Full Transcript for The Persians

Now, this became a serious spiral of destruction in the 3rd century, and it was made particularly destructive by the growing power of Rome's enemies. 00:03:08.479 --> 00:03:12.800 For that was what really characterized the 3rd century more than anything else. 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:20.479 For one of the reasons for Rome's success, as we've discussed before, had always been the absence of powerful enemies. 00:03:20.719 --> 00:03:26.719 For example, Rome was very lucky not to encounter Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. 00:03:26.879 --> 00:03:36.400 It was also very lucky that Alexander's successor states became pretty weak in the 2nd century BC, and Rome could fairly easily defeat them. 00:03:36.560 --> 00:03:45.199 And it was very lucky that the Persians and the Germans weren't that big a threat in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. 00:03:45.759 --> 00:03:49.199 But all that was about to change. 00:03:49.360 --> 00:03:56.319 And in this episode, we'll turn to what most Romans would have said was their most dangerous enemy, and that was Persia. 00:03:56.479 --> 00:04:01.360 As before, I'll continue with my own research and writing about the rise to power of Persia. 00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:02.960 Hope you enjoy it. 00:04:21.199 --> 00:04:24.319 His head was bowed, his skin burnt by the sun. 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:29.600 Beside him a magnificent war horse was brought by a young page boy. 00:04:29.839 --> 00:04:33.360 The old man looked up at the animal through bloodshot eyes. 00:04:33.519 --> 00:04:38.480 Then a warrior appeared, tall, strong, and with long flowing braided hair. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:43.680 He walked up to the old man and placed one foot firmly on his back. 00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:51.920 He pushed him onto all fours like an animal, and using him as a human mounting block, he lifted himself onto his horse. 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:54.480 The old man gasped in pain. 00:04:54.720 --> 00:05:04.720 Seldom in human history has there been a more sorrowful sight, for only a few days before the old man had been the emperor of Rome. 00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:06.879 His name was Valerian. 00:05:07.040 --> 00:05:14.240 Now the setting sun cast a long silhouette on his conqueror, Shapur, the Persian king of kings. 00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:17.920 Shapur looked down on the old man and laughed. 00:05:18.079 --> 00:05:26.480 Soon Valerian's skin would be flayed, dyed purple and hung on display in the Persian palace at Catesiphon. 00:05:26.639 --> 00:05:36.480 For the Romans, such an act was unimaginable at a time when the Roman Empire regarded itself as the sole ruler of the civilized world. 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:41.680 But that world was changing, and it was changing fast. 00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:46.240 Persia was not a new enemy but an ancient one. 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:48.399 It had an illustrious past. 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:57.759 In the 6th century BC, when Rome was only a small city-state, the Achaemen Persian Empire had been founded by Cyrus the

Great. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:06.079 Within a hundred years it had become the largest empire on the planet, surpassing the Tao Empire in China. 00:06:06.319 --> 00:06:16.720 But it met more than its match in Alexander the Great, who destroyed it in the 330s BC, spreading his rule as far east as India and Afghanistan. 00:06:16.959 --> 00:06:20.079 Persia then suffered a loss of identity. 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:32.399 Its culture was overwhelmed, as were the cultures of most of the other Middle Eastern civilizations, by the Greek revolution that followed Alexander's conquest of Persia and some of India. 00:06:32.639 --> 00:06:42.079 Everywhere, Greek language and morays dominated from philosophy, literature and architecture to the pantheon of Greek gods. 00:06:42.319 --> 00:06:49.839 Militarily, Greek fighting methods also took over with the widespread use of the hoplite and the phalanx. 00:06:50.079 --> 00:06:58.399 The process of Hellenization continued for decades under the successor states founded by Alexander's generals. 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:06.079 The only exception was the Jewish state, where the Jewish rebels known as the Maccabees rebelled against the Seleucids. 00:07:06.240 --> 00:07:15.360 Seleucus was one of Alexander's generals who founded one of the successor states, and the Maccabees established an independent Judea. 00:07:15.839 --> 00:07:24.319 In the aftermath of Alexander's conquest, Persia had become part of that Seleucid Empire. 00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:35.759 Its sense of Persian identity faded until the Seleucids were overthrown by a more genuinely Persian dynasty called the Parthians. 00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:49.600 However, the Parthian Empire, which lasted from 247 BC to 224 AD, was still culturally and economically the poor relation of the Hellenized Roman world. 00:07:49.759 --> 00:08:03.279 Militarily, although it benefited from having some superbly skilled heavy cavalry, these were limited in number since they were not a professional force, and only consisted of the elite of the Persian aristocracy. 00:08:03.519 --> 00:08:13.839 The rest of the Parthian army consisted of peasant levies of dubious military quality, who would typically hide behind their wicker shields and flee at the first opportunity. 00:08:14.079 --> 00:08:40.159 This meant that although the Parthians achieved one startling surprise victory at the Battle of Cari in fifty three BC over the foolhardy Roman Crassus, who was the third triumvir with Julius Caesar and Pompey, for the next two hundred years the Roman army became very adept at demonstrating its professional and logistical superiority over the Parthians. 00:08:40.480 --> 00:08:54.720 Brutally successful campaigns against Parthia were conducted by the Roman emperors Trajan and later Septimius Severus, in which the Parthians were roundly defeated and their cities sacked, including their capital Catesiphon. 00:08:55.039 --> 00:08:58.799 But then a dramatic change occurred. 00:08:59.039 --> 00:09:09.679 For in the early third century there was growing dissatisfaction amongst the Persian aristocracy about Parthia's pitiful performance against the Romans. 00:09:09.919 --> 00:09:24.080 At that time Parthia was weakened both by civil war and yet another successful Roman invasion in 217, this time led by the Roman Emperor Caracalla, that advanced deep into its Mesopotamian heartland. 00:09:24.320 --> 00:09:33.039 One challenger to the Parthian king was a minor lord called Ardashir, the grandson of a man called Sassan. 00:09:33.279 --> 00:09:55.519 Ardashir's fiefdom was in modern day Fars in the centre of Persia, proclaiming himself the founder of a new Persian Empire and a new dynasty called Sasanian after his grandfather Sasan, he subjugated other local rulers and then challenged the authority of the Parthian king himself, Artabanus IV. 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:08.480 Artabanus's army was already weakened by years of civil war against other claimants to the throne, and it was routed in 224 AD by Ardashir's fervent followers. 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:15.679 Artabanus was killed and Arshadir seized the title of Sharanshar or King of Kings. 00:10:15.919 --> 00:10:25.279 Ardashir quickly conquered all of the remaining Parthian Empire, basing his capital in the traditional Persian capital of Catesiphon. 00:10:25.519 --> 00:10:38.480 Ardashir promised to take revenge on the Romans for the many defeats they had inflicted on the Parthians, and to restore Persia to the former glory of its Achaemenid days. 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:47.360 Indeed, he championed a return to the old Achaemenid Persian Empire, which had ruled the whole of the Middle East, half of which was now Roman. 00:10:47.679 --> 00:10:52.080 This was a declaration of war on the Roman Empire. 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:58.080 But it was not just a military declaration of war, it was a cultural and religious war as well. 00:10:58.320 --> 00:11:08.399 Ardashir revived the traditional Persian religion of Zoroastrianism by giving its priests called Magi greater religious and secular authority. 00:11:08.559 --> 00:11:20.159 Zoroastrianism was and still is a sophisticated and clear-cut cosmology of good and evil in which fire and water are worshipped as agents of ritual purity. 00:11:20.399 --> 00:11:26.879 It stood in stark contrast to the confusing pantheon of Greek and Roman gods. 00:11:27.120 --> 00:11:43.120 Ardashir also patronized Persian art and architecture, reinvoking the Achaemenid traditions of massive figures carved into rock reliefs and the huge vaulted domes in palaces and public buildings. 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:50.159 But most important of all, Ardashir was a remarkably effective military leader. 00:11:50.399 --> 00:12:06.399 His greatest achievement, however, lay not on the battlefield but in the rebuilding of the Persian military machine, for he managed to mobilize larger and better armies than the Parthians had succeeded in doing. 00:12:06.639 --> 00:12:14.639 He achieved

this by centralizing authority in his own hands more successfully than his Parthian predecessors. 00:12:14.720 --> 00:12:43.519 Although government was still largely semi-feudal, with the great Parthian and other noble families serving as vassals to the Shar and Shah or King of Kings, he reduced the power of the independent nobility by replacing them with a network of his own loyal appointees, many of whom were related to him and whom he called Shars, binding them to him through royal patronage. 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:53.919 He also centralized tax collection and built up an efficient bureaucracy with more clearly defined powers and methods of tax enforcement. 00:12:54.159 --> 00:12:59.279 Increased tax revenues rolled into his treasury to fund his growing army. 00:12:59.519 --> 00:13:04.720 And there was one purpose behind all of this, to defeat the Romans. 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:10.879 And to do this the Sasanians held one trump card, their cavalry. 00:13:11.039 --> 00:13:38.240 The traditional Persian combination of heavily mailed cavalry and light horse archers had triumphed over the Roman legionaries at the Battle of Cari in 53 BC, as I've already mentioned, and even though Rome was militarily dominant over the Parthians for the next 250 years, its slow moving legionary infantry armies always found it difficult to fight the intensely mobile Persian cavalry. 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:54.240 So Ardashir concentrated on developing the Persian cavalry advantage, developing a professional Sasanian corps of heavily armoured cavalry, which was probably the most effective fighting unit on any battlefield at the time. 00:13:54.559 --> 00:14:01.120 As the third century developed, the Romans realized that they were at a military disadvantage against the Sasanians. 00:14:01.440 --> 00:14:13.919 The legionaries' weapons and tactics began to look outdated, and the Romans began to copy Persian cavalry tactics and to build up much bigger cavalry units than had existed for centuries in the Roman army. 00:14:14.080 --> 00:14:36.080 And in the third century, this new Sasanian dynasty became Rome's first major adversary since Carthage in 237-8 AD, with Rome distracted by increasing attacks from the German tribes along the Rhine and politically more divided than ever with an extraordinary year of the six emperors in 238 when civil war engulfed the Empire. 00:14:36.399 --> 00:14:40.000 Ardashir invaded Roman Mesopotamia. 00:14:40.159 --> 00:14:54.799 He demonstrated his army's newfound prowess in siege warfare by using mining operations to undermine enemy walls and succeeded in taking the important Roman fortified frontier towns of Nisibis, Cari, and Hattra. 00:14:55.039 --> 00:15:09.200 But it was his son Shapo I, who, during his long reign from 240 to 272 AD, who became Rome's most redoubtable enemy when he invaded Roman Syria in around 241. 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:17.279 Unfortunately, contemporary source material is lacking and confused, making it difficult to be

sure about what really happened. 00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:27.840 But Persian sources make a grand claim that his army captured the great city of Antioch, Rome's third largest after Rome itself and Alexandria and Egypt. 00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:38.879 This is almost certainly an exaggeration, and the Persians probably only made it to the outskirts of Antioch before the Romans repelled them, but even to get that far was an extraordinary achievement. 00:15:39.039 --> 00:15:42.000 However, Shapo didn't have everything his own way. 00:15:42.159 --> 00:15:56.159 Once the Romans had resolved their internal divisions with the appointment of Gordian III as emperor, there was a successful Roman counter-attack in 243 AD, and Shapur's troops were driven out of Syria. 00:15:56.480 --> 00:16:13.519 But the Romans squandered this success when in 244 the Roman commander in the east, the Praetorian prefect Philip the Arab, concluded a humiliating treaty with Shapur, apparently paying half a million denarii in tribute. 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:28.559 The reason for this Roman indignity was entirely due to political instability, for Gordian III died that year, and rather than fighting the Persians, Philip the Arab wanted to buy peace in order to make himself emperor. 00:16:28.799 --> 00:16:40.000 Therefore, at a crucial moment when the Romans were gaining the upper hand over the Sasanians, he led the Eastern Roman army west to make himself emperor. 00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:46.960 This Roman civil war was yet another example of the chronic weakness of the Roman political system. 00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:52.960 It served to snatch defeat from the jaws of what could have been a major Roman victory. 00:16:53.279 --> 00:17:00.639 For the moment Philip was gone, Shapur was back again, invading Syria in force in the 250s. 00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:26.640 And although contemporary source material is again woefully lacking and it's impossible to reconstruct an entirely accurate course of events, it seems that he captured some Roman cities near to Antioch in 251-2 and scored a significant victory over a large Roman army, 60,000 strong, according to the Persian sources, at Barbilissus on the Euphrates. 00:17:26.960 --> 00:17:46.000 He then probably did go on to capture Antioch, which had always been his chief objective, although the Roman ally, the king of Armenia Kosro the Great, seems to have saved the day for the Romans by scoring some successes against him on his northern flank, for the Persians appeared to have withdrawn in 254-5. 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:59.839 But whatever the details of the campaign, this time Shapur had shown that the Sasanian threat to the east was no joking matter and posed a real danger to Rome's control of the eastern Mediterranean. 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:09.279 This meant that the new Emperor Valerian hurried to the east to confront him with the largest army Rome had ever fielded against Persia. 00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:15.759 The few surviving Roman sources are yet again frustratingly vague about what actually happened. 00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:28.079 They suggest that Valerian's army was surrounded near Edessa in 259 or 260, and he unwisely agreed to meet Shapur to negotiate for peace. 00:18:28.240 --> 00:18:32.079 Whereupon Shapur tricked him and abducted him. 00:18:32.319 --> 00:18:37.440 However, the Persian account tells a different and very clear story. 00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:46.240 It says simply that Shapur achieved a decisive Persian victory, taking most of the Roman army, including the Emperor prisoner. 00:18:47.119 --> 00:19:08.720 Valerian the Caesar came against us with seventy thousand men, and we fought a great battle against him, and we took Valerian the Caesar with our own hands, and the provinces of Syria, Cilicia, and Cappadocia, we burnt with fire, we ravaged and conquered them, taking their people captive. 00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:11.599 So that's what the Persians said. 00:19:11.839 --> 00:19:20.960 And whatever actually happened, certainly the majority of the Roman army simply disappeared, with only a few survivors making it back. 00:19:21.279 --> 00:19:25.519 This was one of the worst defeats in Roman history. 00:19:25.759 --> 00:19:28.240 The result was catastrophe. 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:35.599 Shapur marched into Syria and captured Antioch yet again, the centre of Roman administration and government in the east. 00:19:35.839 --> 00:19:41.920 He was now poised to advance both south into Egypt and north into Anatolia. 00:19:42.079 --> 00:19:50.960 It looked as if the Sasanian dream of reestablishing the boundaries of the Achaemenid Empire would become a reality. 00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:57.279 Rome was about to lose the eastern half of its empire. 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:11.440 And that ends this episode. 00:20:11.599 --> 00:20:14.400 Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed it. 00:20:14.480 --> 00:20:22.079 And if you did, as usual, I'd be really grateful if you wanted to subscribe, tell a friend, or best of all, to leave a review. 00:20:22.160 --> 00:20:24.160 That would be fantastic, thank you. 00:20:24.319 --> 00:20:30.319 And in the next episode, we'll continue with the decline of the Roman Empire in the third century. 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:33.279 Thanks for listening and see you next time.