Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

182 6 Shared interests: Continuing conflicts
Galerius over the Sasanians in the year 298 Tiridates had been placed on the
Armenian throne as a Roman client king. Presumably he had supported
Rome’s anti-Christian policy during the reign of Diocletian, and when
he decided to convert to Christianity and the Christian religion became
the official, publicly promoted religion also in the Roman Empire, this
brought the two states even closer. 44 In contrast, the relationship with the
Zoroastrian Sasanian Empire was bound to deteriorate dramatically. 45 The
persecutions of the Christians in the Sasanian Empire that began during
the reign of ˇ Sāpūr II clearly reveal that the relationship between West
and East was changing for the worse after the Constantinian revolution.
Accordingly, Moses of Chorene’s letter of the Armenians to the Roman
emperor Constantius stems from the fear that the Sasanians would renew
their attempts to take possession of the country. The petition for military
support against the claims of the ‘godless Persians’ is now accompanied by
a reference to the emperor’s duty to act as the patron of Christianity as a
whole.
Elsewhere we also hear about the emperor’s all-embracing care for the
Christians, which applied also to the Christians in the Sasanian Empire
and inevitably irritated the Persian king (31). Numerous sources attest to
the continuing confrontations between the followers of the Christian faith
and those of the Zoroastrian fire cult, which provoked intervention by the
great powers in Armenia. The changes with regard to the religious affairs
in Armenia meant that the already explosive situation in this region was
aggravated. It is thus not surprising that ˇ Sāpūr II’s far reaching political
ambitions also took aim at Armenia.
Ammianus Marcellinus xxvii.12.1–4 46
(1) The Persian king, the now aged ˇ Sāpūr (II), 47 who from the very beginning of
his reign had always been tempted by raids, seemed well disposed to us with his
people for a short while after the death of the emperor Julian and after the shameful
peace 48 was struck; but then he spurned the promise of the agreements made under
Jovian and laid his hand on Armenia in order to bring it under his rule as if the
validity of the agreements had been erased. (2) At first he used various tricks and
inflicted fairly light harm on this densely populated country by soliciting some of
44 Again, scholars do not accept this reconstruction of events unanimously; see above, p. 128 with n. 47.
45 According to Chaumont 1987a: 427, ‘Christianization tended to strengthen Armenia’s link with the
Roman Empire and to set back the Iranian cultural influence.’
46 For another English translation that includes the following paragraphs see Greatrex and Lieu 2002:
21–2.
47 The author describes events of the last years of Sāpūr ˇ II’s long reign, the years after 367.
48 This is the peace treaty of 363 which was concluded between Jovian and Sāpūr ˇ II (18).