Geoffrey Greatrex (2005). Byzantium and the East in - Kaveh Farrokh

The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian
good faith and sense of justice were untried, and, what is more, one
who belonged to an alien and heathen faith?” (Histories, 4.26.6, trans.
Averil Cameron).
Centuries of warfare could scarcely be effaced by elaborate protocol.
In the words of Nina Garsoïan, “Behind the bland courtesy of
diplomatic clichés ran a deep vein of enmity, and, what was perhaps still
more damaging, mutual contempt.” 4 For the Sasanian Persians, whose
rulers claimed descent from an obscure figure named Sasan, were but the
latest eastern power to challenge the Romans, having overthrown their
Parthian overlords in the 220s. Greek-speaking Romans of the eastern
empire looked to an even remoter past, tracing hostilities back to the
wars between Greece and the Achaemenid Persians in the fifth century
BC. The Persians were thus for many Romans a source equally of fascination,
fear, and revulsion. Historians such as Procopius and Agathias
go out of their way to recount amazing tales concerning Persian kings
but note with horror certain of their practices, such as their failure to
bury their dead and the incestuous marriage practices of the nobility. 5
Of the importance and power of the Persians there could be no
doubt. Their empire, stretching roughly from the Indus in the east to
the Roman frontiers in the west, and from the steppes of Central Asia
in the north to the southern shores of the Persian Gulf in the south, was
equal in size to the eastern Roman Empire. They had proved to be a
far more redoubtable foe than the Parthians had ever been. The power
of their kings was largely uncontested throughout their domains, while
their military technology (for instance, in the case of siege warfare)
was notably superior to their predecessors’. Roman dealings with other
peoples in the east, such as the Huns to the north of the Caucasus, the
Iberians, Lazi, and Armenians in the Caucasus, the Arabs of the Syrian
steppes or of southern Arabia, were mediated above all by a calculation
of how they might affect relations with Persia. Alliances were forged
or broken, depending on their reliability and usefulness in gaining an
advantage in negotiations or warfare with Persia: thus Justin I welcomed
the Iberian king Gourgenes, hitherto a Persian ally, to his court in the
mid-520s, promising to defend his country against Persian reprisals, but
his nephew quickly abandoned it when it suited him, and the Eternal
Peace agreed in 532 merely permitted refugee Iberians to remain in the
Roman Empire if they wanted. 6
We shall begin with an overview of Romano-Persian relations
up to the early sixth century, in order to appreciate the background to
Justinian’s policies in the East. We shall then briefly examine the position
of the Persian kingdom in the sixth century, before moving on to offer a
478
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006