Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

25 Proxy policy’: Lahmids and Gassānids 171
the activities of the Roman troops and to raid Sasanian territory. 105 As he
was much feared by the Romans, these planned their activities carefully
around possible attacks by Alamoundaros. 106 Moreover the Ghassanids
and Lahmids fought each other directly without any Roman or Persian
involvement. 107
Procopius indicates that the great powers used the Arabian allies merely
as a means to an end in order to pursue their own military interests.
Procopius, De bello Persico ii.1.1–5
(1) Shortly after Xusrō (I) learnt that Belisarius had also started to win over Italy
for the emperor Justinian, 108 and – although he was no longer able to conceal his
plans – wanted to find a way how to break the peace treaty by way of a clever excuse.
(2) He took counsel with Alamoundaros in the matter and instructed him to come
up with reasons for a war. (3) The latter then accused Arethas of having violated
borderland, started hostilities in spite of the peace and in this way attempted to
attack Roman territory. (4) He claimed that he himself was not violating the peace
treaty between the Persians and Romans because neither of the two parties had
included him in the peace. (5) And this was true because not in a single instance
were the Saracens, as they were subsumed under the name ‘Persians’ or ‘Romans’,
named in the declarations.
Apparently Xusrō I wanted an excuse for a new war with Byzantium. In
540 – when Justinian seemed occupied with activities in the West – he
thus provoked confrontations between the Lahmids and Ghassanids. The
Persian ruler did not perceive this as a violation of the so-called ‘eternal
peace’ (eirēnē peras ouk echousa), 109 which had been concluded shortly before
between Byzantium and the Sasanian Empire, because the treaty of 532 did
not explicitly mention the Arabian allies. 110 In this way the two powers,
who were each striving for strategic advantages, had retained their liberty to
move. In practice, however, the attacks of Alamoundaros, who accused his
opponent Arethas of violations of the border, became the casus belli and in
540 this led to the outbreak of the second Byzantine–Sasanian War in the
sixth century. 111 In light of these events it is even more remarkable that the
105 Ibid. ii.19.11–18. 106 Ibid. ii.16.17.
107 Ibid. ii.28.12–14; on these activities, of which the great powers in general approved, see Vasiliev
1950: 274–83; Rubin 1960: 272–3 and 310–11 and Shahîd 1971b: 240–2.
108 In 535, after the victory over the empire of the Vandals in North Africa (533/4), the most powerful
of Justinian’s generals, Belisarius, was put in charge of the war against the Eastern Goths in Italy.
After several victories in southern Italy he entered Rome on 10 December 536.
109 Proc. BP i.22.3; cf. also the references in Luther 1997: 219 n. 425.
110 On the foedus of 532 see Güterbock 1906: 37–56 and Greatrex 1998: 213–21.
111 On the events of the year 540 see Greatrex 1998: 218–21.