Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

5 ˇ Sāpūr I at war with Rome 79
sources. 31 These talk about Gordian III’s victorious activities against the
Persians and emphasise that the emperor’s successor, the praetorian prefect
Philip the Arab, was responsible for Gordian’s death. 32 They do not
mention the battle of Miˇsīk. The ˇ Sāpūr Inscription alone does not suffice
in order to question the entire Western tradition but as the account
was composed very soon after the events it cannot be dismissed easily.
This is even more so if we consider that the Western authors did
not have access to immediate eyewitness accounts but were based on
older sources of the third century. 33 There is no doubt that the battle
of Miˇsīk did in fact take place. 34 As it was typical in Eastern historiography
to record only victorious events, the battle at Rhesaina does not
appear. Western historiography shows the same tendency by on the one
hand ignoring the battle of Miˇsīk, but on the other mentioning the confrontation
at Rhesaina and referring to the successful Persian campaign of
Gordian III.
The ˇ Sāpūr Inscription was composed within thirty years of the events of
244 and we may assume that it would have harmed ˇ Sāpūr’s credibility to
deliberately create a false account; this could not have been in the Sasanian
ruler’s interest. The rock relief at Bīˇsāpūr also confirms that Gordian III
met his death in the context of the Persian–Roman confrontations (fig. 6). 35
The figure lying under the hoofs of ˇ Sāpūr’s horse has been identified as
Gordian III, and on the Sasanian triumphal reliefs a prostrate figure always
symbolises a dead opponent. 36
Admittedly, neither the Res gestae divi Saporis nor the representation on
the relief at Bīˇsāpūr reveal whether the emperor actually died on the battlefield
or as the result of a wound he had incurred during the battle. Perhaps
the inscription and the visual representation were consciously designed in
an ambiguous way in order to insinuate that ˇ Sāpūr I was prepared to take
responsibility for the emperor’s death. Gordian’s death was a triumph for
the king, which he used in his imperial propaganda. Why would ˇ Sāpūr
31 SHA Gord. 29–30; Eutr. ix.2–3; Fest. 22; Zos. i.18–19; Oros. vii.19; on the element of propaganda
in the Res gestae divi Saporis see Rubin 1998: 177–85.
32 On the circumstances of Gordian’s death see Oost 1958: 106–7; Winter 1988: 83–97; Bleckmann
1992: 66–78; Schottky 1994: 232–5; Körner 2002: 77–92.
33 York 1972: 320–32 and MacDonald 1981: 502–8.
34 Maricq and Honigmann 1953: 111–22; at first, it was difficult to locate the place referred to in the ˇ Sāpūr
Inscription; today it is fairly certain that Miˇsīk, which was later called Pērōz- ˇ Sāpūr (= ‘victorious is
ˇSāpūr’) is al-Anbār of the Muslim period and situated on the left bank of the Euphrates as far north
as Baghdad; for the date and outcome of the battle cf. also Gignoux 1991a: 9–22.
35 Apart from the bibliographical references in n. 27 see also the monographs (i–vi) on Bīˇsāpūr that
have appeared in the series ‘Iranische Denkmäler’.
36 Cf. Göbl 1974: 12.