ABSTRACT
Procopius’ Persian War, comprising the first two books of his narrative of the wars of Justinian, is our main source for the conflicts between Rome and Persia in 502-49 AD. Long in preparation, the work was finished in 551.1 But in 554 Procopius published a continuation of all three Wars (Persian, Vandal and Gothic) in a supplementary Book (8), extending the Persian War by narrating the conflict in Lazike in 550-51. Unlike the Vandal War, which narrates a single expedition against the Vandals in 533-34 followed by inconclusive wars with the Moors, and the Gothic War, which recounts a single long war aĞer 535, the Persian War is discontinuous, with each raid provoking a counter-raid, which leads to a truce and possibly a peace, lasting in some cases for years. Unlike in Africa and Italy, the aggressor here was usually the Persian king, who wanted plunder and not conquest. The Romans had the worst of it, as Procopius tells it, but the border remained stable despite being violated oĞen. The Persian War, then, recounts the confrontation with King Cabades in 502-506 (1.7-10), and then with Cabades and his heir Chosroes between 527 and 532, when the so-called Eternal Peace was signed (1.12-22).2 Hostilities resumed again in 540 and lasted until 545, when a five-year truce was agreed; they resumed again in 549 in Lazike (this is covered in Book 2). Therefore, ‘the war’ in these Books was both chronologically spread out and discontinuous, with more years of calm than active warfare (especially between 506-27, 532-40
1 For dates, see G. Greatrex, ‘The dates of Procopius’ works’, BMGS 19 (1994), 101-14. Translations are from H. B. Dewing’s Loeb, with modifications. The most recent survey of late antique (or early Byzantine) historiography is by W. Treadgold, The Early Byzantine Historians (New York, 2007), esp. 176-226 on Procopius.
