In the year 610 the Byzantine empire faced its darkest hour since the Hunnish invasions of the fifth century. This time, however, there was no Western empire to lure the enemy away from Constantinople, and the enemy wasn't some barbarian horde blazing through the landscape like a meteor, to end in an inglorious fizzle on the defeat or death of some warlord. Rather, the enemy was two-fold: in Constantinople there reigned the thug-emperor Phocas, whose tyranny made him loathed by all, and outside of the capital the old Persian enemy had overrun much of the Empire and was in the process of collecting more. The Empire seemed to all intents to be tottering toward final destruction.

     To the rebels from Carthage, the exarch Heraclius and his son of the same name, something had to be done. Phocas had lost his grip, along with whatever authority he had once wielded; to defeat him now was not particularly difficult. Heraclius junior ascended the throne in 610, preparing to embark on the daunting task of rebuilding the ruined mess which was once the proud mistress of the Roman world.

     How had all this happened? Why was the Empire so much less than it had been? Such declines were not unprecedented, but this one was more than a surprise. To have fallen so low - and at the hands of an enemy usually defeated, and until recently almost a friend and ally - was like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky. The ruin took a bare decade, apparently, although the roots of this evil went deeper.

Gold Solidus of Maurice Tiberius from Constantinople. S.478..Lot 17.

     In the days of the emperor Maurice Tiberius the situation had improved considerably over that of the years following the death of Justinian. True, much of Europe had been lost to the Germanic hordes, but what was left consisted of the best part of the Empire, and was easily defended. True, the Slavs were raiding, but the army was up to the task of dealing with them. The old enemy, Persia, was inclined to be annoying, but suddenly the Byzantines got a great stroke of luck which virtually eliminated this threat.

     Khusru II "Parviz" ("the Victorious") ascended the Sasanian throne in 590, succeeding his father Hormizd IV who had been murdered. Almost immediately he ran into trouble. A palace revolution led by Varhran "Chobin" (i. e., "of the mace"), a distinguished general, overthrew and nearly killed him, and he barely managed to escape. As Roman refugees fled to Persia, so now this fugitive fled to Byzantium. His activities at this time seem like something out of a historical romance, and indeed his story has been written into well-known literary works. The tale of Khusru's winning of his Armenian wife Shirin, for example, is an embellished account of some of the events of his exile.

     To Maurice this was a golden opportunity. He supplied two important commodities: hard cash and troops, and they were put to good use. Although Chobin wasn't much of a threat to Byzantium Vishtam was that much less, so the conquest was easy. All this had to be paid for, of course, and the cession of Armenia to Maurice was not popular, but Khusru was sensible enough not to grudge what he could not have otherwise kept.

Gold Solidus of Heraclius and son from Constantinople. S.738. Lot 20

     For a few years this policy worked well enough; but in 602 the big taxpayers had had enough of supporting Maurice's endless warfare in the Balkans, and the army resented being on duty constantly, and the combination enabled Phocas to overthrow Maurice. Accordingly Maurice was killed by the rebels along with his son Theodosius. Those who promoted this affair seem to have had ample cause to regret it immediately, but by then it was a little late. Phocas was concerned with settling personal scores and eliminating possible opposition, and spared little concern for foreign affairs.

     Khusru was not inclined to be idle. He gathered an army and invaded, claiming to be the avenger of his benefactor. He certainly saw an opportunity to recreate the glory days of the Achaemenid Empire, and set about his task with vigor. He first grabbed those provinces, particularly Armenia, ceded as the price of his restoration, and then turned covetous eyes elsewhere. By the time the Byzantine world had had enough of Phocas the Persian tide was in full flow.

     By 610, when Heraclius had finally destroyed the tyrant, the Persians had Syria under control and were sweeping into the lands beyond. Heraclius appealed for an end to hostilities, but the Persians weren't about to lose this opportunity. They advanced through Asia Minor to Constantinople itself and through Palestine, thoroughly sacking Jerusalem in 611, and on into that perennial prize, Egypt. Given the Byzantine losses in Europe it seemed that the end of Byzantium was in sight.

     The Persian army occupied Egypt in 619, planning to be there permanently. They issued coins from Alexandria based on the standard Byzantine type; the facing emperor motif is at first glance quite ordinary. On a closer look the Persian coins are not quite so ordinary: they bear no obverse legends, for example, and the King of Kings is accompanied by his favorite symbols: not crosses but a star and a crescent, as on his Persian coins.

     Other aspects of Persian occupation made fewer concessions to the sentiments of the local population. Documents, or scraps of documents, are known from around the region, especially in Palestine and Egypt. Most of them, at least the official documents, are written not in Greek but in Pehlevi.

Æ 12 Nummi struck during the Persian occupation of Alexandria by Khusru II. S.856. Lot 372.

     The Persians came to stay. They seem to have assumed that their enemies were led by an incompetent tyrant and were all but eliminated. Heraclius was not a second Phocas, however. He diagnosed the problem and worked out a solution, and spent several years and much training and diplomacy on building an elite army and a network of allies, ignoring the Persian armies in the field. Preparing his cavalry forces and signing expensive treaties with Avars and Khazars, he maneuvered the Persian forces in Asia Minor to where he wanted them, and then forced a battle in which he decisively defeated them. Thus in 622 Heraclius had cleared the Persians out of the Byzantine heartland.

     Khusru replied to Heraclius' request for a truce with an insulting letter beginning "Khusru, beloved of the gods, master and king of all the earth, son of the great Hormizd, to our foolish and vile slave Heraclius ..."1, not a form of address calculated to bring peaceful replies. The Persians still had the advantage, but all that changed in 626.

     This was the year of the Persian high tide, the year of their "Gettysburg". They had collected so much loot from the captured provinces that they were able to mint vast numbers of coins, including gold dinars, Gold had never been common in Iran, and it still was scarce, but nonetheless there was enough of it from looted Byzantine coinage that the Persians took advantage of it. Sasanian dinars are recorded up to this year, presumably issued for use in gold-using areas like Syria and Asia Minor. Soon, however, the Persians would lose all need for gold coinage.

Rare gold Dinar of Khusro II struck in his 36th year Göbl.221v. Lot 3.

     In that year the Persians, allied with the faithless Avars, launched a massive attack on Constantinople itself. It was decisively defeated, first being frustrated by the walls, then defeated at sea, then defeated in the field by the emperor's brother Theodore. The Persians retreated into Syria in disorder.

     The next year Heraclius, in firm alliance with the Khazars, launched the final assault. Leaving the Persians in Egypt and other places to "wither away", Heraclius struck at the heart of his enemy directly. While the Khazars tied up large numbers of Persian troops, Heraclius swept like a prairie fire into Persia. In December the two main armies met by the ruins of Nineveh, and when the battle ended the Persian army had virtually ceased to exist. Khusru still refused to agree to terms, but in March 628 he was overthrown, deposed and murdered, and his successor was only too glad to end the conflict.

     Khusru was described by one commentator as "grasping, surly, crafty and cowardly"2. He certainly did not know when to stop, and he badly underestimated the Byzantine will and ability to resist him. His rule was grandiose and very expensive in terms of immediate cost, and more than expensive in the long run. With effective central authority gone the kingdom fell into anarchy, with nobles fighting over the scraps. None of them noticed the new threat of Islam. By 650 the Arabs had attacked both of the exhausted empires, and while Byzantium stood the onslaught Sasanid Persia had been too deeply damaged and collapsed quickly. This, along with a vast and interesting numismatic output, was the real legacy of Khusru's policy.

Some sources for further reading:
Cambridge History of Iran, Cambridge 1983, vol. 3. Evagrius of Antioch, Ecclesiastical History. Frye, R. N., Heritage of Persia, London 1963. " , Golden Age of Persia, London 1969 Firdowsi, Shah-Nameh; the "national epic" of Iran. Ghirshman, R., Iran, Harmondsworth 1954. Göbl, R., Sasanidische Numismatik, Braunschwieg 1971. Ostrogorsky, G., History of the Byzantine State, New Brunswick NJ 1969.

1 Ostrogorsky, 102, n. 1.
2 Ghirshman, 307.