Sāsānian Expansion and Roman Decline, 587-626.
Ive seen angels fall from blinding heights,
But you yourself are nothing so divine
just next in line.
-Chris Cornell,
You Know My Name
The latter half of the sixth century saw Roman fortunes decline to a low point, as bad as the worst parts of the reigns of Honorius or Constantinus III. While Roman arms remained largely successful against external opponents, civil wars wracked the Empire, the treasury was perpetually empty, and Roman clients ringing the Mediterranean suffered heavy defeats against foreign opponents. At the same time, the ability of the Roman Emperors to hold the disparate interest groups of the Empire together declined. Everything came disastrously together during the regency of Candidianus in the 580s, as a massive Sāsānian invasion destroyed the client kingdoms of the Greek East, the Balkans fell out of Romes orbit, and when Candidianus was finally overthrown in 586, a massive rebellion ignited in Roman Gaul and Iberia.
Romes problems with regionalism had existed as far back as the late fourth century. The Empire had been developing in separate directions for a very long time not economically, as the Western Mediterranean trading core was still intact and active, but politically and even ethnolinguistically. In the fourth century, Emperors had recognized this divergence, and had made sure to properly spread patronage around; rulers like Valentinianus I had resided in the Rhineland and increased the troop allotments there to stimulate the local economy and provide military commands for the Gallic aristocracy. When Gratianus moved the capital back to Italy in the 380s, the resulting split with the powerful Gallic aristocracy touched off a series of civil wars that didnt really end for fifty years, by which time it was impossible to move the capital back to Gaul, as Italy was once more under serious military threat. Since then, Emperors had attempted to conciliate Gallic interests with shorter-term expedients, with varying degrees of success. Procopius and Probus had been perhaps the best at it, but neither of them solved the fundamental problem.
During Candidianus dominance in the 580s, Gallic calls for a tougher line against the Thuringians had been largely met with approval from the center. The regent had beefed up the Gallic field army while spreading his troops thin in the East, a baffling choice that sparked accusations of incompetence at Ravenna. But it had helped to tie Gallic interests closely to Candidianus person. It has been suggested that Gaul was his backup plan, and that in the event of a palace coup he intended to flee to Arelate and use it as a power base to take back control. In the event, when Emperor Constantius IV launched his plot against Candidianus, the regent was imprisoned before he had got wind of the proceedings against him, and his plan, if it existed in the first place, was not put into action.
Seizing effective control of the Gallic field army would be essential if Constantius IVs nascent regime were to survive: it was the largest remaining army in the state and a valuable potential source of reinforcements for Africa, the Balkans, and the Greek East. To that end, a few months after Candidianus arrest, the Emperor dispatched his ally Saturninus to gain control of the Gallic army and weed out pro-Candidianus conspirators. When Saturninus met with the
magister militum per Gallias, Candidianus man Aufidius, at Lugdunum, the Gallic warlord apparently had Saturninus murdered. Aufidius was not acting alone: he had rallied most of the major Gallic families to his cause, playing on their fear of the Thuringians, and had an iron grip on his soldiers.
Initially, Aufidius didnt make any effort towards claiming the purple, and attempted to paint himself as a loyal imperial subject. He immediately began raiding in Thuringian territory with his outsize army while attempting to get Constantius to confirm his place in command of the Gallic army. This fell flat; Constantius was unwilling to accept a challenge to his authority like that due to the repercussions it would have in Italy, and immediately ordered the
comes Hispaniæ, Astirius, to attack Gaul and force Aufidius to submit. Astirius boldly marched his army through the Pyrenæan passes and headed towards Lugdunum; Aufidius immediately turned his own army around letting the Thuringians raid parts of northern Roman Gaul and crushed the loyalists at Nemausus. Part of the Gallic army, under the command of Maximilianus, pursued Astirius broken troops across the Pyrenæi into Tarraconensis with wild success before entering winter quarters in the Iberus valley. Another group stayed near Nemausus and besieged a small loyalist garrison in Arelate. The rest marched back north and engaged the largest body of Thuringian raiders at Aurelianum in Senonia, where the Thuringians, overburdened with plunder, were virtually annihilated.
Constantius was forced to make some unpalatable alliances to deal with the problem of Aufidius. A defeat in Africa had given him the opening to challenge Candidianus, but he lacked the ability to unseat the commander responsible for the defeat, Heraclianus. Instead, Constantius married Heraclianus niece Atilia, and gave Heraclianus himself extraordinary authority over both military and civil government in Africa. Astirius had also proven to be a failure, but he was also Constantius only real way of fighting Aufidius for the foreseeable future, and had to be confirmed in his command as well. To round things off, in the spring of 587 the Avars raided Italy through the Æmona pass, and were only staved off with a humiliating tribute payment.
While the Emperor feverishly worked to contain the disasters in the western Mediterranean, Rome was faced with new ones in the east. In the early spring of 587, the sad remnant of the Gothic soldiers fighting under Roman command in Anatolia defected to Nikētas, and was absorbed into his army as an autonomous fighting force. Its commander, Agila, promptly launched an attack on the isolated Roman garrison at Myra and forced it to surrender. Within a few months, Nikētas himself, after keeping his armies somewhat idle after the great victory at Synnada, renewed his offensive against the imperial territories in the Greek East. Priscus, the loyal commander in Roman Ionia, feebly attempted to parry the Pontic advance on Kios with his badly depleted army, but ended up barely distracting Nikētas army and was unable to prevent the fall of the city.
Romes allies were also suffering badly. The Ġassānids had taken a bad hit in 584 when most of their forces were killed or captured at the Battle of Gerasa, and the whole thing only got worse in the following year after the death of their king, al-Mundhir. Jabalah, his successor, was constantly being undermined by his younger brother, al-Harith, and was hardly able to do much of anything at all against the Laḫmid raiders, let alone the Sāsānian armies that were repositioning to strike Palæstina after their victories in Anatolia. When the Sāsānian armies began to besiege key forts south of Damaskos, they barely faced any resistance. By 590 the way was open for a massive Sāsānian attack on Jerusalem itself. The Ġassānid king tried to break up the Iranian advance by attacking their siege train on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias, but was trapped by Laḫmid cavalry and the armored Sāsānian
dehkāns. Al-Harith, in charge of his brothers reinforcements, fled the scene, and Jabalah only barely managed to cut his way out with a few thousand adherents. He and his men only had time to partially evacuate Jerusalem before Hormizd, the Iranian
ērān-spāhbed, invested the city, which fell to assault a month later.
The fall of Jerusalem left the Levant in a mess. Al-Harith and his adherents were effectively in a civil war with Jabalah. Both clung to the margins of the old Ġassānid kingdom, with al-Harith ruling over the fortified ports along the coast and Jabalah hanging on by his fingernails along the edge of the Arabian Desert in the oasis towns. The Sāsānians held the central part of the country, but little else, and were soon absorbed in the slow conquest of the various poorly manned Ġassānid forts that choked the region. In 591, a new challenger emerged, as Egypt entered the mix under Taurinos son Abinnaios, who had ascended to the throne under the influence of an anti-Red Sea camarilla. Al-Harith, who was steadily losing forts to the Sāsānian advance, quickly agreed to nominate a non-Chalkēdōnian patriarch of Jerusalem and to accept his title from Egypt in exchange for Egyptian silver, soldiers, and supplies. Abinnaios also launched an attack on Roman Cyprus, which was captured fairly easily.
Abinnaios intervention hardly made an impact on Constantius at Ravenna, who was busily shoring up his reign by increasingly frightening expedients. Priscus, unable to hang on in Ionia, evacuated his last garrisons in 590 and fled for Greece, hoping to shore up imperial rule there at the very least. He was summoned to Ravenna and executed for his pains, and replaced by Constantius cousin Domentiolus. Astirius, who was steadily (but slowly) losing ground in Iberia, was retained, but his family was taken hostage and kept at Rome to ensure his cooperation. In 593, a suspected plot between the Empress Atilia and the
magister officiorum Palladius resulted in Atilias murder and Palladius tonsure and castration. This last event aroused the ire of Heraclianus at Carthage, who went into open rebellion and seized much of the Roman fleet, gaining control of Sicily and Sardinia.
The whole sad mess came to a head in 594 when Aufidius, fresh from successes against Pisen and the Thuringians, launched a massive invasion of northern Italy. Theodosius, one of Constantius few remaining loyal generals, led the
præsental army into battle against the Gallic armies at Eporedia. Neither Aufidius troops nor the loyalists could gain any decisive advantage, and inconclusively mauled each other for two days straight. Constantius personally left Ravenna to take command of the
præsental army, and had Theodosius publicly executed for his failure when he arrived. This was the last straw for the
comes domesticorum, Seronatus, who had command of several of the remaining elite regiments of the army at Rome and Ravenna. Seronatus seized control of both cities, along with Constantius only child, Ælia Eudocia, and pledged his support to Heraclianus. Unknown to him, Heraclianus had died of old age a few months before, and had been replaced by his second-in-command, Eugenius. Eugenius was also an old Africa hand, and had masterminded several successful campaigns against the Mauri over the last several years. While he stayed safely in Carthage, he shipped most of his army to Rome along with several thousand Mauri
fderati under the command of his subordinate general Generidus.
As opposition to him mounted in southern Italy, Constantius, who was by then at least partially insane, launched an all-out attack on Aufidius army near Augusta Taurinorum. The Gallic troops, who had been cut off from the imperialists by the flooded Stura River, didnt expect an attack on the grounds that it was insane to try to cross the Stura while it was swollen with melted snow. It was, in fact, insane, but by commandeering riverboats all down the Padus, the Emperor amassed enough transport to successfully cross the river and launch a successful night attack on Aufidius entrenchments. The Gauls fell back in disarray; many of them were slaughtered, and those that werent fled with Aufidius across the Alpine passes. Constantius then force-marched his army south to reclaim Ravenna, but as his army camped at Bononia, only a few days away from a confrontation with Generidus and the African troops, several of his soldiers broke into his tent and murdered him. Within a few days, representatives of the
præsental army had contacted Generidus and offered to surrender.
The civil war was far from over, though, and now the greatest prize was a seven year old girl. Eudocia, who was staying at Rome under the custody of Seronatus and Pope Adeodatus, was the best link to legitimacy for any of the contestants, none of whom had actually claimed the title of Emperor yet. Seronatus had made an agreement with Generidus to hand Eudocia over, so Eugenius could marry her to his infant son Romanus, but after Constantius assassination Seronatus reneged on the agreement and fortified himself in Rome with the
præsental army which swore allegiance to Eudocia and his palatine elites. He quickly opened negotiations with Aufidius, Eugenius, and even faraway Astirius, who still controlled Bætica and Carthaginensis. Generidus attempted to blockade Rome to force Seronatus to come to terms, but he lacked the manpower to do it, while Aufidius and his own army were recovering and taking control of northern Italy. Eventually Eugenius agreed to keep Seronatus on as regent in exchange for Romanus betrothal to Eudocia, and Seronatus duly admitted Generidus and his army into the city. Within a few nights, Generidus had had the troublesome regent assassinated while implicating the pope, and got rid of both of his enemies with a single stroke. The
præsental army and the palatine troops came over to the African cause with hardly a murmur.
Aufidius, in the meantime, launched a drive south down the peninsula with the aim of taking by conquest what he had failed to gain by negotiation. He captured poorly-garrisoned Ravenna and moved south along the
Via Flaminia in early fall 594. Within a few weeks he drew up his army at Narnia, only fifty miles from Rome. Generidus, in command of the united
præsental and African armies, moved his own troops up and engaged in a pitched battle with the Gallo-Roman forces in late September. Aufidius infantry made surprisingly good progress against the palatine regiments, but on the flanks, thousands of Mauri cavalry swarmed over the Gallo-Roman horse and put them to flight, then followed up with an attack on Aufidius camp. The Gallic general was killed, and his army was thrown into confusion. Parts of it surrendered, but most of the Gallic troops rallied and managed to cut their way out and retreat to Ravenna.
The Battle of Narnia effectively broke the back of the Gallo-Roman invasion, now under the direction of Aufidius successor Pacatus. Unwilling to try his hand at a second round with Generidus and the Eugenist army in 595, Pacatus and his troops packed up and headed back over the Alps, leaving garrisons in northern Italy to slow Generidus down. He then threw his army into an all-out attack on the recovering Thuringians, winning several symbolic victories and raiding widely in the Siquana river basin. The Gallo-Romans also scored a major triumph when Astirius, still fighting more or less on his own, was defeated in a pitched battle near Sætabis in Carthaginensis. In the aftermath of the victory there, Maximilianus conquered virtually all of Astirius inland territories and confined the
comes Hispaniæ and his forces to a string of ports along the Mediterranean coast.
As Generidus and the Eugenist forces reoccupied northern Italy and moved into the Dalmatian coast, the issue of Greece was opened once again. Domentiolus, the late Constantius cousin, had had his troops declare him Emperor at Thessalonikē in spring 595 upon learning of Constantius murder. While irrelevant in terms of military threat to the Eugenist regime, Domentiolus was a symbolic threat and a rallying point for what pro-Constantius sentiment remained in Italy. He had also been distressingly successful. The largest body of Sclavene raiders yet had launched an attack on Roman Hadrianoupolis in 594, outnumbering Domentiolus and his Romans nearly six to one, but Domentiolus had relieved the city and smashed the Sclavene army, enrolling the survivors as
fderati. More Sclavenes were driven north of the Danube later in the year when Domentiolus reoccupied the Haimos forts. His navy, although tiny compared to the Eugenist fleet, was still able to beat back a Pontic amphibious invasion of Chios in the spring of 595.
In short, the ideal solution for Domentiolus would be for him to be conveniently murdered and to have one of his officers take over smoothly and pledge his loyalty to Romanus and Eudocia, who were officially acclaimed as the imperial couple in April 595. That almost happened. But when the Greco-Gothic officer Athalarichos murdered Domentiolus in the fall of 595 (apparently in a dispute over women), he instead pledged his loyalty to Nikētas and the Pontic armies. Pontic soldiers streamed across the Aegean, while Nikētas went to Constantinople and had himself acclaimed Roman Emperor, despite the disapproval of Patriarch Kyriakos (who was boiled alive for his trouble). Nikētas quickly sent to Rome to try to gain recognition as an imperial colleague, while preparing for a confrontation with the Sāsānians.
The Sāsānians had been doing very well for themselves. Abinnaios intervention briefly changed the balance of forces in Palæstina, but as the largest and most powerful empire in the world, the Iranians had plenty more cards to play. Hormizd had gotten a bloody nose in a battle near Dora in 592, but his armys ranks were soon swelled once again by the addition of reinforcements. The tactical calculus had changed little: Egyptian and Ġassānid cavalry couldnt stand up to the shock charge of the
dehkāns, while Iranian infantry could very much hold their own against the Roman-style Egyptian footsoldiers. One by one, the Levantine ports fell under Sāsānian control. At the same time, Jabalah and his loyalists in the eastern deserts, after several years of hounding from the Laḫmids, finally gave up the ghost and fled into the Arabian wastes, a perfect reversal of the migration that had brought the Ġassānids there in the first place. The Sāsānian hold on the region continued to tighten. In an effort to snag more credibility as a war leader, Abinnaios had his fleet storm undefended Crete, but the act was quickly getting old, and new plots were being hatched in Alexandria every day.
When Yazdgard IV learned that Nikētas had proclaimed himself
Autokratōr of the East, he assumed that their loose mutual agreement mostly live and let live would be able to survive so long as Nikētas continued to address him as a superior. It soon became clear that Nikētas was uninterested in staying under Yazdgards thumb. He demanded control over all Anatolia as well as Syria, all the while addressing the
āh-an-āh as an equal. None of this was acceptable, of course. Fresh Sāsānian armies were dispatched to Anatolia to deal with the upstart Greek. But Nikētas surprised the Iranians and stole a march on them, launching a sneak attack on the great base at Ikonion in the winter of 597. The Sāsānian armies were sent reeling back beyond the Tauros.
The Kārin family, one of the great Parthian houses, had been in command of the armies defeated at Ikonion. Sukhrā, the chief of the family, had been made
spāhbed of the North (
kūst-i ādurbādagān) by Ardaīr III; for this particular ignominious failure, Yazdgard demoted Sukhrā and sent him off to govern Ṭabaristān. In his place, he elevated the Mihrān noble Īzadgushasp into the position of
spāhbed of the North it will be remembered that his family had lost the governorship of Ādurbādagān after a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Mamikonean revolt nearly two centuries prior and instructed him to bring fire and sword to Anatolia. While several thousand Armenians under the command of the puppet ruler Smbat invaded Nikētas-allied Lazikē, Īzadgushasp opened the campaign of 599 with a multi-pronged attack on the Tauros forts that stretched Pontic defenses to the utmost and then snapped them, filtering through the passes near Kamacha to start raiding widely. Nikētas general Leontios attempted to challenge the Sāsānian army near Mōkissos with a scratch force most of the army was in Europe but was badly defeated. With the disintegration of Leontios army, there were effectively no garrisons in Anatolia of any sort (as the Sāsānian raiders passed back over the Tauros, having softened up the Pontic defenses quite well for further exploitation). Whatever the Anatolian Greeks may have thought about Nikētas personally and his claim to the imperium, they certainly began to act as though imperial authority was irrelevant. The
bacaudæ of the fifth century and their self-help government returned to Anatolia.
Eugenius government at Rome remaining there, at least for the time being, as Ravenna was too far away from Eugenius power base in Africa had been prevaricating on the issue of Nikētas claim to the purple in order to determine if he would make a useful temporary ally while Roman troops cleaned up the Gallic insurgency. By 600, it seemed more or less clear that his regime was collapsing. In that year, Roman fleets occupied the Ionian islands, and Roman agents began sounding out Pontic commanders about switching sides. They were not particularly successful compared to the signal victory they achieved in Iberia. Astirius, desperately clinging onto the coastal towns of the south, had died in 599, and his successor, Ruptilius, was eager to come to terms with the Roman regime, offering his military services if he were reinforced and if his command as
comes Hispaniæ were confirmed by the center. The government at Rome quickly agreed. Progress against the Gallo-Roman rebels in the Alps was ridiculously slow, and a second front would be much appreciated.
As the Eugenist government slowly got back on its feet, Abinnaios government began to collapse. Although the Egyptians still had strong positions on Cyprus and Crete strong chiefly because they were unopposed they were losing ground in the important theater, the Levant. In 601, Hormizd or possibly another general of the Ispahbudhān, Zarmihr (the sources are unclear) fought a battle with an Egyptian army that had come to relieve the siege of Azōtos, al-Hariths last stronghold. Although the Egyptians apparently had the element of surprise, the Iranian commander reacted quickly and improvised a crushing heavy cavalry flank attack that scattered the Egyptians and routed their Harithite allies. Two months later, Sāsānian troops opened the gateway to Egypt itself by storming the lightly defended fortress at Pēlousion. In the south, the commander of the garrison in the Thebaid, Aimilios, revolted with the aid of Nobatian
fderati and quickly seized control of the entire country south of Antinoopolis. Almost simultaneously, a palace coup was launched against Abinnaios, who only narrowly crushed it (some historians believe that the Alexandrine conspirators were in contact with Aimilios). Abinnaios apparently decided that the Jews were behind the whole thing, and had his troops begin to purge the Jewish quarter of Alexandria, kicking off riots that engulfed the city.
In 602, the Egyptian disaster unfolded in full scope. As Aimilios army advanced down the Nile and Sāsānian troops stormed into the Delta, Abinnaios loyal forces melted away. When Hormizds army besieged Babylon, the fortress and army base guarding the boundary between Egyptian Augoustamnikai and Arkadia, the remaining soldiers there surrendered within a few days. The nascent Sāsānian fleet in the Mediterranean swelled with Egyptian turncoats, and allowed Iranian troops to rapidly occupy the most important Deltaic strongpoints. Abinnaios successfully put down the Alexandrine uprisings in blood, but almost immediately found his city besieged. He attempted to flee the city for Cyprus or Kyrēnaia, but his plans were discovered by the Alexandrine garrison, who captured him before he could leave and murdered him. Their commander, Timotheos, attempted to take control and repel the Iranians, but only lasted five days before Hormizds troops broke into the city.
Nikētas also got into a bind in 602. To the dismay of Athalarichos and the Roman turncoats that had murdered Domentiolus, the would-be Emperor elected to try to hold off the Iranian invaders with the majority of his army instead of breaking up Sclavene raids. Initially, this worked out moderately well, with Pontic reinforcements surprising Sāsānian troops at Gangra in 601; later that year, though, the Pontic troops ran up against the full force of Īzadgushasps field army at Nazianzos and collapsed. The following year, the shattered Pontic armies could do nothing but fall back before the Iranians, who swept through the Anatolian plateau and began to occupy positions on the coast. A prominent Sāsānian fortification was erected at Skoutari, just across the Straits from Constantinople, from where one could (poetically) see Iranian campfires at night. Pontic garrisons throughout Ionia abandoned their posts, partly from the overwhelming force with which they were confronted and partly from lack of pay. At the same time, Sclavene raids from their territories north of the Danube intensified. For the first time, Sclavene raiders successfully broke into a major fortified city Hadrianoupolis and sacked it bloodily; when a feeble Pontic force was dispatched to corral them, they escaped along the ridge of the Haimos, sticking to the high ground, hills and mountains, as would become a literary trope for Greek and Roman authors soon enough.
Unprecedented Sāsānian military successes were mirrored by Eugenist victories further west. Pacatus had gambled on being able to occupy Thuringian territory in the confusion that followed the death of Pisen in 599. Initially, it seemed to pay off, as his general Sebastianus conquered the Siquana basin and swept into old Roman Belgica. It became increasingly apparent that there was very little to conquer there: the whole thing was less an issue of conquest and more of colonization. The Thuringian state virtually evaporated, with none of the various claimants able to rally a united opposition against the Gallo-Roman onslaught, but the Gallic invaders had little with which to replace it. And the Eugenists were more than capable of seizing the initiative that Pacatus had so obligingly bequeathed them. In Iberia, Ruptilius and his army, bolstered by African regiments, brought Maximilianus and the Gallic army to battle at Cæsarobriga and won a major victory. Gallæcia erupted in a pro-Roman rebellion, and soon Maximilianus was forced to make tracks for the Pyrenæi. By 603, the Romans were finally strong enough to attack the fortifications of Arelate. Generidus army captured the place after a three-week siege and used it as a springboard for an attack up the Rhodanus. At Alba Helvia, the Romans and Gallo-Romans clashed in yet another set-piece battle, with inconclusive result; a few weeks later, Generidus and Sebastianus led their armies against each other again on the Isara River, and this time the Romans clearly worsted the rebels. Sebastianus fell back to Pacatus residence at Lugdunum, where he had his ostensible chief murdered, then opened negotiations with Eugenius government. The regent permitted Sebastianus and Maximilianus to surrender, and their Gallic armies were reintegrated into the Roman military. The Eugenists had, at least temporarily, reunited the Roman Empire in the west.
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I trust this is a sufficiently awesome Post #22,000.
Second post incoming.
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), I'm sure someone here will gladly help you if you get their attention, and there's also the 
