The Middle East: 256–267 CE

Shapur I’s Triumph and Roman Counterattack

The era 256 to 267 CE is dominated by dramatic confrontations between the Roman Empire and the increasingly assertive Sassanid Empire under the formidable leadership of Shapur I.

In 260 CE, Shapur achieves a spectacular victory by defeating the Roman army at the Battle of Edessa, capturing the Roman Emperor Valerian himself—a humiliating and unprecedented event in Roman history. Valerian's capture dramatically undermines Roman prestige, symbolizing the shifting power dynamics in the region.

Emboldened, Shapur pushes deeper into Roman territory, penetrating Anatolia between 258 and 260 CE. However, Roman resilience prevails. A vigorous counteroffensive led by Odaenathus, ruler of Palmyra and ally of Rome, successfully repels the Sassanids, forcing Shapur to retreat and relinquish recently captured territories, including Antioch and Armenia.

Despite these setbacks, Shapur's victories have lasting implications. His exploits highlight the Sassanid Empire's ability to rival Roman power and foreshadow ongoing conflicts that will define Roman–Persian relations for centuries to come. This period underscores a delicate balance of power, characterized by shifting borders, strategic alliances, and intense rivalries between two of antiquity’s greatest empires.

The attacks on the Roman Empire are finally coming from within by 258, when the Empire breaks up into three separate competing states.

Since Rome is unable to protect the eastern provinces against the Sassanids, then-governor Septimius Odaenathus of Palmyra decides to use the substantial legions he has at his disposal—among them the famed Legio XII Fulminata—to defend his provinces, rather than intervene in the struggles for Rome.

Palmyra, ('city of palm trees'), a long-prominent trading city built on an oasis along one of the main routes of east-west trade one hundred and forty miles (two hundred and thirty kilometers) northeast of Damascus, had come under Roman control by the time of the emperor Tiberius.

However, with the Sassanians having supplanted the Parthians in Persia and southern Mesopotamia in 227, the road to the Persian Gulf had soon been closed to Palmyrene trade.

Still relatively autonomous, Palmyra has grown increasingly wealthy and influential due to its tariff on the caravans passing through the city.

In return, the local rulers have policed caravan routes and the border area.

Instability around the Roman-controlled Mediterranean, coupled with the interruption of caravan trade with the East, had led the Romans to set up the personal rule here of the leading Palmyrene family of Septimius Odainath, or Odaenathus, a Roman citizen appointed governor of Syria Phoenice by Valerian.

The year is not known, but already in an inscription dated 258 he is styled "the illustrious consul our lord".

The defeat and captivity of Valerian in 260 has left the eastern provinces largely at the mercy of the Persians; the prospect of Persian supremacy is one that neither Palmyra nor its ruler have any reason to desire.

At first, it seems, Odaenathus had attempted to propitiate the Persian monarch Shapur.

However, when his gifts had been contemptuously rejected (Petr. Patricius, 10) he had decided to throw in his lot with the cause of Rome to prevent his city from falling under Sassanian control.

He thus abandons the neutrality that has made Palmyra's fortune for an active military policy that, while it will add to Odaenathus's fame, in a short time will bring his native city to its ruin.

Before Shapur’s army, returning home in 260 rich in plunder from its sack of Antioch, can cross the Euphrates, Odaenathus deals it a severe defeat, thereby curtailing further Persian aggression in Syria and Asia Minor.

Odaenathus, while fighting for Rome against the Persians, had destroyed the Jewish community and academy at Nehardea in 259.

The academy now moves to ...

...Pumbedita.

Odaenathus had taken the side of Gallienus, the son and successor of Valerian, after the two usurping emperors had been proclaimed in the East.

The usurper Quietus, after the defeat of his brother and father in Thrace in 261, flees to the city of Emesa (now Homs, Syria), where he is besieged by Odaenathus, during the course of which he was killed by its inhabitants, possibly instigated by Ballista.

Gallienus rewards the Palmyrene ruler for his loyalty in 262 with the grant of an exceptional position: the title corrector totius Orientis (“governor of all the East”); in addition, Odaenathus styles himself king of Palmyra and, eventually, king of kings.

The empire’s period of relative peace ends in 267, when the Goths of the northern Black Sea coast attack Byzantium in alliance with the fleet of the Heruli.

Odaenathus has driven the Persians from the Roman provinces of Mesopotamia and Osroëne by 267, and he probably also has brought Armenia back into the empire.

Although he has failed to seize the Sassanian capital of Ctesiphon, he has managed to restore Roman rule in the East, and assembled a small client empire stretching from southern Anatolia to the Red Sea.

He is preparing to drive Gothic invaders from the Roman province of Cappadocia in eastern Asia Minor when he and his eldest son (by his former wife), Herodes (or Herodianus), are assassinated in 267 (or 268).

His queen, Zenobia (in full Septimia Zenobia; Aramaic Znwbya Bat Zabbai) becomes regent for her own young son Wahballat (called Vaballathus in Latin, Athenodorus in Greek).

Zenobia maintains an alliance with the Romans to offset the threat to her kingdom from Persia.