A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  By the 160s CE – the time when the great philosopher‐emperor and Roman general Marcus Aurelius governed Rome – the territory along the Euphrates had been incorporated into the Roman state. Lands beyond the Tigris River now lay just within reach. The geopolitical situation would change again in the early third century, during the reign of the young Alexander Severus. When Alexander seized Osrhoene, it may have been the spark that set in motion the overthrow of the old ruling order within Parthia.

  In 224, the Arsacid family was expelled from the capital in a coup led by the Sasanian leader Ardashir. Ardashir would be the first king of this new empire, soon to be called – for the first time in history – the land of “Iran.” Who were these people just beyond Rome’s borders?

  4.2 Mithras and a Roman Fascination with the Mysteries of Persia

  For centuries, Western historians have operated with an insidious case of “Orientalism.” The people and cultures of the east have been branded different, exotic, and unique. The “East,” as it provocatively came to be imagined, was the source of magic and mystery. Even in antiquity, Romans fell prey to these stereotypical ideas.

  The Roman god Mithras, wildly popular during the second, third, and fourth centuries CE, was once thought by researchers to have come from Persian, or “Eastern,” origins. In art and sculpture, Romans always dressed Mithras in loose‐flowing clothes and fitted him with a floppy hat, the hackneyed image of an non‐Roman “Easterner” (Figure 4.1). Initiates into the private communities of Mithras worshippers were given a series of titles, which may have been awarded based on an individual’s level of financial contribution to the group. (The worship of Mithras itself was never granted the status of a publicly funded state cult.) Among these seven “grades,” one title was, appropriately, “the Persian.” Its symbol was a floppy, “Persian” hat and it is seen widely in the artwork of many community centers where Mithras’ worshippers met, called Mithraea (the Latin singular is Mithraeum). We will look more closely at an example of a Mithraeum, as well as consider the titles and artwork associated with the other “grades” of initiation, when we investigate what it meant to join such a group in later chapters.

  Figure 4.1 A bronze plaque showing the Roman god Mithras slaying a bull. Depicted in wall paintings and sculptural reliefs, the scene was one of the most popular among Mithraic communities in the Late Antique Mediterranean. Mithras himself was worshipped across a wide geographic span, from the northern frontier cities of the Roman Empire, along the Rhine and Danube valleys, to the city of Rome itself and the territory of Roman Syria. This plaque, whose findspot is unfortunately not known, dates to the late second or early third century CE. It is currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, 1997 (accession number: 1997.145.3). Dimensions: 14 × 11 5/8 × 1 3/4 in. (35.6 × 29.5 × 4.4 cm). Open‐access Met collection.

  This evidence points us in a rather peculiar direction. By the third century CE, it would appear that many Romans were worshipping a Zoroastrian god even as their government was waging a war against the leaders of the Sasanian Empire. But can the evidence stand the weight of this interpretation? Recently, scholars have suggested not. In fact, the story of how Romans began to worship Mithras is much more complex – and quite eye‐opening. It began not with a specific act of cultural borrowing but with a more general Roman fascination for all things “Eastern.”

  In Zoroastrian worship, the god “Mitra” was a a solar deity. His name, spelled “Mitra,” appears on inscriptions as early as the fifth century BCE. By the time of Alexander the Great and his successors, knowledge about this Persian sun god “Mitra” had spread to the world of the Hellenistic kings. There, one Hellenistic ruler – King Antiochus (r. c.69–c.31 BCE), ruler of the kingdom of Commagene, located in far eastern Asia Minor – took the Persian cult and transformed it in a way that carefully and cleverly advanced his own political agenda. The Hellenistic king erected statues dedicated to the god “Mithras” which depicted a panoply of stars and at least one symbol of a constellation, the Lion, which were meant to celebrate the king’s birthday. By mixing a Hellenistic fascination with astrology with the symbols of a Persian solar deity, King Antiochus – a descendent of both Hellenistic and Persian families – created a space where cooperation and shared tradition were uniquely built into the fabric of his kingdom.

  Romans eventually conquered and replaced the Hellenistic kingdoms, but to many people of the Roman Empire, the worship of Mithras would always feature this important astrological component, inherited from the Hellenistic world. In short, just like the name of the god itself (“Mithras,” not “Mitra”), many aspects of Mithras worship did not come from Persia. That is why, as we have now seen, very little evidence exists to substantiate the claim that a Persian god was directly imported into Rome. The Roman god “Mithras,” rather, emerged organically as the creative result of many individuals – living at the borderlands of the Roman Empire – who wanted to capitalize on the appeal of a “foreign”‐sounding god to create a stronger community for themselves at home, even going so far as to dress up their private meetings with these aesthetically Persian veneers. None of these traits say anything about the origins of “Mithras,” but they do tell us quite a bit about the Romans. In the case of Mithras, they were allured by the “magic” and “mystery” of Persia.

  So it will be, in Roman writers, for the people of Sasanian Persia themselves. Although Romans discuss aspects of the Sasanian Empire and how it came to power, ultimately, few writers were ever really interested in telling the history of its people from their own perspective. Romans used “Persian” culture to tell comforting tales about themselves. So where do we find evidence to understand the Sasanian Empire from the inside?

  4.3 The Material Culture of Sasanian Persia

  One answer is to look to archaeological evidence. King Ardashir (r. 224–239) and his transformational successor, King Sapur I (r. c.242–270), left behind a stunning record of monumental building that allows us to glimpse how the Sasanian rulers wanted people to view them. These pieces of material culture also allow us to explore how the Sasanian kings saw their own mandate to rule.

  Some of the most important archaeological evidence comes from the cities of Behistun, Bishapur, and Naqsh‐i Rustam, all in modern Iran. All had been important places of political ritual for the leaders of the Achaemenid dynasty, the family of kings who had governed the last great Persian Empire in the fifth century BCE. The Achaemenid family had included such notable figures as Darius I, whose dramatic rise to power was narrated on a trilingual inscription on the face of a mountain at Behistun. The classical Greek historian Herodotus, who recounts the events that led Darius to attack Greece, knew this inscription and used it to draw his own biography of the Persian king. Behistun was a place rich with history and memory. It is no surprise the Sasanians wanted to build near there, too.

  At Naqsh‐i Rustam, we see the Sasanian family articulating their political ideologies and cultural values. We should visit it and look at these remains more closely. The city itself is 12 kilometers, less than 8 miles, from the old Achaemenid capital at Persepolis, a city whose fields of tall columns still mark the place where King Darius and his son, Xerxes, ruled their empire. It was Xerxes himself who had famously battled Athens and Sparta for Persia’s stake in the Mediterranean until they were repelled and driven back to Asia Minor. Just as they had at Behistun, rather than relegate the powerful memory of this earlier age to oblivion, by letting these cities and monuments fall into further disrepair or by actively demolishing them, the first Sasanian rulers returned to these historic sites and referenced them by building around them.

  At Naqsh‐i Rustam, several stunning reliefs have been cut into the cliff face that provide important historical information about Sasanian rulers. These sculptural reliefs depict Ardashir’s rise to power, the event which marked the establishment of the new Persian dynasty. In one scene, Ardashir receives his crown from the God of Light, Ahura M
azda (also known as Ohrmazd), the most important divinity to Zoroastrian worshippers (Figure 4.2). In another, Ardashir is shown trampling his enemies. The first person to be conquered is his rival, Ardawan IV, also known as Artabanus, the last of the Arsacid rulers.

  Figure 4.2 Carved into the cliff face at Naqsh‐i Rustam, in modern Iran, is an image of the first Sasanian king, Ardashir of Persia (r. 224–242 CE). Ardashir, the founder of the Sasanid dynasty, is shown here on horseback, at left. He is meeting the Zoroastrian God of Light, Ahura Mazda, at right, who is depicted as his equal. By offering the new ruler a crown, Ahura Mazda invests the head of the Sasanian family with a symbol of divine authority. Zoroastrian values, beliefs, and worship were foundational to the Sasanian Empire. Third century CE.

  Photo credit: Saman Tehrani, with permission.

  King Ardashir’s victories are not limited to the human realm. The triumphant king is also shown celebrating a victory in the cosmic realm. In yet another relief, the artists have depicted King Ardashir vanquishing the Zoroastrian God of Evil, Ahriman. As a sign of thanks for his divinely inspired victory over his foes, King Ardashir is then shown touching his index finger to his mouth, a gesture of reverence. Behind him is an anonymous attendant who carries a fan or royal canopy.

  What can we learn about the Sasanian king and his relationship to the divine forces of the Zoroastrian world from these monuments at Naqsh‐i Rustam? For one, we can see how the king presented himself on an equal plane with the gods. Battling the God of Evil, as if face‐to‐face with his spiritual enemy, Ardashir had crafted a subtle message that Persia’s new successes were a product of divine support. Ardashir’s diadem, in particular, awarded to him by Ahura Mazda, marks him as the divinely backed victor over the forces of evil. This ideology, intertwining the ruler’s successes with the Zoroastrian forces of Light (Good) and Darkness (Evil), would be promoted by all subsequent Sasanian kings. At the city of Bishapur, for example, Ardashir’s successor, Sapur I, would be shown in almost exactly the same fashion. Ahura Mazda gives King Sapur I his diadem, the symbol of his ruling power. Here, too, as in Naqsh‐i Rustam, the Sasanian king is seen defeating his adversaries and triumphing over spiritual forces.

  One of the more thought‐provoking aspects of Sapur I’s monument at Bishapur is the man over whom the Persian king is claiming victory. The general depicted in the relief is the Roman emperor Gordian III (r. 238–244), an inexperienced ruler who led the Romans against the Sasanians in 244. In a traumatic loss for the Roman people, Gordian III never returned from battle.

  4.4 Rome and Sasanian Persia in Conflict

  The death of the Roman emperor, against the rising Sasanian power, was not something many Roman historians dwelled upon in their texts. In fact, if chance had preserved for us only our Latin and Greek texts, we would have a rather distorted view of what happened on the battlefield in 244 CE, when Gordian III died. Here is the report of the one Latin writer who describes the Roman march to war against Persia and the disastrous outcome of Gordian’s battle:

  There was a severe earthquake in Gordian III’s reign, so severe that whole cities with all their inhabitants disappeared into the opening in the ground. Vast sacrifices were offered throughout the entire city and the entire world because of this. And Cordus [a historian] says that the Sibylline Books were consulted and everything that seemed ordered in them was done, whereupon the worldwide evil was stayed.

  But after this earthquake, in the consulship of Praetextatus and Atticus, Gordian III opened the twin gates of Janus, which was a sign that war had been declared, and set out against the Persians with so much gold as easily to conquer them with either his regulars or his auxiliaries. He marched into Moesia. …

  From there, he stormed through Syria to Antioch, which was then in Persian hands. There he fought and won repeated battles and drove out Shapur, the Persian King. After this Gordian recovered Artaxanses, Antioch, Carrhae, and Nisibis, all of which had been included in the Persian empire. Indeed, the Persian king had become so fearful of Emperor Gordian that … he evacuated cities and restored them unharmed to their citizens, nor did he injure their possessions in any way. (Writers of the Imperial History [Scriptores Historiae Augustae], “Lives of the Three Gordians,” LCL trans. by D. Magie [1924], 26.1–27.1)

  The text, which is anonymous, comes from a collection of biographies of third‐century emperors known to later tradition as the Writers of the Imperial History (Scriptores Historiae Augustae in Latin, often abbreviated to SHA). The text continues by narrating Gordian III’s triumphs in Rome. There, like previous emperors, Gordian reported to the Senate and boasted of his victories, which he had achieved with the help of his father‐in‐law. The Senate itself decreed a victory parade, an important political ritual in Rome known as a triumphal procession. The writer of the Imperial History tells us that Gordian III’s parade was truly remarkable for featuring four elephants to show “that Gordian might have a Persian triumph in as much as he had succeeded in conquering the Persians.” If we were to end our reading here, Gordian III would enter the history books as a hero!

  At this point, the biographer reports the upsetting news. While on a subsequent campaign, the head of the Roman emperor’s bodyguard, the praetorian prefect – a man named Philip who hailed from Roman Syria – conspired to arrange the emperor’s death. Philip spread rumors and slander among the soldiers, implying that Gordian III was too young to capably manage the empire. Soon, the praetorian prefect had convinced a group of soldiers to grant him and Gordian equal rank. A short while later, Philip arranged for the young emperor to be “carried out of sight, shouting in protest, where he was despoiled and slain.” As the writer of the Imperial History characterizes it, “At first [Philip’s] orders were delayed, but afterwards, it was done as Philip had bidden. And in this unholy and illegal manner, Philip became emperor” (SHA, “Lives of the Three Gordians,” 29.4, 30.8–9).

  Philip’s cover‐up of the assassination was diabolically deceitful:

  And now, that Philip might not seem to have obtained the imperial office by bloody means, he sent a letter to Rome saying that Gordian III had died of disease and that he, Philip, had been chosen emperor by all the soldiers. The Senate was naturally deceived in these matters about which it knew nothing, and so it gave Philip the imperial title, Augustus, and then voted to place Gordian III among the gods, bestowing on him the divine epithet Divus. (SHA, “Lives of the Three Gordians,” 31.2–3)

  Is it fair to take this anonymous text at face value? The larger collection to which it belongs is a set of biographies of the rulers from the turbulent years of the third century CE. In it, the third‐century political and military world is beset by political killings, military defeats, and rapid turnover in the palace (Key Debates 4.1: Was There a “Third‐Century Crisis” in Roman History?). There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the collection as a historical document, not the least of which is that the Imperial History was composed a hundred years after the events it describes – when Rome’s fortunes had rebounded and writers could begin to look back with some distance, mixing nostalgia for better times with hope about their present day.

  Key Debates 4.1 Was There a Third‐Century Crisis in Roman History?

  When Emperor Alexander Severus died in 235 CE, it was the end of a dynasty. For many historians, it was the ruin of Rome. For four decades, from 193–235 CE, a member of the Severan family had governed the empire. Their patriarch had been Septimius Severus, and he and his successors had presided over an age of stable leadership matched with a commitment to urban investment.

  Born in Lepcis Magna, Libya, to a Phoenician family and proclaimed emperor by an army outside Vienna, Septimius had been the first Roman ruler to hail from North Africa. He would sponsor public building across the empire, outfitting his hometown with extravagant new baths, colonnades, basilicas, and temples. In 212 CE, one of the Severans, Caracalla, extended citizenship to every free‐born man and woman of the Roman Mediterranean. A welcome feel of in
novation and transformation blew through the empire. It lasted until Alexander’s death.

  Generations of students have come to learn about the subsequent period as the “third‐century crisis.” It is distinguished by a tragic series of assassinations, bold military coups, a plague that decimated North Africa, unchecked inflation, a loss of religious values, even widespread urban decay, or so the traditional telling goes. But what is the evidence for this catastrophic model of third‐century daily life, and can it still hold up to scrutiny?

  A closer look at one set of sources, the biographies of the third‐century rulers, exposes the difficulties of doing third‐century history.

  Textual sources are sparse. Two Greek writers, Cassius Dio and Herodian, end their narrative, frustratingly, in the first decades of the third century, the very time when single‐minded generals and senators began vying with each other for power. Latin historians are non‐existent, a disheartening loss. During this period of historical silence, twenty‐five emperors would rule Rome in the course of a fifty‐year period. Almost all of what survives about their careers – and in one case about a famous empress, Zenobia of Palmyra – comes from a later source. Known in Latin as the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, or Writers of the Augustan [Imperial] History, this anonymous collection of biographies was composed in the mid‐ to late fourth century, almost a century or more after the events it purports to describe.

  It is riddled with errors. The most jaw‐dropping fiction of the Writers (or SHA, as it is commonly abbreviated) is that Emperor Gordian III was killed by a Roman military plot – not, as attested on the inscription at the Ka’ba‐i Zardusht, by the Sasanian king. Today, most scholars believe that the story of Gordian’s assassination was invented to cover up the scandalous, indeed, shocking memory of the emperor’s death at the hands of a foreign enemy. Not without reason, the third century does seem, on first glance, as calamitous as once thought.