Shapur Ii.
9. SHAPUR or SAPOR II. POSTUMUS, who reigned from A. D. 310-381, and was crowned in his mother's womb. His father dying without issue, but leaving his queen pregnant, the princes of the collateral branches of the royal house were elated with hopes of the succession. The Magi, however, discovered by means only known to them, that the queen was pregnant with a male child, and they prevailed upon the grandees to acknowledge the unborn child as their lawful sovereign, and the diadem destined to adorn the future king was placed with great solemnity upon the body of his mother.
This is a strange story, yet we cannot but admit it as an historical fact. Agathias, the only Western historian who mentions it (iv. p. 135, ed. Paris), took it from Eastern sources; and those Persian historians who are known to us, relate the story with all its details (see Malcolm, quoted below). Zosimus (ii. p. 100, &c. ed. Oxon, 1679) does not mention the coronation of an unborn child, but only of a younger son of Hormuz, the elder, who bore his father's name Hormuz, or Hormisdas, having been excluded from the succession. Now this Hormuz is again a well-known historical person, but we must presume that he was a prince of royal blood, and not the elder brother of the infant Shapur. Hormisdas was one of the causes of the great struggle that took place afterwards between Sapor and the emperor Constantius, and the matter came to pass in the following way. Zosimus is here a valuable source, and he is corroborated by the Persian historians. Once, long before the birth of Sapor, and during the reign of Hormisdas II., Prince Hormisdas, then heir-apparent as it seems, spoke of some grandees in a very contemptuous manner, menacing them with the fate of Marsyas when he should be their king. Unacquainted with Greek mythology, the nobles inquired who Marsyas was, and were greatly alarmed when they heard that they might expect to be flayed alive, a punishment which was sometimes inflicted in the administration of the criminal law in Persia.
This explains the election of an unborn baby, and also the fate of Prince Hormisdas, who was thrown into a dungeon as soon as King Hormisdas was dead.
After a captivity of many years, lie gained his liberty through a stratagem of his wife, who sent him a fish in which she had hidden a file, the most welcome present to any prisoner who finds nothing between himself and liberty but a couple of iron bars. Hormisdas accordingly escaped and fled to the court of the emperor Constans, whither young Sapor generously sent his wife after him. Constans received him well, and he afterwards appears as an important person on the stage of events. (Suidas,
s. v. Μαρσύας, relates the same story, and speaks of it as a well-known fact:
ἡ ἱστορία δήλη.)
The minority of Sapor passed without any remarkable event regarding Rome. We must presume that the Persian aristocracy employed their time well in augmenting their power during that minority.
In this time also falls the pretended conquest of Ctesiphon by Thair, an Arabic or Himyaritic king of Yemen; and the minister of Sapor issued cruel edicts against the Christians, who, tired of the state of oppression in which they lived, sought for an amelioration of their condition by addressing themselves to Constantius. For this step they were punished by Sapor, who, however, contented himself with imposing a heavy tax upon them. Symeon, bishop of Seleucia, complained of this additional burthen in so haughty and offensive a manner as to arouse the king's anger, and orders were accordingly given to shut up the Christian churches, confiscate the ecclesiastical property, and put the priest to death. Some years afterwards. in 344, the choice was left to the Christians between fire worship and death, and during fifty years the cross lay prostrate in blood and ashes till it was once more erected by the Nestorians.
After the death of King Tiridates and the conquest of his kingdom by Sapor in 342, the same cruelties were perpetrated against the Christians in that country also; and the hostility which had existed between Rome and Persia ever since the death of Constantine, was now changed into a war of extermination.
An account of these wars has been given in the lives of the emperors Constantius II. and his successors. We shall therefore only mention a few additional facts. Prince Hormisdas mentioned above was in the Roman army, and fought valiantly against his countrymen, whence we may conclude that, had Constantius reaped laurels instead of thistles in this war, he would have put the fugitive prince on the throne of Persia. Sapor, although victorious in the open field, could do nothing against the strong bulwarks of Nisibis and other fortresses, and consequently derived no advantages from his victories.
The conquest of Armenia was his only trophy; in his bloody zeal against the Christians in that country, he went so far as to order all Armenian and Greek books to be burnt, but even the barbarous murder of his (only?) son, who had accidentally been made a prisoner by the Romans, and was put to death by order of Constantius, could not justify the still more savage conduct of Sapor against so many innocent and defenceless Christians.
In 358, Constantius sued for peace, but was startled when the Persian ambassador, Narses, delivered in Constantinople the conditions of Sapor, who demanded only Mesopotamia, Armenia, and the five provinces beyond the Tigris, although as the legitimate successor of Cyrus, he said that he had a right to all Asia and Europe as far as the river Strymon in Macedonia. Constantius endeavoured to obtain better terms; but the negotiations of his ambassadors in Persia were frustrated through intrigue and perfidy; and the war was continued as before, and with the same disadvantage to the Romans. In 359, Sapor took Amida by storm, and Singara, Berabde, and other places yielded to him in the following year.
The death of Constantius and the accession of Julian made no change.
The fate of Julian is known.
He might have avoided it by accepting the proposals of peace which Sapor made him immediately after his accession, but he nobly rejected them, and caused his ruin although he did not deserve it. Jovian, to secure his own accession, made that famous treaty with Sapor for which he has been blamed so much, and ceded to him the five provinces beyond the Tigris, and the fortresses of Nisibis, Singara, &c. Iberia and Armenia were left to their fate ; and were completely reduced by Sapor in 365, and the following year.
A war with the Caucasian nations, occasioned through the subjugation of Armenia, and another with the Arsacidae in distant Bactria, which might have had its cause in the same circumstance, filled the latter years of the reign of Sapor, who died in 381. Sapor has been surnamed the Great, and no Persian king had ever caused such terror to Rome as this monarch.
