Armies of the Roman-Persian Wars, 253 260 AD
J.M. aka "Salah ad-Din", Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
In 224 AD, the Roman Empire was at the peak of its power, but was about to enter a half-century period of nearly terminal decline. Seven years before they had defeated their most powerful enemies the Parthians in what is now Iraq. The Parthian Empire, already weakened by this war, were in no condition to face the Persian revolt that sprung up in several of their Iranian provinces. By 226, the leader of the Persians had annihilated the Parthians, and declared himself Ardashir (Artaxerxes) the First of a new dynasty of Persian rulers, called the Sassanid after his grandfather. The Romans did not have long to rejoice at the destruction of their most terrible eastern foes, however, for the Persians would prove to be far more troublesome neighbors than the Parthians ever were.
The second Sassanid Emperor, Shapur the First, was an energetic man and a brutally efficient general. He used both treachery and raw brute force to humble the Romans time and again. Though he was defeated by the Roman general Furius Timesitheus at the Battle of Rhessaina in 243, he managed to build the strength of the Persian army up again. In 251 he attempted to blackmail the Roman Emperor Trebonianus Gallus. When the latter refused to pay tribute to what he arrogantly saw as a barbarian chieftain, the Persians invaded Roman-held Syria. What followed was one of the costliest military disasters in the history of Rome.
Between 253 and 260, Shapur and his army defeated several Roman armies in battle. The war culminated with the treacherous capture of the Roman Emperor Valerianus in 260 this was the first and only time that a Roman emperor was captured in battle, and it was said by the historian Libianus that after this Romans were prepared to suffer any fate rather than look a Persian in the face.
With Romes defeat in 260 there was relative peace between the respective empires until the 290s, when the young Roman Caesar Galerius waged a fairly successful campaign against Persia. Over the course of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Centuries the Sassanid and Roman/Byzantine empires fought a succession of costly wars that drained their manpower and resources, but that also left a permanent mark on human history the destruction of Roman Emperor Julians army by the Persians at Ctesiphon prevented a final, terrible persecution of Christianity and helped secure the Christian hold on Europe for good. At the beginning of the 7th Century AD, however, both armies were too weak from fighting each other to face a new enemy like the Arab warlord Muhammad, and the first Islamic armies, which conquered Sassanid Persia in the 640s AD.
Major Battles
Barbalissos, 253
A Roman army of c. 60,000, mustering here is destroyed by Sassanids
Siege of Antioch, c. 255 256
Antioch is taken by Shapur
Siege of Dura Europos, c. 255 256
Dura Europos is taken by Shapur
Antioch, 256
Valerian recaptures Antioch with an army of c. 70,000
Sieges of Edessa and Carrhae, 256
Shapur sieges Edessa and Carrhae to draw Valerians attention
Battle of Edessa/Carrhae, 260
Valerian is captured and his army destroyed by Shapur, end of Valerians War with Persia
The Roman Army, 253 260 AD
The mid-point of the 3rd Century AD, often called the Crisis of the Third Century, was a dark one for the Roman Empire. Anarchy reigned throughout the provinces, and indeed often in Rome herself as the emperor had to ride out to deal with a multitude of disturbances both within and outside of the Empire. Persian and Germanic invasions, as well as pesky incursions by smaller tribes were no longer the only threats Roman generals and governors would secure the allegiance of legions and declare themselves emperor. Thanks to these selfish and short-sighted men, the Roman Empire was effectively locked in some fifty years of civil war between 235 and 284. The usurpation problem reached its peak in the reign of Valerians son Gallienus, 260 268, during which time no less than thirty men and at least one woman declared themselves Caesar and all of them except for the Syrian empress Zenobia died violent deaths. Most were fittingly murdered by subordinates.
Because of the anarchic state of the Empire in the middle of the 3rd Century, the Roman Army of this period has tended to be viewed in a negative light by recent historians. This is unfair, however; the army cannot be judged by the stupid ambitions and antics of its leaders. The common fighting men of Rome proved themselves in this period as well as they had under Caesar, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius in centuries past. The organization and tactics of the Imperial army had also been further improved in the 3rd Century with an increase in specialist troops and in highly mobile cavalry forces used for rapid deployment to trouble spots. In the east, Rome involved herself in Arab politics and was often able to enlist in these tribes to slow down the invading Sassanids.
Even though both cavalry and light infantry had started to steal the spotlight in the 3rd Century, the heavy infantry soldiers of the legions remained the solid backbone of the Roman Army. A Roman legion in this time period nominally consisted of 5,120 infantry with a hundred or so cavalry attached to it. The infantry were divided into ten cohorts. The first cohort consisted of 800 men, the other nine of 480. Each cohort was in turn divided into units of 80 men called centuries; these were commanded by centurions. Overall commanders of legions were usually called legates, though men of senatorial rank were allowed to command legions until the reign of Gallienus, shortly after this period.
Recent historians have overstated the number of changes that took place in the weapons and fighting styles of the Roman legionaries in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD in fact, the army of the 250s did not look much different from that of two centuries before save for some different styles of armor. Armor was now a somewhat hodgepodge affair so much Roman armor had been looted by the Persians and barbarians that the Romans had to settle with whatever they could buy, make, or themselves loot. Breastplates had not been worn since the early 1st Century, while plated loricas had declined though they were still to be seen. The most common kind of armor was chainmail; even if it was not as effective as the lorica it was lighter and more comfortable, and was also cheaper to manufacture. Scalemail, made from horses hooves, was to be seen amongst soldiers of the Eastern provinces also.
A trend that started in the early 3rd Century was for legionaries to fight in light marching order, with no helmets or body armor, defending themselves only with their shields. This was especially so of the lanciarii specially trained skirmishers who were used mostly by the Eastern legions in combat with Parthians and Persians. Other soldiers wore leather or padded cotton armor the latter could absorb blows surprisingly well, and was not a major encumbrance to wear. Helmets, when worn, had not changed as much as body armor. The conical spangenhelm, a style invented by the barbarians, was adopted by the Roman army in the late 3rd Century. It is not known if it was worn as early as the reign of Valerian.
Weapons remained largely unchanged the typical legionary of the Persian Wars would have carried two heavy javelins (pila) with lead weights, a medium-length cut-and-thrust sword (gladius), and a fat little dagger (pugio). Specialist legionaries included those who carried several, lighter javelins (lanciarii) and those who carried thrusting spears (phalangarii). There is evidence to suggest that Roman soldiers often used pickaxes (dolabrae), officially only for digging siegeworks, as particularly nasty shock-weapons. Legionaries also received archery training, though they did not often use it in battle archery was left to auxiliary units and local militias.
The Roman body shield (scutum) had always been rectangular in shape and concave, but in the 3rd Century an increasing preference was shown to flat oval shields. Shields were brightly painted with the name, number, and mascot of the legion, and the name of the owner was inscribed on the back. As new faiths like Mithraism and Christianity took hold in the army, some soldiers chose to display their faiths by painting sacred symbols on their shields.
The Roman army had always been supported by a number of auxiliary troop types these included barbarian spearmen and archers, Arab camel-riders, and cavalrymen, slingers, rock-throwers, and artillerymen from diverse nations. Cavalry were especially prominent in the East; they included Armenians, Arabs, Gothic mercenaries, and probably renegade Parthians and Persians, all equipped in their native styles. Barbarian cavalry, like those of the Goths, fought with long swords, light spears, and oval shields, as did the Roman cavalry. Allied Eastern cavalry copied Persian tactics and were very heavily armored shock troops fighting with two-handed lances. Arabs and Parthians, on the other hand, fought from both horses and camels as unarmored bowmen.
The Sassanid Persian Army of 253 260 AD
The people of Persia/Iran have always had a strong tradition of both horsemanship and archery, as well as swordsmanship. The Persians of the Sassanid dynasty have went down in history above all else as excellent cavalrymen arguably the finest the world has ever seen. The savaran knights of Sassanid Persia would be the bane of the Roman legions time and again, and would successfully clash with a number of other opponents, Turks, Huns, Indians, and Islamic Arabs. When the Arab conquest of Persia was finally completed in 651 AD, many veteran Persian cavalrymen were incorporated into the Islamic armies; even into the early modern era the military traditions of Sassanid Persia would survive in Iran, and throughout the Islamic World.
The Parthians whom the Persians supplanted not only preserved but perfected the mounted archery techniques of their Scythian ancestors. It is estimated that for every spear-armed cavalryman in the Parthian army, that was at least ten horse archers. This situation was almost completely reversed by the Sassanids. Though the Sassanids did not disdain archery (like the contemporary Germanic tribes, and, to a lesser extent the Romans), they favored the use of spears and swords, especially when fighting on horseback. Even as early as the Persian rise to power and conquest of Parthia in the 220s the Persians were fighting predominately as armored lancers. By the 5th Century most horse archers fielded by the Persians were not even blood Persians but auxiliaries recruited amongst the tribes on the eastern and northern fringes of their Empire.
The Sassanid name for a standing army was spah. The core of a spah was the savaran armored cavalry. As mentioned above the savaran were predominately armed with spears and swords, the latter of which were massive weapons like those used in late medieval Europe. Savaran are also recorded as using javelins, maces, axes, bows, and whips as weapons. The last of these weapons could be used to ensnare enemy generals or tangle up the spears of foemen. The Persian savaran were always upper-class noblemen of noble Aryan descent. Military reforms of the 6th Century AD allowed for lower-class citizens of the Empire to become savaran, which allowed for many more of them to be recruited. The savaran were always a tiny percentage of the army in terms of numbers, but they were the most powerful and decisive element in most Persian armies.
The Romans were amazed at the massive amounts of armor worn by Persian savaran they often wore several layers of chainmail, leather barding, and plated armor in addition to heavy spangenhelm helmets. Most also had round shields. The Romans had two names for the heavy cavalry of Persia, based on what degree they were armored cataphractarii usually wore chainmail and rode unarmored horses, while clibanarii wore several layers of armor and rode armored horses. Considering the brutally hot conditions under which they fought, clibanarii were only recruited amongst the very toughest and most dedicated of Persians, and were not able to fight extended engagements in daylight.
The Persians also used lighter cavalry in their wars against Rome notable amongst these in the 3rd and 4th Century were the Lakhmid Arabs, many of whom had converted to Christianity. Most of the Arab tribes fought as moderately armored lancers, like cataphractarii. Other light cavalry included auxiliaries hired from the Turks, the White Huns, and perhaps the Indians and Indo-Scythians. The White Huns, unlike their distant relatives who terrorized Europe under Attila, appear to have preferred to fight with javelins rather than bows, but they shared their skill as excellent horsemen and hardy warriors.
Like in the later Roman Army, so much is made of the Persian cavalry that their infantry were often overlooked, or even looked upon with disdain, both in ancient times and by modern historians. The Persians fielded huge amounts of infantry of diverse types, however, and some were able to go toe-to-toe with Roman legionaries.
Numerically speaking, the overwhelming majority of Persian infantry were local militias and conscripts fighting with whatever weapons their people specialized in. In Persia and Iraq these would often be archers, while in Asia Minor they would be slingers and the Kurds and Arabs were able to provide fine javelineers. The most common type of militia infantry, however, were the lower paighan farmer warriors equipped with light thrusting spears, poorly-made rectangular shields, and small swords overall, they were something of a cheap parody of the Roman legions, or of the fine infantry spearmen fielded by the Achaemenid Persians of Biblical and Greek fame. The fighting qualities of these men were so poor that they were often chained together or threatened with cruel tortures just to keep them upright in the battleline.
The best Persian infantry were the Medes the Medes and Persians had a longstanding and brotherly alliance going back to Biblical times, and this relationship was honored under the Sassanid rulers. Median chieftains sent contingents of sturdy heavy infantry to back up the cavalry-strong Persians in battle. These men were equipped the same as Roman legionaries, and it is likely that they had been trained and armed by the many Roman deserters, traitors, and prisoners that were acquired in the wars of the 240s and 250s. Their weapons included spears, javelins, and infantry swords. They wore spangenhelm helmets and chainmail shirts. No depictions or descriptions of their shields have been found so far; they may have been wicker shields of old Persian style, or plywood shields of Roman craft. These men are described by Roman historians as fighting like gladiators and giving crack cohorts of Roman legionaries a run for their money.
J.M. aka "Salah ad-Din", Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
In 224 AD, the Roman Empire was at the peak of its power, but was about to enter a half-century period of nearly terminal decline. Seven years before they had defeated their most powerful enemies the Parthians in what is now Iraq. The Parthian Empire, already weakened by this war, were in no condition to face the Persian revolt that sprung up in several of their Iranian provinces. By 226, the leader of the Persians had annihilated the Parthians, and declared himself Ardashir (Artaxerxes) the First of a new dynasty of Persian rulers, called the Sassanid after his grandfather. The Romans did not have long to rejoice at the destruction of their most terrible eastern foes, however, for the Persians would prove to be far more troublesome neighbors than the Parthians ever were.
The second Sassanid Emperor, Shapur the First, was an energetic man and a brutally efficient general. He used both treachery and raw brute force to humble the Romans time and again. Though he was defeated by the Roman general Furius Timesitheus at the Battle of Rhessaina in 243, he managed to build the strength of the Persian army up again. In 251 he attempted to blackmail the Roman Emperor Trebonianus Gallus. When the latter refused to pay tribute to what he arrogantly saw as a barbarian chieftain, the Persians invaded Roman-held Syria. What followed was one of the costliest military disasters in the history of Rome.
Between 253 and 260, Shapur and his army defeated several Roman armies in battle. The war culminated with the treacherous capture of the Roman Emperor Valerianus in 260 this was the first and only time that a Roman emperor was captured in battle, and it was said by the historian Libianus that after this Romans were prepared to suffer any fate rather than look a Persian in the face.
With Romes defeat in 260 there was relative peace between the respective empires until the 290s, when the young Roman Caesar Galerius waged a fairly successful campaign against Persia. Over the course of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Centuries the Sassanid and Roman/Byzantine empires fought a succession of costly wars that drained their manpower and resources, but that also left a permanent mark on human history the destruction of Roman Emperor Julians army by the Persians at Ctesiphon prevented a final, terrible persecution of Christianity and helped secure the Christian hold on Europe for good. At the beginning of the 7th Century AD, however, both armies were too weak from fighting each other to face a new enemy like the Arab warlord Muhammad, and the first Islamic armies, which conquered Sassanid Persia in the 640s AD.
Major Battles
Barbalissos, 253
A Roman army of c. 60,000, mustering here is destroyed by Sassanids
Siege of Antioch, c. 255 256
Antioch is taken by Shapur
Siege of Dura Europos, c. 255 256
Dura Europos is taken by Shapur
Antioch, 256
Valerian recaptures Antioch with an army of c. 70,000
Sieges of Edessa and Carrhae, 256
Shapur sieges Edessa and Carrhae to draw Valerians attention
Battle of Edessa/Carrhae, 260
Valerian is captured and his army destroyed by Shapur, end of Valerians War with Persia
The Roman Army, 253 260 AD
The mid-point of the 3rd Century AD, often called the Crisis of the Third Century, was a dark one for the Roman Empire. Anarchy reigned throughout the provinces, and indeed often in Rome herself as the emperor had to ride out to deal with a multitude of disturbances both within and outside of the Empire. Persian and Germanic invasions, as well as pesky incursions by smaller tribes were no longer the only threats Roman generals and governors would secure the allegiance of legions and declare themselves emperor. Thanks to these selfish and short-sighted men, the Roman Empire was effectively locked in some fifty years of civil war between 235 and 284. The usurpation problem reached its peak in the reign of Valerians son Gallienus, 260 268, during which time no less than thirty men and at least one woman declared themselves Caesar and all of them except for the Syrian empress Zenobia died violent deaths. Most were fittingly murdered by subordinates.
Because of the anarchic state of the Empire in the middle of the 3rd Century, the Roman Army of this period has tended to be viewed in a negative light by recent historians. This is unfair, however; the army cannot be judged by the stupid ambitions and antics of its leaders. The common fighting men of Rome proved themselves in this period as well as they had under Caesar, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius in centuries past. The organization and tactics of the Imperial army had also been further improved in the 3rd Century with an increase in specialist troops and in highly mobile cavalry forces used for rapid deployment to trouble spots. In the east, Rome involved herself in Arab politics and was often able to enlist in these tribes to slow down the invading Sassanids.
Even though both cavalry and light infantry had started to steal the spotlight in the 3rd Century, the heavy infantry soldiers of the legions remained the solid backbone of the Roman Army. A Roman legion in this time period nominally consisted of 5,120 infantry with a hundred or so cavalry attached to it. The infantry were divided into ten cohorts. The first cohort consisted of 800 men, the other nine of 480. Each cohort was in turn divided into units of 80 men called centuries; these were commanded by centurions. Overall commanders of legions were usually called legates, though men of senatorial rank were allowed to command legions until the reign of Gallienus, shortly after this period.
Recent historians have overstated the number of changes that took place in the weapons and fighting styles of the Roman legionaries in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD in fact, the army of the 250s did not look much different from that of two centuries before save for some different styles of armor. Armor was now a somewhat hodgepodge affair so much Roman armor had been looted by the Persians and barbarians that the Romans had to settle with whatever they could buy, make, or themselves loot. Breastplates had not been worn since the early 1st Century, while plated loricas had declined though they were still to be seen. The most common kind of armor was chainmail; even if it was not as effective as the lorica it was lighter and more comfortable, and was also cheaper to manufacture. Scalemail, made from horses hooves, was to be seen amongst soldiers of the Eastern provinces also.
A trend that started in the early 3rd Century was for legionaries to fight in light marching order, with no helmets or body armor, defending themselves only with their shields. This was especially so of the lanciarii specially trained skirmishers who were used mostly by the Eastern legions in combat with Parthians and Persians. Other soldiers wore leather or padded cotton armor the latter could absorb blows surprisingly well, and was not a major encumbrance to wear. Helmets, when worn, had not changed as much as body armor. The conical spangenhelm, a style invented by the barbarians, was adopted by the Roman army in the late 3rd Century. It is not known if it was worn as early as the reign of Valerian.
Weapons remained largely unchanged the typical legionary of the Persian Wars would have carried two heavy javelins (pila) with lead weights, a medium-length cut-and-thrust sword (gladius), and a fat little dagger (pugio). Specialist legionaries included those who carried several, lighter javelins (lanciarii) and those who carried thrusting spears (phalangarii). There is evidence to suggest that Roman soldiers often used pickaxes (dolabrae), officially only for digging siegeworks, as particularly nasty shock-weapons. Legionaries also received archery training, though they did not often use it in battle archery was left to auxiliary units and local militias.
The Roman body shield (scutum) had always been rectangular in shape and concave, but in the 3rd Century an increasing preference was shown to flat oval shields. Shields were brightly painted with the name, number, and mascot of the legion, and the name of the owner was inscribed on the back. As new faiths like Mithraism and Christianity took hold in the army, some soldiers chose to display their faiths by painting sacred symbols on their shields.
The Roman army had always been supported by a number of auxiliary troop types these included barbarian spearmen and archers, Arab camel-riders, and cavalrymen, slingers, rock-throwers, and artillerymen from diverse nations. Cavalry were especially prominent in the East; they included Armenians, Arabs, Gothic mercenaries, and probably renegade Parthians and Persians, all equipped in their native styles. Barbarian cavalry, like those of the Goths, fought with long swords, light spears, and oval shields, as did the Roman cavalry. Allied Eastern cavalry copied Persian tactics and were very heavily armored shock troops fighting with two-handed lances. Arabs and Parthians, on the other hand, fought from both horses and camels as unarmored bowmen.
The Sassanid Persian Army of 253 260 AD
The people of Persia/Iran have always had a strong tradition of both horsemanship and archery, as well as swordsmanship. The Persians of the Sassanid dynasty have went down in history above all else as excellent cavalrymen arguably the finest the world has ever seen. The savaran knights of Sassanid Persia would be the bane of the Roman legions time and again, and would successfully clash with a number of other opponents, Turks, Huns, Indians, and Islamic Arabs. When the Arab conquest of Persia was finally completed in 651 AD, many veteran Persian cavalrymen were incorporated into the Islamic armies; even into the early modern era the military traditions of Sassanid Persia would survive in Iran, and throughout the Islamic World.
The Parthians whom the Persians supplanted not only preserved but perfected the mounted archery techniques of their Scythian ancestors. It is estimated that for every spear-armed cavalryman in the Parthian army, that was at least ten horse archers. This situation was almost completely reversed by the Sassanids. Though the Sassanids did not disdain archery (like the contemporary Germanic tribes, and, to a lesser extent the Romans), they favored the use of spears and swords, especially when fighting on horseback. Even as early as the Persian rise to power and conquest of Parthia in the 220s the Persians were fighting predominately as armored lancers. By the 5th Century most horse archers fielded by the Persians were not even blood Persians but auxiliaries recruited amongst the tribes on the eastern and northern fringes of their Empire.
The Sassanid name for a standing army was spah. The core of a spah was the savaran armored cavalry. As mentioned above the savaran were predominately armed with spears and swords, the latter of which were massive weapons like those used in late medieval Europe. Savaran are also recorded as using javelins, maces, axes, bows, and whips as weapons. The last of these weapons could be used to ensnare enemy generals or tangle up the spears of foemen. The Persian savaran were always upper-class noblemen of noble Aryan descent. Military reforms of the 6th Century AD allowed for lower-class citizens of the Empire to become savaran, which allowed for many more of them to be recruited. The savaran were always a tiny percentage of the army in terms of numbers, but they were the most powerful and decisive element in most Persian armies.
The Romans were amazed at the massive amounts of armor worn by Persian savaran they often wore several layers of chainmail, leather barding, and plated armor in addition to heavy spangenhelm helmets. Most also had round shields. The Romans had two names for the heavy cavalry of Persia, based on what degree they were armored cataphractarii usually wore chainmail and rode unarmored horses, while clibanarii wore several layers of armor and rode armored horses. Considering the brutally hot conditions under which they fought, clibanarii were only recruited amongst the very toughest and most dedicated of Persians, and were not able to fight extended engagements in daylight.
The Persians also used lighter cavalry in their wars against Rome notable amongst these in the 3rd and 4th Century were the Lakhmid Arabs, many of whom had converted to Christianity. Most of the Arab tribes fought as moderately armored lancers, like cataphractarii. Other light cavalry included auxiliaries hired from the Turks, the White Huns, and perhaps the Indians and Indo-Scythians. The White Huns, unlike their distant relatives who terrorized Europe under Attila, appear to have preferred to fight with javelins rather than bows, but they shared their skill as excellent horsemen and hardy warriors.
Like in the later Roman Army, so much is made of the Persian cavalry that their infantry were often overlooked, or even looked upon with disdain, both in ancient times and by modern historians. The Persians fielded huge amounts of infantry of diverse types, however, and some were able to go toe-to-toe with Roman legionaries.
Numerically speaking, the overwhelming majority of Persian infantry were local militias and conscripts fighting with whatever weapons their people specialized in. In Persia and Iraq these would often be archers, while in Asia Minor they would be slingers and the Kurds and Arabs were able to provide fine javelineers. The most common type of militia infantry, however, were the lower paighan farmer warriors equipped with light thrusting spears, poorly-made rectangular shields, and small swords overall, they were something of a cheap parody of the Roman legions, or of the fine infantry spearmen fielded by the Achaemenid Persians of Biblical and Greek fame. The fighting qualities of these men were so poor that they were often chained together or threatened with cruel tortures just to keep them upright in the battleline.
The best Persian infantry were the Medes the Medes and Persians had a longstanding and brotherly alliance going back to Biblical times, and this relationship was honored under the Sassanid rulers. Median chieftains sent contingents of sturdy heavy infantry to back up the cavalry-strong Persians in battle. These men were equipped the same as Roman legionaries, and it is likely that they had been trained and armed by the many Roman deserters, traitors, and prisoners that were acquired in the wars of the 240s and 250s. Their weapons included spears, javelins, and infantry swords. They wore spangenhelm helmets and chainmail shirts. No depictions or descriptions of their shields have been found so far; they may have been wicker shields of old Persian style, or plywood shields of Roman craft. These men are described by Roman historians as fighting like gladiators and giving crack cohorts of Roman legionaries a run for their money.
