122 | CHAPTER 4
two same regions, Arabia in the South and Armenia (plus Iberia and Alba-
nia) in the North. The last decades of the sixth century and the first of the
seventh saw the Sasanians, too, simultaneously on the offensive in both Ar-
menia and South Arabia.^112 The story culminated with Heraclius delivering
his knock- out blow against Khosrow II through the Armenian mountains
rather than facing the Sasanian cavalry on their preferred terrain in Mesopo-
tamia.^113 “This is virtually the only way to win, or at least it is the easiest,” had
observed a Latin historian already in the fourth century.^114
Indisputably, the Armenians possessed a superb vantage point from which
to survey the strategic issues between Iran and Rome, and to appreciate the
natural arena in which they were played out. Procopius of Caesarea, the his-
torian of Justinian’s wars, brilliantly illustrates this by putting into the mouths
of Armenian ambassadors to Khosrow I a threatening evocation of Justini-
an’s all- consuming greed for power, with the Sasanians, by the late 530s, as
inevitably the next in line. The ambassadors enumerate (how authentically,
or with what insidious purpose, is here immaterial) the East Roman emper-
or’s intrigues, interventions, and conquests across a vast front stretching from
the northern and eastern shores of the Black Sea and the Huns who threat-
ened Iran’s northern frontiers, through the Caucasus, Syria, and Arabia as far
as the Ethiopians (“of whom the Romans were completely ignorant”), while
not omitting—in order to drive their point home—remoter regions such as
North Africa and Italy.^115
Our detailed literary sources for the Roman Empire enable us to decipher
something of its policy makers’ motives. But much else that was done in and
around the Mountain Arena, by less documented but not necessarily less
powerful actors, also serves to underline the region’s dynamic centrality to
our story. Let us glance at Iran and the Caliphate.
Despite the Roman elite’s explicitly articulated appreciation of the Moun-
tain Arena’s importance, attacking Iran through Armenia was far easier in
theory than practice. Heraclius’s successful invasion of Iran from the North—
in alliance with the Turks—was an exhibition of breathtaking generalship
under extremely adverse conditions and with an army that enjoyed the un-
precedented (for Rome) psychological advantage of fighting for the empire’s
very survival. Under the more usual conditions of warfare between the two
empires, Rome might indulge the luxury of harrying urbanized Mesopota-
112 M. L. Chaumont, “Armenia and Iran ii,” EIr 2.431–32; Gajda, Royaume de Himyar [3:76]
152–67.
113 J. Howard- Johnston, East Rome, Sasanian Persia and the end of Antiquity (Aldershot 2006)
VIII.16, 18, 23, 25 ,40, 42.
114 Aurelius Victor, Caesars [ed. and French tr. P. Dufraigne (Paris 1975)] 39.34. Cf. Theophanes,
Chronicle [ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig 1883–85); tr. C. Mango and R. Scott (Oxford 1997)] 304, on Iranian
fear of unexpected attack through Armenia.
115 Procopius, Wa r s [4:9] 2.3.37–48.