THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN – A REGION IN FERMENTwith an unsuccessful meeting at Callinicum, but persecution followed, as it
did again in 598–99. This was fruitless and any effects were temporary. Hera-
clius held meetings at Dvin to try to win round the Armenians even as he was
struggling to meet the assault of Chosroes II’s armies, and his Monothelete
initiative in the 630s – yet another imperial attempt to win over the east – was
met by hectic synodal activity in Palestine and Cyprus in which Sophronius
was a major participant. The meeting known as the Lateran Synod held in
Rome in 649, with prominent roles played by Maximus the Confessor and
his supporters, was yet another powerful indicator of the extent of opposi-
tion to imperial policy. Its Acts, composed in Greek and only later translated
into Latin, and written with heavy input from Maximus’s own writings, are an
indication of the level of tendentiousness as well as the sheer energy that was
involved (Chapter 9). Yet the various meetings and synods mentioned here
are for the most part only the more public and offi cial; there were also count-
less local meetings, all with their own extensive records, preparatory materials
and what we would now see as pubic relations. It is not surprising to fi nd that
in the major councils of the late seventh and eighth centuries the authenticity
of evidence and materials cited in the discussions was such a serious concern
that measures had to be put in place to try to verify them; nor is it surprising
that in many cases they have come down to us in redacted versions which
sometimes pose diffi cult problems of interpretation.^66
The eastern frontierThe study of the material remains of military installations in the east is an
important factor in any consideration of the defence of the eastern prov-
inces.^67 It is also closely connected with the development of a revised concep-
tion of frontiers as zones of infl uence and ‘borderlands’ (Chapter 2),^68 and
with a better understanding of the relations between ‘nomadic’ and settled
groups and of the use of local client forces. Nor does a frontier necessarily
have to be linear: much of the very extensive building of fortifi cations under
Anastasius and Justinian entailed building or strengthening garrison forts and
fortifying cities well inside the conventional ‘frontier’.
The build-up of Roman forces in the east had begun with Trajan’s Parthian
war of 106, which marked ‘the beginning of an obsession which was to take a
whole series of Roman emperors on campaign into Mesopotamia, and some-
times down as far as Seleucia and Ctesiphon on the Tigris’.^69 Under Septimius
Severus in the early third century, two extra legions were created for service
in the east, and fi ve cities in the new province of Mesopotamia – Edessa,
Carrhae, Resaina, Nisibis and Singara – were given the status of Roman colo-
nies; eight legions were now stationed in the zone which stretched south from
here to Arabia. Rome was soon faced with the strong military regime created
by the Sasanians on its eastern borders and highly damaging incursions took
place in the fourth century under Shapur I; Rome was obliged to make an
expensive peace in 363 after the ill-fated Persian expedition of the Emperor