Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

84 3 Military confrontations
a standard-bearer, a mounted soldier who leads the emperor’s horse and
another page walking in front of the king’s horse. There is a striking detail
at the lower edge of the image where two little trees grow out of the rock.
Whereas the left one below ˇ Sāpūr grows tall and straight the one next to
it on the right below the Roman emperor is bent and wilted. The growth
of the two trees corresponds to the different positions of power of the two
rulers at the time when the Persians defeated Rome in the year 260. This
again corresponds to the victorious Sasanian soldiers depicted at the upper
edge of the image; one of these is proclaiming the victory by blowing his
trumpet. As a whole it reveals how the Sasanians saw themselves – and
claimed to be perceived from the outside – in other words, how the events
were interpreted from an ‘Eastern perspective’.
In the West the motif of the victorious Sasanian king, who had defeated
the Roman emperor, was also transmitted and passed into European cultural
memory. Although much later in time, in 1521 the German painter Hans
Holbein captured Valerian’s humiliation in a pen-and-ink drawing (fig. 9).
Among other scenes from antiquity and representations of the virtues,
the drawing complemented the programme of murals for the Great Council
Chamber of Basle Town Hall. The setting is contemporary and the names
of the main characters are given as inscriptions (Valerianus Imp./Sapor Rex
Persarum). ˇ Sāpūr uses the emperor as a stool to mount his horse. The scene
probably served to remind councillors of the quick reversal of fate and to
warn them not to abuse their power.
6: Galerius defeats Narsē in the year 298
Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 9.5–8
(5) Spurred on by the example of his grandfather ˇ Sāpūr (I), the Persian king Narsē
attempted to conquer the East with a great force. (6) At the time, Diocletian, who
tended to respond to any unrest with fear and pessimism and who was also afraid
that he could share Valerian’s fate, did not dare to oppose the king but instead sent
him [Galerius] via Armenia while he himself halted in the East and waited to see
how matters developed. (7) The former trapped the barbarians, who customarily
went to war together with their whole family and were therefore impeded by
their numbers and occupied with their luggage, 48 and overcame them without
difficulties. After Galerius had put King Narsē to flight he returned with plunder
and immense booty and with this brought for himself ‘pride’, for Diocletian ‘fear’.
(8) For after this victory he became so arrogant that he even despised the title
48 Several ancient authors agree that the Romans took a large number of members of the royal family
as prisoners; cf. e.g. Eutrop. ix.25; Festus 14.5 and 25.2–3; Oros. vii.25.11; only Malal. 12.6–24 (p. 308)
mentions that the Persian queen Arsane was taken to Daphne near Antioch on the Orontes.