# Sassanid campaigns of Gordian III

The Sassanid Campaign of Gordian III was an episode of the Roman–Sassanid Wars (224–363). The war between the Roman Empire, ruled by the Roman Emperor Gordian III (r. 238–244), during the period of military anarchy, and the rule of the Sasanians, led by Shapur I (r. 241–272), who succeeded his father Ardashir I (r. 224–241), was fought in a period between 242 and 244, originated from a Sassanid expansion attempt into the eastern Roman provinces and resulted in neither side gaining an important victory.

## Historical context
### Background

Between 224 and 226–227 it had happened that in the East the last emperor of the Parthians, Artabanus IV, had been overthrown in the Battle of Hormozdgan on 28 April, and the rebel, Ardashir I, had founded the Sassanid dynasty, destined to be a fearsome eastern adversary of the Romans until the 7th century. In particular, between 239 and 241, the Sassanids and the Romans clashed for the second time.

### Prelude

The prelude was the constant claim, by the Sassanids who considered themselves descendants of the Persians, of possession of the entire empire of the Achaemenids, including the now Roman territories of Asia Minor and the Near East, up to the Aegean Sea, having however failed during the first invasion of 229–232.
   «[Ardashir] Believing that the entire continent facing Europe, separated by the Aegean Sea and the Propontis, and the region called Asia belonged to him by divine right, he intended to recover it for the Persian Empire. He declared that all the countries in the area, between Ionia and Caria, had been governed by Persian satraps, starting with Cyrus the Great, who first transferred the kingdom from Media to the Persians, until Darius III, the last of the Persian rulers, whose kingdom was destroyed by Alexander the Great. Thus according to him it was right to restore and reunite for the Persians the kingdom which they had previously possessed.»

### Casus belli

In fact, the Sassanid campaign of Severus Alexander of 232 had as their final result that of bringing the two Empires to the status quo of the time of Septimius Severus. The Romans and Sassanids thus returned to establish themselves along the "ancient borders" of a few decades earlier, and peace between the two powers reigned for the next seven/eight years. In the years 239–241, in fact, the Sassanid ruler Ardashir I, together with his son Shapur I, invaded the region, besieging Dura-Europos in vain but perhaps not Antioch on the Orontes in Roman Syria (239), conquering and destroying the city of Hatra, allied with the Romans (in 240), and finally occupying some cities of Roman province of Mesopotamia, Nisibis and Carrhae (provided that the latter two had already been wrested from the Romans during the last months of the reign of Maximinus Thrax).

## Forces in the field
### Sassanid forces

We do not know precisely how many and what kind of armies the Sassanids fielded. Cassius Dio had told us about the previous campaign of Alexander Severus and the preceding years (from 229 to 232), that it was a large army, ready to terrorize not only Roman province of Mesopotamia, but also that of Syria, west of the Euphrates. This may have been true for the campaigns of the following decade as well.
What we know about this army is that it was not permanent like the the Roman one, with professional soldiers pay regularly for their trade. There was only a possible division of the final spoils. Rather, we are faced with a system similar to the feudal one, where for each campaign it was necessary to assemble an army from time to time, composed of nobles at the head of their "clans", then placed under the command of a prince of the royal house. There were therefore no experienced weapons officers serving continuously, nor was there a lasting recruitment system, since there were no permanent military units, although there were many nobles at the disposal of the Sassanid army. For these reasons, they often hired mercenary armies. They mainly used the bow and the horse in war, unlike the Romans who favored the infantry, so much so that the Sassanids are said to have grown up from childhood, riding and shooting arrows, living constantly for war and hunting.
It should be added, however, that, unlike the Parthian Arsacids, they tried to keep their contingents under arms for several years, during major military campaigns, speeding up the recruitment of their armies, as well as better assimilating the siege techniques of their Roman opponents, never truly learned from their predecessors.

### Roman forces

We know instead that for the Romans the forces put in charge, They were represented by legions and auxiliary troops placed along the eastern limes. Below is a list of legions and their respective fortresses:
| No. of legionary fortresses of the eastern limes | Legionary unit | Ancient location | Modern location | Roman province |
| 1. | XV Apollinaris | Satala | Sadagh | Cappadocia |
| 2. | XII Fulminata | Melitene | Melitene | Cappadocia |
| 3. | III Parthica | Nisibis | Nusaybin | Mesopotamia |
| 4. | I Parthica | Singara | Sinjar | Mesopotamia |
| 5. | IV Scythica | Zeugma | Belkis | Syria Coele |
| 6. | XVI Flavia Firma | Sura | Sura | Syria Coele |
| 7. | II Parthica | Apamea | | Syria Coele |
| 8. | III Gallica | Danaba | Mehin | Syria Phoenicia |
| 9. | X Fretensis | Aelia Capitolina | Jerusalem | Syria Palaestina |
| 10. | VI Ferrata | Caparcotna | Kfar Otnay | Syria Palaestina |
| 11. | III Cyrenaica | Bostra | Bosra | Arabia Petraea |
To these legions, already present on the eastern front, were added others coming from the Danube and from other western regions such as:
* the Legio I Adiutrix, I Parthica, II Parthica (?, or was already present on the eastern front, in Apamea), III Cyrenaica, III Gallica, III Parthica, IV Italica, IV Scythica, VI Ferrata, X Fretensis, XII Fulminata, XV Apollinaris and XVI Flavia Firma;
In addition to some vexillationes coming from other fronts such as:
* the Legio I Italica, I Minervia, II Adiutrix, II Italica (?), III Italica, IV Flavia Felix, V Macedonica, VII Claudia Pia Fidelis, VIII Augusta, X Gemina, XI Claudia Pia Fidelis, XIV Gemina, XXII Primigenia and XXX Ulpia Traiana Victrix.
The total forces deployed by the Roman Empire along the entire eastern limes, may have been around 150–170,000 Roman soldiers involved or perhaps more, certainly an immense army, of which half was made up of legionaries, the remainder by auxiliaries.

## Course of the Campaign
### 242 AD: Departure of Gordian

The young emperor had the doors of the Temple of Janus opened for the last time in history. and, having mobilized the army, he personally marched towards the eastern limes, with the actual command of the campaign entrusted to his father-in-law Timesitheus and to the other praetorian prefect, Gaius Julius Priscus. The philosopher Plotinus also took part in the expedition.

### 243 AD: First campaign and total Roman victory

Having arrived at Antioch (perhaps towards the end of the previous year), which it seems he reconquered after previousky falling into the hands of Shapur I, he crossed the Euphrates, repeatedly defeating the Persians, taking from them Carrhae, Nisibis, and Singara (so much so that all three of these cities returned to minting Roman coins), and then defeating them in the Battle of Resaena abd drove them back into their territory east of the Euphrates. The same emperor, having returned to winter in Roman province of Syria, he was planning a new campaign for the following year, with which he was supposed to reach and occupy the enemy capital, Ctesiphon, when Timesitheus died, which seems to be caused by illness.
Without the military experience and charisma of his father-in-law, the campaign in Sassanid territory and the very safety of the emperor were now at risk. The praetorian prefect Priscus he convinced Gordian to appoint his brother Marcus Julius Philippus (better known as Philip the Arab) as the new praetorian prefect to replace Timesitheus. During the autumn and early winter of this same year, Roman troops advanced along the Euphrates. This is the account of Zosimus, certainly not favorable to Philip the Arab.
   «Of Arab origin [Philip], a very bad people, and elevated by fortune starting from a low condition, as soon as he assumed the office [being praetorian prefect], he was seized by the ambition of acceding to the imperial throne. He therefore obtained the favor of the soldiers inclined to revolt and when he saw that the provisions intended for the army were sufficient, while the Emperor [Gordian] was still with the troops at Carrhae and Nisibis, he ordered the ships of the fleet, who brought supplies to the soldiers to advance inland, so that the army oppressed by hunger and lack of food would mature a rebellion.»
Gordian III and Tranquillina: sestertius :
| Laureate head of Gordian III wearing cuirass and drapery (left), his wife Tranquillina on the right, facing each other; | Tyche sitting on a rock, holding a small boat as she crosses a river; above, a Sagittarius (symbol of the Legio I Parthica stationed in Singara), shooting an arrow from his bow. |
| minted in 243–244 (?) ||

### 244: Battle of Misiche and death of Gordian

Persian sources report that, early in the year, the Persians and Romans clashed again in the Battle of Misiche (present-day Fallujah or al-Anbar, 40km west of Baghdad), ended with a heavy defeat for the Romans, following which Shapur I, changed the name of the city to Peroz-Shapur ("Victorious Shapur") and celebrated the victory with an inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam in which he claimed to have killed Gordian. Roman sources, however, do not mention the battle and suggest that Gordian died near Circesium, over 300km north of Peroz-Shapur, suspecting that he was killed by the praetorian prefect (who according to Zosimus had incited the exhausted and starving troops), Philip the Arab, who succeeded him on the throne. The inscription on the cenotaph of Circesium was according to the Historia Augusta written in Greek, Latin, Persian, Hebrew and Egyptian, so that everyone could read:
   «The divus Gordian, conqueror of the Persians, winner of the Goths, conqueror of the Sarmatians, who repelled the mutinies in Rome, winner of the Germans, but not the conqueror of Philip.»
A final version hypothesizes that Gordian died on the way back near "Circesium", after a battle fought against the Persians (Misiche, ?), due to an injury sustained in a fall from a horse. The same fate had befallen the stepson of Octavian Augustus over two centuries earlier. Drusus the Elder, who died in Germania due to an identical fall from a horse and subsequent gangrene of the injured leg. Here too a cenotaph was erected (at Mogontiacum) in memory of the military exploits of the Roman general. The possibility, therefore, that Gordian died as a consequence of the battle of Misiche, for an injury sustained following a fall from a horse, it should not be ruled out. The death of the emperor would not, therefore, deny either the Roman version which presented the military campaign as victorious, nor the Sassanid one which saw in the death of Gordian a consequence of the battle, and therefore the Roman retreat from the Persian territories of central-southern Mesopotamia. In fact, the Sassanids did not conquer any other cities, apart from Hatra, and Shapur did not undertake any further military initiatives for the next eight years, until 252.

## Consequences

Philip the Arab: antoninianus :
| IMP C M IVL PHILIPPVS P F AVG P M, head with a radiate crown, wearing cuirass; | PAX FVNDATA CVM PERSIS, the Peace standing, holding a branch and a scepter. |
| 22 mm, 4.27 g, minted in 244 ca. ||
The sudden death of Emperor Gordian, for whom the soldiers built a cenotaph at Circesium (on the bank of the Euphrates, in the locality of Zaitha), We do not know whether in battle or at the hands of his successor, the praetorian prefect, Philip the Arab, determined the withdrawal of the roman armies, a peace judged by Zosimus to be "dishonorable" and probably the loss of southern Mesopotamia and Armenia, even if Philip felt entitled to use the title of Persicus maximus, and the Romans conqered Nisibis, Singara and Carrhae, with the possibility of keeping northern Mesopotamia. The Res Gestae Divi Saporis, a propaganda epigraph of the Sassanid emperor, says:
   «The Caesar Gordian was killed and the Roman armies were destroyed. The Romans then made a certain Philip "Caesar". Then the "Caesar" Philip came to us to negotiate the terms of peace, and to ransom the lives of the prisoners, giving us 500,000 denarii, and thus became our tributary. For this reason we renamed the locality of Mesiche, Peroz-Shapur (or "Victory of Saphur")
The Roman East was then entrusted by Philip to his brother, Priscus, who was appointed Rector Orientis, while the defensive line in Mesopotamia and Osroene was reorganized around the cities/strongholds of Nisibis, Circesium and Resaena. It should be added that the alternating phase of military anarchy in which the Roman Empire was immersed for about fifty years, determined many advantages in favor of the nascent Sasanian Empire, which did not let slip the opportunity for surprising revenge, up to occupying Antioch during a siege in 252 (or 253) and in the siege of 260.