Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

202 6 Shared interests: Continuing conflicts
The foedus of 298 also forced Narsē to acknowledge the Roman protectorate
of Ibēria (17), an area south of the central Caucasus and north of
Armenia through which the upper and middle Kyros was flowing. Diocletian
intended to expand the Roman sphere of influence to the north-east
in order to create new routes for the Eastern trade which would circumvent
Sasanian territory in the north. The emperor’s ambition to regain
power over Ibēria was closely linked to the role of this area as a transit area.
Repeatedly the Romans had become painfully aware that the most important
overland trade routes in the East of the ancient world, by which the
sought after luxury goods from the Far East reached the large Roman centres
along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, went through Sasanian
territory. The Persian supremacy by sea, in particular in the Persian Gulf,
which was the starting point for the lucrative trade with India, 146 must have
further strengthened the key role the Sasanians played with regard to the
Roman eastern trade. The Romans therefore tried to establish firm bases
along the Black Sea and in the Caucasus in order to create new land routes
for an extended eastern trade, primarily with China. 147 To some extent their
attempts to maintain diplomatic relations with Armenia and the Caucasus
had to do with the hope that the peoples in this region would help them
to obtain important luxury goods, above all silk and silk products. The
significance of the areas in the Caucasus and around the Caspian Sea with
regard to trade has been suggested as a motive for the expansion of a Roman
Eastern policy during the Parthian period 148 and has been acknowledged
for some time as a cause for confrontations between Byzantium and the
Sasanian Empire during the fifth and sixth centuries. 149 This significance
very much also applies to the situation at the end of the third century.
Until the treaty of 363 (18) when ˇ Sāpūr II (309–79) made the emperor
Jovian (363–4) revise the central aspects of the foedus of 298 (17) the agreements
of this treaty continued to be legally valid. Ammianus Marcellinus
states, however, that during the reign of Constantius II an annual market
existed in Batnai where Indian and goods from Seran were offered and
the author also praises the magnificent goods of the city of Kallinikos. 150
146 On the Sasanian contacts with India, specifically by sea via the Persian Gulf see also Wiesehöfer
1998a: 19–20 and Daryaee 2003: 1–6.
147 On possible trade routes to China which went through the Caucasus and bypassed Sasanian territory
in the north see Herrmann 1966: 18–19 and 26–7; cf. also Thorley 1969: 215 and Wissemann 1984:
166–73; on the Sasanian attempts to stop trade along the northern route of the Silk Road see Haussig
1983: 161–82.
148 Wissemann 1984: 166–73.
149 Pigulevskaja 1969: 155–8; Harmatta 2000: 249–52.
150 Amm. xiv.3.3 and xxiii.3.7; cf. also Kirsten 1959: 558 and Synelli 1986: 89; on Batnai as a centre of
trade see Kissel 1998: 171–2 and De Ligt 1993: 74.