Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

36 Enforced resettlement of prisoners 261
The text once more illustrates a Persian interest in resettling prisoners of
war, whose knowledge and skills could be an asset. 76 It was thus a matter of
acquiring not only a work force as such but also the knowledge of specialists,
and the main beneficiary of this process was the king, who continued to
make use of those he had captured ‘with his own hands’. 77 There is no doubt
that the use of Roman prisoners contributed considerably to improving the
infrastructure of the Sasanian Empire. 78 One of the consequences of the
resettlements of large numbers of Roman prisoners was – to say it in modern
terms –a‘transfer of technology’, which guaranteed an economic upturn
for Sasanian Iran. 79
Deportations of Romans continued into the sixth century. The following
two passages refer to activities of Xusrō I(531–79). After his conquest of
Syrian Antioch in the year 540 the king resettled the inhabitants of this
metropolis to the city Vēh-Antiok-Xusrō, which he founded in the vicinity
of the Sasanian capital Ktēsiphōn. 80
Procopius, De bello Persico ii.14.1–4
(1) Xusrō (I) founded a city in Assyria, 81 in a place that was a day’s march away
from the city of Ktēsiphōn; he named it ‘Xusrō’s Antioch’ and settled all captives
from Antioch there, for whom he even had a bath and a hippodrome built
and whom he provided also with other comforts. (2) For he brought along the
charioteers and musicians from Antioch and other Romans. (3) Moreover, at public
expense he took more care in catering for these people from Antioch than
was customary for captives, and (he did so) for their entire life, and gave orders
to call them ‘the royal ones’ so that they would not be responsible to any magistrate
but the king alone. 82 (4) When one of the other Romans had escaped
and managed to seek refuge in Xusrō’s Antioch and when one of the inhabitants
claimed that he was a relative, the owner was no longer allowed to remove this
captive, not even if one of the highest ranking Persians happened to have enslaved
the man.
76 On this passage and specifically on the consequences of the deportations for the spread of Christianity
see Brock 1982: 4 and 14–15.
77 Cf. Metzler 1982: 214 and 219–20. 78 Wiesehöfer 1993: 369.
79 For this link between a ‘transfer of technology’ and captivity, also with regard to the Roman–Sasanian
relations, see Stoll 1998: 254–70.
80 Theoph. Simoc. v.6.10; cf. also Güterbock 1906: 93–105; Christensen 1944: 386 and 487–96; Metzler
1982: 205 and Wiesehöfer 2001: 292–3.
81 ‘Assyria’ refers to the core territories of the former Assyrian Empire to the west and east of the river
Tigris; this comprises roughly the area of modern northern Iraq; over time the political-geographical
name ‘Adiabēnē’ replaced the traditional name ‘Assyria’. In late antique sources ‘Assyria’ can also refer
to entire Babylonia including the southern Mesene; cf. Amm. xxiii.6.15–24; see also Sellwood 1985:
465–9 and Oelsner 1996: 112.
82 The Martyrology of Pusai already mentioned royal workshops where prisoners of war were employed
as skilled workers and supervised by the king.