is, on the other hand, a matter of indifference. He can readily be
removed and replaced by another; but no usurper who was not
of the legitimate blood can hope no become the genuine king.
Therefore the native tradition carries the Sassanid line back to the
Achaemenids and, still further, to the kings of the legendary period.
Officially the king is all-powerful, and his will, which is guided by God and bound up in His law, unfettered. Thus, externally, he is surrounded by all the splendour of sovereignty; on his head he wears a great and resplendent crown, with a high circular centrepiece; he is clothed in gold and jewels; round him is a brilliant court, composed of his submissive servants. He sits in dazzling state on his throne in Ctesiphon. All who approach fling themselves to the ground, life and death depend on his nod. Among his people he is accounted the fairest, strongest and wisest man of the empire; and from him is required the practice of all piety and virtue, as well as skill in the chase and in arms—especially the bow. Ardashir I., moreover, and his successors endeavoured to establish the validity of the royal will by absorbing the vassal states and instituting a firmer organization. Nevertheless they failed to attain the complete independence and power of the Achaemenids. Not strong enough to break up the nobility, with its great estates, they were forced to utilize its services and still further to promote its interests; while their dependence on its good-will and assistance led inevitably to incessant gifts of money, lands and men. This state of affairs had also prevailed under the later Achaemenids, and had materially contributed to the disintegration of the empire and the numerous insurrections of the satraps. But the older Achaemenids held an entirely different position; and hardly a single Sassanid enjoyed even that degree of power which was still retained by the later Achaemenids. It was of fundamental importance that the Sassanian Empire could not make good its claim to world dominion; and, in spite of the title of its kings, it always remained essentially the kingdom of Iran—or rather west Iran, together with the districts on the Tigris and Euphrates. This fact, again, is most closely connected with its military and administrative organization. The external and inter11al conditions of the empire are in mutual reaction upon one another. The empire, which in extent did not exceed that of the Arsacids with its vassal states, was protected on the east and west by the great Military Achievements. deserts of central Iran and Mesopotamia. For the defence of these provinces the mounted archers, who formed the basis of the army, possessed adequate strength; and though the Scythian nomads from the east, or the Romans from the west, might occasionally penetrate deep into the country, they never succeeded in maintaining their position. But the power of the neo-Persian Empire was not great enough for further conquests, though its army was caipable and animated by a far stronger national feeling than that of the Parthians. It still consisted, however, of levies from the retinue of the magnates led by their territorial lords; and, although these troops would stream in at the beginning of a war, they could not be kept permanently together. For, on the one hand, they were actuated by the most varied personal interests and antipathies, not all of which the king could satisfy; on the other hand he could not, owing to the natural character and organization of his dominions, maintain and pay a large army for any length of time. Thus the great hosts soon melted away, and a war, begun successfully, ended ingloriously, and often disastrously. Under such circumstances an elaborate tactical organization employing different species of arms, or the execution of a comprehensive plan of campaign, was out of the question. The successes of the Sassanids in the east were gained in the later period of their dominion; and the Roman armies, in spite of decay in discipline and military spirit, still remained their tactical and strategical superiors. A great victory might be won—even an emperor might be captured, like Valerian—but immediately afterwards successes, such as those gained against Shapur I. (who was certainly an able general) by Ballista and Odenathus of Palmyra, or the later victories of Carus, Julian and others, demonstrated how far the Persians were from being on an equality with the Romans. That Babylonia permanently remained a Sassanian province was due merely to the geographical conditions and to the political situation of the Roman Empire, not to the strength of the Persians.
Among the magnates six great houses—seven, if we include the royal house—were still regarded as the foremost, precisely as under the Achaemenids, and from these were drawn the generals, crown officials and governors (cf. Procop. Pers. i. 6, 13 sqq.). In the last of these positions we frequently find princes of the blood, who then bear the royal title The Nobility. (shah). Some of these houses—whose origin the legends derive from King Gushtasp (i.e. Vishtaspa), the protector of Zoroaster (Marquart, Zeitschr. d. d. morgenl. Ges. xlix. 635 sqq.), already existed under the Arsacids, e.g. the Suren (Surenas, vide supra, p. 798) and Karen (Carenes, Tac. Ann. xii. 12 sqq.), who had obviously embraced the cause of the victorious dynasty at the correct moment and so retained their position. The name Pahlavan, moreover, which denoted the Parthian magnates, passed over into the new empire. Below these there was an inferior nobility, the dikhans (“village-lords”) and the “knights” (aswar); who, as among the Parthians, took the field in heavy scale-armour. To an even greater extent than under the Arsacids the empire was subdivided into a host of small provinces, at the head of each being a Marzban (“boundary-lord,” “lord of the marches”). These were again comprised in four great districts. With each of these local potentates the king could deal with as scant consideration as he pleased, always provided that he had the power or understood the art of making himself feared. But to break through the system or replace it by another was impossible. In fact he was compelled to proceed with great caution whenever he wished to elevate a favourite of humbler origin to an office which custom reserved for the nobility. Thus it is all the more worthy of recognition that the Sassanian Empire was a fairly orderly empire, with an excellent legal administration, and that the later sovereigns did their utmost to repress the encroachments of the nobility, to protect the commonalty, and, above all, to carry out a just system of taxation.
Side by side with the nobles ranked the spiritual chiefs, now a far more powerful body than under the Arsacids. Every larger district had its upper Magian (Magupat, mobed, i.e. “Lord of the Magians”). At their head was the supreme Mobed, resident in Rhagae (Rai), who was regarded as the successor of Zoroaster. In the new empire, Religious Development. of which the king and people were alike zealous professors of the true faith, their influence was extraordinarily strong (cf. Agathias ii. 26)—comparable to the influence of the priesthood in later Egypt, and especially in Byzantium and medieval Christendom. As has already been indicated, it was in their religious attitudes that the essential difference lay between the Sassanid Empire and the older Iranian states. But, in details, the fluctuations were so manifold that it is necessary at this point to enter more fully into the history of Persian religion (cf. especially H. Gelzer, “Eznik u. d. Entwickel. des pers. Religions-systems,” in the Zeitschr. f. armen. Philol. i. 149 sqq.).
The Persian religion, as we have seen, spread more and more widely after the Achaemenian period. In the Indo-Scythian Empire the Persian gods were zealously worshipped; in Armenia the old national religion was almost entirely banished by the Persian cults (Gelzer, “Zur armen. Götterlehre,” in Ber. d. sächs. Gesch. d. Wissensch., 1895); in Cappadocia, North Syria and the west of Asia Minor, the Persian gods were everywhere adored side by side with the native deities. It was in the third century that the cult of Mithras, with its mysteries and a theology evolved from Zoroastrianism, attained the widest diffusion in all Latin-speaking provinces of the Roman dominion; and it even seemed for a while as though the Sol invictus Mithras, highly favoured by the Caesars, would become the official deity-in-chief of the empire. But in all these cults the Persian gods are perfectly tolerant of other native or foreign divinities; vigorous as was their propagandism, it was yet equally far removed from an attack on other creeds. Thus this Parseeism always bears a syncretic character; and the supreme god of Zoroastrian theory, Ahuramazda (i.e. Zeus or Jupiter), in practice yields place to his attendant deities, who work in the world and are able to lead the believer, who has been initiated and keeps the commandments of purity, to salvation.
But, meanwhile, in its Iranian home and especially in Persis, the religion of Zoroaster lived a quiet life, undisturbed by the proceedings of the outside world. Here the poems of the prophet and fragments of ancient religious literature survived, understood by the Magians and rendered accessible to the faithful laity by versions in the modern dialect (Pahlavi). Here the opposition between the good spirit of light and the demons of evil—between Ormuzd and Ahriman—still remained the principal dogma of the creed; while all other gods and angels, however estimable their aid, were but subordinate servants of Ormuzd, whose highest manifestation on earth was not the sun-god Mithras, but the holy fire guarded by his priests. Here all the prescriptions of purity—partly connected with national customs, and impossible of execution abroad—were diligently observed; and even the injunction not to pollute earth with corpses, but to cast out the dead to vulture and dog, was obeyed in its full force. At the same time Ahuramazda preserved his character as a national god, who bestowed on his worshippers victory and world dominion. In the sculptures of the Sassanids, as also in Armenian traditions, he appears on horseback as a war-god. Here, again, the theology was further developed, and an attempt made to annul the old dualism by envisaging both Ormuzd and Ahriman as emanations of an original principle of infinite time (Zervan), a doctrine which long enjoyed official validity under the Sassanids till, in the reign of Chosroes I., “the sect of Zervanites" was pronounced heretical.[1] But, above all, the ritual and the doctrine of purity were elaborated and expanded, and there was evolved a complete and detailed system of casuistry, dealing with all things allowed and forbidden, the forms of pollution and the expiation for each, &c., which, in its arid and spiritless monotony vividly recalls the similar prescriptions in the Pentateuch. The consequences of this development were that orthodoxy and literal obedience to all priestly injunctions now assumed an importance far greater than previously; henceforward, the great commandment of Zoroastrianism, as of Judaism, is to combat the heresies
- ↑ It may be observed that this innovation was also known to the Mithras-cult of the West, where Zervan appears as αἰών.
