Revolt of Armenia and Acceptance by Arsaces of the Position of a Roman Feudatory. Character and Issue of Sapor’s Eastern Wars. His negotiations with Constantius. His Extreme Demands. Circumstances under which he determines to renew the War. His Preparations. Desertion to him of Antoninus. Great Invasion of Sapor. Siege of Amida. Sapor’s Severities. Siege and Capture of Singara; of Bezabde. Attack on Virtu fails. Aggressive Movement of Constantius. He attacks Bezabde, but fails Campaign of A.D. 361. Death of Constantius.
Evenerat . . . quasi fatali constellatione . . . ut Constantium dimicantem cum Persis fortuna semper sequeretur afflictior.—Amm. Marc. xx. 9, ad fin.
It seems to have been soon after the close of Sapor’s first war with Constantius that events took place in Armenia which once more replaced that country under Roman influence. Arsaces, the son of Tiranus, had been, as we have seen, established as monarch, by Sapor, in the year A.D. 341, under the notion that, in return for the favor shown him, he would administer Armenia in the Persian interest. But gratitude is an unsafe basis for the friendships of monarchs. Arsaces, after a time, began to chafe against the obligations under which Sapor had laid him, and to wish, by taking independent action, to show himself a real king, and not a mere feudatory. He was also, perhaps, tired of aiding Sapor in his Roman war, and may have found that he suffered more than he gained by having Rome for an enemy. At any rate, in the interval between A.D. 351 and 359, probably while Sapor was engaged in the far East, Arsaces sent envoys to Constantinople with a request to Constantius that he would give him in marriage a member of the Imperial house. Constantius was charmed with the application made to him, and at once accepted the proposal. He selected for the proffered honor a certain Olympias, the daughter of Ablabius, a Praetorian prefect, and lately the betrothed bride of his own brother, Constans; and sent her to Armenia, where Arsaces welcomed her, and made her (as it would seem) his chief wife, provoking thereby the jealousy and aversion of his previous sultana, a native Armenian, named Pharandzem. The engagement thus entered into led on, naturally, to the conclusion of a formal alliance between Rome and Armenia—an alliance which Sapor made fruitless efforts to disturb, and which continued unimpaired down to the time A.D. 359 when hostilities once more broke out between Rome and Persia.
Of Sapor’s Eastern wars we have no detailed account. They seem to have occupied him from A.D. 350 to A.D. 357, and to have been, on the whole, successful. They were certainly terminated by a peace in the last-named year—a peace of which it must have been a condition that his late enemies should lend him aid in the struggle which he was about to renew with Rome. Who these enemies exactly were, and what exact region they inhabited, is doubtful. They comprised certainly the Chionites and Gelani, probably the Euseni and the Vertse. The Chionites are thought to have been Hiongnu or Huns; and the Euseni are probably the Usiun, who, as early as B.C. 200, are found among the nomadic hordes pressing towards the Oxus. The Vertse are wholly unknown. The Gelani should, by their name, be the inhabitants of Ghilan, or the coast tract south-west of the Caspian; but this locality seems too remote from the probable seats of the Chionites and Euseni to be the one intended. The general scene of the wars was undoubtedly east of the Caspian, either in the Oxus region, or still further eastward, on the confines of India and Scythia. The result of the wars, though not a conquest, was an extension of Persian influence and power. Troublesome enemies were converted into friends and allies. The loss of a predominating influence over Armenia was thus compensated, or more than compensated, within a few years, by a gain of a similar kind in another quarter.
While Sapor was thus engaged in the far East, he received letters from the officer whom he had left in charge of his western frontier, informing him that the Romans were anxious to exchange the precarious truce which Mesopotamia had been allowed to enjoy during the last five or six years for a more settled and formal peace. Two great Roman officials, Cassianus, duke of Mesopotamia, and Musonianus, Praetorian prefect, understanding that Sapor was entangled in a bloody and difficult war at the eastern extremity of his empire, and knowing that Constantius was fully occupied with the troubles caused by the inroads of the barbarians into the more western of the Roman provinces, had thought that the time was favorable for terminating the provisional state of affairs in the Mesopotamian region by an actual treaty. They had accordingly opened negotiations with Tamsapor, satrap of Adiabene, and suggested to him that he should sound his master on the subject of making peace with Rome. Tamsapor appears to have misunderstood the character of these overtures, or to have misrepresented them to Sapor; in his despatch he made Constantius himself the mover in the matter, and spoke of him as humbly supplicating the great king to grant him conditions. It happened that the message reached Sapor just as he had come to terms with his eastern enemies, and had succeeded in inducing them to become his allies. He was naturally elated at his success, and regarded the Roman overture as a simple acknowledgment of weakness. Accordingly he answered in the most haughty style. His letter, which was conveyed to the Roman emperor at Sirmium by an ambassador named Narses, was conceived in the following terms:
“Sapor, king of kings, brother of the sun and moon, and companion of the stars, sends salutation to his brother, Constantius Caesar. It glads me to see that thou art at last returned to the right way, and art ready to do what is just and fair, having learned by experience that inordinate greed is oft-times punished by defeat and disaster. As then the voice of truth ought to speak with all openness, and the more illustrious of mankind should make their words mirror their thoughts, I will briefly declare to thee what I propose, not forgetting that I have often said the same things before. Your own authors are witness that the entire tract within the river Strymon and the borders of Macedon was once held by my ancestors; if I required you to restore all this, it would not ill become me (excuse the boast), inasmuch as I excel in virtue and in the splendor of my achievements the whole line of our ancient monarchs. But as moderation delights me, and has always been the rule of my conduct—wherefore from my youth up I have had no occasion to repent of any action—I will be content to receive Mesopotamia and Armenia, which was fraudulently extorted from my grandfather. We Persians have never admitted the principle, which you proclaim with such effrontery, that success in war is always glorious, whether it be the fruit of courage or trickery. In conclusion, if you will take the advice of one who speaks for your good, sacrifice a small tract of territory, one always in dispute and causing continual bloodshed, in order that you may rule the remainder securely. Physicians, remember, often cut and burn, and even amputate portions of the body, that the patient may have the healthy use of what is left to him; and there are animals which, understanding why the hunters chase them, deprive themselves of the thing coveted, to live thenceforth without fear. I warn you, that, if my ambassador returns in vain, I will take the field against you, so soon as the winter is past, with all my forces, confiding in my good fortune and in the fairness of the conditions which I have now offered.”
It must have been a severe blow to Imperial pride to receive such a letter: and the sense of insult can scarcely have been much mitigated by the fact that the missive was enveloped in a silken covering, or by the circumstance that the bearer, Narses, endeavored by his conciliating manners to atone for his master’s rudeness. Constantius replied, however, in a dignified and calm tone. “The Roman emperor,” he said, “victorious by land and sea, saluted his brother, King Sapor. His lieutenant in Mesopotamia had meant well in opening a negotiation with a Persian governor; but he had acted without orders, and could not bind his master. Nevertheless, he (Constantius) would not disclaim what had been done, since he did not object to a peace, provided it were fair and honorable. But to ask the master of the whole Roman world to surrender territories which he had successfully defended when he ruled only over the provinces of the East was plainly indecent and absurd. He must add that the employment of threats was futile, and too common an artifice; more especially as the Persians themselves must know that Rome always defended herself when attacked, and that, if occasionally she was vanquished in a battle, yet she never failed to have the advantage in the event of every war.” Three envoys were entrusted with the delivery of this reply—Prosper, a count of the empire; Spectatus, a tribune and notary; and Eustathius, an orator and philosopher, a pupil of the celebrated Neo-Platonist, Jamblichus, and a friend of St. Basil. Constantius was most anxious for peace, as a dangerous war threatened with the Alemanni, one of the most powerful tribes of Germany. He seems to have hoped that, if the unadorned language of the two statesmen failed to move Sapor, he might be won over by the persuasive eloquence of the professor of rhetoric.
But Sapor was bent on war. He had concluded arrangements with the natives so long his adversaries in the East, by which they had pledged themselves to join his standard with all their forces in the ensuing spring. He was well aware of the position of Constantius in the West, of the internal corruption of his court, and of the perils constantly threatening him from external enemies. A Roman official of importance, bearing the once honored name of Antoninus, had recently taken refuge with him from the claims of pretended creditors, and had been received into high favor on account of the information which he was able to communicate with respect to the disposition of the Roman forces and the condition of their magazines. This individual, ennobled by the royal authority, and given a place at the royal table, gained great influence over his new master, whom he stimulated by alternately reproaching him with his backwardness in the past, and putting before him the prospect of easy triumphs over Rome in the future. He pointed out that the emperor, with the bulk of his troops and treasures, was detained in the regions adjoining the Danube, and that the East was left almost undefended; he magnified the services which he was himself competent to render; he exhorted Sapor to bestir himself, and to put confidence in his good fortune. He recommended that the old plan of sitting down before walled towns should be given up, and that the Persian monarch, leaving the strongholds of Mesopotamia in his rear, should press forward to the Euphrates, pour his troops across it, and overrun the rich province of Syria, which he would find unguarded, and which had not been invaded by an enemy for nearly a century. The views of Antoninus were adopted; but, in practice, they were overruled by the exigencies of the situation. A Roman army occupied Mesopotamia, and advanced to the banks of the Tigris. When the Persians in full force crossed the river, accompanied by Chionite and Albanian allies, they found a considerable body of troops prepared to resist them. Their opponents did not, indeed offer battle, but they laid waste the country as the Persians took possession of it; they destroyed the forage, evacuated the indefensible towns (which fell, of course, into the enemy’s hands), and fortified the line of the Euphrates with castles, military engines, and palisades. Still the programme of Antoninus would probably have been carried out, had not the swell of the Euphrates exceeded the average, and rendered it impossible for the Persian troops to ford the river at the usual point of passage into Syria. On discovering this obstacle, Antoninus suggested that, by a march to the north-east through a fertile country, the “Upper Euphrates” might be reached, and easily crossed, before its waters had attained any considerable volume. Sapor agreed to adopt this suggestion. He marched from Zeugma across the Mons Masius towards the Upper Euphrates, defeated the Romans in an important battle near Arnida, took, by a sudden assault, two castles which defended the town, and then somewhat hastily resolved that he would attack the place, which he did not imagine capable of making much resistance.
Amida, now Diarbekr, was situated on the right bank of the Upper Tigris, in a fertile plain, and was washed along the whole of its western side by a semi-circular bend of the river. It had been a place of considerable importance from a very ancient date, and had recently been much strengthened by Constantius, who had made it an arsenal for military engines, and had repaired its towers and walls. The town contained within it a copious fountain of water, which was liable, however, to acquire a disagreeable odor in the summer time. Seven legions, of the moderate strength to which legions had been reduced by Constantine, defended it; and the garrison included also a body of horse-archers, composed chiefly or entirely of noble foreigners. Sapor hoped in the first instance to terrify it into submission by his mere appearance, and boldly rode up to the gates with a small body of his followers, expecting that they would be opened to him. But the defenders were more courageous than he had imagined. They received him with a shower of darts and arrows that were directed specially against his person, which was conspicuous from its ornaments; and they aimed their weapons so well that one of them passed through a portion of his dress and was nearly wounding him. Persuaded by his followers, Sapor upon this withdrew, and committed the further prosecution of the attack to Grumbates, the king of the Chionites, who assaulted the walls on the next day with a body of picked troops, but was repulsed with great loss, his only son, a youth of great promise, being killed at his side by a dart from a balista. The death of this prince spread dismay through the camp, and was followed by a general mourning; but it now became a point of honor to take the town which had so injured one of the great king’s royal allies; and Grumbates was promised that Amida should become the funeral pile of his lost darling.
The town was now regularly invested. Each nation was assigned its place. The Chionites, burning with the desire to avenge their late defeat, were on the east; the Vertse on the south; the Albanians, warriors from the Caspian region, on the north; the Segestans, who were reckoned the bravest soldiers of all, and who brought into the field a large body of elephants, held the west. A continuous line of Persians, five ranks deep, surrounded the entire city, and supported the auxiliary detachments. The entire besieging army was estimated at a hundred thousand men; the besieged, including the unarmed multitude, were under 30,000. After the pause of an entire day, the first general attack was made. Grumbates gave the signal for the assault by hurling a bloody spear into the space before the walls, after the fashion of a Roman fetialis. A cloud of darts and arrows from every side followed the flight of this weapon, and did severe damage to the besieged, who were at the same time galled with discharges from Roman military engines, taken by the Persians in some capture of Singara, and now employed against their former owners. Still a vigorous resistance continued to be made, and the besiegers, in their exposed positions, suffered even more than the garrison; so that after two days the attempt to carry the city by general assault was abandoned, and the slow process of a regular siege was adopted. Trenches were opened at the usual distance from the walls, along which the troops advanced under the cover of hurdles towards the ditch, which they proceeded to fill up in places. Mounds were then thrown up against the walls; and movable towers were constructed and brought into play, guarded externally with iron, and each mounting a balista. It was impossible long to withstand these various weapons of attack. The hopes of the besieged lay, primarily, in their receiving relief from without by the advance of an army capable of engaging their assailants and harassing them or driving them off; secondarily, in successful sallies, by means of which they might destroy the enemy’s works and induce him to retire from before the place.