Arsacids and Sasanians: political ideology in post-hellenistic and late antique Persia

"The present study proposes to examine the political ideology of the early Sasanian empire. In doing so, it shall not only look at Sasanian and Roman relations, but also at Arsacid precedents, for possible stimuli in the formation of the Sasanian ideology. Already Roman historians of the third and fourth centuries CE perceived the imperialism of the Sasanians as infused with the desire to equal, even to surpass, the glory of the kings of old by recovering formerly Achaemenid territories-by then part of the Roman East. In contrast, contemporaneous Sasanian royal inscriptions, in particular the res gestae of Sabuhr the Great and the inscription of king Narseh at Paikuli, neither provide us with a rationale for the war of conquest waged against Rome, nor do they contain any explicit references to the historical predecessors of the Sasanians. This conflicting finding raises questions about historiographical practices in Sasanian Iran and Rome. Indeed, one wonders how Sasanians recorded their past, or the extent to which they were acquainted with it; equally important an inquiry is the nature of Roman knowledge of Sasanian history, as well as the sources whence it had been extracted. Only the elucidation of these problems would allow us to address our initial query, that is, whether the early Sasanians experienced an "Achaemenid revival" that might have shaped their political ideology and prompted their expansionist campaigns against the Roman empire; or whether the revival ascribed to the Sasanians by Roman literati was in reality a Roman interpretation comprehensible only in light of Roman political exigencies"--