From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Roman-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Greco-Roman world and two successive dynasties of the Persian Empire that began as a war between the late Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire in 92 BC before being carried over to the Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia. The long running competition finally ending as a conflict between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Dynasty in 627 AD.

The conflict lasted for over seven centuries. The Persian Empire was projected through the Parthian and later, Sassanid dynasties. For the Greco-Roman world, the conflict encompassed the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Neither side was ever able to dominate the other. Towns, fortifications, and provinces were sacked, captured, destroyed, and changed sides frequently. Neither side had enough strength and logistics to maintain strategic offensives with grand and decisive results, and neither was weak enough to be defeated or subdued. All of the energy expended over the seven centuries amounted to nothing for either side as the Muslim Arabs conquered the war-exhausted Persian Empire and the Near Eastern and North African territories of the Roman Empire soon after the end of the Roman-Persian conflict.

The first military confrontation came in 66/65 BC, during Pompey's campaign in Armenia, when he rejected a Parthian proposal to establish the frontier between the two empires on the Euphrates. The Parthians occupied Corduene, until then part of Armenia, but were expelled by the Romans. More serious warfare began in 53 BC, when Crassus led an invasion of Mesopotamia, with catastrophic results. At the Battle of Carrhae, Crassus was defeated by the Parthians under the Surena. Crassus was killed, his command mostly annihilated, and the rest captured resulting in the worst Roman defeat since the Battle of Cannae. The Parthians retaliated the following year with raids into Syria, and in 51 BC mounted a major invasion led by the crown prince Pacorus and the general Osaces, but their army was decisively defeated near Antioch by the Romans under Cassius and Osaces was killed. During Caesar's civil war the Parthians briefly intervened in Syria in support of the opponents of Julius Caesar, relieving the besieged Pompeian garrison of Apamea before withdrawing. With the civil war over, Caesar planned Eastern operations larger in scope than Crassus, but was assassinated before his plans could come to fruition. During the ensuing Liberators' civil war, the Parthians actively supported Brutus and Cassius, sending a contingent which fought with them at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC. After that defeat, the Parthians under Pacorus invaded Roman territory in 40 BC in conjunction with Quintus Labienus, a Roman erstwhile supporter of Brutus and Cassius. They swiftly overran Syria, where most of the cities welcomed them. Pacorus then advanced into Judaea, overthrowing the Roman client Hyrcanus II and installing his nephew Antigonus in his place. Meanwhile Labienus had invaded Anatolia, but he was driven back to Syria by Roman forces under Ventidius; reinforced by the Parthians, Labienus was nevertheless defeated and killed. After suffering a further defeat near the Syrian Gates, the Parthians withdrew from Syria. They returned in 38 BC, but were decisively defeated by Ventidius and Pacorus was killed. With Roman control of Syria and Judaea restored, Mark Antony led a huge army into Azerbaijan but failed to make progress and the Romans withdrew with heavy casualties.

After Antony's campaign, peace between the empires was largely uninterrupted until 59 AD, when the Romans invaded Armenia after the Parthian king Vologases I forcibly installed his brother Tiridates on the throne there. Roman forces under Corbulo overthrew Tiridates and replaced him with a Cappadocian prince. This prompted Parthian retaliation and an inconclusive series of campaigns in Armenia ensued. The war came to an end in 64 when the Romans agreed to allow Tiridates and his descendants to rule Armenia on condition that they received the kingship from the Roman emperor. A new series of wars began in the second century AD, during which the Romans consistently held the upper hand over Parthia. In 114 the Roman Emperor Trajan invaded Armenia and annexed it as a Roman province. In 115 he ovverran northern Mesopotamia and in 116 he captured the Parthian capital Ctesiphon before sailing downriver to the Persian Gulf. However, in that year revolts erupted in the occupied territory, while a major Jewish revolt broke out in Roman territory, severely stretching Roman military resources. Trajan subdued the rebels in Mesopotamia, but having installed the Parthian prince Parthamaspates on the throne there as a client ruler he withdrew his armies, and his remaining conquests were abandoned by his successor Hadrian. In 161 another war broke out over Armenia; Vologases IV of Parthia defeated the Romans there and ravaged Syria. In 163 a Roman counter-attack under Statius Priscus installed a favoured candidate on the throne of Armenia, and in 164 Avidius Cassius began an invasion of Mesopotamia, sacking Seleucia and Ctesiphon in the following year. An epidemic, possibly of smallpox, which was sweeping Parthia at the time now spread to the Roman army, leading to their withdrawal. In 195 another Roman invasion of Mesopotamia began under the Emperor Septimius Severus, who returned and sacked Ctesiphon yet again in 197. These wars led to the Roman acquisition of northern Mesopotamia, as far as the areas around Nisibis and Singara. A final war against the Parthians was launched by the Emperor Caracalla, who sacked Arbela in 216, but after his assassination his successor Macrinus was defeated by the Parthians near Nisibis and was obliged to make a payment in exchange for peace.

When the Parthian Empire was overthrown, there was no reduction in the conflict since the Sassanids were even more aggressive and stronger than their predecessors due to their more centralized state. Conflict with Rome began shortly after the foundation of the Sassanid Empire by Ardashir I (226–241), who raided in Mesopotamia and Syria in 230. A Roman counter-offensive in 232 under Alexander Severus (222–235) met with mixed fortunes, winning a number of engagements in north-western Iran while another army was defeated on the Euphrates. The struggle resumed and intensified under Ardashir's successor Shapur I (241–272). He invaded Mesopotamia but his forces were expelled from Roman territory after their defeat in the Battle of Resaena in 243. Encouraged by this success, the Emperor Gordian III advanced down the Euphrates but was defeated near Ctesiphon in the Battle of Misiche in 244. Responding to Roman incursions into Armenia, Shapur I resumed hostilities and defeated the Romans at the Battle of Barbalissos in 253 allowing him to take and plunder Antioch. In 259 he captured the Emperor Valerian I after crushing his army in the Battle of Edessa, but his subsequent advance into Anatolia ended in defeat and the loss of all his territorial gains. In 283 the Emperor Carus launched a successful invasion of Persia, sacking its capital, Ctesiphon. In 296 the Persian Shah Narseh defeated the Emperor Galerius in Mesopotamia, but in 298 Galerius defeated Narseh in Armenia, capturing his harem and forcing the Persians to cede five provinces east of the Tigris. From 336 the Persians under Shapur II mounted a series of offensives against the Romans under Constantius II, with little lasting effect. After a period of truce in the 350s while Shapur repulsed nomad attacks on his Central Asian frontier, he launched a new campaign in 359 which was more successful and provoked a major offensive in 363 by the Roman Emperor Julian. Despite victory in the Battle of Ctesiphon, Julian was unable to take the Persian capital and he was killed the same year during a difficult retreat along the Tigris. His successor Jovian was forced to hand over Nisibis, Singara and the territories taken in 298 in exchange for safe passage for his army back to Roman territory. With both empires preoccupied by barbarian threats from the north, a largely peaceful period followed, interrupted only by two brief wars in 421-2 and 440.

When Anastasius I refused Kavadh I's demand for money to pay his debts to the Hephthalites who had helped him regain his throne, Kavadh used this as a pretext for war. In 502 he quickly captured the unprepared city of Theodosiopolis, but it was soon retaken by the Romans; Kavadh then besieged the fortress-city of Amida through the autumn and winter. In early 503, Amida finally fell and the year saw much warfare without decisive results. The Romans attempted an ultimately unsuccessful siege of the Persian-held Amida while Kavadh laid siege to Edessa with the same results. Finally in 504, the Romans gained the upper hand with the renewed investment of Amida leading to the hand-over of the city. That year an armistice was agreed as a result of an invasion of Armenia by the Huns from the Caucasus. In late 506, a treaty was finally agreed, with the Romans paying subsidies to the Persians for the maintenance of fortifications in the Caucasus against the nomads who threatened the security of both empres. The Roman generals blamed many of their difficulties in this war on their lack of a major base in the immediate vicinity of the frontier, a role filled for the Persians by Nisibis (which until its cession in 363 had served the same purpose for the Romans), and in 505 Anastasius therefore ordered the building of a great fortified city at Dara. This was to become a key component of the Roman defences, and also a lasting source of controversy with the Persians, who complained that its construction violated earlier "arms limitation" pacts by which both empires had agreed not to establish new fortifications in the frontier zone.

Main article: Iberian War

The war was fought from 526 to 532 between the Roman Empire and Persian Empire over the country of Iberia. After the Anastasian War, a seven-year truce was agreed on, yet it lasted for nearly twenty years. Kavadh I tried to force the Christian Iberians to become Zoroastrians even though they were already under Persian rule. In 521/2 the neighbouring Christian kingdom of Lazica had succeeded in transferring its allegiance from the Sassanids to the Romans, and in 524/5 the Iberians under the leadership of Gourgen tried to do likewise, rising in revolt against Persia. Violence escalated at various points where the power of the two empires met: in 525 a Roman fleet transported an Aksumite army to conquer Himyarite Yemen and in 525/6 Persia's Arab allies the Lakhmids raided Roman territories on the edge of the desert. By 526, overt fighting between the two empires had broken out in the Transcaucasus region and upper Mesopotamia. Following the emperor Justin I’s death in 527, Justinian I succeeded to the imperial throne. Kavadh tried to make peace with the new emperor by attempting to have Justinian adopt his son Khosrau I, but without success. The early years of war favoured the Persians: by 527 the Iberian revolt had been crushed, a Roman offensive against Nisibis and Thebetha in that year was unsuccessful and forces attempting to fortify Thunnuris and Melabasa were prevented from doing so by Persian attacks. In 528 the Persians pressed on from Iberia to capture forts in eastern Lazica. Attempting to remedy the deficiencies revealed by these Persian successes, Justinian reorganised the eastern armies by dividing the command of the Magister Militum of the East in two and appointing a Magister Militum of Armenia over the northern portion. Damaging raids on Syria by the Lakhmids in 529 also encouraged Justinian to strengthen his own Arab allies, helping the Ghassanid leader Al-Harith ibn Jabalah turn a loose coalition into a coherent kingdom which was able to gain the upper hand against the Lakhmids over the following decades. In 530 Belisarius led the Romans to victory over a much larger Persian force under Mihran through his superior generalship in the Battle of Dara, while Sittas and Dorotheus defeated a Persian army under Mihr-Mihroe at Satala and the Romans captured some forts in Armenia. In 531 Belisarius was defeated by Persian and Lakhmid forces at the Battle of Callinicum, but the Romans made further gains in Armenia. Kavadh died shortly afterwards and the Eternal Peace agreement, which lasted less than eight years, was signed in September 532, with both sides agreeing to return all occupied territories and the Romans to make a one-off payment of 11,000lbs of gold. Iberia remained in Persian hands.

The successful campaigns of Belisarius in the west encouraged the Persians to return to war, both taking advantage of Roman preoccupation elsewhere and seeking to check the expansion of Roman territory and resources. In 539 the resumption of hostilities was foreshadowed by a Lakhmid raid led by al-Mundhir IV, which was defeated by the Ghassanids under al-Harith ibn Jabalah. In 540, the Persians broke the Treaty Of Eternal Peace and Khosrau I invaded Syria, destroying the great city of Antioch and deporting its population to Persia; as he withdrew, he extorted large sums of money from the cities of Syria and Mesopotamia. Belisarius was quickly recalled by Justinian I to the East to deal with the Persian threat, while the Ostrogoths in Italy, who were in touch with the Persian King, launched a counter-attack. Belisarius took the field and waged an inconclusive campaign against Nisibis in 541. In the same year Lazica switched its allegiance to Persia and Khosrau led an army to secure the kingdom. In 542 Khosrau launched another offensive in Mesopotamia, but soon withdrew in the face of an army under Belisarius, en route sacking the city of Callinicum. Attacks on a number of Roman cities were repulsed and the Persian general Mihr-Mihroe was defeated and captured at Dara by John Troglita. Roman commanders then launched an offensive against Dvin in Armenia, but were defeated by a small Persian force at Anglon. In 543 Khosrau besieged Edessa without success and was eventually bought off by the defenders. A five-year truce was agreed in 545, secured by Roman payments to the Persians.

Main article: Lazic War

The Lazic War lasted from 547 to 562, with the actual fighting ending in 557 due to a five-year truce. Having escaped Persian persecution by defecting to the Romans in 521/2, after twenty years the Lazi had become discontented with their new overlords, and in the wake of Khosrau I's spectacular campaign of 540, in 541 Gubazes II of Lazica switched his allegiance to Khosrau, who captured and garrisoned the Roman base at Petra on the Black Sea. Over the following years Gubazes came to regret his decision and in 547 Lazica changed sides yet again, reigniting the war. In 548 and 549 combined Roman and Lazic forces under Gubazes and the Magister Militum of Armenia Dagistheus won a series of victories against Persian armies under Mihr-Mihroe and Khorianes, but failed in repeated attempts to take Petra. The city finally fell to the Roman general Bessas in 551, but in the same year a Persian army under Mihr-Mihroe occupied eastern Lazica and secured the defection of Scymnia and Svaneti, subject territories of Lazica. That year the truce which had been established in 545 was renewed outside Lazica for a further five years, with the Romans paying 2,000lbs of gold each year. Within the kingdom a limited war continued but the fighting was generally inconclusive, with both sides winning victories but little territory changing hands. The Romans and Lazi blocked attempts by other subject peoples of Lazica, the Abkhaz, Apsili and Misimians, to transfer their allegiance to the Persians. Meanwhile, despite the truce, the Arab clients of the two empires continued to clash, with results that reflected the continuing shift in the balance of power in favour of the Ghassanids. In retaliation for the murder of his son, the Ghassanid king al-Harith ibn Jabalah had led his people to a victory over the Lakhmids in the late 540s or early 550s. In 554 the Lakhmids launched new raids in Syria, but were decisively defeated by the Ghassanids under al-Harith near Chalkis and the Lakhmid king Al-Mundhir IV was killed. In 557 a general truce brought an end to hostilities and a peace treaty was finally concluded in 562. The Persians withdrew from eastern Lazica, leaving the kingdom under Roman control, and agreed to prevent attacks on Roman territory by nomads crossing the Caucasus, the Romans were to pay the Persians 30,000 nomismata annually, and both sides agreed not to build new fortifications near the frontier and to ease restrictions on diplomacy and trade between the two empires.

Main article: Roman-Persian War of 572-591

War broke out again when an Armenian rebellion against the Sassanids began in 571, accompanied by another revolt in Iberia, which enabled the Romans to gain control of much of the Caucasus. However, in Mesopotamia a Roman siege of Nisibis failed and in 573 the great fortress city of Dara fell to Khosrau I, while another Persian army ravaged Syria. In 574 the Romans paid to secure a five-year truce in Mesopotamia, while elsewhere the war went on. In 575 the Romans' Ghassanid allies sacked Hira, the capital of the Lakhmids. In 576 Khosrau I mounted his last campaign, a foray into Anatolia which ended in disaster when he was defeated near Melitene and his army suffered further heavy losses as they crossed the Euphrates under Roman attack. The Romans exploited Persian disarray by raiding deep into Albania and Azerbaijan, launching amphibious raids across the Caspian Sea against northern Iran, wintering in Persian territory and continuing their attacks into the summer of 577. In 578 the truce in Mesopotamia came to an end and the main focus of the war shifted to that front, where the future emperor Maurice sacked the major frontier city of Singara. Around 580 the future Khosrau II was put in charge of the situation in Armenia, where he succeeded in convincing most of the rebel leaders to return to the Persian allegiance, although Iberia remained loyal to the Romans. During the 580s the war continued in inconclusive fashion, with victories on both sides. In 589 the Persians achieved a last success, capturing Martyropolis through treachery, but in the same year the stalemate was shattered when the Persian general Bahram Chobin, having been dismissed and humiliated by Hormizd IV, raised a rebellion. Hormizd was overthrown in a palace coup in 590 and replaced by his son Khosrau II (590–628), but Bahram pressed on with his revolt regardless and the defeated Khosrau was soon forced to flee for safety to Roman territory, while Bahram took the throne as Bahram VI. With support from the Roman emperor Maurice (582–602), Khosrau raised a rebellion against Bahram, and in 591 the combined forces of his supporters and the Romans defeated Bahram, restoring Khosrau II to power and bringing the war to an end. In exchange for their help, Khosrau not only returned Dara and Martyropolis but also agreed to cede the western half of Iberia and more than half of Persian Armenia to the Romans.

Green: Sassanian Empire in 602 to 629, Strokes: Under Sassanid military control.

During Maurice’s Balkan campaigns, he and his family were murdered by Phocas. In November 602 and Khosrau II seized this excuse to attack the Roman Empire. The war initially went the Persians' way, partly because of Phocas' brutal repression and the succession crisis that ensued as the general Heraclius sent his nephew Nicetas to attack Egypt, enabling his son Heraclius the younger to claim the throne in 610. By this time the Persians had conquered Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, and in 611 they overran Syria and entered Anatolia. A major counter-attack led by Heraclius in 613 was decisively defeated outside Antioch by Shahrbaraz and Shahin and the Roman position collapsed. Over the following decade the Persians were able to conquer Palestine and Egypt and to devastate Anatolia, while the Avars and Slavs took advantage of the situation to overrun the Balkans, bringing the Roman Empire to the brink of destruction. During these years, Heraclius strove to rebuild his army, slashing non-military expenditure, devaluing the currency and melting down Church plate to raise the necessary funds to continue the war. Having revived his forces by such means, in 622 he launched a new counter-offensive and won a first victory over the Persians under Shahrbaraz. In 624 and 625, Heraclius campaigned in the Caucasus, winning a series of victories in Azerbaijan and Armenia against Khosrau and his generals Shahrbaraz, Shahin and Shahraplakan. In 626 the Avars and Slavs besieged Constantinople, supported by a Persian army commanded by Shahrbaraz, but the siege ended in failure, while a second Persian army under Shahin suffered another crushing defeat at the hands of Heraclius's brother Theodore. With the Persian war effort disintegrating, Heraclius was able to bring the Gokturks of the Western Turkic Khaganate into the war against the Sassanids in the Caucasus (see Third Perso-Turkic War).

Byzantine Empire by 626 AD under Heraclius, Stripped areas are lands still threatened by the Sassanids

Late in 627 he launched a winter offensive into Mesopotamia, where despite the desertion of the Turkish contingent which had accompanied him he defeated the Persians under Rhahzadh at the Battle of Nineveh. Continuing south along the Tigris he sacked Khosrau's great palace at Dastagird and was only prevented from attacking Ctesiphon by the destruction of the bridges on the Nahrawan Canal. Discredited by this series of disasters, Khosrau was overthrown and killed in a coup led by his son Kavadh II, who at once sued for peace, agreeing to withdraw from all occupied territories.

The devastating impact of this last war, added to the cumulative effects of a century of almost continuous conflict, left both empires crippled. When Kavadh II died only months after coming to the throne, Persia was plunged into several years of dynastic turmoil and civil war. The Sassanids were further weakened by economic decline, heavy taxation from Khosrau II's campaigns, religious unrest, and the increasing power of the provincial landholders. The Roman Empire was even more severely affected, with its financial reserves exhausted by the war, the Balkans now largely in the hands of the Slavs, Anatolia devastated by repeated Persian invasions and the empire's hold on its recently regained territories in the Caucasus, Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt loosened by many years of Persian occupation. Neither empire was given any chance to recover, as within a few years they were struck by the onslaught of the Arabs, newly united by Islam. The Sassanid Empire rapidly succumbed to these attacks and was completely destroyed. During the Byzantine-Arab Wars, the exhausted Roman Empire's recently regained southern provinces were also lost during the Muslim conquest of Syria, Egypt and North Africa, reducing the empire to a territorial rump consisting of Anatolia and a scatter of islands and footholds in the Balkans and Italy.

Byzantine Empire by 650 AD by this point the Sassanid Empire had fallen as well as Byzantine Syria, Palestine, and Egypt to the Arab Caliphate

These remaining lands were thoroughly impoverished by frequent attacks, marking the transition from classical urban civilisation to a more rural, medieval form of society. However, unlike Persia the Roman Empire (in its medieval form usually termed the Byzantine Empire) ultimately survived the Arab assault, holding onto its residual territories and decisively repulsing two Arab sieges of its capital Constantinople in 674-678 and 717-718.

• A.D.H. Bivar, The Political History of Iran under the Arsacids, in The Cambridge History of Iran, volume 3/1. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1983
• Michael H. Dodgeon and Samuel N.C. Lieu, The Roman eastern frontier and the Persian Wars (AD 226-363): a documentary history. London, Routledge: 1991
• Geoffrey Greatrex and Samuel N.C. Lieu, The Roman eastern frontier and the Persian Wars. Part 2, A.D. 363-630: a narrative sourcebook. London, Routledge: 2002
• John Warry, Warfare in the Classical World. New York, Barnes & Noble Books: 2000