REVIEW BY MARC DESANTIS
In ancient times, following the fall of Carthage, only Persia on Rome’s eastern frontier would be, to adopt a modern term, her ‘peer adversary’. It was the only state that bore any comparison in power and had to be, however grudgingly, accorded a different status by the Romans to that given to the minor kingdoms and barbarian tribes that abounded on its periphery.
The two empires would uncomfortably abut one another for seven centuries in a fraught relationship filled with numerous wars, but also with long periods of peace and extensive trading contacts. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy examines their hot and cold confrontation over this tremendous span, running from the 1st century BC to the 7th century AD, in his Rome and Persia: the seven hundred year rivalry. Though they would fight often, it was never for mortal stakes, until the final, ruinous decades of their confrontation.
Contrary to the notorious fate they inflicted on Carthage, the Romans were beholden to no need to always fight a war of extinction. ‘Turning an enemy into a suitably humble and subordinate ally,’ notes Goldsworthy, ‘was an entirely acceptable conclusion to a Roman war.’ This meant that a negotiated peace that could be presented to the Roman people as one that was advantageous to Rome, and which also made it appear that an enemy was in an inferior position, was welcome. This was a pragmatic view of war and diplomacy, one that avoided the incalculable dangers of war when taken to the extreme of annihilating an opponent. The Persians themselves, till just before the end of the rivalry, would also refrain from going for the jugular.
What the emissary saw