Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

35 Diplomacy and espionage 253
Agathias ii.27.8 and iv.30.2–4
[ii.27.8] Also in this respect I have recorded precisely what they themselves wrote
down, and, I believe, it is particularly appropriate to mention all this in the present
work. In what follows I shall therefore – when necessary – give a detailed account,
even though this means that I shall include long lists of names, and those of
barbarians, some of whom have not even achieved anything noteworthy.
[iv.30.2] As I promised, I have given a comprehensive chronology of the Persian
kings and a list of the years of their reigns. I think that this list is very accurate
and exact because it is based on Persian books. 40 (3) For the translator Sergius 41
went there and persuaded the guards and administrators of the royal records 42 to
make the relevant documents available to him (for I frequently asked him to do
so); he claimed that he wanted to see them for no purpose other than that what
they knew and appreciated would also be recorded among us, and they therefore
were happy to comply, thinking that they were doing a good deed, which would
bring fame to their kings, if it were known also among the Romans which and
how many kings there had been and how they had taken care of their succession.
(4) Sergius, however, recorded their names and dates, and the more important
events 43 that took place during their reigns and then carefully translated them into
Greek (for he was the best translator around, admired even by Xusrō (I) himself
and acknowledged as a specialist in his field in both states). After he had made
an accurate translation he handed everything over to me, in a conscientious and
friendly way, and he encouraged me to use the material for the purpose it had been
given to him. And this has now happened.
Agathias’ work on the reign of Justinian continued Procopius’ Histories but
was never finished. In five books he covers the years between 552 and 558. 44
Apart from comprehensive ethnographical and chronological digressions
40 On the question of sources used by Agathias for his digression on Persia see Cameron 1969–70: esp.
109–10 and 161–2. ‘Evidently Agathias did not suspect that Sergius’ information was not quite what
it purported to be, nor did he realize that it was in some places contaminated with a Syrian bias’
(161).
41 Sergius was probably Syrian; as Syriac was a kind of ‘mediating’ language between the Greek and
the Persian world (cf. e.g. Proc. BP ii.2.3) Syrians were often used as interpreters. However, when
referring to his sources Sergius explicitly talks about Persikai bibloi, which were certainly composed
in the official language of the Sasanian Empire, namely Middle Persian.
42 From the Achaemenid period onwards the Persians had kept such annals; cf. Hdt. vii.100.1 and
viii.90.4; Thuc. i.129.3; Diod. ii.32.4. The Sasanian annals, whose middle-Persian title (xvatāināmag)
means ‘book of rulers’ or ‘book of lords’, were the official chronicle of the Sasanian Empire.
They began with the reign of Xusrō I(531–79), who drew on earlier records and added new information.
After his death these annals were continued to the reign of Yazdgard III (632–51). None of
the original Middle Persian text has survived. We get an idea of this ‘book of rulers’ only through
later Arabic and neo-Persian books, especially through the revised translations made by authors of
the ninth and later centuries.
43 It looks as if Sergius did not produce a full translation of the material but made excerpts or summarised
the records as he saw appropriate.
44 For an English translation see Frendo 1975; on Agathias and his work see also Cameron 1970.