Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

2.1 The third century 23
also made an advance into Cappadocia. 22 Exceptionally important was the
destruction of the caravan city Dura-Europos in the central Mesopotamian
steppe. 23 After the fall of Hatra, the Romans had now lost a further important
trading base in the region. In the second half of 253, however, the
Persians suffered a first setback when one of their columns was stopped at
Emesa and defeated, possibly by the Palmyrene Odaenathus (died in 267).
In the following years this man figured prominently in Persian–Roman
confrontations. When ˇ Sāpūr I rejected his offer of an alliance, Odaenathus
asked Rome instead and soon after his support became crucial for the
Roman position in the East (23).
At first ˇ Sāpūr I used the internal difficulties Rome faced during this
period for further offensives. 24 In 260 the Persians defeated the emperor
and his personal army. At Edessa they captured high Roman officials and
Valerian himself. 25 Within all of Sasanian history this was one of the greatest
triumphs over their Western opponent. Over and over again ˇ Sāpūr I boasted
of this triumph (5). According to his own words, the king exploited Valerian’s
defeat at Edessa by taking thirty-seven cities in the Roman provinces
of Syria, Cilicia and Cappadocia. 26 Apparently he also occupied the Syrian
metropolis Antioch on the Orontes. Among the numerous Roman prisoners
were many engineers, scholars and artists, who were deported and
resettled in the modern provinces of Fārs and Hūzistān. Many of them
found a new home in cities founded by ˇ Sāpūr I. These men contributed to
a spread of Western ‘know-how’ to areas beyond the rivers Euphrates and
Tigris and thus enhanced the infrastructure of the Sasanian Empire (36).
Numerous Christians, and among these priests and Church officials, also
entered Persia and established organised congregations. 27 These were not
bothered by ˇ Sāpūr I because the king hoped that by tolerating Christians,
whose fellow believers in the Roman Empire were persecuted at the time
of the deportations, he would gain an advantage in his conflict with Rome.
However, the quick spread of Christianity in the Sasanian Empire endangered
the position of the Zoroastrian priesthood, whose claims to power
22 The individual dates are uncertain. An advance between 253 and 255 is as likely as one in 255/6.
23 MacDonald 1986: 45–68; Millar 1996: 445–71 and 1998b; Pollard 2004: 119–44.
24 Strobel 1993: 243–4.
25 On the Roman–Sasanian confrontations of the year 260 and on the capture of Valerian see
Kettenhofen 1982: 97–126.
26 ˇ SKZ §§ 10–17 (pp. 295–306 ed. Back); regarding the number of cities conquered by ˇ Sāpūr I see
Maricq and Honigmann 1953: 144.
27 For the religious life in the Sasanian Empire see the respective entries in CHI iii.2 1983: 819–
1024; for the position of Christianity see Atiya 1991; Wiesehöfer 2001: 199–216; see also chapter 7
below.