The Two Great Powers in Late Antiquity: a Comparison

Abstract

THIS PAPER presents some provisional conclusions reached by an outsider who has made a number of forays into the history of the Sasanian empire, Rome&s;s great eastern rival in late antiquity. Much of the expertise which ideally should underlie such a paper - knowledge of Pahlavi and Arabic, archaeological training, and wide-ranging travels over Iran which alone can give the historian of institutions, policy-making and policy-outcomes a real understanding of his subject - is lacking in this case. All that the outsider can claim in compensation for these grave defects are the advantages which come from a position of detachment, a willingness to question received opinion within the field and attention to the general rather than the particular. If positive contributions can be made by a Byzantinist who reaches back into the late Roman period, they will come from fresh scrutiny of those Roman (and Armenian) texts which throw light on Sasanian institutions and from an appreciation of the performance of the Sasanian empire in foreign affairs, principally (because of the bias of the surviving evidence) in its relations with the east Roman empire.

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