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Updated: May 3, 2025
"And Rome brooks no such men as you, traitor," said Rufinus. "Ay, traitor, I say," he repeated, as Odaenathus started at the word. "Think not to hide your plots to overthrow the Roman power in your city and hand the rule to the base Sapor of Persia. Every thing is known to our great father the Emperor, and thus doth he reckon with traitors.
But Mesopotamia had remained in the possession of the Persians as the prize of their victory over Valerian, and could only be obtained by wresting it from the hands into which it had fallen. Odenathus did not shrink from this contest. It had been with some reason conjectured that Sapor must have been at this time occupied with troubles which had broken out on the eastern side of his empire.
Sapor, no doubt, thought he saw in this condition of things an opportunity that he ought not to miss, and rapidly matured his plans lest the favorable moment should pass away. Crossing the middle Tigris into Mesopotamia, the bands of Sapor first attacked the important city of Nisibis.
It was necessary, before anything could be done to resist the advance of Sapor, that the insubordination of the troops should be checked, their wants supplied, and their good-will conciliated. Constantius applied himself to effect these changes.
It must have been shortly after his rejection of the teaching of Manes that Sapor died, having reigned thirty-one years, from A.D. 240 to A.D. 271. He was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable princes of the Sassanian series. In military talent, indeed, he may not have equalled his father; for though he defeated Valerian, he had to confess himself inferior to Odenathus.
If any credit can be given to this marvellous tale, which seems, however, to be countenanced by the manners of the people, and by the extraordinary duration of his reign, we must admire not only the fortune, but the genius, of Sapor.
He therefore quitted the East in A.D. 244, having concluded a treaty with Sapor by which Armenia seems to have been left to the Persians, while Mesopotamia returned to its old condition of a Roman province. The peace made between Philip and Sapor was followed by an interval of fourteen years, during which scarcely anything is known of the condition of Persia.
'They should have been gladly yours, very heartily yours. It was a foul deed of Sapor and a sad fate, that of the great Censor, and of your father the good Oneius Piso. And yet I see not much that I could have done. 'Refuse not my thanks, said I, 'for the expression of so generous sentiments.
Hesitation and diffidence characterize the movements of both parties to the contest, and the year is signalized by no important enterprise on the part of either monarch. Sapor, on his side, began the year with demonstrations which were taken to mean that he was about to pass the Euphrates; but in reality he never even brought his troops across the Tigris, or once set foot in Mesopotamia.
Taxation, on those left to tax, falls an intolerable burden; we have seen how Shah Sapor is dealing with one end of the empire; at the other end, in Gaul, one Magnentius rose against Constantius, and the latter thoughtfully invited in the Germans to put him down and help themselves to what they found handy; and a certain Chnodomar, a king in those trans-Rhenish regions, has taken him much at his word.
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