The Sasanian Campaign of Gordian III was an episode of the RomanâÂÂSasanian Wars. The war between the Roman Empire, ruled by the Roman Emperor Gordian III (), during the period of military anarchy, and the rule of the Sasanians, led by Shapur I (), who succeeded his father Ardashir I (), was fought in a period between 242 and 244 and ended with a Sasanian victory and the death of Gordian III.
Between 224 and 226âÂÂ227 it had happened that in the East the last emperor of the Parthian Empire, Artabanus IV, had been overthrown in the Battle of Hormozdgan on 28 April, and the rebel, Ardashir I, had founded the Sasanian dynasty, destined to be a fearsome eastern adversary of the Romans until the 7th century. Between 242 and 244, the Sasanians and the Romans clashed for the second time.
The prelude was the constant claim, by the Sasanians who considered themselves descendants of the Persians, of possession of the entirety of the Achaemenid Empire, including the now Roman territories of Asia Minor and the Near East, up to the Aegean Sea.
In fact, the Sasanian campaign of Severus Alexander of 232 had as their final result that of bringing the two Empires to the status quo of the time of Septimius Severus. The Romans and Sasanians thus returned to establish themselves along the "ancient borders" of a few decades earlier, and peace between the two powers reigned for the next seven/eight years. In the years 239âÂÂ241, in fact, the Sasanian ruler Ardashir I, together with his son Shapur I, invaded the region, besieging Dura-Europos in vain but perhaps not Antioch on the Orontes in Roman Syria (239), conquering and destroying the city of Hatra, allied with the Romans (in 240), and finally occupying some cities of Roman province of Mesopotamia, Nisibis and Carrhae (the latter two had already been wrested from the Romans during the last months of the reign of Maximinus Thrax).
We do not know precisely how many and what kind of forces the Sasanians fielded. Cassius Dio had told us about the previous campaign of Alexander Severus and the preceding years (from 229 to 232), that it was a large army, ready to terrorize not only Roman province of Mesopotamia, but also that of Syria, west of the Euphrates.
The Sasanians mainly used the bow and the horse in war, unlike the Romans who favored the infantry while the Sasanians are said to have grown up from childhood, riding and shooting arrows, living constantly for war and hunting.
It should be added that, unlike the Parthians, they tried to keep their contingents under arms for several years, during major military campaigns, speeding up the recruitment of their armies, as well as better assimilating the siege techniques of their Roman opponents, never truly learned from their predecessors.
We know instead that for the Romans the forces put in charge, They were represented by legions and auxiliary troops placed along the eastern limes. Below is a list of legions and their respective fortresses:
To these legions, already present on the eastern front, were added others coming from the Danube and from other western regions such as:
In addition to some vexillationes coming from other fronts such as:
The total forces deployed by the Roman Empire along the entire eastern limes, may have been around 150âÂÂ170,000 Roman soldiers involved or perhaps more, certainly an immense army, of which half was made up of legionaries, the remainder by auxiliaries.
Having arrived at Antioch, he crossed the Euphrates, and then defeated the Persian forces in the Battle of Resaena and drove them back into their territory east of the Euphrates. The emperor, then returned in the Roman province of Syria and planned a new offensive for the following year, aimed at conquering the enemy capital, Ctesiphon, when Timesitheus died, which seems to be caused by illness.
The praetorian prefect Priscus convinced Gordian to appoint his brother Marcus Julius Philippus (better known as Philip the Arab) as the new praetorian prefect to replace Timesitheus. During the autumn and early winter of this same year, Roman troops advanced along the Euphrates. This is the account of Zosimus, certainly not favorable to Philip the Arab :
Persian sources report that, early in the year, the Persians and Romans clashed again in the Battle of Misiche (present-day Fallujah or al-Anbar, 40km west of Baghdad), ended with a heavy defeat for the Romans, following which Shapur I, changed the name of the city to Peroz-Shapur ("Victorious Shapur") and celebrated the victory with an inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam in which he claimed to have killed Gordian. The Roman sources never admitted the defeat. The contemporary and later Roman sources claim that the Roman expedition was entirely or partially successful, but the emperor was murdered after a plot by Philip the Arab, who succeeded him on the throne. The inscription on the cenotaph of Circesium was, according to the Historia Augusta, written in Greek, Latin, Persian, Hebrew and Egyptian, so that everyone could read:
A final version hypothesizes that Gordian died on the way back near "Circesium", after a battle fought against the Persians (Misiche, ?), due to an injury sustained in a fall from a horse.
After the death of Gordian III, Philip the Arab paid 500,000 denarii to the Sasanian Empire and cedes Armenia and Mesopotamia to them. The Res Gestae Divi Saporis, an epigraph of the Sasanian emperor, says:
The Roman East was then entrusted by Philip to his brother, Priscus, who was appointed Rector Orientis.