Empire: World History - 105. The Last Great War of Antiquity

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Eurasia is divided into two great superpowers. Khusrow II rules the Sassanian Empire. Maurice, the last of the Justinian dynasty, rules their mighty rivals, the Byzantines. When he is overthrown, Khusrow looks to capitalise upon the chaos, invades his neighbour, and begins to sweep through Byzantine territory. The clash that follows over the next 30 years consumes the two empires and leads to the end of antiquity. Listen as William and Anita discuss this titanic war for the world. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. We had a corking response to the last episode with the marvellous, the spectacular vest. I love Vesta. Curtis.

You know our game of party top trumps? Everyone's playing now. Everyone's playing. He's got a far bigger deck than you'd imagine. Oh, a much bigger deck. Field Marshal Manichshore. Manichshore. He's a great figure here in India, not well known in Britain, but for defeating the Pakistanis in

1971. It's the Indo-Pak War. He was, yes, I think he was a huge figure in the 1971 War. And Homi Baba, who is both the family of the nuclear scientists and the literary critic. Two different homie babbers. And I will see your homie barber and I will raise you at Persis Cambata who was a beauty queen who with... Why don't I know about Persis Cabrata?

Oh, she's absolutely... Yes, I know. I'm surprised. You normally know your beauty queens quite well. Yes, what is wrong with you? Persis Cambata may be familiar if you are a fan of Star Trek. Star Trek Voyager. She was the one absolutely stunning woman with the shaved head who becomes, spoiler alert. The voice of Vija. It's all very, very good. This is a different generation of Star Trek to... This is not Lieutenant Tohura, who's the last one I said.

No, no, no. This is Kirk. This is Kirk in a film. Yeah, in a film. So, yes, I do love my sci-fi. She's quite something, isn't she? And you're right, it's a very sort of Parsi face, that. Yes. So there we are. So any more in the Parsi top truck. Oh, I have another. I have a wild card.

Tell me if it's acceptable or not. You're not going to believe it. Morgan Freeman What? Yes, well, let me tell you. What? God! God is a party.

God is a party. Let me explain. So Morgan Freeman, who did a dreadful thing, a dreadful film called, I think it was Bruce Almighty. That's right. Dreadful film where he plays God. But then after that, I think he talks about Zoroanism in that film. But later on, he's chosen to do this documentary series on the telebox about the religions

of the world. and he goes and he explores as Morgan Freeman in his God voice, looking at all the religions. And then afterwards, in interviews, he said, actually he was most drawn to Zoroastrianism. So can we count to? As an honorary Trump card. I also have one little, I don't know if it's a confession,

but a story about Zoroastrianism, because Zoroastrianism saved my life and my family's life in an indirect way. Because in 2004, 2005, I had booked the family into a nice hotel called Fisherman's Cove, south of Madras for Christmas New Year. And I'd been there briefly for one night on work and thought it's so nice, I'd take the whole family there. And at the last minute, a Parsi friend ran me up and said that her boy's going to do their

Navjot, which is like a... That's the coming of age ceremony, like a bar mitzvah. Like a bar mitzvah for parties in Bombay. And could we come? So we cancelled our trip to Fisherman's Cove and went to Bombay. And while we were in Bombay... That New Year's Eve. The kids were out paddling on the beach in Bombay when the tide very weirdly went out a little bit. I just put it together. And it came in a little bit because it was the west coast of India and it was hardly a big deal. There was certainly no massive tidal wave. But fishermen's cove was almost destroyed. And the cottages which we were booked into were destroyed. This is the tsunami, the great tsunami. The Boxing Day tsunami. And we would have been killed. But for the fact that we had friends, personally.

friends who invited us to their coming of age ceremony in Bombay. That is a true story. Wow. You know what? That had everything. That had the Christmassy aspect, the jeopardy, the raised by wolves randomness of that story coming into this podcast. I'm going to call it the Raised by Wolves Factor. I've never thought the Raised by Wolves was a particularly, there was just this little old lady I knew. Yes, stop it now. Stop it now. Stop it. Just for those who don't know what the hell we're about if you don't listen religiously to every podcast, why don't you? But William every so often will just interject some absolutely bad shit story and expect us to pick up from once he left.

So thank you. Thank you for that. And I'm glad you're all because I'm very, very fond of your family and you're fine too. Okay. Shall we? Shall we talk about what we're talking about? We're not in the past seasons episode. How do we go down? Okay. No, no, I know we were referring back. So what we're going to talk about now is what could be termed the apocalyptic war of antiquity, battle between two genuine superpowers, clash of the Titans, if you will. Who are we talking about? So for the final part of antiquity, the two superpowers of the day were remarkably well balanced. And on one hand, you had Rome, which controlled the, Mediterranean world up as far as the Antenine or Hadrian's War. And opposite them, you had the Sasanian Persians, a civilization which was almost the exact equal of Rome in terms of strength, in terms of military efficiency, which went eastwards from what's now eastern Turkey,

right through to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and the Indus. And these two powers sometimes made war, and sometimes one defeated the other. On one occasion, Trajan defeated the persons very catastrophically. On several other occasions, the Sasanians defeated the Romans and took their emperors captive or murdered their generals, massacred their generals. And often they lived in peace, which is the bit that one doesn't read so much about. And there was quite a well-established border in what's now Eastern Turkey around Nisabeth and the Euphrates. Whereas Nisabis, I mean, you're going to have to, because I know you know from the Holy Land has meant that you have trodden in your sandals through much of this part of the world. But for those who

don't know, Nizabeth just sounds so exotic. Where is it? Well, Nizabeth is the border town now between Turkey and Syria. But it was a much fought over border town between Byzantium and Sassanian Persia in the early centuries AD. And yes, this is a time that I have thought a lot about because 30 years ago, I wrote a book called From the Holy Mountain about the Eastern Christians. I just said that. You said my holy land, you said. Did I? Oh, right.

Sorry, I've got a bit of a cough. I'm sorry, feeling a little onto the weather at the moment. So this book was a book about the Eastern Christians, but it was very much set against the background of two monks who wandered around this area in the sixth century. One was called John Moskis. And he brought with him his younger pupil, his disciple, who was called Sophronius.

And these two monks went around the last days of Byzantine control in the Middle East, which was then an entirely Christian world. But a very, very unfamiliar world as well. It was a world full of stylites, these strange hermits who would get on top of pillars and make prophecies and have mystical visions on top of pillars just on top of hillsides and would be famous for their miracles. There would be hermits. There would be monks everywhere. The desert became a city, was the phrase. I mean, I always envisaged this, and particularly when I read your book, what was it from the Holy Roman Empire? I know what it was called, the Holy Mountain, sorry. But I sort of imagine a landscape, you know, from Life of Brian when you have the old ascetic with the long white beard going, of course it's a juniper berries. It's a juniper bush. I mean, are we talking about a land populated with that kind of person?

It's all that. I was very attracted to it because it was just so weird. you know, we're very familiar with that world of the Roman cities with their amphia theatres and their forums and their, you know, the Roman troops and their tortoises and all this sort of stuff that, you know, were brought up in our history lessons with. But the world of late Antukity is altogether weirder because that world, that settled world that feels a little bit like a cousin of our own world has fallen apart completely. The baths are in decay. It's now a Christian world, but a very weird sort of Christianity where everyone is fighting over the relics of saints where, as you say, these saints are either standing on top of pillars, making prophecies, or thousands of them are in the desert, wandering around, you know, in the manner of John the Baptist, eating on honey and locusts.

Some of them were kind of going to boil in the bag monks. They had these guys who sewed themselves up in animal skins and to sort of boil themselves. It was like modern saddues in India doing ascetic practices. Absolutely. I mean, you see sometimes when you travel around parts of India, Sathu is all holy men who've never cut their nails. And so they have like these enormous... Or have been standing up for 20 years or on one leg for 20 years or got an arm in there for 30 years. Well, I should explain.

I mean, there is a reason for that because when I was little, I was a bit scared of people who did that kind of thing. And I still can't explain your boy in the bag monk. But, you know, the Sathu certainly I couldn't understand. But it's all abasance to, and normally to Shiva, you know, to get some kind of blessing from the gods that you have to mortise. It's the same as monks whipping themselves in the West. It's mortification of the flesh, isn't it? And John Moskis was a great admirer of this sort of thing. And as the cities decayed, as the economies went to pot, as everything, the old Roman world began gradually to sort of fall apart at the seams, more and more people took these extreme measures and became. these mystics living in the wilderness. And on one hand, they helped save what was salvageable of the civilization, in that the monastic libraries that were built in these monasteries often

contained the great works of the classical authors. And what we have coming down to us, often survive in that context. On the other hand, they're absolutely mad as fishes. A whole lot of them. And John Moskis' travel book reads like a sort of, you know, open a lunatic asylum across the Middle East. You know, actually, from the Holy Mountain is such a beautiful book, and I have to say that one of our regular listeners, hello, Simon Mayo, I know you listen a lot, but he says it's his favorite, he told me once it's his favorite book. Oh, that's nice.

Well, this is the world which we are going to be talking about today. It's good to anchor it. And we're going to talk about Byzantium quite a lot, and we should explain what Byzantium it is. I mean, for many, and we sort of talked about this when we ages and ages, the myths of time spoke to Peter Francapan. Peter Francapan. Yeah. But, you know, Byzantine often represents things that are negative, lusch over the top.

Complicated and bureaucratic. Complicated and ridiculous, you know. So, but actually, Byzantium was what was left of the once Roman Empire. It was wealthy, it was filthy rich. It had power. It had influence. It had all the wealth of the Eastern Mediterranean, which happened to be the richest part of the Roman Empire. And the poorest part had sort of been taken over by the angeles. Anglo-Saxons, the Huns, the Vandals, the Franks, all these tribes, nomadic tribes had swept through Western Europe, leaving this world again, where, you know, with the Irish keeping the flame of Christianity going in the, in sort of Skellig Michael and Iona and Lindisfan. Sure, but the Byzantines thought that they were actually the real Rome from now on.

And they governed out of Constantinople. They consider themselves to be the protectors of Christ. I mean, we've talked about this in a previous series before, but the Christianity part, and it was a very eastern flavour of Christianity, and you can see it the difference, the divergence of art at around this time. But against this, you have ranged another world, which is much less well known, I think, in the West, which is Sassanian Persia. And it is every bit as powerful, every bit as rich, every bit as pleasure-loving, every bit as violent as the Roman Empire. And one of the contemporary sources describe these two empires as being like two eyes in one face, that they balance each other. That's a beautiful way of putting it. And the figures that we're going to be homing in on at the centre of our narrative are this wonderful pair of Kushro and Shereen.

I'm in love with these lovers. It's one of the great love stories of history. It is. And I've sort of been looking at representations. You don't know about it here in the West. But if you look at medieval tapestries, paintings, illuminated pages, poetry, the story of these two lovers is everywhere. And it's rather lovely. It's also, I mean, one of the most famous renditions of this story was written.

It's in the Shaname, which we're going to talk about a little later in this series by Ferdorsi, which is the most famous illuminated poetry. We're going to get lovely Vesta back. Yes, just coming back. But there was another poet, Persian poet. it, Nizami Ganjavi, who writes, I think, most movingly and it's maybe most lastingly about these two lovers. And do you know, he also wrote Leila and Mudgeeu. That's right. It's the same book. He writes something called the Chamsa. Yeah. And the Hamsa is a book of five stories. And one of them is Cusra and Shereen, and one of them is Leila and Mudgeon, as immortalized by Eric Clapton.

By Eric Lela. Leila, yeah. But also, I mean, it's been done and done and done in India. Leila and Mudgee, for those who don't know, are the Romeo and Juliet. of the Indian subcontinent. I mean, it is the love story that everybody, you know, when they're teasing a moonstruck teenager, they'll just say, yeah, they'll say, who's your Leila? What's up, Mudge Noot? It's like, you know, that's genuinely. And Mugn mean sort of crazed.

He's the kind of figure of driven mad by love. But Cusra and Shereena are slightly different version. They're Romeo and Juliet. They're Star-crossed lovers. Everything goes wrong for them. They fall in love, but they're continually not meeting. They mistake each other. What are you doing?

Let's talk about them properly. Go for it. I mean, that's like saying Romeo and Julia, and then she takes poison and he kills himself and they're dead in the first two minutes. I didn't say that. Listen. Only because I stopped you. Right.

So, Shireen, sort of the 590s, 600s, we're thinking, AD, was a Christian wife of a Sasanian king, Kostro, who you mentioned. It's very rare at this period that we. have detailed biography of any of the principal players in court politics in either world. But the wonderful chance is that we actually have a great deal of individual sources for Shirin, although they often contradict each other and we're never quite sure which one is true. So Shireen, according to some sources, is from southwest Persia and she was a Nestorian Christian of the Church of the East, and that her family worked.

in the royal household, that she was from a relatively humble background, and that she caught the eye of Custro and became one of his queens. But what is an Nestorian Christian? An Astorian Christian. So a lot of the politics of Byzantium is predicated on incredibly minute theological differences on, for example, the definition of the virgin birth, the definition of what the mother of God should be called. How many angels dance on the head of a pin? This sort of thing meant an enormous amount, and street battles would be fought over theological definitions. Councils were continually being held.

People like Cyril of Alexandria were turning up at Ephesus and bringing sort of thug-like groups of monks who would beat up the rivals, who went for a different conception. And in one of these disputes, the patriarch of Constantinople called Nestorius is kicked out and takes refuge in Persia, and the church of his followers becomes called the Nestorian Church. See, and this is really important because, and we mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again, ancient Persia was a melting pot of many different religions, beliefs, who all muddled along pretty well together. So you've got sort of the Christians, you've got, we've talked about it before, big Jewish minority who exists there. A few Buddhists. Yeah. So, okay, so Shereen is, we think, an historian Christian, although, as you say, I think some people have said Armenian princess as well. Where does that come from? Later versions elevate her to become an Armenian princess, and the Armenians claim her, but that seems to be a later sort of elevation of her.

The early sources say that she's from Kuzestan, from southern, southwestern Persia. And what's fascinating is that we have records from the Sasanian court, whereby Kusra himself says, it is not allowed to marry a Christian, but I have done so because she caught my favor, or some phrase like that. So we actually have evidence and he breaks the law to marry her. So we should explain this. In Zoroastrianism,

you have to marry another Zoroastrian. It's just as simple as that. If you don't, you are then apostate. You cannot remain a Zoroastrian. And your children are not Zoroastrians either. And even to this day, I know people who've struggled with this in the modern era about,

you know, faith versus love, who are Parsi. The Navjot I talked about was a controversial one because the children had an English father. And should they have had enough jot, according to the Orthodox not? By the law of the religion, I believe they're not even allowed into the fire temple.

I think that's right, isn't it? Some Orthodox fire temples will not let them not allow them in. And other ones were liberal ones. Again, like Judaism. It's orthodox and liberal. Yeah. So that, I mean, that is what we know from historical sources. What we know from the poetry of the time is that she was beautiful.

She was gracious. She was lovely. I mean, there's, you know, every painting depiction is this swan-necked, dark-haired, flashing-eyed, beauty. And often the depiction, actually, which will be important with this falling in love fictional story, is that, you know, she is seen by Kusrow, who is the King of Kings, bathing. Bathing. She's even on a micro-level, it's a micro-aggression series. Bathing. So, what's my gosh.

Baving, I was getting there. And this is the excuse for Persian painter. to paint pictures of pretty girls where any clothes on. Oh, boobs, actually. Lots of boobs. Lots of boobs. But, yeah, apparently Kusro sort of comes across her as she's bathing. And I mean, the romance of it and all of the illuminated scripts,

she's bathing in Armenia somewhere. And he's annoyed his father by having a feast with a neighbour next door that he didn't have permission for. And so, you know, he's sort of off on a penitential, I'm really sorry, Dad, kind of pilgrimage around the country. around the lands and he comes across her bathing and he falls immediately in love. And she with him at the same time? Yes, but in the mythical version they keep on missing each other.

He goes on to Rome and she goes to our media and they come back and they're in the wrong place again. It's a bit of Ealing comedy. They keep going through the wrong doors and trying to find each other. And then somebody called Far Hard falls in love with her. Oh, Farhart's story. That's good. Hang on. No, don't script that. So Farhart is a sculptor who falls madly in love with this. great beauty, Shireen, and really wants her with all of his heart. And he's around, you know, he's not in the wrong state, which often Kusrow finds himself in. Cusrow is somewhere else.

But Cusra gets to find out, and so, because he has power, he sends poor old Farhad off for a mission to sculpt stairs into a mountainside to get rid of his rival. And canals of milk, isn't it? Also that he likes milk. He's basically biffed out of the way. They do end up together in the romance. And in real life? But there is a Romeo and Juliet style ending. We're not doing that yet. No, no, no, let's do it at the end of the real life story.

So in real life, Costro has difficulty and ends up sort of taking the wing of the Byzantine emperor, who is fabulously named Maurice. Maurice. I mean, I do like the name of the suburban hairdresser. Maurice. Maurice. Maurice is the last. descendant of the greatest of Byzantine emperors, Justinian. He's the last of the line.

And at some point, Cusero, his father is assassinated. He comes to power, but is only supported by a few people at court. And he's driven out and he takes refuge in Byzantine Syria, where Maurice, who is not a hairdresser, but a Byzantine emperor, takes him under his wing and sends him back and he regains his throne. So he sort of empowers him and arms him. And we're talking about, We should put dates on this as always, William, but we're talking about 591 AD. This is the date of Maurice. So Custero goes back. He is victorious.

Which his name reflects. He's called Custero Paviz, which means the victorious. Oh, yes, Beauvais. Same. Okay. But is all well in the world of Custro and Shireen? Tis not, because this is a world of turmoil. And it is even less well in the world of Maurice.

I'm never going to be able to think without a pair of... Tongue curling tongs in his hand. Well, curling tongs is one thing, but also, some people call me Maurice. Woo, woo, woo. Every time you say Maurice, I have a soundtrack in my head to get us. Luckily, we won't have to think about him too much more because he then gets killed and assassinated. He's like God. I mean, it's terrible, but we don't have to talk about him anymore.

By somebody called Fokas. And Kusra, who is now firmly in the saddle of the Sissanian Empire, whether out a genuine grief for a man who did put him back on the throne, or whether just seizing the opportunity of chaos, uses this as an excuse to launch the beginning of this war, which before we went down all these various rabbit holes, was the main subject of this podcast. Yeah, that's right. We had a point. And this is the opening of the great 30-year war of antiquity, the final great conflict

between these two two paths, who've been kind of usually rubbing along together. And finally, Kusra uses the opportunity of Maurice's assassination to attack. into Byzantium and has astonishing success. He takes Antioch. He heads straight down the coast. He takes Damascus and suddenly the Byzantine world is cut in two. And I suspect that's probably quite a good place to take a break. Welcome back. So just before the break, we were talking about Kusra, basically plowing his way through enormous amounts of territory that he's able to take and he's able to amass, but not without a great deal of chafing from the local population. I just want to go back just for a moment to Shireen, who, you know,

it's not just the love interest in this, you know, not just a cameo role. But Shereen is one of the very few women, I would say, who in antiquity has given the importance in both historical record and in poetry and in art. Because she is a formidable woman who has some rights and some power to rule herself, her agency as well. I mean, he built her a palace and there's a city that grows around her. And she has autonomy to govern as well, doesn't she?

Remarkably, before all this war breaks out, she has having trouble conceiving a child. And we have these details of the time that Cusra and Shereen make this enormous donation to one of the main pilgrimage shines in the Middle East, which is at a place called Sergiopolis, which is modern Rassaf at the back end of Syria, very near. where ISIS had their last stand. And this is right out of beyond the Euphrates. And Kusra and Shrine give to this enormous basilica, founded by Justinian, enormous quantities of gold and crosses and textiles. And we have all the details of the gifts. So again, not only is he marrying a Christian, she's obviously continuing as a Christian. And when she can't have a child,

her first reaction is to go to the main Christian shrine in the region and donate to it. Which, I mean, does that mean that even though she's married as a raster and she still retains her Christianity? I mean, that's a very strongly suggestive that she's allowed to do that. Entirely implies that. Yeah, that she's able to do that. You know, one of the reasons I think that, you know, women fall through the cracks of history, I've said this many times before. Another reason that she's disappeared and she was such a huge figure is that the modern-day Iranian-neeshire.

leadership have decided that she shouldn't be spoken about. Do you know, it wasn't very long ago that they decided to, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I know. In 2011, Iranian censors decided to, they would heavily censor that Nizami poem about her because it was not decent. It wasn't culturally appropriate. And they wouldn't give a reason because people, of course, you know, for 831 years before this, people have been loving Nizami's poetry. and she was quite the folk heroine among Persian people, Iranian people. I actually have a picture in my office. When I write in my office, I have behind me a poster of Shereen.

In the bath, bathing. Not in the bath. But in her tower, refusing to get. She has a fight with Kuzro. Kuzro comes to see her when he's drunk. And she's standing in top of her town. She won't come down until he sobers up. Until he sobers up, that's right.

And that's the picture I've got. Yes. But the reason that people decided that because of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance gave no official explanation, but it was let known that there is one scene where Shereen is cradling her beloved in her arms. And they said that's not, that's just not Islamic. That's not okay. It is also the death scene, which we're going to come to because that's me doing a dial room for now. But yeah, that's why they crack down on it. So maybe that's why nobody knows about. this fabulous shir-anyah, carry on, you were saying. Vesta was talking yesterday about this big struggle in Persia between the regime, which looks on Islam and particularly Shia Islam, as the defining characteristic of Iranian-ness, and the nationalists who look on ancient Persian culture, whether it's the Tumasairus, the poetry of Fadozi or Nizami, and that whole body of non-Islamic culture as their main identifier.

And this is a battle that's going on now, absolutely as we speak, in Iran. So these stories are not sort of forgotten neutral bits of history. They are parts of living politics. They're talismanic. Yeah, and they're being used as symbols of resistance. Anyway, we seem to have lost quite literally focus. Hey, see what I just did there? Focus.

Oh, good. Do you say? That was very good. That was very good. You should explain because everyone would have forgotten to focus this. Well, it was quite a long time ago, wasn't it? So Focus has defeated Maurice, P-H-O-C-A-S. He's defeated Maurice.

And so this is why Kusro has been on manoeuvres. Does Focus then start losing power? Yes. The main heartlands of Byzantium are these incredibly rich eastern cities like Antioch, Damascus, and further south Alexandria. And in this incredible Persian thrust into that heartland, the richest areas of Byzantium. and him are lost, are being burnt, are being looted by the Persians. And very quickly, the people of Constantinople decide that this guy's hopeless, that he's a usurper, he's overthrown the legitimate ruler, and it's time to get rid of him. And they are led by a man called Heraclius.

And Heraclius is your kind of guy. He's my kind of guy. Tall, handsome. Yes. But yes, he's said to be very athletic, handsome, tall, brave. and highly ambitious to Heraclius, isn't he? All those things. And he recaptures Constantinople from focus, and he makes an attempt to come to terms with the Persians. But Kusra, who's now very pleased with his success,

will have nothing of it, and actually executes the ambassadors. So Heracles is sending, Heracles is sending messages, and they're just coming back headless. Is that how it goes? That's exactly how it goes. Well, that's not friendly. That's not going to go well.

And then things go even worse. And it's in the early days of Heracculus' emperorship that the catastrophe happens and Jerusalem itself is taken by the Persians. Now, the Byzantines, as we said, are hyper-religious and look on relics as the source of good luck and well-being. And with the fall of Jerusalem, they lose the greatest relic of all, which is the true cross. The one true cross. Now, the one true cross is that the beating heart of all that is holy. I mean, where is the one true cross supposedly living in Jerusalem? It's kept at this point in the holy sepulchre in Jerusalem, which is the place where allegedly Jesus was both crucified on Calvary and where the rock-cut tomb, where he rose to life and was resurrected. This is under a single roof, the holy sepulchre built first by

Constantine, rebuilt by subsequent Byzantine emperors. And Cusrow captures this, and he, He takes the true cross and he sends it to his Christian wife. He sends it to Shereen. To Shereen, who is obviously still Christian because he knows. It's not enough just to give her a nicer Chanel back. Here, here's the one true cross. Now, this, of course, will be unbearable to the Byzantines. And Heraclius doesn't seem to be a man who can bear very much being as ambitious.

What is his response to this? So Heraclius, nothing you can do. He's walled up in Constantinople. And then things get even worse because there are these very formidable nomad armies called the Avars. And the Avars make an alliance with the Sasanian Persians and they together besiege Constantinople. And this is the kind of the greatest challenge that the Byzantines will ever face until 1453 when the Ottomans encircle Constantinople. And it is a moment of utter peril with Avars on one side with very, very, advanced siege technology, the Persians to the east, and it looks for a month or two as if this is

going to be the end. Already they've lost Antioch, which is where St. Peter's first sea was, they've lost Damascus. Remember I mentioned my two monks, I was following around him from the home mountain, John Moscus and Sophranus. Their home monastery, Marthaa Dozias, is just outside Bethlehem. That's burnt to the ground. And these two monks in this book, the spiritual meadow that they write, record the loss of their home monastery. The one monastery which is spared, the one church which is spared, is the church of the nativity in Bethlehem. Why? Because there is a mosaic over the front door showing the three magi in Persian outfits, bringing their gifts to the Christ child. And so they're saved by that. And when they see the three Persians, they leave it. So Bethlehem is saved.

Oh, you know what? That's gorgeous. So, yeah, that art saved. Art saved. I had a thought. I mean, you talked about the Nestorian Christians who lived in the Persian Empire and the other minorities. What is their position? If, you know, if it is being presented as a war for Christendom by the Byzantines against the Persians, what happens to the Christian minorities in Persia? What do they do? So they now have the True Cross. The True Cross is taken from Jerusalem to Satisophan. So they're basically flicking the Vs to the Byzanty. Yeah, we're Christians, but we're happy Christians. And I think that it's important a little moment this in cultural history because it is the Eastern Christians, the Nestorian Church of the East,

which takes a lot of the classical authors from the Greek-speaking world to the Persian-speaking world, and it is those manuscripts which later get translated into Arabic. And when you read now, you know, a Persian classics version of Homer or any of the great classical authors, the chances are that this will be from a library which came back to the West via translations in Persian and Arabic. Now, when you get two superpowers which are clashing, which clearly you do here, everybody else has to make their choices in the region, they get pulled in. So how do the regional powers that exist around greater Persia and the new Rome, Byzantium,

how do they ally themselves? So this, of course, whenever, I mean, just like a sort of Tory cabinet at the moment, as soon as you get things going against the government, all the rebels sort of pop up and make themselves known. The same is true of Byzantine this time. So one of the largest minorities in the Byzantine East is, of course, the Jews. And the Jews have suffered anti-Semitism and oppression at the hands of the Byzantine Christians. And they take this moment of Persian triumph to rise up and attack back at their oppressors. So there's massacres, for example, in the streets of Tiberius and Jerusalem, according to Byzantine sources. You also find a lot of the

Christian minorities, such as the monophysites, the Jacobites, all these breakaway Christian factions resisting the rule of the Orthodox Byzantine emperors, they all rise up again and say, we're free of your taxes and your oppression. And so it's a catastrophic moment for Byzantium and its embrace of the Orthodox faith. But what an amazing thing that not splitting across, you know, just simple religious lines, you know, all Christians band together. It's like, not your type of Christian. We are not. We're going over to the Zoroastrian. amazing. That's a big, big feature of the time. And in the next episode, we're going to hear more about that with the story of the rise of Islam, but that's to come. So there's this moment in,

I think, 615, when the siege reaches its peak and it looks as if the city is going to fall. And first of all, it's the Avars, the allies of the Persians, who, get bored of besieging the great land walls of Constantinople. They can't get anywhere against these three lines of spectacular fortifications built by Theodosius II in the fourth century, I think. And they go back to their homelands. And very soon after this, the Persians break the siege. And this is the moment that Heraclius has been waiting for. And he does two things. First of all, he breaks out of Constantinople and does this astonishing counterattack against the Persians in Asia Minor. But then he also makes a brilliant diplomatic move. And the Turks, who at this

point are just emerging from Central Asia, again another nomadic group up in the back end of Persia, he makes an alliance with them and marries his daughter to a Turkish Khan. And they attack from one side. So hang on, a Turkish Khan who is not Christian. I'm He's not Christian. But allegiances are made on political lines. And even in the one true church of Byzantium, as it would call itself, it doesn't matter that you're marrying out of the faith. It does matter, but as far as Heraclus is concerned, it's this or oblivion. Right.

Okay. So often princesses are married to non-Christian powers. I mean, previously they'd be married to Persians. Yeah, true. So this alliance takes place with the Turks. and there is this extraordinary attack of Heraclis. He makes a feint to the south and makes the Persians thinking he's going to attack Antioch. And instead he goes straight up to Armenia.

And then he doubles down past what's modern Tabriz to one of the major Zoroastrian holy sites, and he burns it in revenge for the attack on the Holy Sepulchre. Wow. Okay. Does he, do they, I mean, do they ever offer ultimatums that give back our one tree cross or we're going to do this? Does that become the focal point? Well, the True Cross will appear very much in the final negotiations, but we haven't quite got to that point yet.

Okay, all right, okay. And just when we're talking about the armies of these two, I mean, we have spoken about sort of vast horsemen and, you know, retinues of men. But when we talked about Darius and Cyrus, I mean, what are we talking about here? Are we talking about bodies of men that completely outnumber the ones that have gone before in antiquing? So the style of fighting. of the Sussanians. They're famous for their heavy cavalry and they they look rather like the knights of the Middle Ages. They wear this armour which is sort of heavy, big, solid hauberks and these

enormous shields and helmets. And there's some pictures of the Sassanian heavy cavalry in some of the carvings that at Nakhshurastam and... Oh no, properly. Properly medieval. Yeah, no, it's a very, very, yeah. And horses with armour and Well, it looks like sort of protein chain mail. I'm not sure exactly, but it's not very delicate links, but that's fascinating. And the Byzantines have a very efficient army. They have manuals of warfare and Heracus is one of their great generals. So he now does what the Persians has done before him. He then doubles down, down the Orontes Valley, past Antioch. He recaptures Jerusalem. He recaptures Damascus. He recaptures Egypt. And then he doubles back and he heads for

Sotisiphan, the capital of the Sassanians. And as seems to happen, whenever there is a major defeat of the Persian army, the Persians themselves turn on their ruler. And Kusra, who tries to escape from Sotisiphan and who makes an escape through an underground tunnel. There's a wonderful moment when he and Shireen make this escape with their children. But it doesn't end well. They are captured by their own. Well, they're right. Isn't it his own son who wants him dead? And it's his own son by another wife, Mariam, because there are many, many wives. And Shereen is only one of a thousand wives or something. Yes, later in the legendary, in the legendary version, Marium is the great rival of Shireen. We don't know, in fact. Oh, we don't know exactly. Okay, so I'm conflating

the beautiful poem. No, it's very easy to muddle the two. Because the poems are so beautiful, and so good, such good stories. And quite a lot of it follows the real story, but then that's often with myth and poetry, it goes off on its own. So do you want to tell the story of what happens to Cusra and Shireen in the myth? Then I'll tell the true version. So in the poetic version of this, the usurping son of Cusro is also in love. Shiroia, I think his name is from memory. And he's also in love with Shireen, the great beauty. And he wants to marry her. But she just doesn't want him at all. And when she hears that Cusory has been captured, and killed. Much in the Romeo and Juliet spirit, she takes her own life over his dead body,

which is the scene that the clerics hated because she's cradling his dead body. And she decides she can't live anymore. And so she kills herself. In reality, we don't know what happened to Shereen. She disappears. We know she survived Kusra and we know that she isn't killed at the time that he is killed. And one theory is there's a monastery named after her. which still exists. And one theory is that she, rather than being named after a foundation by her, that this is a place where she went at the end of her life into retreat and became a nun. A nun.

Oh, they always do that to women, don't they? They're either murdered, slaughtered or nunned. I mean, it's not really much of my... Nobody ever lives happily ever after if you're a woman. But there are some really beautiful, like I said, illuminated pages which are lovely. I'm just looking at one. And they're often about the discovering Shireen bathing bit. but there's one in the Brooklyn Museum, mid-18th century,

which is sort of a cycle of paintings. Just go and Google it, because there's some really lovely and actually affecting images of this story. But we should stick to history and come back for a minute, because this war which has gone on now for 30 years, in the first campaign, you get the burning of Antioch, Damascus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Alexandria, and Old Cairo. In the second phase, you get the burning of Sartisophon and a lot of the other major Sassanian capitals. For 30 years, people have been heavily taxed to

support this war. And by the time that Constantinople is besieged, they're even breaking into cathedral and monastic and ecclesiastical treasuries and melting down the crosses and the gold given to the church. And so by the time this war is over, although the Byzantines emerge from this triumphant and Heraclius returns the true cross to Jerusalem, both empires are completely exhausted. And do you know what, William, that act of Heraclius of taking the one true cross jubilantly after this 30 years of warfare back to Jerusalem. I've seen coins and have you seen these sort of minted coins which show him taking the cross back to Jerusalem. So this is, you know, this is a big deal. And before that, when Constantinople is under siege, when he's

melting down the ecclesiastical treasuries to try and make ends meet to get the money together to fight the Persians, at that point, he mince a gold coin with a cross on the back. and this is a symbol that he's fighting for the cross. He's fighting for the church. And he is sometimes therefore referred to as the First Crusader. Well, I was just thinking they reminded me exactly of penance flying in the wind with crosses on it. Well, I can see exactly why they would call him that. By the time this war is over, although the Byzantines emerged from this triumphant,

many of the cities are looking like Gaza now, these wastelands that have been burnt down, looted and destroyed. and this leaves both Byzantium and the Sasanian Persian Empire vulnerable to the next oncoming army, and that army is the first army of Islam. So join us on Thursdays. We finish the story by looking at the Arab conquest and the rise of Islam. Alternatively, if you just can't wait, if you're like William and you have no patience in your body at all, no sense of time passing, and you need it all now, right now, right now, now, what you need to do is become a friend of the Empire Podcast. An Empire Podcast Club is waiting for you.

All you need to do is go to EmpirePoduk.com and sign up as a friend of the show or a gold tier member. If not, join us on Thursday as we finish the story. Till then, though, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arlen. And goodbye from me, William Durhampool.