Alberto said: > Great message.
Thank you. > But we all hear from the Roman's point of view. What was the > Persian logic for keeping up a war against Rome? Did they see Rome > as the heirs of Alexander and they wanted to take revenge? I'm very aware of my bias towards the Romans in my reading about history and one of my intentions for next year is to read several histories of the Persian empires to compensate. Having said that, I think that it's largely Rome that was to blame for the wars against the Parthians and Sassanids. The motivations for the Romans were mixed: the prestige attached to military conquest, the promise of plunder from the famously wealth East, the almost pathological desire to secure the Republic against threats from its few peers, and later the religious opposition of Christianity and Zoroastrianism (the latter of which was much more tolerant of other religions than the former). The war that started over half a millennium of intermittent conflict between the two powers was engineered purely so that Crassus could have military exploits to rival those of his fellow triumvirs. Marcus Antonius' Parthian expedition had a similar motive. And so it went... I don't think the Parthians wanted revenge for Alexander's conquests. In general they were fairly philhellenic and during their expansion they largely absorbed the Greek administrative system and the Greek elites of the crumbling Seleucid empire. Maybe such a motive was more likely for the Sassanid monarchy, but again I know so little about Persia that I'd hesitate to say. By the way, I can't remember if I've mentioned it here before but you might be interested in reading the first of my (slowly) ongoing series on the period from the crisis of the third century to the Arab conquests, "The Pirenne Thesis and the End of Antiquity": http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000140.html With a little luck I might find time to finish the second part soon! Rich _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
