Download Romans in Iraq and Iran

Romans in Iraq and Iran
Early offensives
Mark Anthony, in his quest to avenge the battle of Carrhae defeat,[2] conquered in 33 BC
some areas of Atropatene (northern Iran) and Armenia but soon lost it: that was the first time
that Romans occupied a Persian territory, even if temporarily.[3]
Furthermore, probably in 20 BC, Augustus is said to have nominated Ariobarzanes II, the son
of Artavasdes, to be king of Media Atropatene,[4] creating a semi-authonomous "vassal state"
of Rome in what is now northwestern Iran. But soon, around 19 AD, The Parthians took again
full control of Atropatene.
Trajan’s invasion
Romans were able to conquer Persia under emperor Trajan.
Indeed in 113 AD Trajan invaded Parthia, marching first on Armenia. In 114 AD Trajan
annexed Armenia to the Roman empire, after defeating and killing Parthamasiris, relative of
Osroes I of Parthia. Then he turned south into Parthia itself, taking the cities of Babylon,
Seleucia and finally the capital of Ctesiphon in 116 AD.
He deposed Osroes I and put his own puppet ruler Parthamaspates on the throne. In
Mesopotamia Osroes' brother Mithridates IV and his son Sanatruces II took the diadem and
fought against the Romans, but Trajan marched southward to the Persian Gulf, defeated them,
and declared Mesopotamia a new province of the empire. Later in 116 AD, he crossed the
Khuzestan mountains into Persia and captured the great city of Susa.
Those months of 116 and 117 saw Persian Parthia as a client state of the Romans. Trajan
originally planned to annex Parthia as part of the Roman Empire, but ultimately decided
instead to place Parthamaspates on his father's throne as a Roman client, doing so in 116.
In Mesopotamia, the city of Hatra resisted Trajan’s siege. Unable to take the city and short of
supplies and campaign resources, Trajan’s campaign came to a close. The emperor withdrew
his men from southern Mesopotamia to consolidate his gains in the north. Trajan planned to
embark on another campaign, but was struck by illness. Trajan died in 117 AD, after returning
home.[6]
Trajan created even the province of Assyria, whose eastern border were never well defined by
historians: it is possible that included northwestern Elam, a semi-autonomous Persian
province (now Īlām Province of Iran) that welcomed his conquest of Mesopotamia.
Following the death of Trajan and Roman withdrawal from the area, Osroes easily defeated
Parthamaspates and reclaimed the Persian throne. Hadrian acknowledged this fait accompli,
recognized Osroes, Parthamaspates king of Osroene, and returned Osroes' daughter who had
been taken prisoner by Trajan (as a warranty to control his client state).
Later development
Even if there were further attacks from Roman emperors against the Parthian and later
Sassanid empire (Romans even suffered humiliating defeats, like with emperor Valerian), no
huge territory of actual Iran was never occupied again by Roman legions: The Romans
stopped always after conquering Ctesiphon and soon returned behind their "limes siriacus"
(only in 298 AD western Atropene up to lake Urmia was occupied by Romans for half a
century).
Indeed this city (capital of the Parthian and Sassanian empire, but not located in Iran) was
captured by Rome five times in its history - three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor
Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116 AD, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return
Ctesiphon the next year as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius
captured Ctesiphon in 164 AD during another Parthian war, but abandoned it when peace was
concluded. In 197 AD, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off
thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery. Late in the 3rd century, after the
Parthians had been supplanted by the Sassanids, the city again became a source of conflict
with Rome. In 283 AD, emperor Carus sacked the city uncontested during a period of civil
upheaval. In 295 AD, emperor Diocletianus sent Galerius but was defeated outside the city.
However, he returned a year later with a vengeance and won a victory which ended in the
fifth and final capture of the city by the Romans in 299 AD.
Furthermore in 297 AD Galerius marched into eastern Armenia and crushed there a Persian
force, capturing an enormous amount of booty and even the harem and family of the
Sassanian King Narseh. Moving later into Mesopotamia, Galerius' advance had the Persian
defence collapsing before him and so he conquered the Persian capital Ctesiphon. Badly
mauled, the Persians sued for peace. In AD 298 the province of Mesopotamia, together with
even some territory from across the river Tigris up to the lacus Matianus (now called Lake
Urmia in western Iran), was restored to Rome for half a century with an important Treaty.[7]
The extension of Armenia to the fortress of Zintha, in Media, seems to have imported much
more than would at first sight appear from the words. Gibbon interprets it as implying the
cession of all Media Atropatene, which certainly appears a little later to be in the possession
of the Armenian monarch, Tiridates. A large addition to the Armenian territory out of the
Median is doubtless intended; but it is quite impossible to determine definitely the extent or
exact character of the cession....[8]
Galerius (who occupied western Persia up to lake Matianus) wanted to conquest all Persia
after his victory against Sassanian king Narseh, but Diocletianus preferred to have a Treaty
and did the last "Parade" in Rome with a significant victory in the history of the Roman
Empire.
Julian’s invasion
On November 3, 361, Constantius II died in the city of Mobsucrenae, leaving his cousin
Flavius Claudius Julianus, known to history as Julian the Apostate, as sole Emperor of Rome.
Arriving at Constantinople to oversee Constantius' burial, Julian immediately focused on
domestic policy and began to greatly reform the Roman Imperial government by reorganizing,
streamlining and reducing the bureaucracy.
Turning next to foreign policy, Julian saw the previously unchecked military incursions of
Shapur II of Persia against the Eastern Roman provinces as posing the greatest external threat.
After many failed earlier attempts, the Persian king launched a more successful second
campaign against the Romans and captured Amida in 359, controlling the headwaters of the
Tigris and the entrance to Asia Minor from the east. A Roman offensive was desperately
needed to halt Shapur.
With Julian's reputation and exploits during his years as Caesar and general of Gaul preceding
him, Shapur preferred to negotiate a peace treaty with the intrepid young Julian. Julian
responded to Shapur's calls for peace by saying that the Persian king would be seeing him
very soon and began preparing for an expedition against the Sassanid dynasty, collecting all
his legions and marching east from Constantinople. Carefully planning and crafting his
Persian campaign for over a year, Julian transferred his capital and forward base for the
coming war to Antioch, Syria in the summer of 362 and on March 5, 363, set out with 90,000
men while Shapur, along with the main Persian army, spah, was away from Ctesiphon. Per his
devised plan of attack, Julian sent 30,000 soldiers under the command of his maternal cousin
Procopius to Armenia, with the aim of obtaining support from the King of Armenia for a
clever and not looked-for double pincers movement against Shapur.
Seeing Julian successfully march into his dominions, Shapur ordered his governors to
undertake a scorched earth policy until he reached the Sassanid capital, Ctesiphon, with the
main Persian army. However after a few minor skirmishes and sieges Julian arrived with his
undefeated army [4] before Shapur II to the walls of Ctesiphon on May 29. Outside the walls a
Persian army under Spahbod Merena was formed up for battle across the Tigris.
One of the Christian sources and not one friendly to the pagan Julian, Socrates Scholasticus,
even states that Julian's victories up to this point in the campaign had been so great that they
caused Shapur to offer Julian a large portion of the Persian domains if he and his legions
would withdraw from Ctesiphon. But Julian rejected this offer out of desire for the glory of
taking the Persian capital and defeating Shapur in battle which would earn him the honorific
of Parthicus. However, Julian lacked the equipment to lay siege to the strongly fortified
Ctesiphon, and the main Sassanid army, commanded by Shapur and far larger than the one
just defeated, was closing in quickly. Also critical was the failure of Procopius to arrive with
the 30,000 detachment of the Roman army that could have aided Julian in crushing Shapur's
approaching force as he had intended. For as previously captured Satraps had testified after
being fairly treated by Julian, the capture or death of Shapur would have compelled the
Persian city to open its gates to the new Roman conqueror. While Julian was in favor of
advancing further into Persian territory, he was overruled by his officers. Roman morale was
low, disease was spreading, and there was very little forage around.
Reluctantly, Julian agreed to retreat back along the Tigris and look for Procopius and the
other half of his army that had failed to coordinate the double-pincers movement with him
outside of Ctesiphon as had been planned. On June 16, 363, the retreat began and ten days
later, outside Samarra, the army’s rearguard came under heavy attack. Not even pausing to put
on his armour, Julian plunged into the fray shouting encouragement to his men. Just as the
Persians were beginning to pull out with heavy losses, Julian was struck in the side by a flying
spear. His liver fatally pierced, Julian died before midnight, on June 26, 363.
Julian was succeeded by the short-lived emperor Jovian, who lacked the martial vigor and
strong will of his honored predecessor. As the Roman army was deep inside Sassanid
territory, the inexperienced Jovian chose to make peace with Shapur, a peace received on
unfavorable terms, in order to be allowed to safely lead his troops back to Roman territory.
The humiliating peace terms required that the districts on the Tigris and Nisibis (a total of five
Roman provinces) be ceded to the Persians, and the Romans promised to no longer interfere
in the political affairs of Armenia.
The death of Julian brought about the demise of formerly unchallenged Roman military
supremacy in the East as the campaign of 363 would be the last great offensive campaign that
consisted of legions and auxiliaries nearing 95,000 strong. Rome not only lost an effective
and competent emperor and general in Julian, but its military policy after his death shifted
permanently to a defensive posture.
The big picture
Although warfare between the Romans and the Parthians/Sassanids lasted for seven centuries,
the frontier remained largely stable in those centuries. A game of tug of war ensued: towns,
fortifications, and provinces were continuously sacked, captured, destroyed, and traded. The
line of stalemate shifted in the 2nd century AD with Trajan: it had run along the northern
Euphrates until then. The new line ran northeast, across Mesopotamia to the northern Tigris.
There were also several substantial shifts further north, in Armenia and the Caucasus.
A new series of wars began in the 2nd century AD, during which the Romans consistently
held the upper hand over Parthia. In 113 AD the Roman Emperor Trajan decided that the
moment was ripe to resolve the "eastern question" once and for all time by the decisive defeat
of Parthia and the annexation of Armenia: his conquests mark a deliberate change of the
Roman Policy towards Parthia, and a shift of emphasis in the "grand strategy" of the empire.[5]
Romans withdrew from the homeland territory of Persia with the 363 AD defeat of Jovian,
and only bizantine emperor Heraclius was able to return and conquer Gazaca (the capital of
Atropatene) and Ispahan (in central Persia) in 623 AD, just a few years before the Arab
conquest of Sassanian Persia.[9]
Finally, one characteristic of the Roman presence in Persia is that Roman emperors dreamed
of conquering all Persia from Trajan to Galerius, while Parthian/Sassanian kings never tried to
conquer Rome, Italy or southeastern Europe according to historian Theodor Mommsen.