the yoke
whereto they had by long use become accustomed, and of the star of
the Sasanidae paling before that of the former masters of Asia. It was
essential to the consolidation of the new Persian Empire that Armenia
should be subjugated, or at any rate that Arsacidae should cease to
govern it; and the fact that the peace which appears to have been made
between Rome and Persia, A.D. 232, set Artaxerxes at liberty to direct
all his endeavors to the establishment of such relations between his own
state and Armenia as he deemed required by public policy and necessary
for the security of his own power, must be regarded as one of paramount
importance, and as probably one of the causes mainly actuating him in
the negotiations and inclining him to consent to peace on any fair
and equitable terms. Consequently, the immediate result of hostilities
ceasing between Persia and Rome was their renewal between Persia and
Armenia. The war had indeed, in one sense, never ceased; for Chosroes
had been an ally of the Romans during the campaign of Severus, and had
no doubt played a part in the invasion and devastation of Media which
have been described above. But, the Romans having withdrawn, he was left
wholly dependent on his own resources; and the entire strength of Persia
was now doubtless brought into the field against him. Still he defended
himself with such success, and caused Artaxerxes so much alarm, that
after a time that monarch began to despair of ever conquering his
adversary by fair means, and cast about for some other mode of
accomplishing his purpose. Summoning an assembly of all the vassal
kings, the governors, and the commandants throughout the empire, he
besought them to find some cure for the existing distress, at the same
time promising a rich reward to the man who should contrive an effectual
remedy. The second place in the kingdom should be his; he should have
dominion over one half of the Arians; nay, he should share the Persian
throne with Artaxerxes himself, and hold a rank and dignity only
slightly inferior. We are told that these offers prevailed with a noble
of the empire, named Anak, a man who had Arsacid blood in his veins, and
belonged to that one of the three branches of the old royal stock
which had long been settled at Bactria (Balkh), and that he was induced
thereby to come forward and undertake the assassination of Chosroes, who
was his near relative and would not be likely to suspect him of an ill
intent. Artaxerxes warmly encouraged him in his design, and in a little
time it was successfully carried out. Anak, with his wife, his children,
his brother, and a train of attendants, pretended to take refuge in
Armenia from the threatened vengeance of his sovereign, who caused his
troops to pursue him, as a rebel and deserter, to the very borders of
Armenia. Unsuspicious of any evil design, Ohosroes received the exiles
with favor, discussed with them his plans for the subjugation of Persia,
and, having sheltered them during the whole of the autumn and winter,
proposed to them in the spring that they should accompany him and
take part in the year’s campaign. Anak, forced by this proposal to
precipitate his designs, contrived a meeting between himself, his
brother, and Chosroes, without attendants, on the pretext of discussing
plans of attack, and, having thus got the Armenian monarch at a
disadvantage, drew sword upon him, together with his brother, and
easily put him to death. The crime which he had undertaken was thus
accomplished; but he did not live to receive the reward promised him
for it. Armenia rose in arms on learning the foul deed wrought upon its
king; the bridges and the few practicable outlets by which the capital
could be quitted were occupied by armed men; and the murderers, driven
to desperation, lost their lives in an attempt to make their escape by
swimming the river Araxes. Thus Artaxerxes obtained his object without
having to pay the price that he had agreed upon; his dreaded rival was
removed; Armenia lay at his mercy; and he had not to weaken his power at
home by sharing it with an Arsacid partner.

The Persian monarch allowed the Armenians no time to recover from the
blow which he had treacherously dealt them. His armies at once entered
their territory and carried everything before them. Chosroes seems to
have had no son of sufficient age to succeed him, and the defence of the
country fell upon the satraps, or governors of the several provinces.
These chiefs implored the aid of the Roman emperor, and received a
contingent; but neither were their own exertions nor was the valor of
their allies of any avail. Artaxerxes easily defeated the confederate
army, and forced the satraps to take refuge in Roman territory. Armenia
submitted to his arms, and became an integral portion of his empire.
It probably did not greatly trouble him that Artavasdes, one of the
satraps, succeeded in carrying off one of the sons of Chosroes, a
boy named Tiridates, whom he conveyed to Rome, and placed under the
protection of the reigning emperor.

Such were the chief military successes of Artaxerxes. The greatest of
our historians, Gibbon, ventures indeed to assign to him, in addition,
“some easy victories over the wild Scythians and the effeminate
Indians.” But there is no good authority for this statement; and on the
whole it is unlikely that he came into contact with either nation. His
coins are not found in Afghanistan; and it may be doubted whether he
ever made any eastern expedition. His reign was not long; and it
was sufficiently occupied by the Roman and Armenian wars, and by the
greatest of all his works, the reformation of religion.

The religious aspect of the insurrection which transferred the headship
of Western Asia from the Parthians to the Persians, from Artabanus to
Artaxerxes, has been already noticed; but we have now to trace, so far
as we can, the steps by which the religious revolution was accomplished,
and the faith of Zoroaster, or what was believed to be such, established
as the religion of the State throughout the new empire. Artaxerxes,
himself (if we may believe Agathias) a Magus, was resolved from the
first that, if his efforts to shake off the Parthian yoke succeeded,
he would use his best endeavors to overthrow the Parthian idolatry
and install in its stead the ancestral religion of the Persians.
This religion consisted of a combination of Dualism with a qualified
creature-worship, and a special reverence for the elements, earth,
air, water, and fire. Zoroastrianism, in the earliest form which is
historically known to us, postulated two independent and contending
principles--a principle of good, Ahura-Mazda, and a principle of evil,
Angro-Mainyus. These beings, who were coeternal and coequal, were
engaged in a perpetual struggle for supremacy; and the world was the
battle-field wherein the strife was carried on. Each had called into
existence numerous inferior beings, through whose agency they waged
their interminable conflict. Ahura-Mazda (Oromazdos, Ormazd) had created
thousands of angelic beings to perform his will and fight on his side
against the Evil One; and Alngro-Mainyus (Arimanius, Ahriman) had
equally on his part called into being thousands of malignant spirits to
be his emissaries in the world, to do his work, and fight his battles.
The greater of the powers called into being by Ahura-Mazda were proper
objects of the worship of man, though, of course, his main worship was
to be given to Ahura-Mazda. Angro-Mainyus was not to be worshipped, but
to be hated and feared. With this dualistic belief had been combined,
at a time not much later than that of Darius Hystaspis, an entirely
separate system, the worship of the elements. Fire, air, earth, and
water were regarded as essentially holy, and to pollute any of them
was a crime. Fire was especially to be held in honor; and it became an
essential part of the Persian religion to maintain perpetually upon the
fire-altars the sacred flame, supposed to have been originally kindled
from heaven, and to see that it never went out. Together with this
elemental worship was introduced into the religion a profound regard for
an order of priests called Magians, who interposed themselves between
the deity and the worshipper, and claimed to possess prophetic powers.
This Magian order was a priest-caste, and exercised vast influence,
being internally organized into a hierarchy containing many ranks, and
claiming a sanctity far above that of the best laymen.

Artaxerxes found the Magian order depressed by the systematic action
of the later Parthian princes, who had practically fallen away from the
Zoroastrian faith and become mere idolaters. He found the fire-altars in
ruins, the sacred flame extinguished, the most essential of the Magian
ceremonies and practices disregarded. Everywhere, except perhaps in his
own province of Persia Proper, he found idolatry established. Temples of
the sun abounded, where images of Mithra were the object of worship, and
the Mithraic cult was carried out with a variety of imposing ceremonies.
Similar temples to the moon existed in many places; and the images of
the Arsacidae were associated with those of the sun and moon gods,
in the sanctuaries dedicated to them. The precepts of Zoroaster were
forgotten. The sacred compositions which bore that sage’s name, and had
been handed down from a remote antiquity, were still indeed preserved,
if not in a written form, yet in the memory of the faithful few who
clung to the old creed; but they had ceased to be regarded as binding
upon their consciences by the great mass of the Western Asiatics.
Western Asia was a seething-pot, in which were mixed up a score of
contradictory creeds, old and new, rational and irrational, Sabaism,
Magism, Zoroastrianism, Grecian polytheism, teraphim-worship, Judaism,
Chaldae mysticism, Christianity. Artaxerxes conceived it to be his
mission to evoke order out of this confusion, to establish in lieu of
this extreme diversity an absolute uniformity of religion.

The steps which he took to effect his purpose seem to have been the
following. He put down idolatry by a general destruction of the images,
which he overthrew and broke to pieces. He raised the Magian hierarchy
to a position of honor and dignity such as they had scarcely enjoyed
even under the later Achaemenian princes, securing them in a condition
of pecuniary independence by assignments of lands, and also by
allowing their title to claim from the faithful the tithe of all their
possessions. He caused the sacred fire to be rekindled on the altars
where it was extinguished, and assigned to certain bodies of priests the
charge of maintaining the fire in each locality. He then proceeded to
collect the supposed precepts of Zoroaster into a volume, in order
to establish a standard of orthodoxy whereto he might require all to
conform. He found the Zoroastrians themselves divided into a number
of sects. Among these he established uniformity by means of a “general
council,” which was attended by Magi from all parts of the empire, and
which settled what was to be regarded as the true Zoroastrian faith.
According to the Oriental writers, this was effected in the following
way: Forty thousand, or, according to others, eighty thousand Magi
having assembled, they were successively reduced by their own act to
four thousand, to four hundred, to forty, and finally to seven, the most
highly respected for their piety and learning. Of these seven there was
one, a young but holy priest, whom the universal consent of his brethren
recognized as pre-eminent. His name was Arda-Viraf. “Having passed
through the strictest ablutions, and drunk a powerful opiate, he was
covered with a white linen and laid to sleep. Watched by seven of the
nobles, including the king, he slept for seven days and nights; and, on
his reawaking, the whole nation listened with believing wonder to his
exposition of the faith of Ormazd, which was carefully written down by
an attendant scribe for the benefit of posterity.”

The result, however brought about, which must always remain doubtful,
was the authoritative issue of a volume which the learned of Europe have
now possessed for some quarter of a century, and which has recently been
made accessible to the general reader by the labors of Spiegel. This
work, the Zendavesta, while it may contain fragments of a very ancient
literature, took its present shape in the time of Artaxerxes, and was
probably then first collected from the mouths of the Zoroastrian priests
and published by Arda-Viraf. Certain additions may since have been made
to it; but we are assured that “their number is small,” and that we
“have no reason to doubt” that the text of the Avesta, in the days
of Arda-Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at present. The
religious system of the new Persian monarchy is thus completely known
to us, and will be described minutely in a later chapter. At present we
have to consider, not what the exact tenets of the Zoroastrians were,
but only the mode in which Artaxerxes imposed them upon his subjects.

The next step, after settling the true text of the sacred volume, was to
agree upon its interpretation. The language of the Avesta, though pure
Persian, was of so archaic a type that none but the most learned of the
Magi understood it; to the common people, even to the ordinary priest,
it was a dead letter. Artaxerxes seems to have recognized the necessity
of accompanying the Zend text with a translation and a commentary in the
language of his own time, the Pehlevi or Huzvaresh. Such a translation
and commentary exist; and though in part belonging to later Sassanian
times, they reach back probably in their earlier portions to the era
of Artaxerxes, who may fairly be credited with the desire to make the
sacred book “understanded of the people.”

Further, it was necessary, in order to secure permanent uniformity of
belief, to give to the Magian priesthood, the keepers and interpreters
of the sacred book, very extensive powers. The Magian hierarchy
was therefore associated with the monarch in the government and
administration of the State. It was declared that the altar and the
throne were inseparable, and must always sustain each other. The Magi
were made to form the great council of the nation. While they lent their
support to the crown, the crown upheld them against all impugners,
and enforced by pains and penalties their decisions. Persecution was
adopted and asserted as a principle of action without any disguise. By
an edict of Artaxerxes, all places of worship were closed except the
temples of the fire-worshippers. If no violent outbreak of fanaticism
followed, it was because the various sectaries and schismatics succumbed
to the decree without resistance. Christian, and Jew, and Greek, and
Parthian, and Arab allowed their sanctuaries to be closed without
striking a blow to prevent it; and the non-Zoroastrians of the empire,
the votaries of foreign religions, were shortly reckoned at the
insignificant number of 80,000.

Of the internal administration and government of his extensive empire
by Artaxerxes, but little is known. That little seems, however, to
show that while in general type and character it conformed to the usual
Oriental model, in its practical working it was such as to obtain the
approval of the bulk of his subjects. Artaxerxes governed his provinces
either through native kings, or else through Persian satraps. At the
same time, like the Achaemenian monarchs, he kept the armed force
under his own control by the appointment of “generals” or “commandants”
 distinct from the satraps. Discarding the Parthian plan of intrusting
the military defence of the empire and the preservation of domestic
order to a mere militia, he maintained on a war footing a considerable
force, regularly paid and drilled. “There can be no power,” he remarked,
“without an army, no army without money, no money without agriculture,
and no agriculture without justice.” To administer strict justice was
therefore among his chief endeavors. Daily reports were made to him of
all that passed not only in his capital, but in every province of his
vast empire; and his knowledge extended even to the private actions of
his subjects. It was his earnest desire that all well-deposed persons
should feel an absolute assurance of security with respect to their
lives, their property, and their honor. At the same time he punished
crimes with severity, and even visited upon entire families the
transgression of one of their members. It is said to have been one of
his maxims, that “kings should never use the sword where the cane would
answer;” but, if the Armenian historians are to be trusted, in practice
he certainly did not err on the side of clemency.

Artaxerxes was, of course, an absolute monarch, having the entire power
of life or death, and entitled, if he chose, to decide all matters at
his own mere will and pleasure. But, in practice, he, like most Oriental
despots, was wont to summon and take the advice of counsellors. It is
perhaps doubtful whether any regular “Council of State” existed under
him. Such an institution had prevailed under the Parthians, where the
monarchs were elected and might be deposed by the Megistanes; but there
is no evidence that Artaxerxes continued it, or did more than call on
each occasion for the advice of such persons among his subjects as he
thought most capable. In matters affecting his relations towards
foreign powers he consulted with the subject kings, the satraps, and the
generals; in religious affairs he no doubt took counsel with the chief
Magi. The general principles which guided his conduct both in religious
and other matters may perhaps be best gathered from the words of that
“testament,” or “dying speech,” which he is said to have addressed to
his son Sapor. “Never forget,” he said, “that, as a king, you are at
once the protector of religion and of your country. Consider the altar
and the throne as inseparable; they must always sustain each other. A
sovereign without religion is a tyrant; and a people who have none
may be deemed the most monstrous of all societies. Religion may exist
without a state; but a state cannot exist without religion; and it is by
holy laws that a political association can alone be bound. You should be
to your people an example of piety and of virtue, but without pride or
ostentation.... Remember, my son, that it is the prosperity or adversity
of the ruler which forms the happiness or misery of his subjects, and
that the fate of the nation depends on the conduct of the individual who
fills the throne. The world is exposed to constant vicissitudes; learn,
therefore, to meet the frowns of fortune with courage and fortitude,
and to receive her smiles with moderation and wisdom. To sum up all--may
your administration be such as to bring, at a future day, the blessings
of those whom God has confided to our parental care upon both your
memory and mine!”

There is reason to believe that Artaxerxes, some short time before
his death, invested Sapor with the emblems of sovereignty, and either
associated him in the empire, or wholly ceded to him his own place. The
Arabian writer, Macoudi, declares that, sated with glory and with
power, he withdrew altogether from the government, and, making over
the administration of affairs to his favorite son, devoted himself to
religious contemplation. Tabari knows nothing of the religious motive,
but relates that towards the close of his life Artaxerxes “made Sapor
regent, appointed him formally to be his successor, and with his own
hands placed the .crown on his head.” [PLATE XII.] These notices would,
by themselves, have been of small importance; but force is lent to them
by the facts that Artaxerxes is found to have placed the effigy of Sapor
on his later coins, and that in one of his bas-reliefs he seems to be
represented as investing Sapor with the diadem. This tablet, which is
at Takht-i-Bostan, has been variously explained, and, as it is
unaccompanied by any inscription, no certain account can be given of it;
but, on the whole the opinion of those most competent to judge seems
to be that the intention of the artist was to represent Artaxerxes
(who wears the cap and inflated ball) as handing the diadem to
Sapor--distinguished by the mural crown of his own tablets and
coins--while Ormazd, marked by his customary _baton_, and further
indicated by a halo of glory around his head, looks on, sanctioning and
approving the transaction. A prostrate figure under the feet of the
two Sassanian kings represents either Artabanus or the extinct Parthian
monarchy, probably the former; while the sunflower upon which Ormazd
stands, together with the rays that stream from his head, denote an
intention to present him under a Mithraitic aspect, suggestive to the
beholder of a real latent identity between the two great objects of
Persian worship.


[Illustration: PLATE 12.]


The coins of Artaxerxes present five different types. [PLATE XI., Fig.
1.] In the earliest his effigy appears on the obverse, front-faced, with
the simple legend AETaHsnaTE (Artaxerxes), or sometimes with the longer
one, BaGi ARTaiiSHaTR MaLKA, “Divine Artaxerxes, King;” while the
reverse bears the profile of his father, Papak, looking to the left,
with the legend BaGi PAPaKi MaLKA, “Divine Papak, King;” or BaBl BaGi
PAPaKi MaLKA, “Son of Divine Papak, King.” Both heads wear the ordinary
Parthian diadem and tiara; and the head of Artaxerxes much resembles
that of Volagases V., one of the later Parthian kings. The coins of the
next period have a head on one side only. This is in profile, looking
to the right, and bears a highly ornamental tiara, exactly like that
of Mithridates I. of Parthia, the great conqueror. It is usually
accompanied by the legend MaZDiSN BaGi ARTaHSHaTR MaLKA (or MaLKAN
MaLKA) aiean, i.e. “The Ormazd-worshipping Divine Artaxerxes, King of
Iran,” or “King of the Kings of Iran.” The reverse of these coins bears
a fire-altar, with the legend ARTaHSHaTR nuvazi, a phrase of doubtful
import. In the third period, while the reverse remains unchanged, on the
obverse the Parthian costume is entirely given up; and the king takes,
instead of the Parthian tiara, a low cap surmounted by the inflated
ball, which thenceforth becomes the almost universal badge of a
Sassanian monarch. The legend is now longer, being commonly MaZDiSN
BaGi ARTaiisi-iaTR MaLKAN MaLKA airanMiNUCHiTRi iniN YazDAN, or “The
Ormazd-worshipping Divine Artaxerxes, King of the Kings of Iran,
heaven-descended of (the race of) the Gods.” The fourth period is
marked by the assumption of the mural crown, which in the sculptures of
Artaxerxes is given only to Ormazd, but which was afterwards adopted by
Sapor I. and many later kings, in combination with the ball, as their
usual head-dress. The legend on these coins remains as in the third
period, and the reverse is likewise unchanged. Finally, there are a few
coins of Artaxerxes, belonging to the very close of his reign, where he
is represented with the tiara of the third period, looking to the right;
while in front of him, and looking towards him, is another profile, that
of a boy, in whom numismatists recognize his eldest son and successor,
Sapor. [PLATE XV., Fig. 1].


[Illustration: PLATE 15.]


It is remarkable that with the accession of Artaxerxes there is at
once a revival of art. Art had sunk under the Parthians, despite their
Grecian leanings, to the lowest ebb which it had known in Western Asia
since the accession of Asshur-izir-pal to the throne of Assyria (B.C.
886). Parthian attempts at art were few and far between, and when made
were unhappy, not to say ridiculous. The coins of Artaxerxes, compared
with those of the later Parthian monarchs, show at once a renaissance.
The head is well cut; the features have individuality and expression;
the epigraph is sufficiently legible. Still more is his sculpture
calculated to surprise us. Artaxerxes represents himself as receiving
the Persian diadem from the hands of Ormazd; both he and the god are
mounted upon chargers of a stout breed, which are spiritedly portrayed;
Artabanus lies prostrate under the feet of the king’s steed, while under
those of the deity’s we observe the form of Ahriman, also prostrate,
and indeed seemingly dead. Though the tablet has not really any great
artistic merit, it is far better than anything that remains to us of
the Parthians; it has energy and vigor; the physiognomies are carefully
rendered; and the only flagrant fault is a certain over-robustness in
the figures, which has an effect that is not altogether pleasing. Still,
we cannot but see in the new Persian art--even at its very beginning--a
movement towards life after a long period of stagnation; an evidence
of that general stir of mind which the downfall of Tartar oppression
rendered possible; a token that Aryan intelligence was beginning to
recover and reassert itself in all the various fields in which it had
formerly won its triumphs.

The coinage of Artaxerxes, and of the other Sassanian monarchs, is
based, in part upon Roman, in part upon Parthian, models. The Roman
aureus furnishes the type which is reproduced in the Sassanian gold
coins, while the silver coins follow the standard long established
in Western Asia, first under the Seleucid, and then under the Arsacid
princes. This standard is based upon the Attic drachm, which was adopted
by Alexander as the basis of his monetary system. The curious occurrence
of a completely different standard for gold and silver in Persia during
this period is accounted for by the circumstances of the time at which
the coinage took its rise. The Arsacidae had employed no gold coins,
but had been content with a silver currency; any gold coin that may
have been in use among their subjects for purposes of trade during
the continuance of their empire must have been foreign money--Roman,
Bactrian, or Indian; but the quantity had probably for the most part
been very small. But, about ten years before the accession of Artaxerxes
there had been a sudden influx into Western Asia of Roman gold, in
consequence of the terms of the treaty concluded between Artabanus
and Macrinus (A.D. 217), whereby Rome undertook to pay to Parthia an
indemnity of above a million and a half of our money. It is probable
that the payment was mostly made in aurei. Artaxerxes thus found current
in the countries, which he overran and formed into an empire, two
coinages--a gold and a silver--coming from different sources and
possessing no common measure. It was simpler and easier to retain what
existed, and what had sufficiently adjusted itself through the working
of commercial needs, than to invent something new; and hence the
anomalous character of the New Persian monetary system.

The remarkable bas-relief of Artaxerxes described above and figured
below in the chapter on the Art of the Sassanians, is accompanied by
a bilingual inscription, or perhaps we should say by two bilingual
inscriptions, which possess much antiquarian and some historic interest.
The longer of the two runs as follows:--“Pathkar zani mazdisn bagi
Artahshatr, malkan malka Airan, minuchitri min Ydztan, bari bagi Pap-aki
malka;” while the Greek version of it is--


[Illustration: INSCRIPTION, PAGE 278]


The inscriptions are interesting, first, as proving the continued use
of the Greek character and language by a dynasty that was intensely
national and that wished to drive the Greeks out of Asia. Secondly, they
are interesting as showing the character of the native language, and
letters, employed by the Persians, when they came suddenly into notice
as the ruling people of Western Asia. Thirdly, they have an historic
interest in what they tell us of the relationship of Artaxerxes to Babek
(Papak), of the rank of Babek, and of the religious sympathies of the
Sassanians. In this last respect they do indeed, in themselves, little
but confirm the evidence of the coins and the general voice of antiquity
on the subject. Coupled, however, with the reliefs to which they are
appended, they do more. They prove to us that the Persians of the
earliest Sassanian times were not averse to exhibiting the great
personages of their theology in sculptured forms; nay, they reveal to us
the actual forms then considered appropriate to Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd) and
Angro-Mainyus (Ahriman); for we can scarcely be mistaken in regarding
the prostrate figure under the hoofs of Ahura-Mazda’s steed as the
antagonist Spirit of Evil. Finally, the inscriptions show that, from
the commencement of their sovereignty, the Sassanian princes claimed
for themselves a qualified divinity, assuming the title of BAG and
ALHA, “god,” and taking, in the Greek version of their legends, the
correspondent epithet of _OEOE_




CHAPTER IV.


_Death of Artaxerxes I. and Accession of Sapor I. War of Sapor with
Manizen. His first War with Rome. Invasion of Mesopotamia, A.D. 241.
Occupation of Antioch. Expedition of Gordian to the East. Recovery by
Rome of her lost Territory. Peace made between Rome and Persia. Obscure
Interval. Second War with Rome. Mesopotamia again invaded, A.D. 258.
Valerian takes the Command in the East. Struggle between him and Sapor.
Defeat and Capture of Valerian, A.D. 260. Sapor invests Miriades with
the Purple. He takes Syria and Southern Cappadocia, but is shortly
afterwards attacked by Odenathus. Successes of Odenathus. Treatment of
Valerian. Further successes of Odenathus. Period of Tranquillity. Great
Works of Sapor. His Scriptures. His Dyke. His Inscriptions. His Coins.
His Religion. Religious Condition of the East in his Time. Rise into
Notice of Mani. His Rejection by Sapor. Sapor’s Death. His Character._


[Illustration: CHAPTER-4]


Artaxerxes appears to have died in A.D. 240. He was succeeded by his
son, Shahpuhri, or Sapor, the first Sassanian prince of that name.
According to the Persian historians, the mother of Sapor was a daughter
of the last Parthian king, Artabanus, whom Artaxerxes had taken to wife
after his conquest of her father. But the facts known of Sapor throw
doubt on this story, which has too many parallels in Oriental romance
to claim implicit credence. Nothing authentic has come down to us
respecting Sapor during his father’s lifetime; but from the moment that
he mounted the throne, we find him engaged in a series of wars, which
show him to have been of a most active and energetic character. Armenia,
which Artaxerxes had subjected, attempted (it would seem) to regain
its independence at the commencement of the new reign; but Sapor easily
crushed the nascent insurrection, and the Armenians made no further
effort to free themselves till several years after his death.
Contemporaneously with this revolt in the mountain region of the north,
a danger showed itself in the plain country of the south, where Manizen,
king of Hatra, or El Hadhr, not only declared himself independent, but
assumed dominion over the entire tract between the Euphrates and the
Tigris, the Jezireh of the Arabian geographers. The strength of Hatra
was great, as had been proved by Trajan and Severus; its thick walls
and valiant inhabitants would probably have defied every attempt of
the Persian prince to make himself master of it by force. He therefore
condescended to stratagem. Manizen had a daughter who cherished
ambitious views. On obtaining a promise from Sapor that if she gave
Hatra into his power he would make her his queen, this unnatural child
turned against her father, betrayed him into Sapor’s hands, and thus
brought the war to an end. Sapor recovered his lost territory; but he
did not fulfil his bargain. Instead of marrying the traitress, he handed
her over to an executioner, to receive the death that she had deserved,
though scarcely at his hands. Encouraged by his success in these two
lesser contests, Sapor resolved (apparently in A.D. 241) to resume the
bold projects of his father, and engage in a great war with Rome. The
confusion and troubles which afflicted the Roman Empire at this time
were such as might well give him hopes of obtaining a decided advantage.
Alexander, his father’s adversary, had been murdered in A.D. 235 by
Maximin, who from the condition of a Thracian peasant had risen into the
higher ranks of the army. The upstart had ruled like the savage that he
was; and, after three years of misery, the whole Roman world had risen
against him. Two emperors had been proclaimed in Africa; on their fall,
two others had been elected by the Senate; a third, a mere boy, had been
added at the demand of the Roman populace. All the pretenders except
the last had met with violent deaths; and, after the shocks of a year
unparalleled since A.D. 69, the administration of the greatest kingdom
in the world was in the hands of a youth of fifteen. Sapor, no doubt,
thought he saw in this condition of things an opportunity that he ought
not to miss, and rapidly matured his plans lest the favorable moment
should pass away.

Crossing the middle Tigris into Mesopotamia, the bands of Sapor first
attacked the important city of Nisibis. Nisibis, at this time a Roman
colony, was strongly situated on the outskirts of the mountain
range which traverses Northern Mesopotamia between the 37th and 38th
parallels. The place was well fortified and well defended; it offered a
prolonged resistance; but at last the Avails were breached, and it was
forced to yield itself. The advance was then made along the southern
flank of the mountains, by Carrhae (Harran) and Edessa to the Euphrates,
which was probably reached in the neighborhood of Birehjik, The hordes
then poured into Syria, and, spreading themselves over that fertile
region, surprised and took the metropolis of the Roman East, the rich
and luxurious city of Antioch. But meantime the Romans had shown a
spirit which had not been expected from them. Gordian, young as he
was, had quitted Rome and marched through Mossia and Thrace into Asia,
accompanied by a formidable army, and by at least one good general.
Timesitheus, whose daughter Gordian had recently married, though his
life had hitherto been that of a civilian, exhibited, on his elevation
to the dignity of Praetorian prefect, considerable military ability.
The army, nominally commanded by Gordian, really acted under his orders.
With it Timesitheus attacked and beat the bands of Sapor in a number of
engagements, recovered Antioch, crossed the Euphrates, retook
Carrhae, defeated the Persian monarch in a pitched battle near Resaina
(Ras-el-Ain), recovered Nisibis, and once more planted the Roman
standards on the banks of the Tigris. Sapor hastily evacuated most of
his conquests, and retired first across the Euphrates and then across
the more eastern river; while the Romans advanced as he retreated,
placed garrisons in the various Mesopotamian towns, and even threatened
the great city of Ctesiphon. Gordian was confident that his general
would gain further triumphs, and wrote to the Senate to that effect;
but either disease or the arts of a rival cut short the career of
the victor, and from the time of his death the Romans ceased to be
successful. The legions had, it would seem, invaded Southern Mesopotamia
when the Praetorian prefect who had succeeded Timesitheus brought
them intentionally into difficulties by his mismanagement of the
commissariat; and at last retreat was determined on. The young emperor
was approaching the Khabour, and had almost reached his own frontier,
when the discontent of the army, fomented by the prefect, Philip, came
to a head. Gordian was murdered at a place called Zaitha, about twenty
miles south of Circesium, and was buried where he fell, the soldiers
raising a tumulus in his honor. His successor, Philip, was glad to make
peace on any tolerable terms with the Persians; he felt himself insecure
upon his throne, and was anxious to obtain the Senate’s sanction of his
usurpation. He therefore quitted the East in A.D. 244, having concluded
a treaty with Sapor, by which Armenia seems to have been left to the
Persians, while Mesopotamia returned to its old condition of a Roman
province.

The peace made between Philip and Sapor was followed by an interval of
fourteen years, during which scarcely anything is known of the condition
of Persia. We may suspect that troubles in the north-east of his empire
occupied Sapor during this period, for at the end of it we find Bactria,
which was certainly subject to Persia during the earlier years of
the monarchy, occupying an independent position, and even assuming an
attitude of hostility towards the Persian monarch. Bactria had, from a
remote antiquity, claims to pre-eminence among the Aryan nations. She
was more than once inclined to revolt from the Achaemenidae; and during
the later Parthian period she had enjoyed a sort of semi-independence.
It would seem that she now succeeded in detaching herself altogether
from her southern neighbor, and becoming a distinct and separate power.
To strengthen her position she entered into relations with Rome, which
gladly welcomed any adhesions to her cause in this remote region.

Sapor’s second war with Rome was, like his first, provoked by himself.
After concluding his peace with Philip, he had seen the Roman world
governed successively by six weak emperors, of whom four had died
violent deaths, while at the same time there had been a continued series
of attacks upon the northern frontiers of the empire by Alemanni,
Goths, and Franks, who had ravaged at their will a number of the finest
provinces, and threatened the absolute destruction of the great monarchy
of the West. It was natural that the chief kingdom of Western Asia
should note these events, and should seek to promote its own interests
by taking advantage of the circumstances of the time. Sapor, in A.D.
258, determined on a fresh invasion of the Roman provinces, and, once
more entering Mesopotamia, carried all before him, became master of
Nisibis, Carrhae, and Edessa, and, crossing the Euphrates, surprised
Antioch, which was wrapped in the enjoyment of theatrical and other
representations, and only knew its fate on the exclamation of a couple
of actors “that the Persians were in possession of the town.” The
aged emperor, Valerian, hastened to the protection of his more eastern
territories, and at first gained some successes, retaking Antioch, and
making that city his headquarters during his stay in the East. But,
after this, the tide turned. Valerian entrusted the whole conduct of the
war to Macrianus, his Praetorian prefect, whose talents he admired, and
of whose fidelity he did not entertain a suspicion. Macrianus,
however, aspired to the empire, and intentionally brought Valerian into
difficulties, in the hope of disgracing or removing him. His tactics
were successful. The Roman army in Mesopotamia was betrayed into a
situation whence escape was impossible, and where its capitulation was
only a question of time. A bold attempt’ made to force a way through the
enemy’s lines failed utterly, after which famine and pestilence began
to do their work. In vain did the aged emperor send envoys to propose a
peace, and offer to purchase escape by the payment of an immense sum in
gold. Sapor, confident of victory, refused the overture, and, waiting
patiently till his adversary was at the last gasp, invited him to
a conference, and then treacherously seized his person. The army
surrendered or dispersed. Macrianus, the Praetorian prefect, shortly
assumed the title of emperor, and marched against Gallienus, the son and
colleague of Valerian, who had been left to direct affairs in the West.
But another rival started up in the East. Sapor conceived the idea of
complicating the Roman affairs by himself putting forward a pretender;
and an obscure citizen of Antioch, a certain Miriades or Cyriades, a
refugee in his camp, was invested with the purple, and assumed the title
of Caesar. [PLATE. XIII.]


[Illustration: PLATE 13.]

The blow struck at Edessa laid the whole of Roman Asia open to attack,
and the Persian monarch was not slow to seize the occasion. His troops
crossed the Euphrates in force, and, marching on Antioch, once more
captured that unfortunate town, from which the more prudent citizens had
withdrawn, but where the bulk of the people, not displeased at the turn
of affairs, remained and welcomed the conqueror. Miriades was installed
in power, while Sapor himself, at the head of his irresistible
squadrons, pressed forward, bursting “like a mountain torrent” into
Cilicia and thence into Cappadocia. Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul,
at once a famous seat of learning and a great emporium of commerce,
fell; Cilicia Campestris was overrun; and the passes of Taurus, deserted
or weakly defended by the Romans, came into Sapor’s hands. Penetrating
through them and entering the champaign country beyond, his bands soon
formed the siege of Caesarea Mazaca, the greatest city of these parts,
estimated, at this time to have contained a population of four hundred
thousand souls. Demosthenes, the governor of Caesarea, defended
it bravely, and, had force only been used against him, might have
prevailed; but Sapor found friends within the walls, and by their help
made himself master of the place, while its bold defender was obliged to
content himself with escaping by cutting his way through the victorious
host. All Asia Minor now seemed open to the conqueror; and it is
difficult to understand why he did not at any rate attempt a permanent
occupation of the territory which he had so easily overrun. But it
seems certain that he entertained no such idea. Devastation and plunder,
revenge and gain, not permanent conquest, were his objects; and hence
his course was everywhere marked by ruin and carnage, by smoking towns,
ravaged fields, and heaps of slain. His cruelties have no doubt been
exaggerated; but when we hear that he filled the ravines and valleys of
Cappadocia with dead bodies, and so led his cavalry across them; that
he depopulated Antioch, killing or carrying off into slavery almost the
whole population; that he suffered his prisoners in many cases to perish
of hunger, and that he drove them to water once a day like beasts, we
may be sure that the guise in which he showed himself to the Romans was
that of a merciless scourge--an avenger bent on spreading the terror
of his name--not of one who really sought to enlarge the limits of his
empire.

During the whole course of this plundering expedition, until the retreat
began, we hear but of one check that the bands of Sapor received. It had
been determined to attack Emesa (now Hems), one of the most important of
the Syrian towns, where the temple of Venus was known to contain a vast
treasure. The invaders approached, scarcely expecting to be resisted;
but the high priest of the temple, having collected a large body of
peasants, appeared, in his sacerdotal robes, at the head of a
fanatic multitude armed with slings, and succeeded in beating off the
assailants. Emesa, its temple, and its treasure, escaped the rapacity
of the Persians; and an example of resistance was set, which was not
perhaps without important consequences.

For it seems certain that the return of Sapor across the Euphrates was
not effected without considerable loss and difficulty. On his advance
into Syria he had received an embassy from a certain Odenathus, a Syrian
or Arab chief, who occupied a position of semi-independence at Palmyra,
which, through the advantages of its situation, had lately become a
flourishing commercial town. Odenathus sent a long train of camels laden
with gifts, consisting in part of rare and precious merchandise, to the
Persian monarch, begging him to accept them, and claiming his favorable
regard on the ground that he had hitherto refrained from all acts of
hostility against the Persians. It appears that Sapor took offence at
the tone of the communication, which was not sufficiently humble to
please him. Tearing the letter to fragments and trampling it beneath his
feet, he exclaimed--“Who is this Odenathus, and of what country, that he
ventures thus to address his lord? Let him now, if he would lighten his
punishment, come here and fall prostrate before me with his hands tied
behind his back. Should he refuse, let him be well assured that I will
destroy himself, his race, and his land.” At the same time he ordered
his servants to cast the costly presents of the Palmyrene prince into
the Euphrates.

This arrogant and offensive behavior naturally turned the willing
friend into an enemy. Odenathus, finding himself forced into a hostile
position, took arms and watched his opportunity. So long as Sapor
continued to advance, he kept aloof. As soon, however, as the retreat
commenced, and the Persian army, encumbered with its spoil and captives,
proceeded to make its way back slowly and painfully to the Euphrates,
Odenathus, who had collected a large force, in part from the Syrian
villages, in part from the wild tribes of Arabia, made his appearance in
the field. His light and agile horsemen hovered about the Persian host,
cut off their stragglers, made prize of much of their spoil, and even
captured a portion of the seraglio of the Great King. The harassed
troops were glad when they had placed the Euphrates between themselves
and their pursuer, and congratulated each other on their escape. So
much had they suffered, and so little did they feel equal to further
conflicts, that on their march through Mesopotamia they consented to
purchase the neutrality of the people of Edessa by making over to them
all the coined money that they had carried off in their Syrian raid.
After this it would seem that the retreat was unmolested, and Sapor
succeeded in conveying the greater part of his army, together with his
illustrious prisoner, to his own country.

With regard to the treatment that Valerian received at the hands of
his conqueror, it is difficult to form a decided opinion. The writers
nearest to the time speak vaguely and moderately, merely telling us that
he grew old in his captivity, and was kept in the condition of a slave.
It is reserved for authors of the next generation to inform us that he
was exposed to the constant gaze of the multitude, fettered, but clad in
the imperial purple; and that Sapor, whenever he mounted on horseback,
placed his foot upon his prisoner’s neck. Some add that, when the
unhappy captive died, about the year A.D. 265 or 266, his body was
flayed, and the skin inflated and hung up to view in one of the most
frequented temples of Persia, where it was seen by Roman envoys on their
visits to the Great King’s court.

It is impossible to deny that Oriental barbarism may conceivably have
gone to these lengths; and it is in favor of the truth of the details
that Roman vanity would naturally have been opposed to their invention.
But, on the other hand, we have to remember that in the East the person
of a king is generally regarded as sacred, and that self-interest
restrains the conquering monarch from dishonoring one of his own class.
We have also to give due weight to the fact that the earlier authorities
are silent with respect to any such atrocities and that they are
first related half a century after the time when they are said to
have occurred. Under these circumstances the scepticism of Gibbon with
respect to them is perhaps more worthy of commendation than the ready
faith of a recent French writer.

It may be added that Oriental monarchs, when they are cruel, do not show
themselves ashamed of their cruelties, but usually relate them openly in
their inscriptions, or represent them in their bas-reliefs. The remains
ascribed on good grounds to Sapor do not, however, contain anything
confirmatory of the stories which we are considering. Valerian is
represented on them in a humble attitude, but not fettered, and never in
the posture of extreme degradation commonly associated with his name. He
bends his knee, as no doubt he would be required to do, on being brought
into the Great King’s presence; but otherwise he does not appear to
be subjected to any indignity. It seems thus to be on the whole most
probable that the Roman emperor was not more severely treated than the
generalty of captive princes, and that Sapor has been unjustly taxed
with abusing the rights of conquest.

The hostile feeling of Odenathus against Sapor did not cease with the
retreat of the latter across the Euphrates. The Palmyrene prince was
bent on taking advantage of the general confusion of the times to carve
out for himself a considerable kingdom, of which Palmyra should be the
capital. Syria and Palestine on the one hand, Mesopotamia on the other,
were the provinces that lay most conveniently near to him, and that he
especially coveted. But Mesopotamia had remained in the possession of
the Persians as the prize of their victory over Valerian, and could
only be obtained by wresting it from the hands into which it had fallen.
Odenathus did not shrink from this contest. It had been with some
reason conjectured that Sapor must have been at this time occupied with
troubles which had broken out on the eastern side of his empire. At any
rate, it appears that Odenathus, after a short contest with Macriarius
and his son, Quietus, turned his arms once more, about A.D. 263, against
the Persians, crossed the Euphrates into Mesopotamia, took Oarrhee and
Nisibis, defeated Sapor and some of his sons in a battle, and drove
the entire Persian host in confusion to the gates of Ctesiphon. He even
ventured to form the siege of that city; but it was not long before
effectual relief arrived; from all the provinces flocked in contingents
for the defence of the Western capital; several engagements were fought,
in some of which Odenathus was defeated; and at last he found himself
involved in difficulties through his ignorance of the localities, and
so thought it best to retire. Apparently his retreat was undisturbed; he
succeeded in carrying off his booty and his prisoners, among whom
were several satraps, and he retained possession of Mesopotamia, which
continued to form a part of the Palmyrene kingdom until the capture of
Zenobia by Aurelian (A.D. 273).

The successes of Odenathus in A.D. 263 were followed by a period of
comparative tranquillity. That ambitious prince seems to have been
content with ruling from the Tigris to the Mediterranean, and with
the titles of “Augustus,” which he received from the Roman emperor,
Gallienus, and “king of kings,” which he assumed upon his coins. He did
not press further upon Sapor; nor did the Roman emperor make any serious
attempt to recover his father’s person or revenge his defeat upon the
Persians. An expedition which he sent out to the East, professedly
with this object, in the year A.D. 267, failed utterly, its commander,
Heraclianus, being completely defeated by Zenobia, the widow and
successor of Odenathus. Odenathus himself was murdered by a kinsman
three or four years after his great successes; and, though Zenobia
ruled his kingdom almost with a man’s vigor, the removal of his powerful
adversary must have been felt as a relief by the Persian monarch. It
is evident, too, that from the time of the accession of Zenobia, the
relations between Rome and Palmyra had become unfriendly; the old empire
grew jealous of the new kingdom which had sprung up upon its borders;
and the effect of this jealousy, while it lasted, was to secure Persia
from any attack on the part of either.

It appears that Sapor, relieved from any further necessity of defending
his empire in arms, employed the remaining years of his life in
the construction of great works, and especially in the erection and
ornamentation of a new capital. The ruins of Shahpur, which still exist
near Kazerun, in the province of Fars, commemorate the name, and afford
some indication of the grandeur, of the second Persian monarch. Besides
remains of buildings, they comprise a number of bas-reliefs and rock
inscriptions, some of which were beyond a doubt set up by Sapor I.
In one of the most remarkable the Persian monarch is represented on
horseback, wearing the crown usual upon his coins, and holding by the
hand a tunicked figure, probably Miriades, whom he is presenting to the
captured Romans as their sovereign. Foremost to do him homage is the
kneeling figure of a chieftain, probably Valerian, behind whom are
arranged in a double line seventeen persons, representing apparently the
different corps of the Roman army. [PLATE XIV.] All these persons are on
foot, while in contrast with them are arranged behind Sapor ten guards
on horseback, who represent his irresistible cavalry. Another bas-relief
at the same place gives us a general view of the triumph of Sapor on his
return to Persia with his illustrious prisoner. Here fifty-seven guards
are ranged behind him, while in front are thirty-three tribute-bearers,
having with them an elephant and a chariot. In the centre is a group
of seven figures, comprising Sapor, who is on horseback in his usual
costume; Valerian, who is under the horse’s feet; Miriades, who stands
by Sapor’s side; three principal tribute-bearers in front of the main
figure; and a Victory which floats in the sky.


[Illustration: PLATE 14.]


Another important work, assigned by tradition to Sapor I., is the great
dyke at Shuster. This is a dam across the river Karun, formed of cut
stones, cemented by lime, and fastened together by clamps of iron; it is
twenty feet broad, and no less than twelve hundred feet in length. The
whole is a solid mass excepting in the centre, where two small arches
have been constructed for the purpose of allowing a part of the stream
to flow in its natural bed. The greater portion of the water is directed
eastward into a canal cut for it; and the town of Shuster is thus
defended on both sides by a water barrier, whereby the position becomes
one of great strength. Tradition says that Sapor used his power over
Valerian to obtain Roman engineers for this work; and the great dam is
still known as the Bund-i-Kaisar, or “dam of Caesar,” to the inhabitants
of the neighboring country.

Besides his works at Shahpur and Shuster, Sapor set up memorials
of himself at Haji-abad, Nakhsh-i-Rajab, and Nakhsh-i-Rustam, near
Persepolis, at Darabgerd in South-eastern Persia, and elsewhere; most
of which still exist and have been described by various travellers. At
Nakhsh-i-Rustam Valerian is seen making his submission in one tablet,
while another exhibits the glories of Sapor’s court. The sculptures are
in some instances accompanied by inscriptions. One of these is, like
those of Artaxerxes, bilingual, Greek and Persian. The Greek inscription
runs as follows:


[Illustration: PAGE 289]

In the main, Sapor, it will be seen, follows the phrases of his father
Artaxerxes; but he claims a wider dominion. Artaxerxes is content to
rule over Ariana (or Iran) only; his son calls himself lord both of the
Arians and the non-Arians, or of Iran and Turan. We may conclude from
this as probable that he held some Scythic tribes under his sway,
probably in Segestan, or Seistan, the country south and east of the
Hamoon, or lake in which the Helmend is swallowed up. Scythians had been
settled in these parts, and in portions of Afghanistan and India,
since the great invasion of the Yue-chi, about B.C. 200; and it is not
unlikely that some of them may have passed under the Persian rule during
the reign of Sapor, but we have no particulars of these conquests.

Sapor’s coins resemble those of Artaxerxes in general type, but may be
distinguished from them, first, by the head-dress, which is either a cap
terminating in the head of an eagle, or else a mural crown surmounted by
an inflated ball; and, secondly, by the emblem on the reverse, which is
almost always a fire-altar between two supporters [PLATE XV., Fig. 2.]
The ordinary legend on the coins is “Mazdisn bag Shahpuhri, malkan
malka Airan, minuchitri minyazdan,” on the obverse; and on the reverse
“Shahpuhri nuvazi.”

It appears from these legends, and from the inscription above given,
that Sapor was, like his father, a zealous Zoroastrian. His faith
was exposed to considerable trial. Never was there a time of greater
religious ferment in the East, or a crisis which more shook men’s belief
in ancestral creeds. The absurd idolatry which had generally prevailed
through Western Asia for two thousand years--a nature-worship which
gave the sanction of religion to the gratification of men’s lowest
propensities--was shaken to its foundation; and everywhere men were
striving after something higher, nobler, and truer than had satisfied
previous generations for twenty centuries. The sudden revivification
of Zoroastrianism, after it had been depressed and almost forgotten for
five hundred years, was one result of this stir of men’s minds. Another
result was the rapid progress of Christianity, which in the course of
the third century overspread large portions of the East, rooting itself
with great firmness in Armenia, and obtaining a hold to some extent on
Babylonia, Bactria, and perhaps even on India. Judaism, also, which had
long had a footing in Mesopotamia, and which after the time of Hadrian
may be regarded as having its headquarters at Babylon--Judaism itself,
usually so immovable, at this time showed signs of life and change,
taking something like a new form in the schools wherein was compiled the
vast and strange work known as “the Babylonian Talmud.”

Amid the strife and jar of so many conflicting systems, each having a
root in the past, and each able to appeal with more or less of force
to noble examples of virtue and constancy among its professors in the
present, we cannot be surprised that in some minds the idea grew up
that, while all the systems possessed some truth, no one of them was
perfect or indeed much superior to its fellows. Eclectic or syncretic
views are always congenial to some intellects; and in times when
religious thought is deeply stirred, and antagonistic creeds are brought
into direct collision, the amiable feeling of a desire for peace comes
in to strengthen the inclination for reconciling opponents by means of a
fusion, and producing harmony by a happy combination of discords. It was
in Persia, and in the reign of Sapor, that one of the most remarkable of
these well-meaning attempts at fusion and reconciliation that the whole
of history can show was made, and with results which ought to be a
lasting warning to the apostles of comprehension. A certain Mani (or
Manes, as the ecclesiastical writers call him), born in Persia about
A.D. 240, grew to manhood under Sapor, exposed to the various religious
influences of which we have spoken. With a mind free from prejudice and
open to conviction, he studied the various systems of belief which he
found established in Western Asia--the Cabalism of the Babylonian Jews,
the Dualism of the Magi, the mysterious doctrines of the Christians, and
even the Buddhism of India. At first he inclined to Christianity, and is
said to have been admitted to priest’s orders and to have ministered to
a congregation; but after a time he thought that he saw his way to the
formation of a new creed, which should combine all that was best in
the religious systems which he was acquainted with, and omit what
was superfluous or objectionable. He adopted the Dualism of the
Zoroastrians, the metempsychosis of India, the angelism and demonism
of the Talmud, and the Trinitarianism of the Gospel of Christ. Christ
himself he identified with Mithra, and gave Him his dwelling in the sun.
He assumed to be the Paraclete promised by Christ, who should guide men
into all truth, and claimed that his “Ertang,” a sacred book illustrated
by pictures of his own painting, should supersede the New Testament.
Such pretensions were not likely to be tolerated by the Christian
community; and Manes had not put them forward very long when he was
expelled from the church and forced to carry his teaching elsewhere.
Under these circumstances he is said to have addressed himself to Sapor,
who was at first inclined to show him some favor; but when he found
out what the doctrines of the new teacher actually were, his feelings
underwent a change, and Manes, proscribed, or at any rate threatened
with penalties, had to retire into a foreign country.

The Zoroastrian faith was thus maintained in its purity by the Persian
monarch, who did not allow himself to be imposed upon by the specious
eloquence of the new teacher, but ultimately rejected the strange
amalgamation that was offered to his acceptance. It is scarcely to be
regretted that he so determined. Though the morality of the Manichees
was pure, and though their religion is regarded by some as a sort of
Christianity, there were but few points in which it was an improvement
on Zoroastrianism. Its Dualism was pronounced and decided; its
Trinitarianism was questionable; its teaching with respect to Christ
destroyed the doctrines of the incarnation and atonement; its “Ertang
“ was a poor substitute for Holy Scripture. Even its morality, being
deeply penetrated with asceticism, was of a wrong type and inferior to
that preached by Zoroaster. Had the creed of Manes been accepted by the
Persian monarch, the progress of real Christianity in the East would,
it is probable, have been impeded rather than forwarded--the general
currency of the debased amalgam would have checked the introduction of
the pure metal.

It must have been shortly after his rejection of the teaching of Manes
that Sapor died, having reigned thirty-one years, from A.D. 240 to
A.D. 271. He was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable princes of the
Sassanian series. In military talent, indeed, he may not have equalled
his father; for though he defeated Valerian, he had to confess himself
inferior to Odenathus. But in general governmental ability he is among
the foremost of the Neo-Persian monarchs, and may compare favorably with
almost any prince of the series. He baffled Odenathus, when he was not
able to defeat him, by placing himself behind walls, and by bringing
into play those advantages which naturally belonged to the position of
a monarch attacked in his own country. He maintained, if he did not
permanently advance, the power of Persia in the west; while in the east
it is probable that he considerably extended the bounds of his dominion.
In the internal administration of his empire he united works of
usefulness with the construction of memorial which had only a
sentimental and aesthetic value. He was a liberal patron of art, and
is thought not to have confined his patronage to the encouragement of
native talent. On the subject of religion he did not suffer himself
to be permanently led away by the enthusiasm of a young and bold
freethinker. He decided to maintain the religious system that
had descended to him from his ancestors, and turned a deaf ear to
persuasions that would have led him to revolutionize the religious
opinion of the East without placing it upon a satisfactory footing. The
Orientals add to these commendable features of character, that he was a
man of remarkable beauty, of great personal courage, and of a noble and
princely liberality. According to them, “he only desired wealth that he
might use it for good and great purposes.”




CHAPTER V.


Short Reign of Hormisdas I. His dealings with Manes. Accession of
Varahran I. He puts Manes to Death. Persecutes the Manichaeans and the
Christians. His Relations with Zenobia. He is threatened by Aurelian.
His Death. Reign of Varahran II. His Tyrannical Conduct. His Conquest
of Seistan, and War with India. His war with the Roman Emperors Cams and
Diocletian. His Loss of Armenia. His Death. Short Reign of Varahran III.


[Illustration: CHAPTER-5]


The first and second kings of the Neo-Persian Empire were men of mark
and renown. Their successors for several generations were, comparatively
speaking, feeble and insignificant. The first burst of vigor and
freshness which commonly attends the advent to power of a new race in
the East, or the recovery of its former position by an old one, had
passed away, and was succeeded, as so often happens, by reaction and
exhaustion, the monarchs becoming luxurious and inert, while the people
willingly acquiesced in a policy of which the principle was “Rest and be
thankful.” It helped to keep matters in this quiescent state, that the
kings who ruled during this period had, in almost every instance, short
reigns, four monarchs coming to the throne and dying within the space
of a little more than twenty-one years. The first of these four was
Hormisdates, Hormisdas, or Hormuz, the son of Sapor, who succeeded his
father in A.D. 271. His reign lasted no more than a year and ten days,
and was distinguished by only a single event of any importance. Mani,
who had fled from Sapor, ventured to return to Persia on the accession
of his son, and was received with respect and favor. Whether Hormisdas
was inclined to accept his religious teaching or no, we are not told;
but at any rate he treated him kindly, allowed him to propagate his
doctrines, and even assigned him as his residence a castle named
Arabion. From this place Mani proceeded to spread his views among the
Christians of Mesopotamia, and in a short time succeeded in founding
the sect which, under the name of Manichaeans or Manichaes, gave so much
trouble to the Church for several centuries. Hormisdas, who, according
to some founded the city of Ram-Hormuz in Eastern Persia, died in
A.D.272, and was succeeded by his son or brother, Vararanes or Varahran.
He left no inscriptions, and it is doubted whether we possess any of his
coins.

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

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

Thus unhappy in his domestic administration, Varahran was not much more
fortunate in his wars. Zenobia, the queen of the East, held for some
time to the policy of her illustrious husband, maintaining a position
inimical alike to Rome and Persia from the death of Odenathus in A.D.
267 to Aurelian’s expedition against her in A.D. 272. When, however, in
this year, Aurelian marched to attack her with the full forces of the
empire, she recognized the necessity of calling to her aid other troops
besides her own. It was at this time that she made overtures to the
Persians, which were favorably received; and, in the year A.D. 273,
Persian troops are mentioned among those with whom Aurelian contended in
the vicinity of Palmyra. But the succors sent were inconsiderable, and
were easily overpowered by the arts or arms of the emperor. The young
king had not the courage to throw himself boldly into the war. He
allowed Zenobia to be defeated and reduced to extremities without making
anything like an earnest or determined effort to save her. He continued
her ally, indeed, to the end, and probably offered her an asylum at his
court, if she were compelled to quit her capital; but even this poor
boon he was prevented from conferring by the capture of the unfortunate
princess just as she reached the banks of the Euphrates.

In the aid which he lent Zenobia, Varahran, while he had done too little
to affect in any degree the issue of the struggle, had done quite enough
to provoke Rome and draw down upon him the vengeance of the Empire, It
seems that he quite realized the position in which circumstances had
placed him. Feeling that he had thrown out a challenge to Rome, and
yet shrinking from the impending conflict, he sent an embassy to the
conqueror, deprecating his anger and seeking to propitiate him by rare
and costly gifts. Among these were a purple robe from Cashmere, or some
other remote province of India, of so brilliant a hue that the ordinary
purple of the imperial robes could not compare with it, and a chariot
like to those in which the Persian monarch was himself wont to be
carried. Aurelian accepted these gifts; and it would seem to follow that
he condoned Varahran’s conduct, and granted him terms of peace. Hence,
in the triumph which Aurelian celebrated at Rome in the year A.D. 274,
no Persian captives appeared in the procession, but Persian envoys
were exhibited instead, who bore with them the presents wherewith their
master had appeased the anger of the emperor.

A full year, however, had not elapsed from the time of the triumph when
the master of the Roman world thought fit to change his policy, and,
suddenly declaring war against the Persians, commenced his march
towards the East. We are not told that he discovered, or even sought to
discover, any fresh ground of complaint. His talents were best suited
for employment in the field, and he regarded it as expedient to
“exercise the restless temper of the legions in some foreign war.” Thus
it was desirable to find or make an enemy; and the Persians presented
themselves as the foe which could be attacked most conveniently.
There was no doubt a general desire to efface the memory of Valerian’s
disaster by some considerable success; and war with Persia was therefore
likely to be popular at once with the Senate, with the army, and with
the mixed multitude which was dignified with the title of “the Roman
people.”

Aurelian, therefore, set out for Persia at the head of a numerous, but
still a manageable, force. He proceeded through Illyricum and Macedonia
towards Byzantium, and had almost reached the straits, when a
conspiracy, fomented by one of his secretaries, cut short his career,
and saved the Persian empire from invasion. Aurelian was murdered in the
spring of A.D. 275, at Coenophrurium, a small station between Heraclea
(Perinthus) and Byzantium. The adversary with whom he had hoped to
contend, Varahran, cannot have survived him long, since he died (of
disease as it would seem) in the course of the year, leaving his crown
to a young son who bore the same name with himself, and is known in
history as Varahran the Second.

Varahran II. is said to have ruled at first tyrannically, and to have
greatly disgusted all his principal nobles, who went so far as to form
a conspiracy against him, and intended to put him to death. The chief
of the Magians, however, interposed, and, having effectually alarmed the
king, brought him to acknowledge himself wrong and to promise an entire
change of conduct. The nobles upon this returned to their allegiance;
and Varahran, during the remainder of his reign, is said to have been
distinguished for wisdom and moderation, and to have rendered himself
popular with every class of his subjects.


[Illustration: PLATE 16.]


It appears that this prince was not without military ambition. He
engaged in a war with the Segestani (or Sacastani), the inhabitants
of Segestan or Seistan, a people of Scythic origin, and after a time
reduced them to subjection [PLATE XVII]. He then became involved in a
quarrel with some of the natives of Afghanistan, who were at this time
regarded as “Indians.” A long and desultory contest followed without
definite result, which was not concluded by the year A.D. 283, when he
found himself suddenly engaged in hostilities on the opposite side of
the empire.


[Illustration: PLATE 17]


Rome, in the latter part of the third century, had experienced one of
those reactions which mark her later history, and which alone enabled
her to complete her predestined term of twelve centuries. Between the
years A.D. 274 and 282, under Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, and Carus, she
showed herself once more very decidedly the first military power in
the world, drove back the barbarians on all sides, and even ventured to
indulge in an aggressive policy. Aurelian, as we have seen, was on the
point of invading Persia when a domestic conspiracy brought his reign
and life to an end. Tacitus, his successor, scarcely obtained such a
firm hold upon the throne as to feel that he could with any prudence
provoke a war. But Probus, the next emperor, revived the project of a
Persian expedition, and would probably have led the Roman armies into
Mesopotamia, had not his career been cut short by the revolt of the
legions in Illyria (A.D. 282). Carus, who had been his praetorian
prefect, and who became emperor at his death, adhered steadily to his
policy. It was the first act of his reign to march the forces of the
empire to the extreme east, and to commence in earnest the war which had
so long been threatened. Led by the Emperor in person, the legions once
more crossed the Euphrates.

Mesopotamia was rapidly overrun, since the Persians (we are told) were
at variance among themselves, and a civil war was raging. The bulk of
their forces, moreover, were engaged on the opposite side of the empire
in a struggle with the Indians, probably those of Afghanistan. Under
these circumstances, no effectual resistance was possible; and, if
we may believe the Roman writers, not only was the Roman province of
Mesopotamia recovered, but the entire tract between the rivers as far
south as the latitude of Bagdad was ravaged, and even the two great
cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon were taken without the slightest
difficulty. Persia Proper seemed to lie open to the invader, and Carus
was preparing to penetrate still further to the east, when again an
opportune death checked the progress of the Roman arms, and perhaps
saved the Persian monarchy from destruction. Carus had announced his
intention of continuing his march; some discontent had shown itself;
and an oracle had been quoted which declared that a Roman emperor would
never proceed victoriously beyond Ctesiphon, Carus was not convinced,
but he fell sick, and his projects were delayed; he was still in his
camp near Ctesiphon, when a terrible thunderstorm broke over the ground
occupied by the Roman army. A weird darkness was spread around, amid
which flash followed flash at brief intervals, and peal upon peal
terrified the superstitious soldiery. Suddenly, after the most violent
clap of all, the cry arose that the Emperor was dead. Some said that his
tent had been struck by lightning, and that his death was owing to this
cause; others believed that he had simply happened to succumb to his
malady at the exact moment of the last thunder-clap; a third theory
was that his attendants had taken advantage of the general confusion to
assassinate him, and that he merely added another to the long list of
Roman emperors murdered by those who hoped to profit by their removal.
It is not likely that the problem of what really caused the death of
Carus will ever be solved. That he died very late in A.D. 283, or within
the first fortnight of A.D. 284, is certain; and it is no less certain
that his death was most fortunate for Persia, since it brought the war
to an end when it had reached a point at which any further reverses
would have been disastrous, and gave the Persians a breathing-space
during which they might, at least partially, recover from their
prostration.

Upon the death of Carus, the Romans at once determined on retreat.
It was generally believed that the imperial tent had been struck by
lightning; and it was concluded that the decision of the gods against
the further advance of the invading army had been thereby unmistakably
declared. The army considered that it had done enough, and was anxious
to return home; the feeble successor of Carus, his son Numerian, if
he possessed the will, was at any rate without the power to resist the
wishes of the troops; and the result was that the legions quitted the
East without further fighting, and without securing, by the conclusion
of formal terms of peace, any permanent advantage from their victories.

A pause of two years now occurred, during which Varahran had the
opportunity of strengthening his position while Rome was occupied by
civil wars and distracted between the claims of pretenders. No great use
seems, however, to have been made of this interval. When, in A.D. 286,
the celebrated Diocletian determined to resume the war with Persia, and,
embracing the cause of Tiridates, son of Chosroes, directed his efforts
to the establishment of that prince, as a Roman feudatory, on his
father’s throne. Varahran found himself once more overmatched, and could
offer no effectual resistance. Armenia had now been a province of Persia
for the space of twenty-six (or perhaps forty-six) years; but it had in
no degree been conciliated or united with the rest of the empire. The
people had been distrusted and oppressed; the nobles had been deprived
of employment; a heavy tribute had been laid on the land; and a
religious revolution had been violently effected. It is not surprising
that when Tiridates, supported by a Roman _corps d’armee_, appeared
upon the frontiers, the whole population received him with transports
of loyalty and joy. All the nobles flocked to his standard, and at once
acknowledged him for their king. The people everywhere welcomed him
with acclamations. A native prince of the Arsacid dynasty united the
suffrages of all; and the nation threw itself with enthusiastic zeal
into a struggle which was viewed as a war of independence. It was
forgotten that Tiridates was in fact only a puppet in the hand of the
Roman emperor, and that, whatever the result of the contest, Armenia
would remain at its close, as she had been at its commencement, a
dependant upon a foreign power.

The success of Tiridates at the first was such as might have been
expected from the forces arrayed in his favor. He defeated two Persian
armies in the open field, drove out the garrisons which held the more
important of the fortified towns, and became undisputed master of
Armenia. He even crossed the border which separated Armenia from Persia,
and gained signal victories on admitted Persian ground. According to the
native writers, his personal exploits were extraordinary; he defeated
singly a corps of giants, and routed on foot a large detachment mounted
on elephants! The narrative is here, no doubt, tinged with exaggeration;
but the general result is correctly stated. Tiridates, within a year of
his invasion, was complete master of the entire Armenian highland, and
was in a position to carry his arms beyond his own frontiers.

Such seems to have been the position of things, when Varahran II.
suddenly died, after a reign of seventeen years,52 A.D. 292. He is
generally said to have left behind him two sons, Varahran and Narsehi,
or Narses, of whom the elder, Varahran, was proclaimed king. This prince
was of an amiable temper, but apparently of a weakly constitution. He
was with difficulty persuaded to accept the throne, and anticipated
from the first an early demise. No events are assigned to his short
reign, which (according to the best authorities) did not exceed the
length of four months. It is evident that he must have been powerless to
offer any effectual opposition to Tiridates, whose forces continued
to ravage, year after year, the north-western provinces of the Persian
empire. Had Tiridates been a prince of real military talent, it could
scarcely have been difficult for him to obtain still greater advantages.
But he was content with annual raids, which left the substantial power
of Persia untouched. He allowed the occasion of the throne’s being
occupied by a weak and invalid prince to slip by. The consequences of
this negligence will appear in the next chapter. Persia, permitted to
escape serious attack in her time of weakness, was able shortly to take
the offensive and to make the Armenian prince regret his indolence or
want of ambition. The son of Chosroes became a second time a fugitive;
and once more the Romans were called in to settle the affairs of the
East. We have now to trace the circumstances of this struggle, and to
show how Rome under able leaders succeeded in revenging the defeat
and captivity of Valerian, and in inflicting, in her turn, a grievous
humiliation upon her adversary.




CHAPTER VI.


_Civil War of Narses and his Brother Hormisdas. Narses victorious. He
attacks and expels Tiridates. War declared against him by Diocletian.
First Campaign of Galerius, A.D. 297. Second Campaign, A.D. 298. Defeat
suffered by Narses. Negotiations. Conditions of Peace. Abdication and
Death of Narses._


It appears that on the death of Varahran III., probably without issue,
there was a contention for the crown between two brothers, Narses and
Hormisdas. We are not informed which of them was the elder, nor on what
grounds they respectively rested their claims; but it seems that Narses
was from the first preferred by the Persians, and that his rival
relied mainly for success on the arms of foreign barbarians. Worsted in
encounters wherein none but Persians fought on either side, Hormisdas
summoned to his aid the hordes of the north--Gelli from the shores of
the Caspian, Scyths from the Oxus or the regions beyond, and Russians,
now first mentioned by a classical writer. But the perilous attempt to
settle a domestic struggle by the swords of foreigners was not destined
on this occasion to prosper. Hormisdas failed in his endeavor to obtain
the throne; and, as we hear no more of him, we may regard it as probable
that he was defeated and slain. At any rate Narses was, within a year or
two of his accession, so firmly settled in his kingdom that he was
able to turn his thoughts to the external affairs of the empire, and to
engage in a great war. All danger from internal disorder must have been
pretty certainly removed before Narses could venture to affront, as he
did, the strongest of existing military powers. [PLATE XVIII.]


[Illustration: PLATE 18.]


Narses ascended the throne in A.D. 292 or 293. It was at least as early
as A.D. 296 that he challenged Rome to an encounter by attacking in
force the vassal monarch whom her arms had established in Armenia.
Tiridates had, it is evident, done much to provoke the attack by his
constant raids into Persian territory, which were sometimes carried even
to the south of Ctesiphon. He was probably surprised by the sudden march
and vigorous assault of an enemy whom he had learned to despise; and,
feeling himself unable to organize an effectual resistance, he had
recourse to flight, gave up Armenia to the Persians, and for a second
time placed himself under the protection of the Roman emperor. The
monarch who held this proud position was still Diocletian, the greatest
emperor that had occupied the Roman throne since Trajan, and the prince
to whom Tiridates was indebted for his restoration to his kingdom. It
was impossible that Diocletian should submit to the affront put upon him
without an earnest effort to avenge it. His own power rested, in a great
measure, on his military prestige; and the unpunished insolence of
a foreign king would have seriously endangered an authority not very
firmly established. The position of Diocletian compelled him to declare
war against Narses in the year A.D. 296, and to address himself to a
struggle of which he is not likely to have misconceived the importance.
It might have been expected that he would have undertaken the conduct of
the war in person; but the internal condition of the empire was far
from satisfactory, and the chief of the State seems to have felt that
he could not conveniently quit his dominions to engage in war beyond his
borders. He therefore committed the task of reinstating Tiridates and
punishing Narses to his favorite and son-in-law, Galerius, while he
himself took up a position within the limits of the empire, which at
once enabled him to overawe his domestic adversaries and to support and
countenance his lieutenant.

The first attempts of Galerius were unfortunate. Summoned suddenly from
the Danube to the Euphrates, and placed at the head of an army composed
chiefly of the levies of Asia, ill-disciplined, and unacquainted with
their commander, he had to meet an adversary of whom he knew little
or nothing, in a region the character of which was adverse to his own
troops and favorable to those of the enemy. Narses had invaded the
Roman province of Mesopotamia, had penetrated to the Khabour, and was
threatening to cross the Euphrates into Syria. Galerius had no choice
but to encounter him on the ground which he had chosen. Now, though
Western Mesopotamia is ill-described as a smooth and barren surface of
sandy desert, without a hillock, without a tree, and without a spring
of fresh water, it is undoubtedly an open country, possessing numerous
plains, where, in a battle, the advantage of numbers is likely to be
felt, and where there is abundant room for the evolutions of cavalry.
The Persians, like their predecessors the Parthians, were especially
strong in horse; and the host which Narses had brought into the field
greatly outnumbered the troops which Diocletian had placed at the
disposal of Galerius. Yet Galerius took the offensive. Fighting under
the eye of a somewhat stern master, he was scarcely free to choose his
plan of campaign. Diocletian expected him to drive the Persians
from Mesopotamia, and he was therefore bound to make the attempt. He
accordingly sought out his adversary in this region, and engaged him
in three great battles. The first and second appear to have been
indecisive; but in the third the Roman general suffered a complete
defeat. The catastrophe of Crassus was repeated almost upon the same
battle-field, and probably almost by the same means. But, personally,
Galerius was more fortunate than his predecessor. He escaped from the
carnage, and, recrossing the Euphrates, rejoined his father-in-law in
Syria. A conjecture, not altogether destitute of probability, makes
Tiridates share both the calamity and the good fortune of the Roman
Caesar. Like Galerius, he escaped from the battle-field, and reached the
banks of the Euphrates. But his horse, which had received a wound, could
not be trusted to pass the river. In this emergency the Armenian prince
dismounted, and, armed as he was, plunged into the stream. The river
was both wide and deep; the current was rapid; but the hardy adventurer,
inured to danger and accustomed to every athletic exercise, swam across
and reached the opposite bank in safety.

Thus, while the rank and file perished ignominiously, the two personages
of most importance on the Roman side were saved. Galerius hastened
towards Antioch, to rejoin his colleague and sovereign. The latter
came out to meet him, but, instead of congratulating him on his escape,
assumed the air of an offended master, and, declining to speak to him or
to stop his chariot, forced the Caesar to follow him on foot for nearly
a mile before he would condescend to receive his explanations and
apologies for defeat. The disgrace was keenly felt, and was ultimately
revenged upon the prince who had contrived it. But, at the time, its
main effect doubtless was to awake in the young Caesar the strongest
desire of retrieving his honor, and wiping out the memory of his great
reverse by a yet more signal victory. Galerius did not cease through the
winter of A.D. 297 to importune his father-in-law for an opportunity of
redeeming the past and recovering his lost laurels.

The emperor, having sufficiently indulged his resentment, acceded to
the wishes of his favorite. Galerius was continued in his command. A
new army was collected during the winter, to replace that which had been
lost; and the greatest care was taken that its material should be of
good quality, and that it should be employed where it had the best
chance of success. The veterans of Illyria and Moesia constituted the
flower of the force now enrolled; and it was further strengthened by the
addition of a body of Gothic auxiliaries. It was determined, moreover,
that the attack should this time be made on the side of Armenia,
where it was felt that the Romans would have the double advantage of
a friendly country, and of one far more favorable for the movements of
infantry than for those of an army whose strength lay in its horse. The
number of the troops employed was still small. Galerius entered Armenia
at the head of only 25,000 men; but they were a picked force, and they
might be augmented, almost to any extent, by the national militia of the
Armenians. He was now, moreover, as cautious as he had previously been
rash; he advanced slowly, feeling his way; he even personally made
reconnaissances, accompanied by only one or two horsemen, and, under
the shelter of a flag of truce, explored the position of his adversary.
Narses found himself overmatched alike in art and in force. He allowed
himself to be surprised in his camp by his active enemy, and suffered a
defeat by which he more than lost all the fruits of his former victory.
Most of his army was destroyed; he himself received a wound, and with
difficulty escaped by a hasty flight. Galerius pursued, and, though he
did not succeed in taking the monarch himself, made prize of his
wives, his sisters, and a number of his children, besides capturing
his military chest. He also took many of the most illustrious Persians
prisoners. How far he followed his flying adversary is uncertain; but
it is scarcely probable that he proceeded much southward of the Armenian
frontier. He had to reinstate Tiridates in his dominions, to recover
Eastern Mesopotamia, and to lay his laurels at the feet of his colleague
and master. It seems probable that having driven Narses from Armenia,
and left Tiridates there to administer the government, he hastened to
rejoin Diocletian before attempting any further conquests.

The Persian monarch, on his side, having recovered from his wound, which
could have been but slight, set himself to collect another army, but at
the same time sent an ambassador to to the camp of Galerius, requesting
to know the terms on which Rome would consent to make peace. A writer
of good authority has left us an account of the interview which followed
between the envoy of the Persian monarch and the victorious Roman.
Apharban (so was the envoy named) opened the negotiations with the
following speech:

“The whole human race knows,” he said, “that the Roman and Persian
kingdoms resemble two great luminaries, and that, like a man’s two eyes,
they ought mutually to adorn and illustrate each other, and not in the
extremity of their wrath to seek rather each other’s destruction. So
to act is not to act manfully, but is indicative rather of levity and
weakness; for it is to suppose that our inferiors can never be of any
service to us, and that therefore we had bettor get rid of them. Narses,
moreover, ought not to be accounted a weaker prince than other Persian
kings; thou hast indeed conquered him, but then thou surpassest all
other monarchs; and thus Narses has of course been worsted by thee,
though he is no whit inferior in merit to the best of his ancestors.
The orders which my master has given me are to entrust all the rights of
Persia to the clemency of Rome; and I therefore do not even bring with
me any conditions of peace, since it is for the emperor to determine
everything. I have only to pray, on my master’s behalf, for the
restoration of his wives and male children; if he receives them at your
hands, he will be forever beholden to you, and will be better pleased
than if he recovered them by force of arms. Even now my master cannot
sufficiently thank you for the kind treatment which he hears you have
vouchsafed them, in that you have offered them no insult, but have
behaved towards them as though on the point of giving them back to
their kith and kin. He sees herein that you bear in mind the changes of
fortune and the instability of all human affairs.”

At this point Galerius, who had listened with impatience to the long
harangue, burst in with a movement of anger that shook his whole
frame--“What? Do the Persians dare to remind us of the vicissitudes of
fortune, as though we could forget how they behave when victory inclines
to them? Is it not their wont to push their advantage to the uttermost
and press as heavily as may be on the unfortunate? How charmingly they
showed the moderation that becomes a victor in Valerian’s time! They
vanquished him by fraud; they kept him a prisoner to advanced old age;
they let him die in dishonor; and then when he was dead they stripped
off his skin, and with diabolical ingenuity made of a perishable human
body an imperishable monument of our shame. Verily, if we follow this
envoy’s advice, and look to the changes of human affairs, we shall not
be moved to clemency, but to anger, when we consider the past conduct
of the Persians. If pity be shown them, if their requests be granted, it
will not be for what they have urged, but because it is a principle of
action with us--a principle handed down to us from our ancestors--to
spare the humble and chastise the proud.” Apharban, therefore, was
dismissed with no definite answer to his question, what terms of peace
Rome would require; but he was told to assure his master that Rome’s
clemency equalled her valor, and that it would not be long before he
would receive a Roman envoy authorized to signify the Imperial pleasure,
and to conclude a treaty with him.

Having held this interview with Apharban, Galerius hastened to meet and
consult his colleague. Diocletian had remained in Syria, at the head
of an army of observation, while Galerius penetrated into Armenia and
engaged the forces of Persia. When he heard of his son-in-law’s
great victory he crossed the Euphrates, and advancing through Western
Mesopotamia, from which the Persians probably retired, took up his
residence at Nisibis, now the chief town of these parts. It is perhaps
true that his object was “to moderate, by his presence and counsels, the
pride of Galarius.” That prince was bold to rashness, and nourished an
excessive ambition. He is said to have at this time entertained a design
of grasping at the conquest of the East, and to have even proposed to
himself to reduce the Persian Empire into the form of a Roman province.
But the views of Diocletian were humbler and more prudent. He held
to the opinion of Augustus and Hadrian, that Rome did not need any
enlargement of her territory, and that the absorption of the East was
especially undesirable. When he and his son-in-law met and interchanged
ideas at Nisibis, the views of the elder ruler naturally prevailed; and
it was resolved to offer to the Persians tolerable terms of peace. A
civilian of importance, Sicorius Probus, was selected for the delicate
office of envoy, and was sent, with a train of attendants, into Media,
where Narses had fixed his headquarters. We are told that the Persian
monarch received him with all honor, but, under pretence of allowing
him to rest and refresh himself after his long journey, deferred his
audience from day to day; while he employed the time thus gained in
collecting from various quarters such a number of detachments and
garrisons as might constitute a respectable army. He had no intention of
renewing the war, but he knew the weight which military preparation ever
lends to the representations of diplomacy. Accordingly it was not until
he had brought under the notice of Sicorius a force of no inconsiderable
size that he at last admitted him to an interview. The Roman ambassador
was introduced into an inner chamber of the royal palace in Media, where
he found only the king and three others--Apharban, the envoy sent to
Galerius, Archapetes, the captain of the guard, and Barsaborsus, the
governor of a province on the Armenian frontier. He was asked to unfold
the particulars of his message, and say what were the terms on which
Rome would make peace. Sicorius complied. The emperors, he said,
required five things:--(i.) The cession to Rome of five provinces beyond
the river Tigris, which are given by one writer as Intilene, Sophene,
Arzanene, Carduene, and Zabdicene; by another as Arzanene, Moxoene,
Zabdicene, Rehimene, and Corduene; (ii.) the recognition of the Tigris,
as the general boundary between the two empires; (iii.) the extension of
Armenia to the fortress of Zintha, in Media; (iv.) the relinquishment by
Persia to Rome of her protectorate over Iberia, including the right of
giving investiture to the Iberian kings; and (v.) the recognition of
Nisibis as the place at which alone commercial dealings could take place
between the two nations.

It would seem that the Persians were surprised at the moderation of
these demands. Their exact value and force will require some discussion;
but at any rate it is clear that, under the circumstances, they were
not felt to be excessive. Narses did not dispute any of them except the
last: and it seems to have been rather because he did not wish it to
be said that he had yielded everything, than because the condition was
really very onerous, that he made objection in this instance. Sicorius
was fortunately at liberty to yield the point. He at once withdrew
the fifth article of the treaty, and, the other four being accepted, a
formal peace was concluded between the two nations.

To understand the real character of the peace now made, and to
appreciate properly the relations thereby established between Rome
and Persia, it will be necessary to examine at some length the several
conditions of the treaty, and to see exactly what was imported by each
of them. There is scarcely one out of the whole number that carries its
meaning plainly upon its face; and on the more important very various
interpretations have been put, so that a discussion and settlement of
some rather intricate points is here necessary.

(i.) There is a considerable difference of opinion as to the five
provinces ceded to Rome by the first article of the treaty, as to their
position and extent, and consequently as to their importance. By some
they are put on the right, by others on the left, bank of the Tigris;
while of those who assign them this latter position some place them in
a cluster about the sources of the river, while others extend them very
much further to the southward. Of the five provinces three only can
be certainly named, since the authorities differ as to the two others.
These three are Arzanene, Cordyene, and Zabdicene, which occur in that
order in Patricius. If we can determine the position of these three,
that of the others will follow, at least within certain limits.

Now Arzanene was certainly on the left bank of the Tigris. It adjoined
Armenia, and is reasonably identified with the modern district of
Kherzan, which lies between Lake Van and the Tigris, to the west of the
Bitlis river. All the notices of Arzanene suit this locality; and the
name “Kherzan” may be regarded as representing the ancient appellation.

Zabdicene was a little south and a little east of this position. It
was the tract about a town known as Bezabda (perhaps a corruption of
Beit-Zabda), which had been anciently called Phoenica. This town is
almost certainly represented by the modern Fynyk, on the left bank of
the Tigris, a little above Jezireh. The province whereof it was the
capital may perhaps have adjoined Arzanene, reaching as far north as the
Bitlis river.

If these two tracts are rightly placed, Cordyene must also be sought
on the left bank of the Tigris. The word is no doubt the ancient
representative of the modern Kurdistan, and means a country in
which Kurds dwelt. Now Kurds seem to have been at one time the chief
inhabitants of the Mons Masius, the modern Jebel Kara j ah Dagh and
Jebel Tur, which was thence called Oordyene, Gordyene, or the Gordisean
mountain chain. But there was another and a more important Cordyene
on the opposite side of the river. The tract to this day known as
Kurdistan, the high mountain region south and south-east of Lake Van
between Persia and Mesopotamia, was in the possession of Kurds from
before the time of Xenophon, and was known as the country of the
Carduchi, as Cardyene, and as Cordyene. This tract, which was contiguous
to Arzanene and Zabdicene, if we have rightly placed those regions,
must almost certainly have been the Cordyene of the treaty, which, if
it corresponded at all nearly in extent with the modern Kurdistan, must
have been by far the largest and most important of the five provinces.

The two remaining tracts, whatever their names, must undoubtedly have
lain on the same side of the Tigris with these three. As they are
otherwise unknown to us (for Sophene, which had long been Roman, cannot
have been one of them), it is impossible that they should have been of
much importance. No doubt they helped to round off the Roman dominion
in this quarter; but the great value of the entire cession lay in the
acquisition of the large and fruitful province of Cordyene, inhabited
by a brave and hardy population, and afterwards the seat of fifteen
fortresses which brought the Roman dominion to the very edge of
Adiabene, made them masters of the passes into Media, and laid the whole
of Southern Mesopotamia open to their incursions. It is probable that
the hold of Persia on the territory had never been strong; and in
relinquishing it she may have imagined that she gave up no very great
advantage; but in the hands of Rome Kurdistan became a standing menace
to the Persian power, and we shall find that on the first opportunity
the false step now taken was retrieved, Cordyene with its adjoining
districts was pertinaciously demanded of the Romans, was grudgingly
surrendered, and was then firmly re-attached to the Sassanian dominions.

(ii.) The Tigris is said by Patricius and Festus to have been made the
boundary of the two empires. Gibbon here boldly substitutes the Western
Khabour and maintains that “the Roman frontier traversed, but never
followed, the course of the Tigris.” He appears not to be able to
understand how the Tigris could be the frontier, when five provinces
across the Tigris were Roman. But the intention of the article probably
was, first, to mark the complete cession to Rome of Eastern as well as
Western Mesopotamia, and, secondly, to establish the Tigris as the line
separating the empires below the point down to which the Romans held
both banks. Cordyene may not have touch the Tigris at all, or may have
touched it only about the 37th parallel. From this point southwards,
as far as Mosul, or Nimrud, or possibly Kileh Sherghat, the Tigris was
probably now recognized as the dividing line between the empires. By the
letter of the treaty the whole Euphrates valley might indeed have been
claimed by Rome; but practically she did not push her occupation of
Mesopotamia below Circeshim. The real frontier from this point was the
Mesopotamian desert, which extends from Kerkesiyeh to Nimrud, a
distance of 150 miles. Above this it was the Tigris, as far probably
as Feshapoor; after which it followed the line, whatever it was, which
divided Oordyene from Assyria and Media.

(iii.) The extension of Armenia to the fortress of Zintha, in Media,
seems to have imported much more than would at first sight appear from
the words. Gibbon interprets it as implying the cession of all Media
Atropatene, which certainly appears a little later to be in the
possession of the Armenian monarch, Tiridates. A large addition to the
Armenian territory out of the Median is doubtless intended; but it is
quite impossible to determine definitely the extent or exact character
of the cession.

(iv.) The fourth article of the treaty is sufficiently intelligible.
So long as Armenia had been a fief of the Persian empire, it naturally
belonged to Persia to exercise influence over the neighboring Iberia,
which corresponded closely to the modern Georgia, intervening between
Armenia and the Caucasus. Now, when Armenia had become a dependency
of Rome, the protectorate hitherto exercised by the Sassanian princes
passed naturally to the Caesars; and with the protectorate was bound up
the right of granting investiture to the kingdom, whereby the protecting
power was secured against the establishment on the throne of an
unfriendly person. Iberia was not herself a state of much strength; but
her power of opening or shutting the passes of the Caucasus gave her
considerable importance, since by the admission of the Tatar hordes,
which were always ready to pour in from the plains of the North, she
could suddenly change the whole face of affairs in North-Western Asia,
and inflict a terrible revenge on any enemy that had provoked her. It
is true that she might also bring suffering on her friends, or even
on herself, for the hordes, once admitted, were apt to make little
distinction between friend and foe; but prudential considerations did
not always prevail over the promptings of passion, and there had been
occasions when, in spite of them, the gates had been thrown open and
the barbarians invited to enter. It was well for Rome to have it in her
power to check this peril. Her own strength and the tranquillity of
her eastern provinces were confirmed and secured by the right which she
(practically) obtained of nominating the Iberian monarchs.

(v.) The fifth article of the treaty, having been rejected by Narses
and then withdrawn by Sicorius, need not detain us long. By limiting the
commercial intercourse of the two nations to a single city, and that a
city within their own dominions, the Romans would have obtained enormous
commercial advantages. While their own merchants remained quietly at
home, the foreign merchants would have had the trouble and expense of
bringing their commodities to market a distance of sixty miles from the
Persian frontier and of above a hundred from any considerable town; they
would of course have been liable to market dues, which would have fallen
wholly into Roman hands; and they would further have been chargeable
with any duty, protective or even prohibitive, which Rome chose to
impose. It is not surprising that Narses here made a stand, and insisted
on commerce being left to flow in the broader channels which it had
formed for itself in the course of ages.

Rome thus terminated her first period of struggle with the newly revived
monarchy of Persia by a great victory and a great diplomatic success. If
Narses regarded the terms--and by his conduct he would seem to have done
so--as moderate under the circumstances, our conclusion must be that
the disaster which he had suffered was extreme, and that he knew the
strength of Persia to be, for the time, exhausted. Forced to relinquish
his suzerainty over Armenia and Iberia, he saw those countries not
merely wrested from himself, but placed under the protectorate, and so
made to minister to the strength, of his rival. Nor was this all. Rome
had gradually been advancing across Mesopotamia and working her way
from the Euphrates to the Tigris. Narses had to acknowledge, in so many
words, that the Tigris, and not the Euphrates, was to be regarded as
her true boundary, and that nothing consequently was to be considered as
Persian beyond the more eastern of the two rivers. Even this concession
was not the last or the worst. Narses had finally to submit to see his
empire dismembered, a portion of Media attached to Armenia, and five
provinces, never hitherto in dispute, torn from Persia and added to the
dominion of Rome. He had to allow Rome to establish herself in force on
the left bank of the Tigris, and so to lay open to her assaults a great
portion of his northern besides all his western frontier. He had to
see her brought to the very edge of the Iranic plateau, and within a
fortnight’s march of Persia Proper. The ambition to rival his ancestor
Sapor, if really entertained, was severely punished; and the defeated
prince must have felt that he had been most ill-advised in making the
venture.

Narses did not long continue on the throne after the conclusion of this
disgraceful, though, it may be, necessary, treaty. It was made in
A.D. 297. He abdicated in A.D. 301. It may have been disgust at his
ill-success, it may have been mere weariness of absolute power, which
caused him to descend from his high position and retire into private
life. He was so fortunate as to have a son of full age in whose favor he
could resign, so that there was no difficulty about the succession. His
ministers seem to have thought it necessary to offer some opposition to
his project; but their resistance was feeble, perhaps because they hoped
that a young prince would be more entirely guided by their counsels.
Narses was allowed to complete his act of self-renunciation, and, after
crowning his son Hormisdas with his own hand, to spend the remainder of
his days in retirement. According to the native writers, his main object
was to contemplate death and prepare himself for it. In his youth he had
evinced some levity of character, and had been noted for his devotion to
games and to the chase; in his middle age he laid aside these pursuits,
and, applying himself actively to business, was a good administrator, as
well as a brave soldier. But at last it seemed to him that the only life
worth living was the contemplative, and that the happiness of the hunter
and the statesman must yield to that of the philosopher. It is doubtful
how long he survived his resignation of the throne, but tolerably
certain that he did not outlive his son and successor, who reigned less
than eight years.




CHAPTER VII.

_Reign of Hormisdas II. His Disposition. General Character of his Reign.
His Taste for Building. His new Court of Justice. His Marriage with a
Princess of Cabul. Story of his Son Hormisdas. Death of Hormisdas II.,
and Imprisonment of his Son Hormisdas. Interregnum. Crown assigned to
Sapor II. before his Birth. Long Reign of Sapor. First Period of his
Reign, from A.D. 309 to A.D. 337. Persia plundered by the Arabs and the
Turks. Victories of Sapor over the Arabs. Persecution of the Christians.
Escape of Hormisdas. Feelings and Conduct of Sapor._


Hormisdas II., who became king on the abdication of his father, Narses,
had, like his father, a short reign. He ascended the throne A.D. 301;
he died A.D. 309, not quite eight years later. To this period historians
assign scarcely any events. The personal appearance of Hormisdas, if we
may judge by a gem, was pleasing; [PLATE XVIII., Fig. 4.] he is
said, however, to have been of a harsh temper by nature, but to have
controlled his evil inclinations after he became king, and in fact to
have then neglected nothing that could contribute to the welfare of his
subjects. He engaged in no wars; and his reign was thus one of those
quiet and uneventful intervals which, furnishing no materials for
history, indicate thereby the happiness of a nation. We are told that he
had a strong taste for building, and could never see a crumbling edifice
without instantly setting to work to restore it. Ruined towns and
villages, so common throughout the East in all ages, ceased to be seen
in Persia while he filled the throne. An army of masons always followed
him in his frequent journeys throughout his empire, and repaired
dilapidated homesteads and cottages with as much care and diligence as
edifices of a public character. According to some writers he founded
several entirely new towns in Khuzistan or Susiana, while, according to
others, he built the important city of Hormuz, or (as it is sometimes
called) Ram-Aormuz, in the province of Kerman, which is still a
flourishing place. Other authorities ascribe this city, however, to the
first Hormisdas, the son of Sapor I. and grandson of Artaxerxes.

Among the means devised by Hormisdas II. for bettering the condition of
his people the most remarkable was his establishment of a new Court of
Justice. In the East the oppression of the weak by the powerful is
the most inveterate and universal of all evils, and the one that
well-intentioned monarchs have to be most careful in checking and
repressing. Hormisdas, in his anxiety to root out this evil, is said to
have set up a court expressly for the hearing of causes where complaint
was made by the poor of wrongs done to them by the rich. The duty of
the judges was at once to punish the oppressors, and to see that ample
reparation was made to those whom they had wronged. To increase the
authority of the court, and to secure the impartiality of its sentences,
the monarch made a point of often presiding over it himself, of hearing
the causes, and pronouncing the judgments in person. The most powerful
nobles were thus made to feel that, if they offended, they would be
likely to receive adequate punishment; and the weakest and poorest of
the people were encouraged to come forward and make complaint if they
had suffered injury.

Among his other wives, Hormisdas, we are told, married a daughter of
the king of Cabul. It was natural that, after the conquest of Seistan
by Varahran II., about A.D. 280, the Persian monarchs should establish
relations with the chieftains ruling in Afghanistan. That country seems,
from the first to the fourth century of our era, to have been under the
government of princes of Scythian descent and of considerable wealth and
power. Kadphises, Kanerki, Kenorano. Ooerki, Baraoro, had the main seat
of their empire in the region about Cabul and Jellalabad; but from this
centre they exercised an extensive sway, which at times probably reached
Candahar on the one hand, and the Punjab region on the other. Their
large gold coinage proves them to have been monarchs of great wealth,
while their use of the Greek letters and language indicates a certain
amount of civilization. The marriage of Hormisdas with a princess of
Cabul implies that the hostile relations existing under Varahran II. had
been superseded by friendly ones. Persian aggression had ceased to be
feared. The reigning Indo-Scythic monarch felt no reluctance to give his
daughter in marriage to his Western neighbor, and sent her to his court
(we are told) with a wardrobe and ornaments of the utmost magnificence
and costliness.

Hormisdas II. appears to have had a son, of the same name with himself,
who attained to manhood while his father was still reigning. This
prince, who was generally regarded, and who, of course, viewed himself,
as the heir-apparent, was no favorite with the Persian nobles, whom
he had perhaps offended by an inclination towards the literature and
civilization of the Greeks. It must have been upon previous consultation
and agreement that the entire body of the chief men resolved to vent
their spite by insulting the prince in the most open and public way at
the table of his father. The king was keeping his birthday, which was
always, in Persia, the greatest festival of the year, and so the most
public occasion possible. All the nobles of the realm were invited to
the banquet; and all came and took their several places. The prince
was absent at the first, but shortly arrived, bringing with him, as the
excuse for his late appearance, a quantity of game, the produce of the
morning’s chase. Such an entrance must have created some disturbance
and have drawn general attention; but the nobles, who were bound by
etiquette to rise from their seats, remained firmly fixed in them, and
took not the slightest notice of the prince’s arrival. This behavior was
an indignity which naturally aroused his resentment. In the heat of the
moment he exclaimed aloud that “those who had insulted him should one
day suffer for it--their fate should be the fate of Marsyas.” At first
the threat was not understood; but one chieftain, more learned than
his fellows, explained to the rest that, according to the Greek myth,
Marsyas was flayed alive. Now, flaying alive was a punishment not
unknown to the Persian law; and the nobles, fearing that the prince
really entertained the intention which he had expressed, became
thoroughly alienated from him, and made up their minds that they would
not allow him to reign. During his father’s lifetime, they could, of
course, do nothing; but they laid up the dread threat in their memory,
and patiently waited for the moment when the throne would become vacant,
and their enemy would assert his right to it.

Apparently, their patience was not very severely taxed. Hormisdas II.
died within a few years; and Prince Hormisdas, as the only son whom he
had left behind him, thought to succeed as a matter of course. But the
nobles rose in insurrection, seized his person, and threw him into a
dungeon, intending that he should remain there for the rest of his life.
They themselves took the direction of affairs, and finding that, though
King Hormisdas had left behind him no other son, yet one of his wives
was pregnant, they proclaimed the unborn infant king, and even with the
utmost ceremony proceeded to crown the embryo by suspending the royal
diadem over the womb of the mother. A real interregnum must have
followed; but it did not extend beyond a few months. The pregnant widow
of Hormisdas fortunately gave birth to a boy, and the difficulties of
the succession were thereby ended. All classes acquiesced in the rule
of the infant monarch, who received the name of Sapor--whether simply to
mark the fact that he was believed to be the late king’s son, or in the
hope that he would rival the glories of the first Sapor, is uncertain.

The reign of Sapor II. is estimated variously, at 69, 70, 71, and 72
years; but the balance of authority is in favor of seventy. He was born
in the course of the year A.D. 309, and he seems to have died in the
year after the Roman emperor Valens, or A.D. 379. He thus reigned nearly
three-quarters of a century, being contemporary with the Roman emperors,
Galerius, Constantine, Constantius and Constans, Julian, Jovian,
Valentinian I., Valens, Gratian, and Valentinian II.

This long reign is best divided into periods. The first period of it
extended from A.D. 309 to A.D. 337, or a space of twenty-eight years.
This was the time anterior to Sapor’s wars with the Romans. It included
the sixteen years of his minority and a space of twelve years during
which he waged successful wars with the Arabs. The minority of Sapor was
a period of severe trial to Persia. On every side the bordering nations
endeavored to take advantage of the weakness incident to the rule of a
minor, and attacked and ravaged the empire at their pleasure. The Arabs
were especially aggressive, and made continual raids into Babylonia,
Khuzistan, and the adjoining regions, which desolated these provinces
and carried the horrors of war into the very heart of the empire. The
tribes of Beni-Ayar and Abdul-Kais, which dwelt on the southern shores
of the Persian Gulf, took the lead in these incursions, and though not
attempting any permanent conquests, inflicted terrible sufferings on
the inhabitants of the tracts which they invaded. At the same time a
Mesopotamian. chieftain, called Tayer or Thair, made an attack upon
Otesiphon, took the city by storm, and captured a sister or aunt of the
Persian monarch. The nobles, who, during Sapor’s minority, guided the
helm of the State, were quite incompetent to make head against these
numerous enemies. For sixteen years the marauding bands had the
advantage, and Persia found herself continually weaker, more
impoverished, and less able to recover herself. The young prince is said
to have shown extraordinary discretion and intelligence. He diligently
trained himself in all manly exercises, and prepared both his mind
and body for the important duties of his station. But his tender years
forbade him as yet taking the field; and it is not unlikely that his
ministers prolonged the period of his tutelage in order to retain,
to the latest possible moment, the power whereto they had become
accustomed. At any rate, it was not till he was sixteen, a later age
than Oriental ideas require, that Sapor’s minority ceased--that he
asserted his manhood, and, placing himself at the head of his army, took
the entire direction of affairs, civil and military, into his own hands.

From this moment the fortunes of Persia began to rise. Content at first
to meet and chastise the marauding bands on his own territory, Sapor,
after a time, grew bolder, and ventured to take the offensive. Having
collected a fleet of considerable size, he placed his troops on board,
and conveyed them to the city of El-Katif, an important place on the
south coast of the Persian Gulf, where he disembarked and proceeded
to carry fire and sword through the adjacent region. Either on this
occasion, or more probably in a long series of expeditions, he ravaged
the whole district of the Hejer, gaining numerous victories over the
tribes of the Temanites, the Beni-Wa’iel, the Abdul-Kais, and others,
which had taken a leading part in the invasion of Persia. His military
genius and his valor were everywhere conspicuous; but unfortunately
these excellent qualities were unaccompanied by the humanity which has
been the crowning virtue o£ many a conqueror. Sapor, exasperated by the
sufferings of his countrymen during so many years, thought that he could
not too severely punish those who had inflicted them. He put to the
sword the greater part of every tribe that he conquered; and, when his
soldiers were weary of slaying, he made them pierce the shoulders of
their prisoners, and insert in the wound a string or thong by which to
drag them into captivity. The barbarity of the age and nation approved
these atrocities; and the monarch who had commanded them was, in
consequence, saluted as Dhoulacta, or “Lord of the Shoulders,” by
an admiring people. Cruelties almost as great, but of a different
character, were at the same time sanctioned by Sapor in regard to
one class of his own subjects--viz., those who had made profession
of Christianity. The Zoroastrian zeal of this king was great, and he
regarded it as incumbent on him to check the advance which Christianity
was now making in his territories. He issued severe edicts against the
Christians soon after attaining his majority; and when they sought
the protection of the Roman emperor, he punished their disloyalty by
imposing upon them a fresh tax, the weight of which was oppressive. When
Symeon, Archbishop of Seleucia, complained of this additional burden in
an offensive manner, Sapor retaliated by closing the Christian churches,
confiscating the ecclesiastical property, and putting the complainant
to death. Accounts of these severities reached Constantine, the Roman
emperor, who had recently embraced the new religion (which, in spite
of constant persecution, had gradually overspread the empire), and had
assumed the character of a sort of general protector of the Christians
throughout the world. He remonstrated with Sapor, but to no purpose.
Sapor had formed the resolution to renew the contest terminated
so unfavorably forty years earlier by his grandfather. He made the
emperor’s interference with Persian affairs, and encouragement of his
Christian subjects in their perversity, a ground of complaint, and began
to threaten hostilities. Some negotiations, which are not very clearly
narrated, followed. Both sides, apparently, had determined on war,
but both wished to gain time. It is uncertain what would have been the
result had Constantine lived. But the death of that monarch in the early
summer of A.D. 337, on his way to the eastern frontier, dispelled the
last chance of peace by relieving Sapor from the wholesome fear which
had hitherto restrained his ambition. The military fame of Constantine
was great, and naturally inspired respect; his power was firmly fixed,
and he was without competitor or rival. By his removal the whole face
of affairs was changed; and Sapor, who had almost brought himself to
venture on a rupture with Rome during Constantine’s life, no longer
hesitated on receiving news of his death, but at once commenced
hostilities.

It is probable that among the motives which determined the somewhat
wavering conduct of Sapor at this juncture was a reasonable fear of the
internal troubles which it seemed to be in the power of the Romans to
excite among the Persians, if from friends they became enemies. Having
tested his own military capacity in his Arab wars, and formed an army
on whose courage, endurance, and attachment he could rely, he was not
afraid of measuring his strength with that of Rome in the open field;
but he may well have dreaded the arts which the Imperial State was in
the habit of employing, to supplement her military shortcomings, in
wars with her neighbors. There was now at the court of Constantinople a
Persian refugee of such rank and importance that Constantine had, as it
were, a pretender ready made to his hand, and could reckon on creating
dissension among the Persians whenever he pleased, by simply proclaiming
himself this person’s ally and patron. Prince Hormisdas, the elder
brother of Sapor, and rightful king of Persia, had, after a long
imprisonment, contrived, by the help of his wife, to escape from his
dungeon, and had fled to the court of Constantine as early as A.D.
323. He had been received by the emperor with every mark of honor and
distinction, had been given a maintenance suited to his rank, and had
enjoyed other favors. Sapor must have felt himself deeply aggrieved by
the undue attention paid to his rival; and though he pretended to make
light of the matter, and even generously sent Hormisdas the wife to whom
his escape was due, he cannot but have been uneasy at the possession, by
the Roman emperor, of his brother’s person. In weighing the reasons for
and against war he cannot but have assigned considerable importance to
this circumstance. It did not ultimately prevent him from challenging
Rome to the combat; but it may help to account for the hesitation, the
delay, and the fluctuations of purpose, which we remark in his conduct
during the four or five years which immediately preceded the death of
Constantine.




CHAPTER VIII.


_Position of Affairs on the Death of Constantine. First War of Sapor
with Rome, A.D. 337-350. First Siege of Nisibis. Obscure Interval.
Troubles in Armenia, and Recovery of Armenia by the Persians. Sapor’s
Second Siege of Nisibis. Its Failure. Great Battle of Singara. Sapor’s
Son made Prisoner and murdered in cold blood. Third Siege of Nisibis.
Sapor called away by an Invasion of the Massagatae._


[Illustration: CHAPTER-8]


“Constantius adversus Persas et Saporem, qui Mesopotamiam vastaverant,
novem prasliis parum prospere decertavit.”--Orosius, Hist. vii. 39.


The death of Constantine was followed by the division of the Roman world
among his sons. The vast empire with which Sapor had almost made up his
mind to contend was partitioned out into three moderate-sized kingdoms.
In place of the late brave and experienced emperor, a raw youth, who
had given no signs of superior ability, had the government of the Roman
provinces of the East, of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and
Egypt. Master of one third of the empire only, and of the least warlike
portion, Constantius was a foe whom the Persian monarch might well
despise, and whom he might expect to defeat without much difficulty.
Moreover, there was much in the circumstances of the time that seemed to
promise success to the Persian arms in a struggle with Rome. The removal
of Constantme had been followed by an outburst of licentiousness and
violence among the Roman soldiery in the capital; and throughout the
East the army had cast off the restraints of discipline, and given
indications of a turbulent and seditious spirit. The condition of
Armenia was also such as to encourage Sapor in his ambitious projects.
Tiridates, though a persecutor of the Christians in the early part of
his reign, had been converted by Gregory the Illuminator, and had then
enforced Christianity on his subjects by fire and sword. A sanguinary
conflict had followed. A large portion of the Armenians, firmly attached
to the old national idolatry, had resisted determinedly. Nobles,
priests, and people had fought desperately in defence of their temples,
images, and altars; and, though the persistent will of the king overbore
all opposition, yet the result was the formation of a discontented
faction, which rose up from time to time against its rulers, and was
constantly tempted to ally itself with any foreign power from which it
could hope the re-establishment of the old religion. Armenia had also,
after the death of Tiridates (in A.D. 314), fallen under the government
of weak princes. Persia had recovered from it the portion of Media
Atropatene ceded by the treaty between Galerius and Narses. Sapor,
therefore, had nothing to fear on this side; and he might reasonably
expect to find friends among the Armenians themselves, should the
general position of his affairs allow him to make an effort to extend
Persian influence once more over the Armenian highland.

The bands of Sapor crossed the Roman frontier soon after, if not even
before, the death of Constantine; and after an interval of forty years
the two great powers of the world were once more engaged in a bloody
conflict. Constantius, having paid the last honors to his father’s
remains, hastened to the eastern frontier, where he found the Roman army
weak in numbers, badly armed and badly provided, ill-disposed towards
himself, and almost ready to mutiny. It was necessary, before anything
could be done to resist the advance of Sapor, that the insubordination
of the troops should be checked, their wants supplied, and their
good-will conciliated. Constantius applied himself to effect these
changes. Meanwhile Sapor set the Arabs and Armenians in motion, inducing
the Pagan party among the latter to rise in insurrection, deliver
their king, Tiranus, into his power, and make incursions into the
Roman territory, while the latter infested with their armed bands the
provinces of Mesopotamia and Syria. He himself was content, during the
first year of the war, A.D. 337, with moderate successes, and appeared
to the Romans to avoid rather than seek a pitched battle. Constantius
was able, under these circumstances, not only to maintain his ground,
but to gain certain advantages. He restored the direction of affairs in
Armenia to the Roman party, detached some of the Mesopotamian Arabs from
the side of his adversary, and attached them to his own, and even built
forts in the Persian territory on the further side of the Tigris. But
the gains made were slight; and in the ensuing year (A.D. 338) Sapor
took the field in greater force than before, and addressed himself to
an important enterprise. He aimed, it is evident, from the first, at
the recovery of Mesopotamia, and at thrusting back the Romans from the
Tigris to the Euphrates. He found it easy to overrun the open country,
to ravage the crops, drive off the cattle, and burn the villages and
homesteads. But the region could not be regarded as conquered, it could
not be permanently held, unless the 

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