Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

484 17. armies and society in the later roman world
organization so quickly, and Anastasius’ reassertion of a more civilian
style of government was also a deterrent. But here too resistance to
Persian attacks in the sixth century regularly involved the co-operation of
imperial troops and local civilians: eastern landowners had been given
permission to build defences, and at Amida in 502/3 part of the wall
circuit was guarded by local monks, while at Antioch in 540 and Jerusalem
in 614 it was the local circus factions who exhibited the fiercest opposition
to the Persians. 54 In these three instances the Persians overcame the
Roman defenders, and this may point to another reason why there is less
evidence for the damaging centrifugal consequences of local military
action on the eastern frontier than in the Balkans and the west. Warfare
against the Persians usually entailed the deployment of an imperial army
which could repress separatist tendencies, as Edessa experienced in
602/3, and there was little hope that a city or region could sustain an independent
existence in the face of Persian might – deportation to southern
Iraq was a more plausible fate for the Romans, while massacre and pillage
terminated a brief period of autonomy at Persian Nisibis in 602. 55 The
direct clash of the two great powers of the ancient world helped to ensure
that their common frontier was an area of strong central control, not of
disintegration.
Religion and imperial expenditure were the keys to preserving attachments
to the centre, sometimes in combination, as at Sergiopolis and the
monastery at Mount Sinai, where major religious shrines that served as a
focus for a mobile population received substantial imperial benefactions
which fulfilled both pious and strategic purposes. 56 At Edessa the story of
the acheiropoietos image, the miraculous representation of Christ that was
believed to guarantee the city’s safety, created a local focus for loyalties. But
the city had also received lavish gifts from the imperial family after the devastating
flood of 525, and it knew Persian strength at first hand. In the religious
version of the repulse of the Persian attack in 544, the icon’s power
was linked to the united efforts of soldiers and citizens in effecting the
destruction of the Persian ramp. In the 580s an acheiropoietos image accompanied
the mobile army at Solachon in 586, where Philippicus first paraded
the icon to improve his troops’ morale, and then consigned it to a local
bishop who led neighbouring civilians in prayers for a Roman victory,
another successful tripartite combination. 57 On the Persian side of the
frontier, religion was no less important: Persian kings were sensitive to the
extension of Christianity, they encouraged the spread of Zoroastrian
54 Procop. Wars i.7.22, Zachariah, HE vii.4; Procop. Wars ii.8.28,9; Antiochus Strategus chs. 2–3, 5.
Isaac, Limits of Empire 252–6; Segal (1955) 113.
55 Anon. Guidi 6–7; Chron. Seert 74–5 (PO xiii.507–13).
56 Procop. Buildings ii.9, v.8; Cameron, Procopius 96–8.
57 Evagr. HE iv 27; Theophylact ii.3.4–9.
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