Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

syria, palestine and mesopotamia 595
episode, which may suggest that Syria was not a viable power base, the
political history of this area is restricted to the comings and goings of the
comites Orientis in Antioch, occasional urban riots and the sporadic rebellions
of the Jews and Samaritans in Palestine.
The main threat to the peace and stability of this area between 425 and
600 was from Persian invasions. Persian armies never used the direct desert
crossing to Palestine or Arabia but always attacked through the settled areas
of Euphratensis, Osrhoene and Mesopotamia, and it was these areas, along
with Syria I and II, which bore the brunt of the invasions. After a long
period of peace, hostilities broke out in 502–3 when Kavadh attacked and
captured Amida, slaughtering a large number of its citizens, and went on
to besiege Edessa and ravage the surrounding country. The casus belli in this
instance was that the emperor Anastasius had, from 483, refused to continue
the subsidy previously paid to the Persians for the defence of the
Caucasus passes on the grounds that the Persians had refused to return
Nisibis, which they claimed had been ceded to them by Jovian in 363 for
120 years. In 503 and 504 large Roman armies counter-attacked, and Amida
was restored to imperial control. 21 In 505 a seven-year truce was signed, and
Anastasius began the building of the great fortress at Dara, later improved
by Justinian, immediately across the frontier from Nisibis.
Hostilities broke out again in the Caucasus in 527 at the end of the reign
of Justin I and spread to Mesopotamia, where the then magister militum per
Orientem, Belisarius was defeated at Callinicum in 531. The fighting was
ended by the death of Kavadh and the accession of Khusro I Anushirvan
in 532, and a peace agreement by which the Romans paid a lump sum in
commutation of the subsidy. This peace lasted until 540, when Khusro,
attracted by the weakened defences of the eastern frontier while Justinian’s
efforts were directed to the west, invaded again, apparently more interested
in money than in conquest. Most of the cities, including the provincial capitals
of Edessa, Hierapolis and Apamea, duly paid, but as a result of imperial
promises of military support and divided counsels within the city (it
seems that the patriarch Ephraemius wanted to agree to peace but was prevented
by commissioners sent by Justinian) Antioch attempted to resist.
The result was the most serious military disaster to afflict Syria in this
period. Antioch fell, the city was burned and large numbers of its inhabitants
forcibly resettled in Iraq.
After this catastrophe, hostilities soon petered out, and there is no sign
that Khusro sought to make permanent conquests. The outbreak of plague
in the Roman east in 542 and the successful defence of Edessa by Roman
forces in 544 resulted in a truce in 545 in which Justinian again agreed to a
21 Malalas pp. 398–9 Bonn; for a full and vivid narrative of these campaigns W. Wright, The Chronicle
of Joshua the Stylite (London 1882) caps. xlviii–lxxxi.
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