Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

c h a p t e r 1
Political goals
In order to understand the intense and multi-faceted relations between
Romans and Persians during the course of late antiquity – and in particular
the many military confrontations that continued into the seventh century –
one has to address the overall political goals of the two great powers. These
goals are therefore the starting point of the second part of our survey, in
which we present and analyse the source material.
Whereas Roman generals of the Late Republic already boasted that as
Alexander’s successors they had extended the borders of the Roman Empire
to the ends of the earth 1 and scholars agree on Rome’s claim to world
domination, 2 namely to rule an imperium sine fine (‘an empire without
borders’) 3 or ‘an empire that extended from sun rise to sun set’, 4 there is no
corresponding consensus among scholars with regard to the goals that drove
Sasanian foreign policy. The following examination therefore focuses on
the Sasanian claims and the ideological background of the Sasanian foreign
policy vis à vis Rome. This should not, however, evoke the impression that
the Sasanians acted as aggressors and the Romans as defenders of threatened
possessions or territories, which, obviously, the latter had conquered in long,
violent wars from an unwilling population. On the contrary, the reader
should be aware that such a ‘eurocentric’ view, which has been prevalent
for many decades in the scholarly literature, is not justified in any way. 5
1: Territorial claims of the Sasanians against Rome
The contemporary sources presented in this chapter indicate that immediately
after ad 224 the Sasanians refused to acknowledge Rome’s supremacy
in the Near and Middle East. The enormous Persian capacity for expansion
1 Diod. xl.4. 2 Cf. Badian 1971; Raaflaub 1996: 273–314.
3 Verg. Aen. i.279; cf. also p. 13 n. 22 above. 4 Horace Carm. iv.15.14–15.
5 On the scholarly discussion see van de Mierop 1997: 285–306 and (with references) Hauser 2001a:
1233–43.
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