Thomson and James Howard-Johnston, with the assistance of Tim Greenwood, The Arme-
nian History attributed to Sebeos I–II, Translated Texts for Historians 31 (Liverpool: Liver-
pool University Press, 1999), and for the Syriac chronicles see Andrew Palmer, The Seventh-
Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles, Translated Texts for Historians 15 (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 1993).
8 For the non-Islamic sources on early Islam, see the important study by Robert Hoyland,
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It. A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings
on Early Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1997).
9 As recorded in Corippus’ Latin panegyrical poem on his accession: see Averil Cameron,
Flavius Cresconius Corippus, In Laude Iustini minoris libri IV (London: Athlone Press, 1976),
III.151 ff.
10 Greatrex and Lieu, The Roman Eastern Frontier II, 135–42; the Roman sources all assume the
desirability of an aggressive anti-Persian policy, though it is not obvious that out and out
aggression was always the actual aim: see Benjamin Isaac, ‘The army in the late Roman East:
the Persian wars and the defence of the Byzantine provinces’, in Averil Cameron, ed., States,
Resources and Armies, (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995), 125–51, at 125–9.
11 Ibid., 142–53.
12 Theophylact, Hist. III.14.10–11; John of Biclar, a. 575.
13 Theophylact, Hist. II.3–4; Evagrius, HE I.13; for the battle, see John Haldon, The Byzantine
Wars. Battles and Campaigns of the Byzantine Era (Stroud: Tempus, 2001), 52–6.
14 Theophylact, Hist. V.3; Greatrex and Lieu, The Roman Eastern Frontier II, 173–4.
15 See Matthew Canepa, The Two Eyes of the Earth. Art and Ritual of Kingship between
Rome and Sasanian Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), with rich
bibliography.
16 Theophylact records the interest Chosroes showed in an icon of the Theotokos, who
appeared to him and told him she was giving him victory (Theophylact, Hist. V.15.9–10).
His marriage to the Christian Shirin became the subject of later romances: see Dignas and
Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity, 225–31.
17 Trans. George T. Dennis, Maurice’s Strategikon: Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy (Phila-
delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984); the work draws on earlier material but
also uses offi cial and documentary sources: Philip Rance, ‘Battle’, in Philip Sabin, Hans van
Wees and Michael Whitby, eds., The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare II (Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007), 347–48.
18 Theophylact, Hist. 8.7.8–9.12.
19 Chron. Pasch., s.a. 609; see below.
20 The chronology of these years is diffi cult to establish: Greatrex and Lieu, The Roman Eastern
Frontier II, chap. 13, especially 182–3; Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World Crisis, 436–45,
provides a narrative, and see Thomson and Howard-Johnston, Armenian History, xxii–xxv;
Mark Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium 600–1025 (London: Macmillan, 1996),
69–95, ‘The fall of the old order’.
21 See Averil Cameron, ‘Blaming the Jews: the seventh-century invasions of Palestine in con-
text’, Travaux et Mémoires 14 (Mélanges Gilbert Dagron) (2002), 57–78; Howard-Johnston, Wit-
nesses to a World Crisis, 164–71; Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, 78–87; B. Flusin, Saint
Anastase le Perse et l’histoire de la Palestine au début du VIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions du
CNRS, 1992).
22 Cameron, ‘Blaming the Jews’, 62; discussion, G. Avni, ‘The Persian conquest of Jerusalem
(614 CE): an archaeological assessment’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 357
(2010), 35–48, arguing for minimal evidence of destruction.
23 A more political explanation for this anti-Jewish sentiment is proposed by David M. Olster,
Roman Defeat, Christian Response and the Literary Construction of the Jew (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).
24 Migne, PG 28. 589–700; the fact that it also defends the veneration of religious images
(chaps. 39–41) suggests that this part at least must date from the second half of the seventh
century at the earliest.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 9