A CHANGED WORLDclassical metre of anacreontics.^26 The joy when the Emperor Heraclius returned
the Cross to Jerusalem in 630 was correspondingly great, and Sophronius and
others did not fail to rejoice in what they saw as the discomfiture of the Jews.^27
But the Cross had been received in Ctesiphon with joy and celebration, not
simply as a trophy of victory but also as a Christian symbol.
Persian occupation and Roman recoveryInternal arrangements during the period of Persian occupation are hardly
known, but papyrological evidence from Egypt suggests that little was
changed and that the new rulers left existing administrative structures in
place.^28 For the continued warfare we have detailed accounts in the Chronicon
Paschale, the early ninth-century Chronicle of Theophanes (which draws on ear-
lier sources), the poems of George of Pisidia and the Armenian writers ps.
Sebeos and Movses Daskhurani, all of which have been covered in recent
studies.^29 Peace having been made with the Avars in 620, Heraclius turned to
gathering an army large enough to take on the Persians, melting down church
treasures and a bronze ox that stood in the Forum Bovis in Constantinople.
Despite winning a victory in battle, he soon had to return to confront the
Avars, and agree to pay them a large annual subsidy before setting off again
for Persarmenia. He dared to stay away from the capital during the danger-
ous Avar–Persian siege of 626, though he may have returned that winter. He
had formed an alliance with the Turks and with them entered Persian terri-
tory; disaffected Persian nobles put Chosroes’ son Cavadh on the throne and
Chosroes was executed. Cavadh entered negotiations with Heraclius, and the
latter announced his extraordinary success in a letter read out in St Sophia in
May, 628.^30 Diplomatic conventions were maintained, and the new Persian
shah addressed Heraclius as ‘the most clement Roman emperor, our brother’.
Peace was made in 629, with the Euphrates as the agreed border. The Sasanian
kingdom lasted for two more decades, until 652, with the death of Yazdgerd
III after a period of internal rivalry and confusion; the Persians continued
to put up a resistance, but it was the Arabs, not the Romans, who defeated
them. But the centuries-old threat which Persia had posed to Rome was over,
and in 630 Heraclius triumphantly restored the True Cross to Jerusalem. The
emperor’s emotion is described by ps. Sebeos:
[There was] the sound of weeping and wailing; their tears flowed from the
awesome emotion of their hearts and from the rending of the entrails of
the king, the princes, all his troops and the inhabitants of the city. No-one
was able to sing the Lord’s chants from the fearful and agonizing emotion
of the king and the whole multitude.
(Ps.Sebeos, 41, Thomson and Howard-Johnston, I, 90; II, 24)Even if the Roman empire was better able to sustain the effort to defeat
the Persians than many historians have assumed, the effects on the Roman