A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  But did this crisis of governance trickle down to the lives of the empire’s citizens, and if so, to what extent did they feel the uncertainty in their daily life? These questions demand a closer look at the archaeology of cities, including the study of inscriptions, papyrus documents, and coins. Just like the imperial biographies, this material evidence presents its own challenges of interpretation, but with plenty of room for debate, the study of third‐century society is an exciting area of research.

  There is a good reason to doubt whether Philip had ever really plotted to kill Gordian III, however. It comes from an inscription which was carved onto a monument at Naqsh‐i Rustam. After his many military victories, Sapur I, following the model of Darius, erected a trilingual victory inscription there. It was chiseled onto three sides of a rectangular tower, known as the Ka’ba‐i Zardusht, or the Ka’ba (or “Cube”) of Zoroaster (Exploring Culture 4.1: The People of “Iran”; Figure 4.3). It is an important third‐century document drafted by a Sasanian ruler and is a solid reminder that researchers need to work cautiously, especially when they depend on only one source to write their histories. For contrary to the way the Roman writer reports on Gordian III’s death, the Persian text makes no mention of the emperor dying at the hand of a treacherous praetorian guard. The text at Naqsh‐i Rustam says Gordian III died in battle. It says King Sapur I killed him.

  Figure 4.3 The Sasanids were not the only ones who used the landscape at Naqsh‐i Rustam to promote their family’s authority and power. The relief sculpture of Ardashir, for example, is carved out of the same cliff where the mighty Persian kings Darius and Xerxes (fifth century BCE) were buried. Darius and Xerxes belonged to the Achaemenid family, the great Persian dynasty founded by King Cyrus in the sixth century BCE. His successors would rule for three hundred years and expand Persian territory westward to Egypt and Asia Minor and eastward to the Indus River in modern Pakistan. They were eventually overthrown by Alexander in the third century BCE. Six hundred years later, the Sasanids returned to the burial sites of these long‐gone cultural heroes to express their own hopes for a new empire. An inscription on the Ka’ba, a shrine for Zoroaster at Naqsh‐i Rustam, refers to the new Sasanian leaders as the kings of the people of “Iran.” It is one the earliest documented references to the name of the modern country.

  Copyright © Leonid Andronov/Alamy Stock Photo.

  Exploring Culture 4.1 The People of “Iran”

  The Ka’ba‐i Zardusht is an important monument in Iran. It stands in the valley of Naqsh‐i Rustam in the Fars province outside the old Persian capital of Persepolis. The Arabic word ka’ba means “cube,” and the Ka’ba‐i Zardusht means the “Cube of Zoroaster,” a moniker which suggests that the structure relates to the chief deity of the Zoroastrian religion.

  Unfortunately, this name was bestowed on the monument at a much later time. The structure is a royal shrine which once housed a sacred fire for the Persian King Darius I. It was built in the sixth century BCE.

  Like other royal monuments erected by Darius and his family, such as the captivating trilingual autobiography inscribed on the rock face at Mt. Bihistun for all to read, the so‐called Ka’ba‐i Zardusht was intended to glorify Darius’ family, the Achaemenids, who had ruled during this important period of Persian history. Darius himself would become famous for having expanded the Persian Empire. Breaking out of its regional borders, Achaemenid Persia would eventually expand beyond the Zagros Mountains of modern Iran, beyond Mesopotamia, to the Aegean Sea and Sea of Marmara. After attacking the Aegean city‐states, Darius would inaugurate almost a decade of war famously chronicled by the “father of history,” Herodotus.

  Persia’s advances into the Mediterranean were thwarted; and after the last of the Achaemenid family rulers died, Persia’s empire crumbled, taken over by the Parthians. Thereafter, Persia was the quieter sibling in Mediterranean affairs – until the third century CE. In 224 CE the Persian family known as the Sasanids changed the balance of power once again, asserting their own political interests in the Roman regions of Syria and Mesopotamia.

  One of the most influential leaders of the new Sasanian dynasty was Sapur I (r. c.242–270 CE). And, in order both to establish the legitimacy of his rule and to proclaim the great ambitions of the Sasanian family, he made an important addition to Darius’ old monument, the Ka’ba‐i Zardusht.

  Sapur told his workmen to add an inscription of his own in the three languages of the Sasanian government: Parthian, Middle Persian, and Greek. Although the languages were different from the ones used by Darius, this powerful evocation of the past, almost nine hundred years after the Achaemenid family had vanished, must have inspired many Persians who suddenly felt that they were witnessing the rebirth of their once glorious empire. In many ways, they were. But there were also significant differences.

  In the inscription on the ka’ba at Naqsh‐i Rustam, Sapur I describes himself as “King of the kings of Iran and non‐Iran” (trans. by B. Dignas and E. Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], p. 56). It is the first time in history that the word “Iran” had been chiseled into existence. Sapur I and the Sasanian dynasty, which would rule until the seventh century CE, were responsible for giving a name to a political territory and a culture that still thrives today.

  Weighing the accounts, making a decision

  What is a historian to do given that the Sasanian text so baldly contradicts the Roman one? How do we judge and weigh the validity of these sources? Who is right? In the end, does it really matter?

  One school of thought would argue that Sapur I’s testimony is closer to the events he purports to describe and, hence, the more reliable testimony. Second, the writer of the Imperial History, looking back on the turbulent years of the third century, would have had a good reason to cover up the circumstances of Gordian’s death; Persia and Rome were locked in a fierce rivalry during this time, and it would not have helped the current Roman emperors’ diplomatic maneuvers with the Sasanian kings to popularize a story of Roman defeat. Lastly, there is the scandalous element of the Roman emperor himself dying at the hands of a foreigner. Because Romans were stubbornly proud of their military prowess and looked down on “barbarian” tribes, it is likely that the writer of the Imperial History changed the events that led to Gordian’s demise by blaming an upstart, conniving Roman soldier, Philip – in effect, framing the emperor’s murder as the result of an internal army squabble, not as the disastrous result of a foreign policy decision gone horribly wrong (Political Issues 4.1: Stigmas, Stereotypes, and the Uglier Side of Imperialism).

  Political Issues 4.1 Stigmas, Stereotypes, and the Uglier Side of Imperialism

  According to the biographer Plutarch, Romulus had founded Rome as an asylum, a place where people of all repute – from debtors to murderers to refugees – would be embraced. Romans of later periods were not always eager to offer this warm welcome to others. Ethnic and cultural stereotyping was, unfortunately, rampant and long lasting in the Roman world.

  In 175 CE, Emperor Marcus Aurelius faced a grave internal threat. A Roman general based in the eastern Mediterranean, Avidius Cassius, had decided to challenge the emperor’s rule. Avidius’ father, who had served under a previous administration, had been born in Cyrrhus, in Roman Syria – a city located about 40 miles from Aleppo. Avidius himself, who would try to claim the throne, was born in Egypt while his dad was stationed there.

  When Marcus Aurelius rallied his troops to quash the rebellion, he laid bare the uglier side of Roman society. “Fellow‐soldiers,” he said, “you ought to be of good cheer. For surely Cilicians [a province on the southern coast of Turkey], Syrians, Jews, and Egyptians have never proved superior to you and never will, even if they should muster as many tens of thousands more than you as they now muster fewer” (Cassius Dio, Roman History 72.25, LCL trans. by Cary and Foster [1914]). The sharp rhetoric would have stung, if Avidius had heard it. Before his failed attempt to become emperor, Avidius had
already served as a senator and consul. He was no less Roman than Marcus Aurelius. This kind of ethnic stereotyping had a disturbing history in Rome and Greece. The first‐century CE poet Juvenal rued the spread of “foreign” customs. In his poetry, he lamented that “the Syrian Orontes,” a river near Antioch, had “polluted the Tiber” (Juvenal, Satires 3).

  Three centuries later, at the end of the fourth century CE, the same tired tunes were still being played. Those who did so spared no victim. According to the Writers of the Imperial History, Emperor Severus Alexander himself “felt shame at being called a Syrian” (Severus Alexander 28, LCL trans. by D. Magie [1924]). Whether the report is true or not, the claim suggests that social stigma was commonly used in public debates. Shame knew no boundary, either.

  When problems developed in the fourth century with Germanic and Gothic tribes on the northern frontier, stereotyping became an easy way for emperors and their speech writers to promote the idea that Romans were a superior breed to foreign tribes.

  In 370 CE, the Roman statesman Themistius, who served as city prefect of Constantinople and later as tutor to the imperial house (d. 388 CE), praised the Emperor Valens for brokering a Gothic truce. This act of diplomacy, Themistius argued in ancient Greek, highlighted Valens’ skill at bringing “civilization” to the disorganized tribal folk beyond Rome’s borders.

  “There is in each one of us a barbarian tribe, extremely overbearing and intractable,” Themistius told the emperor and Senate in Constantinople during his oration. “I mean the temper and the insatiate desires, which stand opposed to the rational elements, as the Scythians and Germans do to the Romans” (Oration 10, section 199, trans. by D. Moncur in the series TTH, vol. 11 [1991], p. 35). Themistius argued that, by using diplomacy to establish peace, Valens had wisely relied upon Roman values. Reason and intellect had triumphed over wild, erratic foreigners.

  Themistius’ speech was but the latest chapter in an ongoing story of Romans who wanted to claim cultural superiority over their neighbors.

  A second, alternative interpretation is also possible. Because Sapur’s inscription was intended to augment his own power and stature in Sasanian society, it may have deliberately manipulated the events of the battlefield to present the Sasanian king, not the Roman emperor, in the more flattering light. Whichever side of the story one chooses to believe, a broader vantage provides a clearer picture. The rise of Sasanian Persia was a trying time for third‐century Romans. Perhaps for that reason and for others, no continuous narrative of imperial politics exists for the middle of the third century CE. The monuments at Bishapur and Naqsh‐i Rustam offer vital perspective on the history of Sasanian–Roman relations during this tense time, seen from the outside and from the top‐down.

  Admittedly, the picture that emerges from this perspective may look like one of constant clash and conflict. But, as we recall from our study of the origins of Mithras, not everything about Persia was necessarily seen as suspicious to Roman audiences. In the Sasanian Empire, too, many smaller artifacts attest to a level of dialogue that should cause us to question whether this was really a time of irrational, open hostility between two groups of people – or whether the conflict was limited to the officials in the palaces of the emperor of Rome and king of Iran (Working With Sources 4.1: A Cameo Glorifying the Sasanian King; Figure 4.4).

  Figure 4.4 This piece of jewelry is a cameo, carved from sardonyx, a shiny black gemstone with bands of brownish red. On its face it depicts a battle between the Sasanian King Sapur I (r. c.242–270 CE) and the Roman Emperor Valerian. Cameo craftsmanship was a highly valued trade. Starting with a stone that contains a thin band of contrasting color (a stripe of white, as seen here), the artist would begin to shave away its exterior. When the two colors of the stone were dramatically exposed, a scene would be carved on its surface. This cameo, originally from Iran, is now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France. Measurements: height 6.8 cm, width 10.3 cm (3.5 in. × 4.0 in.).

  Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource.

  Working With Sources 4.1 A Cameo Glorifying the Sasanian King

  In 288 CE, Emperor Diocletian would sign a peace treaty with King Bahram II of Persia to bring stability to the two empires, a truce that would last into the fourth century. It would be natural to assume that the one hundred years prior to this truce were a time of endless conflict.

  Material evidence, however, suggests a level of peaceful, if not tense, dialogue that may have counter‐balanced the open hostility of the battlefield. One piece of surprising evidence comes in the form of a delicately carved piece of jewelry, a cameo.

  Cameos are carved from a single gemstone which has colored bands of minerals on the interior. A deep black onyx cameo, for example, might have layers of white embedded within it, visible only as a thin line on the stone surface. The craftsman’s job – a careful one – is to shave the stone down to the surface of the contrasting color, and then to sculpt an image against the dark background.

  Romans had perfected this technique as early as the first century BCE. Famous classical cameos include the Gemma Augustea, or Augustan gem, which depicts the Emperor Augustus as Jupiter, king of the gods of Mt. Olympus. Augustus is shown with bare feet, like a god, and he receives a crown from the goddess Victory for his triumph over foreign nations.

  Cameos stayed an important Roman luxury item into the third century CE. One good example is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. On it, two adversaries, Emperor Valerian, on the left, and the contemporary King of Persia, Sapur I, on the right, go to battle. Valerian wears a billowing cloak, a paludamentum in Latin. This draped garment was one of the most noticeable expressions of a military commander in third‐century Rome. Sapur is decked out with the regal symbols of the Sasanian kingdom. The globes at each of his shoulders, for example, signify the king’s divine authority. Sapur’s helmet is in the shape of the royal Sasanian crown.

  As the iconography, or imagery of the scene, makes clear, the Paris cameo commemorates a known event: Sapur’s capture of Valerian in 260. Equestrian duels between the two leaders figure prominently in Sasanian art. The way the artist has depicted this particular event is especially telling. In Sasanian artwork, like rock‐cut reliefs and other sculpted monuments, the act of grabbing an opponent by the wrist symbolizes victory.

  Who was the recipient of this expensive jewel, glorifying the capture and defeat of the Roman emperor? Who wore it, when, and in what settings? These questions cannot be answered, but one surprising side of cultural history is hidden in the nature of the artwork itself. Cameos are rare in Sasanian culture. Very likely, this one was executed by a craftsman familiar with the long, storied Roman tradition of cameo production. Yet few Romans would have dared pin this scene on their own togas or stole.

  The cameo is a reminder that behind battle lines were many more subtler encounters.

  To consider this matter in a slightly different way, we might try asking a slightly broader question: What did it mean to be or to identify as a Roman in the third‐century world? Was there one answer? Or were there many? If the latter, how did Romans grapple with so much diversity in a political system that was supposed to be unified and cohesive?

  4.5 The Roman World of the Third Century CE

  Empire‐wide citizenship is decreed

  Looking back at the years before Sasanian Persia’s rise, we can quickly see that the Roman people and their leaders were already grappling with widespread social change at home. In 212 CE, Emperor Caracalla had announced that all free‐born residents of Rome’s territorial holdings – from the seasonally clammy isle of Britain to the perpetually dry sands and welcome oases of Egypt – would be granted Roman citizenship.

  It was a momentous legal victory. For generations, many in the Roman world worked as second‐class residents of its empire. Although they may have held jobs that serviced the Roman army or provided food and goods to Roman politicians, families, and businessmen in their local towns, the Senate and People
of Rome – the constitutional advisory bodies to the emperors – had never guaranteed any of these residents the same access to protections and rights that a real “Roman” had. Those protections were known as the ius Italicum, a Latin legal term roughly meaning “Italian rights,” and the ius Latinum, or “Latin rights.”

  The idea of these rights had a long backstory. “Latin rights” had first become a pressing issue during the turbulent years of Rome’s growth as a republic. As cities throughout Italy began to demand access to the same kinds of laws and protections that citizens of Rome took for granted, they petitioned the Senate and People of Rome to share in the benefits of citizenship. By the early first century BCE, the cities of Italy would go to war to win these rights from Rome. Three hundred years later, by the time of Emperor Caracalla (r. 211–217 CE), “Italian rights” were bestowed on cities that had been founded with the approval of the Senate or the emperor, or awarded as a gift as a sign of the emperor’s graciousness. They could also be passed down generationally. These rights were a highly prized social ticket for residents of a Mediterranean city. They allowed one to live and work in Lepcis Magna (Roman Libya) or in Aquinicum (Roman Vienna) and feel that he belonged to the same class of people in Italy, the heart of the empire, or in its capital, the city of Rome. They also guaranteed one’s access to the codified protections of the Roman legal system.