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Unidentified Sasanian ruler depicted on horseback. Note the panoply typical of
Persian heavy cavalry, with the long lance, quiver at his side, and armored front of
the horse. The prominence of the shield carried on the left hand is important, as it
is often assumed that these were rarely used by Sasanian cavalry. (Philippe
Chavin)
THE SASANIAN EMPIRE AT
WAR
Persia, Rome, and the Rise of Islam, 224–651

MICHAEL J. DECKER

WESTHOLME
Yardley
©2022 Michael J. Decker
Maps by Tracy Dungan ©2022 Westholme Publishing

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
brief passages in a review.

Westholme Publishing, LLC

904 Edgewood Road
Yardley, Pennsylvania 19067
Visit our Web site at www.westholmepublishing.com

ISBN: 978-1-59416-692-1
Also available in hardcover.

Produced in the United States of America.

 Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1. The Rise of the Sasanian Empire

2. The Great King

3. The Challenge to Rome

4. Clash of Empires

5. The Frontiers Erupt

6. The Struggle with Rome

7. Defending the Empire

8. The Last Great War of Antiquity

9. The Muslim Conquest

Epilogue

Notes
Bibliography

Index
 Illustrations

REFERENCE MAPS
1. The Sasanian Imperial Lands at the Height of the Empire

2. Western regions of the Sasanian Empire

3. Central Asia in the Fifth Century

4. Transoxiana

5. The Sasanian Empire in the Seventh Century

6. The Muslim Conquest of the Sasanian Empire

ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Shapur I sketched by George Rawlinson, 1876

2. Stone relief of Valerian surrendering to Shapur I

3. Stone relief of Bahram II’s defeat of Carus

4. Bust of Constantius

5. Roman walls at Amida

6. Stone relief of Shapur II and Shapur III

7. The Klimova plate showing Shapur III killing a leopard

8. Drachma of Yazdegerd II

9. Traction trebuchet

10. Sasanian helmet

11. War elephants

12. Siege of Constantinople, 626 AD

 Introduction

Despite the longevity and success of the Sasanian Empire over the
course of its existence from the third through seventh centuries AD,
there has not been a great deal written about the empire or its
armies. The present volume grew out of my more than twenty years
of teaching ancient and medieval military history at universities
around the world. With it I aim to fill this gap and to make more
accessible the history of an enigmatic and challenging period.
Certainly, the success of the Sasanians through most of their history
in the face of great challenges to their hegemony, from settled and
nomadic powers alike, demands our attention and much further
study beyond that possible in an introductory volume like this one.
The Sasanians are named after an obscure figure named Sasan
who was probably the father-in-law of Papak, whose son Ardashir
(224–242) united the Iranian peoples under his banner and
established the Sasanian dynasty. It is possible that Sasan was a
mythical figure or even a minor god worshipped during the Parthian
era of Iranian history (247 BC–AD 224). Whatever the nature of
Sasan, the dynasty named for him would prove to be one of the
most important in world history, as the state dominated much of the
Middle East for well over four centuries.
Sasanian ideology imbued the House of Sasan with a divine aura
of kingship that provided legitimacy in the face of many challengers.
Despite being surrounded by numerous rival families whose
pedigrees were held more ancient and illustrious than their own, the
Sasanian kings managed to craft ideologies and execute propaganda
that served them through nearly a half millennium of tumult. The
effectiveness with which the Sasanian family had cast themselves as
the cement which kept the foundation blocks of the state in place
can be viewed in the infrequency of challengers to royal rule from
outside the family. Most non-Sasanian claimants to the throne
enjoyed only brief success until the nobility and, in later times, the
gentry class known as the dehqans once more rallied to a Sasanian
candidate.
Despite their success in statecraft, which in those days relied
heavily on the necessity of military force, the armies of the empire
are relatively poorly known. In large part this is due to a lack of
surviving documents. Extraordinarily little textual evidence in the
language in which Sasanian-era people spoke, Pahlavi, also known
as Middle Persian, regarding the dynasty survive. A small corpus of
(mostly later) religious, judicial, and miscellaneous texts survive in
the form of documents, seals, and inscriptions. Most of our
information comes from later sources, predominantly Armenian,
Syriac, Latin, Greek, and Arabic. In many instances the authors of
these histories are only tangentially informed of the nature and inner
workings of Sasanian society, and in more than a few cases, they are
openly hostile and prone to suppression, distortion, and other
manifestations of cultural bias. These facts make it difficult to
separate the wheat from the chaff, and in the cases where valid
historical information is transmitted, we often have frustratingly little
detail, particularly of the kinds that military historians crave. For
example, the numbers of troops, their tactical movements, and
precise description of strategy and weapons are treated only
anecdotally and are rare.
So why attempt to write a history of the Sasanian great king at
war? The Sasanian Persians were one of the great powers of
antiquity. Their empire occupied a crucial place in world history and
was home to a splendid culture. The Sasanians were the last of the
Persian dynasties of antiquity and one that played a significant and
vital role in the history of Eurasia for well over a millennium,
beginning with the Achaemenid Empire that comprised the largest
land empire in history when it peaked under King Darius I (522–486
BC), an era that ended with the fall of the Sasanians in 651 AD.
While the Sasanians apparently only had faint knowledge of the
Achaemenid kings, they did draw links between their own kings and
those of the Achaemenids as well as the remote, mythical realm of
Iranian prehistory and mythology. Since the great western rival of
the Sasanians was the Roman Empire, we are informed enough from
Greek and Roman authors to discern the shape of conflict, at least at
the campaign level. As noted, we also possess some information
from eastern sources which is vital and allows us to talk further
about the military successes and failures of the Sasanians.
In part, this book offers a corrective to what has traditionally
been a subject approached from a Western perspective, usually by
people whose interests lay principally in the Roman world. While I
share in this tradition of Mediterranean studies, my training as an
historian and archaeologist in the broader history of the Levant and
Middle East has made me more agnostic to many of the readings
currently in place within the Western tradition. As will be seen
throughout the chapters which follow, whereas some historians have
rather blindly accepted the word of Graeco-Roman authors at face
value, I am at the least more skeptical of these claims. In the main,
a careful reading of history impels us to take an ax to cherished
props of ancient history: namely that the Sasanians were a second-
rate power to Rome, that their army was unprofessional or even
“feudal,” a mass of barbarians who came together for war in some
ancient violent antecedent to Burning Man, and then dispersed just
as quickly.
THE SASANIAN ARMY
Little is known about small units, but the Persians likely organized
themselves in a decimal system. The drafsh was a commander of a
unit with its own identity and banner, apparently a thousand strong.
The title hazarbed (chief of a thousand), probably commanded a
thousand-man brigade. Like other great power militaries that existed
over a long span of time, the army of the Shahs underwent changes.
Our sources do not permit us a view into all these changes, but the
most important, those of Kavad I (488–531) and Khusrow I (531–
79) over the course of the sixth century transformed many
structures of the military apparatus. These are discussed in more
detail in Chapter 7. In summary, after these reforms, the Sasanian
army proved even more capable than previously, especially in
conducting long-haul, international campaigns which required rapid
movement and sustaining forces over broad fronts for considerable
lengths of time.
Among the major features of the reforms was the creation of four
major commands. Each one of these areas was under the leadership
of a marshal known as the spahbed, literally “army commander.” The
spahbed’s aid or lieutenant was the paygosban, or infantry
commander. The sardar was chief of the savaran cavalry.
In the quarters system, the northern command focused on the
region north of Rayy (near modern Tehran) and stretched across the
southwest flank of the Caspian to the Caucasus. Here the Persians
fronted both the mountain passes and steppe lands that allowed
easy access to Iran to the nomadic tribes that grazed their herds
around the Eurasian plains. This territory also braced the northern
frontier with Rome in Armenia. In the main the Armenians tended to
favor Persian overlordship, as they shared many cultural elements in
common with the Persians and traced many of their leading clans
back to some common ancestors. However, the rise of Christianity in
Armenia from the fourth century onward complicated affairs there,
and Rome repeatedly tried to draw the Armenian lords into their
orbit, offering as they did strategic territory at the headwaters of the
Tigris and Euphrates and access down these into the fertile alluvium
of Mesopotamia. The Armenian highlands opened, too, to the
grazing lands of Azerbaijan through which ancient Media and the
Iranian highlands could be reached.
The eastern command ran astride the northern sector in parallel
with the east-west lying Elburz Mountains that form the spine of
northern Iran. The western rump of the eastern sector comprised
the regions of Tabaristan, amidst the rugged heights south of the
Caspian and its eastern neighbor, Gurgan, where the steppe opened
north of the mountains. The great oasis city of Merv in the north,
Nishapur in the south, and Herat and Balkh in the east anchored the
Iranian presence in their territory called Khorasan (“whence the sun
arrives”). Khorasan encompassed the southern flank of the Eurasian
central steppe that ran from the low mountains of the Chinese
borderlands to the Caspian and from the Tien Shan Mountains of the
south to the Siberian forests of the north. This is the land of the
pastoral nomad; only a handful of oases with fertile soil and water
allowed cities to grow up in this belt of land.
Nomadic elements were far from homogenous, but by late
antiquity Turkic groups in the main dominated this sea of pasturage
through which they moved their herds and flocks. Since they live in
the saddle, raised from birth to be expert riders with every fit male
capable of military action, nomad armies could quickly swell to a
number that could overwhelm the conventional forces of sedentary
societies. Armed mainly with composite short bows, nomadic cavalry
presented a double advantage of long-range missile fire and extreme
mobility. They used swarm attacks, sudden advances and equally
rapid retreats, to confuse and harass the enemy. A favorite steppe
nomad tactic was the feigned retreat in which nomad cavalry would
give way before a strong enemy advance and then suddenly wheel
about to confront and envelop the surprised attackers. Against this
tactic, the Persians would prove vulnerable time and again.
The spahbed in charge of the western quarter watched over the
granary of the empire—Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers,”
as the ancient Greeks called it, the two rivers being the great
watercourses of the Tigris and Euphrates, thought by many ancient
people to have been among the rivers that watered the paradise of
the Garden of Eden. Things were less pacific when the Sasanians
held sway there. Not far from the great capital of Ctesiphon (which
today lies in a suburb of Baghdad) lay the sands of Arabia, inhabited
by fractious, independent tribes of Arabic speakers and others.
These people, especially the nomadic Bedouin, recognized no
authority beyond those of custom and, to a lesser degree, their
chieftains. Most of the time, the Arabs of this hot, desolate periphery
grazed their flocks among the stubble—sheep and goats offered
fertilizer in exchange for grazing—and traded milk, wool, leather, and
meat to the settled peoples who generally lacked these things. Like a
hive of bees, though, the Arabs could become agitated for reasons
that seemed utterly inexplicable to the settled people whose territory
they bordered, and then they would unleash holy hell on their
neighbors, raiding, kidnapping, and burning paths of destruction
where their camels and fine horses would carry them. The Sasanians
took steps to secure the soft underbelly of their empire—in the fifth
century they built a long series of moats, fortresses, watchtowers,
and military waystations to secure this frontier. They also added the
dynamic component of allied Arab tribesmen in the form of the
Nasrid families of the Lakhmid confederation. This delicate system,
carefully tended and maintained, functioned effectively into the
seventh century.
By the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, the
Persian army held numerical, or near parity, with its major settled
rival to the west, the so-called East Roman or “Byzantine” Empire,
with its capital at the great city of Constantinople (today Istanbul).
Prior to the rise of the House of Sasan, the Romans had accustomed
themselves to invading at will the lands of the Parthians, as
evidenced by campaigns of emperors like Trajan (98–117) who led
western forces all the way to the head of the Persian Gulf. The
Sasanians would prove an altogether tougher nut to crack and, as
will be demonstrated, prove at least the equal of Rome on the
battlefield. Among the later Sasanians of the fifth and sixth
centuries, during times of conflict troop numbers can safely be
placed around 300,000—give or take 10 percent—when one
considers the long linear defenses to north and south to be
garrisoned and requiring about 150,000 men.1 To this number
should probably be added a number of elite guard units stationed at
Ctesiphon and attached to the person of the Great King, charged
with defense of the city and the royal palaces.
Although our historians provide us frustratingly few figures, when
they do provide numbers, campaign armies of twenty to thirty
thousand are most frequently seen. When needed, the armies of the
shah could be brigaded into (by ancient standards) truly large
armies of sixty thousand. These facts of such large forces, as well as
their standardization and professionalism, have recently been
reinforced by the discovery of large Persian campaign bases or
marching camps from throughout the empire. Those along the
Gurgan Wall, such as that called “Fort 4,” probably built in the fifth
or sixth centuries, are impressive in their size and organization,
connoting the presence of a professional force with great
capabilities. Fort 4 covered 5.5 hectares (13.5 acres) and was
protected by a wall and thirty-two towers. Internally it was divided
into regular rectangular barracks blocks with spaces for supply and
storage. At Qaleh Kharabeh a marching camp of forty-one hectares
(101 acres) could have easily accommodated ten thousand troops on
the move.
Sasanian recruits were not only drawn from the noble families
and the gentry of Iranian ethnicity. Iranians provided the infantry,
pages, and work details that supported the logistics and siege
capabilities of the army. The Medes, comprised of Iranian tribal
groupings who migrated into the region of what is today western
Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan around 1000 BCE, had challenged the
Assyrian Empire in the eighth century and become an integral part of
the Achaemenid Empire. Median peoples were fully integrated into
the empire and provided all manner of troops, but their main
contribution was apparently in the domain of infantry and foot
archers. Along the southern shores of the Caspian, Iranian-speaking
Daylamite tribesmen provided heavy infantry units during the later
years of the empire and, while close in language and culture, these
regions were only loosely under Sasanian control.
The Sasanians also recruited peoples from the Caucasus,
especially among the Laz and Albanians in the west. Most
prominent, however, were the Armenians who provided valued horse
archers and heavy cavalry to the armies of the Great King. At most
times, at least fifteen thousand Armenian cavalry were available to
the Sasanians. The Sasanians also recruited troops from among their
eastern neighbors, including the Turkic Kushans and Hephthalites
and these, too, would have been predominantly horsemen. Along
the southern desert frontiers of Arabia, the Sasanians employed Arab
infantry and cavalry contingents.
The primary offensive arm of the Sasanian era was the cavalry.
Being trained as expert horsemen from boyhood, the Persians
fielded superb horse soldiers. Aside from the cultural markers of
wealth horses offered to those who bred and trained them—like
nineteenth-century European arms—the expense of maintaining and
equipping a cavalrymen marked the individual trooper from his
lower-class comrades. Pragmatically, too, the Sasanians were people
with a deeply ingrained love of horses that arose from their own
days, deep in the recesses of history, when Iranian tribes roamed
the central steppes of Asia as nomadic herders. The Sasanians might
have been many generations removed from this nomadic life, but it
nested within their DNA nonetheless.
Sasanian heavy cavalry, the cataphracts or clibanarii in the Roman
sources, were called savaran in Middle Persian (Pahlavi). Heavily
protected with a full body covering of armor, they were armed with a
long, two-handed lance as their primary weapon. Arms and legs
were protected by laminated armor, overlapping bands of iron fixed
on leather backing or by small, overlapping iron plates sewn on a
leather backing. This scale armor could also be used to cover the
chest. The Persians also used lamellar armor in which small,
hardened leather or iron plates were rigidly locked to one another
using a system of leather knots that made a strong defensive
covering. They wore helmets mostly of spangenhelm type, common
over considerable portions of Eurasia. The spangenhelm was a multi-
piece helmet riveted together and often with cheek guards. The
most elaborate of these headpieces included face coverings of sheet
metal or mail.
Although the lance was their main weapon with which they
brought home devastating massed charges, contemporary accounts
also indicate that the savaran carried secondary weapons, including
sabres or broadswords and bows. Swords of just over one meter
long were common, and the quality of steel in these blades could be
extremely high, with archaeological evidence for the production of
high-carbon crucible steel at Merv.
In the early years of the empire, at least, the savaran were drawn
from among the seven elite families of the empire, foremost among
whom were the Sasanians. These wuzurgan (noble families) had
Aryan roots, and aside from the Sasanians, most traced their origins
deep into the Parthian era as true-blooded Aryans. These families
held power as regional lords in different areas of the empire; their
support to the House of Sasan was vital to the survival of the
regime. After the reforms of Khusrow I, discussed in Chapter 7, the
gentry classes of the dehqans were admitted into the savarans for
which they were provided land allotments sufficient to support their
requirements for quality mounts and equipment. This move on the
part of the shah permitted the expansion of Sasanian heavy cavalry.
We have scant information about the elite units of later Persian
cavalry. We do hear of a unit called the Immortals, said to have
numbered ten thousand men, whose existence is debated. If true,
this unit’s existence was inspired by Sasanian knowledge and
reverence for the ancient Achaemenid Persian Empire, once the
largest in the world, that ruled the Middle East for two centuries
(553–330 BC). Other elite guard units were raised by Khusrow II
(590–628), one called Khusrow’s Own (Khusrowgetae) and The
Victorious Ones (Pirozetae). Neither of these units were likely to
number more than a thousand combatants.
Like their neighbors on the steppe and to the west, most Persian
mounted soldiers were horse archers first and foremost. The mobile
platform afforded by a well-trained horse gave these soldiers
considerable advantages: speed of movement, the ability to strike
the enemy from a distance, and, if pressed, the chance to escape.
As the years wore on, medium cavalry, probably armored but reliant
mainly on the bow, were never supplanted. Indeed, it is difficult to
know what to make of the description offered of the late Sasanian
army in the late sixth-century Byzantine military manual called the
Strategikon, where certain characteristics ascribed to the Persians
are puzzling. Since the Strategikon is attributed to the emperor
Maurice (580–602) who spent a good deal of his career campaigning
against the Persians, it is difficult to question the more puzzling
assertions in the text, which remains one of our few detailed
discussions of Sasanian arms.
Book XI is dedicated to meeting the Persians in battle. They are
described as formidable when laying siege but even more formidable
when besieged. They hid injuries and admirably endured the
hardships of war. Skilled at using conditions to their advantage, in
summertime the Persians tended to attack in the heat of the day.
Like the Romans, the Sasanians drew up their armies into three
equal bodies, center, right, and left, with a stronger center reinforced
by four or five hundred select troops.

They wear body armor and mail and are armed with bows and swords.
They are more practiced in rapid, although not powerful archery, than all
other warlike nations. Going to war, they encamp within fortifications. When
the time of battle draws near they surround themselves with a ditch and a
sharpened palisade.2

This description can be corroborated by other sources. The sixth-

century historian Procopius asserted that Persian archery was rapid
but not as powerful as that practiced by the Romans. During the
Arab conquests, the use of fortified positions was a standard part of
Sasanian warfare, and the discovery of large fortified marching
camps also indicates such practices were standard. More difficult to
reconcile with what we know from other sources are the assertions
that the author of the Strategikon makes regarding the composition
of Persian cavalry in which they are disturbed by:

. . . very carefully drawn-up formations of infantry, by an even field with no

obstacles to the charge of lancers, by hand to hand combat and fighting
because volleys of arrows are ineffective at close quarters, and because
they themselves do not make use of lances and shields.3

As noted and known from illustrations, especially the monumental

carvings of Sasanian kings described in the chapters that follow, the
two-handed lance wielded by a heavily armored warrior was a staple
of the savaran heavy cavalry. The lack of shields is corroborated by
the visual evidence; while late Sasanian horsemen may have used
bucklers attached to their shoulders, there was no easy way to cope
with a shield alongside the use of the long and heavy two-handed
lance. Whatever the reason, Maurice’s emphasis on Persian tactics as
relying almost exclusively on volleys of arrows delivered from
organized and disciplined lines of cavalry seems out of place. It may
well reflect developments of the later Sasanian Empire, or it could
reflect the unique experiences of the emperor in confronting the
Persians. This question must remain unanswered for the moment,
but if the testimony of the Strategikon is accurate, then perhaps the
foundations of the late Sasanian army had fundamentally
transformed.
As time progressed, the Sasanians fielded heavy infantry
elements, especially from the Daylamites, although the quality of
Persian foot soldiers varied widely through time. Our clearest
window into the equipment and manner of fighting of Sasanian foot
soldiers comes only in the later period when Daylamite mountaineers
formed a conspicuous element in Persian armies. That they were
singled out for comment likely indicates that these infantry were
exceptional, and we should not consider that the bulk of infantry
cohorts resembled them. Likely, the foot soldiers of the line
remained lightly armed, as they had been for centuries, with large
goat-hide shields and armed only with spears.
The story of Sasanian martial success spans more than four
hundred years and is replete with great victories and catastrophic
defeats. In the pages that follow, we shall see how the armies of the
King of Kings, as the head of the Sasanian state was named, used
his armies to forge and unite his vast domains.
 CHAPTER ONE

The Rise of the Sasanian Empire

By the third century of our era the Parthian Empire had held sway
over much of the Middle East for more than three centuries, having
risen in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. A
confederation of Iranian-speaking tribal groups from the region of
Parthia in the northern regions of Iran and spearheaded by the tribe
of Parni, this Iranian confederation dwelled in the region between
the Oxus and Jaxartes Rivers but soon moved south to challenge the
successors of Alexander. Alexander had, by conquest of arms,
opened up the whole of Mesopotamia and southern central Asia to
Macedonian settlement, and the two great rivers would ever after
resonate in history as the frontiers of Hellenic culture in Asia. Less
than a century after his death, however, the dynasty founded by
Alexander’s great general Seleucus I Nicator (“the Victor,” 305–281
BC) had lost its grip on the eastern quarters of their empire.
Powerful governors (satraps) rebelled in Parthia, in northeastern
Iran, and in Bactria anchored on the valley of the Oxus. The Parni,
now led by King Arsaces I (247–211 BC), wrested the region of
Parthia from the local Seleucid authorities and there established their
kingdom. The Seleucid counterattack was late in coming and
ineffectual; thus, under Arsaces, the seeds of the Parthian Empire
found fertile ground. Rallying first the Iranian-speaking peoples who
then dominated the regions from the Caspian to Afghanistan, and
then a host of non-Aryan (Iranian) peoples, the Parthians continued
to grow their power and influence. Under the energetic Mithridates I
(ca. 171–132 BC), the Parthians extended their authority in the east,
against the Macedonian successors in Bactria and nomadic groups,
as well as in the west, against the Seleucids and local princes.
Through a series of successful campaigns, Mithridates carried the
Parthian banner to the shores of the Persian Gulf and had himself
crowned king in Seleucia, which itself had replaced Babylon as the
political center of Macedonian rule. Succeeding generations of
Parthian kings pushed the boundaries further afield to both east and
west, where they clashed with new arrivals in the region, the mighty
Romans.
In 53 BC, in the dusty plains of Carrhae, where centuries later the
Islamist forces of ISIS installed themselves in a reign of terror, the
Parthians met a Roman invasion led by the richest man in Rome, the
notorious plutocrat Marcus Licinius Crassus. Crassus, who along with
Julius Caesar and Pompey formed a junta of strong men known as
the First Triumvirate, thirsted for a conquest that would put him on
equal footing to his two colleagues; although Crassus had defeated
the great slave revolt of Spartacus in 71 BC, his laurels did not shine
so brightly as those of Caesar or Pompey. In 55 BC, Crassus left
Rome under a storm of acrimony. Led by the famous lawyer and
orator Cicero, Crassus’s political enemies thwarted his attempts to
gain the approval of the Roman Senate for the campaign. Rather
than receiving the blessing of the people, Crassus marched out of
the city only to find one of his enemies, Ateius Capito, calling down
the most horrific of curses on him in the ritual of public execration.
In light of what was to follow, Capito’s imprecations would loom
large in the popular imagination.
As governor of Syria, Crassus had access to one of the wealthiest
provinces of the Republic, and he promptly raised troops from
throughout the Mediterranean world and Armenia. The Roman move
was well timed. The Parthians were in turmoil, roiled by civil war that
had raged since 57 BC. Following an inconsequential campaign in 54
BC, Crassus mounted a drive into Parthian territory with a powerful
army at his back. Seven legions formed the heart of the Roman host,
upward of thirty-five thousand heavy infantrymen, most of whom
were seasoned veterans. Alongside him marched a host of allies,
including four thousand light infantry, four thousand light cavalry,
and six thousand Armenian heavy cavalry sent by the Armenian King
Artavasdes (55–34 BC). Artavasdes allegedly offered a much larger
force to Crassus if the Roman would agree to mount the invasion
through Armenia, where the troops could be more easily supplied
and where the Parthians would be at a disadvantage in the
mountainous terrain. Crassus refused. He preferred the direct route,
through the desert country of eastern Syria and across the
Euphrates into Parthian territory, lands in which the Romans had
campaigned the prior year and with which they were thus somewhat
familiar.
While the Roman host pushed eastward, the new Parthian king,
Orodes, marched northwest to attack Artavasdes and cut off support
from that quarter. Meanwhile his general, Suren (a member of the
noble house of the same name, called “Surena” in the Latin
sources), victorious over Orodes’s rival the prior year, moved to
confront Crassus. At Carrhae, the armies clashed. Despite being
outnumbered four to one, the Parthians, who were all cavalry, used
their mobility to devastating effect. Their horse archers peppered the
Roman ranks with arrows and kept them from closing to engage.
Surrounded by the enemy and suffering heavy casualties from the
deadly Parthian missile fire, the Romans formed a testudo, in which
the infantrymen locked their large shields together. While protecting
them from the hail of projectiles, the infantry testudo made the
Romans virtually immobile, and Surena ordered repeated charges by
his cataphracts. These troops were Parthian heavy cavalry, encased
in armor, equipped with lances and bows, and able to drive home a
powerful charge. The Parthians charged repeatedly, rending portions
of the Roman line and demoralizing the fading men, who, exposed
to the intense heat and under constant attack, were unable to
decisively engage the foe.
Crassus’s son, Publius, was sent with his loyal elite Gallic cavalry
troops to attempt to drive off the Parthian horse archers, but the
Romans suffered the fate of many enemies of the Parthians, who
employed the ages-old steppe tactic of the fighting retreat, in which
the horseman was able to cover his withdrawal by shooting behind
his horse; this is the famous “Parthian shot.” By nightfall, his son
dead and his army incapacitated, Crassus withdrew. On the next
day, during a parlay, a skirmish erupted that led to the deaths of the
Roman commanders, and the bulk of the Roman troopers were
captured as they attempted to retreat.
Though it has been told many times, the story of the Battle of
Carrhae illustrates several key points. While it is not proof-positive
for the superiority of cavalry over infantry, the Parthian victory
shattered the myth of Roman invincibility and demonstrated that
expert and well-led cavalry could neutralize excellent Roman foot
troops. Until that day, the Roman legions, with their close order and
superb discipline, had carried the eagle over the Near East with near
impunity. Over time, the Romans would adapt their armies to the
realities of conflict that required mobility and shock from professional
heavy horsemen. Certainly Crassus was outmatched by his Parthian
opponent; when Crassus hoped his soldiers could endure the hail of
arrows until his enemy ran out of missiles, the invaders’ hearts sank
on the realization that Surena had prepared a camel caravan to
supply his men with fresh darts. Though they would fail to press
their advantage by invading Roman Syria on several occasions on
the heels of their staggering victory, the Parthians would never be
able to oust the Romans from Syria and realize their dream of
extending their empire to the shores of the Mediterranean. The
sensational victory in the desert marked the eastern empire as a foe
with which to be reckoned.
In the intervening centuries, Parthian political fractures plagued
their empire. The powerful noble families and non-Iranian local
princes maintained among themselves and vigorously opposed
efforts of the kings of kings to centralize authority over the eighteen
kingdoms of the empire. Despite pressing needs to war frequently in
both the east against nomadic incursions or local settled powers and
in the west against the Roman Empire, the nobility remained fickle
and self-interested. War was for their personal enrichment or the
defense of local interests, seldom for the profit of king or country.
These structural weaknesses manifested on numerous occasions,
especially in the listless response of Parthian armies to Roman
invasions of Mesopotamia, the heartland in which was moored the
wealth of the empire in the form of irrigated agriculture and
populous cities.
Beginning in the second century, Roman aggression against the
Parthians intensified. In 114/15 AD the Roman emperor Trajan (98–
117 AD) fired his opening salvo by plunging into the heart of
Armenia, long in the Persian cultural orbit and a crucial ally of the
Parthians. For centuries Armenia had been ruled by a line of Arsacid
princes descended from Arsaces, the founder of the Parthian
kingdom. Trajan annexed Armenia and put to the sword the
Armenian king. In 116, having settled affairs in Armenia, Trajan
turned the Roman juggernaut on northern Mesopotamia and
swooped south on the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris,
today about thirty-five kilometers southeast of Baghdad. The
Romans invested and sacked the city. The old emperor advanced at
the head of his troops all the way to the head of the Persian Gulf.
Parthian power was hardly broken by the invasion, but the Roman
incursion proved costly for both sides. Trajan decided to return home
with hopes for another expedition to consolidate the Roman hold.
On his return to Syria, Trajan lay siege to Hatra, an Aramaic-
speaking oasis kingdom in what is today northern Iraq. Here, the
Romans suffered their first failure of the campaign. The Hatrenes
resisted stubbornly and, aided by the harsh desert climate, warded
off the assault. By then, the emperor was facing rebellions within the
newly conquered territories as well as the Second Jewish Revolt,
which swept the eastern Mediterranean from Palestine to Cyrenaica
and stretched Roman resources to their limits. Trajan would not live
to see his eastern hopes realized. After suffering a stroke while
sailing back to Rome, the old warrior died in August 117.
Hadrian (117–138), Trajan’s successor, abandoned the recently
won territories in Armenia and Mesopotamia, and peace prevailed
between the empires. Yet the Romans refused to yield their
ambitions in Armenia and the Parthians refused to give ground;
Armenia maintained strong cultural and economic ties and looked
naturally eastward. The wars between the great powers engaged in
a tug of war over Armenia, with the Romans mostly having the
upper hand. Parthian infighting generally played a role in the
weakened position of the empire. In campaigns under Marcus
Aurelius (161–180 AD), the Roman advance was contained, and in
217, during the reign of Caracalla, a large Parthian army inflicted a
serious defeat on the Romans at Nisibis in Upper Mesopotamia. To
buy peace, the Romans had to agree to pay a huge indemnity of fifty
million dinars.
Scarcely had peace been achieved with the Parthians when
internal tremors again shook the empire. The seismic event began in
the south of the realm, in Fars, the sun-baked province then under
the rule of a local prince named Ardashir, scion of a family who, one
tradition holds, owed its fortunes to Ardashir’s grandfather, Sasan.
While the sources are contradictory, it seems that Papak, Sasan’s son
or son-in-law (it is not clear), served as a regional lord under the
Parthians and likely exercised considerable autonomy.
The first Sasanian kings inherited potent cultural tools that they
deftly employed in levering power. Fars had for centuries been a
stronghold of Zoroastrian religion, an ancient faith and a key part of
Aryan (Persian) identity. Among the basic components of the faith
were a belief in the god, Ahura Mazda, who was also the supreme
deity of a pantheon of gods. The religion incorporated a strong
dualism, indicated in liturgical books known as the Gathas, at least
some of which were written around the tenth century BC. Individuals
must make a choice between service to the spirits of good and evil,
which embodied concepts of the truth (asha, good/order) and the lie
(druj, evil/chaos). These ideas had at least some currency in the
Achaemenid period (550–330 BC); the Greek Herodotus, the father
of history, wrote of the Persians of his day:

They educate their boys from five to twenty years old, and teach them only
three things, to ride the horse, shoot the bow, and speak the truth.1

Zoroastrians also venerated fire in their rituals, which symbolized

not only the spiritual binary of light as opposed to darkness but light
of the mind, of thinking as opposed to blind action of animal instinct,
and of the revealing power of truth that destroyed the
murksomeness of deception. The adoration of light and fire grew out
of ancient conceptions of a divine spark in humans and the family
hearth, the source of warmth, comfort, and protection. Each Persian
male started a new hearth fire when he established his new
household, and the fire was kept burning until his life ended.
Ardashir and his successors also inherited Zoroastrian religious
beliefs about kingship, which also can be seen among the dynasties
of their Achaeamenid and Arsacid predecessors. Kingly families were
chosen by Ahura Mazda who gifted them with royal glory (farrah or
khvarenah), a mystical aura that made one worthy of kingship.
Ardashir thus possessed a ready-made ideology through which to
claim legitimacy as a divinely ordained successor to the Arsacids. He
simply needed to conquer them to prove it.
Ardashir’s career likely began as lord of the fort at Darabgerd, a
circular city whose formidable mud brick walls stand silent today in
the south of Fars. The stronghold lay in a well-favored region, with
fertile agricultural land and sufficient water. The provincial city of
Jarhom was later famous for its fabrics and carpets, and cotton was
probably already grown there in the time of the early Sasanians.
Ardashir’s rise to power is recorded in later sources and remains
hazy, but around 220 he rebelled against the Arsacid king of kings,
Artavan IV (sometimes reckoned as Artavan V). Artavan was hardly
invertebrate, having first fought and defeated his brother in a civil
war in 216.
A year later the king of kings fought a bloody three-day battle
against a Roman onslaught at the northern Mesopotamian city of
Nisibis. The emperor Severus (193–211) had recently raised Nisibis
and nearby Harran (Carrhae) to colonial status, a special privilege
afforded to citizens of these settlements, who were recognized as
fully integrated within the empire. Normally such changes of status
involved large-scale local and imperial investment in architecture and
infrastructure. Both cities likely housed substantial Roman garrisons;
possibly one served as the base for the recently recruited III
Parthica (“Parthian Conquering”) legion. After the Roman defeat, the
Praetorian prefect and commander of the II Parthica legion,
Macrinus, a Berber from North Africa whose portraits show him
wearing a large earring, arranged the murder of the emperor
Caracalla. Backed by the army, Macrinus claimed the imperial throne.
He was the first man not to have attained the rank of senator to
hold the reins of the Roman state. His hold on power weak, the
army beaten down and restless, and his coffers empty, Macrinus
parlayed and, in order to extricate himself from the conflict, agreed
to pay hefty tribute to the Parthian shah.
By the time he pressed on to confront the Ardavan, Ardashir had
marshaled sturdy forces, mostly ethnic Persians from Fars. Crucially,
Ardashir had won the backing of the powerful house of Suren. This
noble family’s powerbase lay in the far east, in the Helmand River
valley of what is now Afghanistan. Others also flocked to the banner
of the House of Sasan, including men from Kirkuk (today in Iraqi
Kurdistan), Kerman (today the borderlands of Iraq), and the territory
of Isfahan. Among the allies of the Sasanians also numbered
warriors of the powerful Iranian Mokri tribe whose territory stretched
from the valley of the Jagatu River, ninety kilometers east of Erbil, as
far east as the city of Mahabad (south of modern Tabriz). The
upstart prince had thus extended his sway over a great swathe of
the empire, enlisting ethnic Persians ripe for breaking free of
Parthian rule. It was probably around these engagements that
Ardashir slaughtered considerable numbers of the Karin family, one
of the noble clans who buttressed the Parthian dynasty and who
would play an important role in the history of Sasanian Iran.
In a battle near Istakhr, close to the ancient Achaemenid capital
of Persepolis in Iran, Ardashir defeated the Parthian governor, who
some sources say was one of the sons of Artavan. The Sasanids
went on to seize Isfahan, a key city in central Iran, where Ardashir
slew the local Parthian lord. These victories left the House of Sasan
with mastery over a considerable portion of the empire and sent a
message that Artavan could not ignore. The Parthian king mustered
his army and prepared to meet his rival.
Near the small hamlet of Ram-Hormoz in southwestern Iran, the
armies of the Parthian great king and Ardashir clashed. That the
rebel’s march had carried him westward from his home base reveals
that he had designs on the twin-cities of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the
economic heart of Parthian Mesopotamia and the winter capital of
the king of kings. With the Persian noble households of the south at
his side, Ardashir believed he possessed the might to contest it.
Ardashir’s force comprised ten thousand heavy cavalry, shieldless
and armed with bows and lances. The Parthian enemy was nearly
identically equipped. While the Parthians appear to have
outnumbered Ardashir’s troops from Fars and other easterners, the
rebels carried the day. During the battle, Artavan was struck dead;
later sources claim that Ardashir himself had struck the fatal blow.
The entirety of the Parthian army was not present that fateful
day, but Parthian pretenders to the Arsacid throne sprang forth like
mushrooms until a sufficient portion of the noble clans tasted
Ardashir’s steel. The king from Fars moved against Parthian loyalists
in northern Mesopotamia around Nisibis. Ardashir failed to take the
great caravan city of Hatra but recovered to score a modest victory
sufficient to quench the fires of rebellion for the moment. Finally, in
227, Ardashir forced the Parthian capital of Seleucia-Ctesiphon to
surrender to his rule. Aged forty-seven, the rebel ascended the
throne and was crowned with the diadem of the empire, claiming for
the first time the title of king of kings. Parthian nobles and stragglers
loyal to the cause fled to their Arsacid brethren in Armenia or Bactria
as Ardashir moved briskly to consolidate his position. The Sasanian
era had dawned.

“They use the bow and the horse in war, as the Romans do, but the
barbarians are reared with these from childhood, and live by
hunting; they never lay aside their quivers or dismount from their
horses, but employ them constantly for war and the chase.”2 This
opinion of the Persians held by the Roman historian Herodian (ca.
170–240) misses the mark, for while certainly the Persian troops the
westerners faced were expert horsemen and equally skilled in the
use of the bow, the Sasanians certainly did not make their living as
hunters, however important it was in their pursuit of leisure and
training for war. Herodian, not one to give too much credit to the
barbarians—and all non-Romans were lumped in the same basket—
probably exaggerated what was certainly a Persian mania for
hunting. The great nobles maintained vast preserves and well-
stocked hunting grounds. These enclosures were managed by
wardens and often walled. These manicured parks with their
abundant game, water, and trees within were called paridaida in Old
Persian, and through the Greeks, gave us our word paradise.
While Ardashir enjoyed the hunt as much as any of his princes, in
the year 232, the shahanshah had different quarry on his mind. The
Romans had invaded his empire, led by the young emperor Severus
Alexander, who had risen to power as a boy of seventeen and never
managed to slip from under the thumb of his domineering mother.
While Alexander was in the west, the king of kings led a raid in force
into the highlands of the eastern empire, striking at Cappadocia in
what is today central Turkey.3 On its return, the Persian pack sieged
the city of Nisibis, the bedrock of Roman defenses in Roman
Mesopotamia. Here the great king failed and was turned away but
not before he had done considerable damage to Roman property
and honor. It was about this time that Ardashir sent messengers to
the Roman emperor, laying claim to the lands of his forefathers, the
Achaemenids. Memory of the ancient Persian Empire was very much
alive. The biblical book of Daniel (2:4-49) related the famous dream
of Nebuchadnezzar, which the Hebrew prophet Daniel was
summoned to interpret:

31 Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an
enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the
statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and
thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of
baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by
human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed
them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were
all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the
summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock
that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
 The vision of Daniel, the inspiration for the apocalyptically minded
and televangelists till this day, was likely composed from 167–164
BC, very near the time of the desecration of the Jewish Temple in
Jerusalem during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV
Epiphanes (175–164 BC). In traditional Christian thought as far back
as St. Jerome (c. 347–420), Christians had generally interpreted the
four kingdoms as follows: the head of gold was the Neo-Babylonian
Empire of Nebuchadnezzar (626–539 BC); the chest and arms of
silver symbolized the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BC). The
thighs and legs were thought to represent the Hellenistic kingdoms
following the death of Alexander the Great, while the feet were often
thought to symbolize the Roman Empire. The strength of the
historical memory of the greatness of Persian rule, which had
challenged the powers of the West for dominance, was enshrined in
the cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East, however hazed in
mist and garbled in the memory. The potent image of Achaemenid
power and claims to their former lands Ardashir requisitioned as his
own. The Roman Herodian put the following words into the mouths
of the great king’s emissaries to Rome:

the great king Ardashir commanded the Romans and their emperor to
withdraw from all Syria and from that part of Asia opposite Europe; they
were to permit the Persians to rule as far as Ionia and Caria and to govern
all the nations separated by the Aegean Sea and the Propontic Gulf,
inasmuch as these were the Persians’ by right of inheritance.4

Even if fundamentally wrong, as some have claimed, Herodian

knew his audience. The menace that the great king posed to the
Roman state in the east was not taken lightly, as events were to
prove. In any case, the broad territorial claims allegedly made by
Ardashir differed very little from those lodged in Rome centuries
before by his Parthian predecessors.5
In 228, again threatened with fracture in the north, where the
Armenians remained loyal to the Arsacid Parthian line and backed
rebels against the Sasanian king, and where elements of the old
order resisted, Ardashir went on the attack, marching northeast to
northern Mesopotamia. There the shahanshah suffered defeat at the
hands of a coalition of Armenians, Georgians, and steppe nomads
marshaled by the Armenian King Tiridates II (217–252).6 The
reverse in the north forced Ardashir to withdraw and gather fresh
soldiers from Fars and the eastern provinces. With his
reinforcements, Ardashir traversed the Armenian region of Arzanene,
southwest of the Taurus Mountains, and menaced the major garrison
at Bezabde (Eki Hendek), where the beleaguered Romans were
powerless to halt his advance into central Asia Minor and the
highland region of Cappadocia. The Persians plundered freely over
Cappadocia and perhaps into the fertile lowland plains of Cilicia.7
The following year, Ardashir returned to the offensive and took
aim at the Roman defenses in Upper Mesopotamia. By virtue of their
commanding positions on the edge of the highlands overlooking the
plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, these fortified cities offered the
Romans a bridgehead into Persia and were a menace to the fertile
lowlands and the capital, Ctesiphon. Ardashir attacked the desert
principality of Hatra and invested the Roman frontier cities of Nisibis
and Edessa, although we do not know if these centers fell at this
time. For the second time in as many years, the great king
dispatched flying columns of cavalry to raid as far as Roman
Cappadocia. Like the later chevauchees of the English in the
Hundred Years’ War, the Sasanians used their superior mobility to
undermine a more powerful but static enemy. Once their enemy
bypassed the garrisons, the dispersed Roman infantry could not
hope to catch their mounted foe. The speed of maneuver of the
Sasanians and their surprise appearance behind Roman lines spread
fear, even as the shahanshah’s troops gathered spoils in the form of
money, livestock, and slaves. While on paper, their shocked soldiery
cantoned in the eastern provinces were sufficient to confront the
Sasanians, in all likelihood Roman arms had run down through a
combination of neglect, corruption, and indiscipline. After the failed
Parthian campaign of Caracalla, the emperors took scant note of the
region. The chaos sparked by the Persian advance fanned across the
provinces, attesting to poor communications and overwhelming fear.
Corruption, always a scourge among the provincial troops, led to
abuses like plundering of civilians and doctored muster rolls, so that
officers could pocket the pay packets for nonexistent troops. A
fractured Roman high command further weakened their response to
the crisis.
In the pandemonium wrought by Ardashir’s breach of the
frontiers, panicked by the arrival of Sasanian raiders in the rear of
the curtain of Roman defenses, the pressed Romans in Mesopotamia
mutinied and murdered their commander, Flavius Heracleo. Soon
afterward, the Roman soldiery declared an otherwise unknown
figure, Tarinus (or Taurinius), emperor. Even worse, numerous
Roman troopers deserted to the enemy and joined Ardashir’s pillage
of the civilians they had pledged to protect. The emergency
deepened further. Before the arrival of the emperor in Syria, the
soldiers at Edessa in Mesopotamia declared a certain Uranius
(perhaps Taurinius, sources are not clear) emperor. News of the
crisis quickly spread to Syria and thence to Rome, where the young
emperor Severus Alexander received the news with grave concern.
He recruited a large army and, despite Alexander’s bluster, the large
bonuses the emperor paid out prior to departure speaks to both the
risks the enemy posed and Roman consternation at having to meet
them.
Our sources are silent on the numbers and other details, but the
Romans gathered an exceptionally large force. Enlistment, training,
and logistical support took time to organize. Only in 231 did
Alexander move eastward, where he established his headquarters at
the illustrious city of Antioch, the pearl of Syria on the Orontes River.
There, in preparing his battle plan, Alexander demonstrated strategic
ambition beyond all skill. The emperor and his generals conceived of
a division of the army to prosecute an elaborate, three-pronged
attack. Given that any one of these forces could be expected to
encounter the full weight of Ardashir’s Sasanian troops, it is unlikely
each numbered Roman contingent numbered fewer than ten
thousand men. Upon the arrival of the emperor and his campaign
army at Antioch, the Sasanian raiders withdrew from Cappadocia,
and Ardashir broke off his attack on Nisibis.
 Alexander’s counterstroke, as unlikely to succeed as it was bold,
might have been devised by Wile E. Coyote. The strategy called for
each of the three armies to advance independently into different
parts of Ardashir’s realm. The first, marching north from Antioch,
would descend from the rugged highlands of Armenia into the lands
of Media, today northwestern Iran, a land which was then divided
among a number of petty princes under Parthian suzerainty. Into this
country, the Romans plunged, raping and reaving over a broad area.
Hearing of the Roman slash into the torso of his realm, the king of
kings mustered his field army and moved to intercept them.
The middle Roman army forged through the Tigris-Euphrates
corridor into the dusty desert plains of northern Mesopotamia, the
region where Ardashir had recently attacked in force. There many
Roman units had previously been ineffective or in revolt. The open
wound of these disorders had not been staunched until the
appearance of the emperor in the east.
Alexander himself, under the watchful eye of his domineering
mother, led the southern group through Mesopotamia, probably to
strike through Syria from the Roman frontier fortress-city of Dura
Europos. In any case, the southern attack never materialized due,
we are told, to a combination of an overwrought mother and fever.
Like many of his soldiers, Alexander succumbed to sickness that
physically drained him, most probably malaria which plagued the
length of the Tigris and Euphrates. As with so many unseasoned
troops throughout history, mighty Rome was cut down by the bite of
the tiny anopheles mosquito.
Ardashir, apparently still campaigning in the Upper Mesopotamia
against Nisibis or Hatra, first responded to the northern prong of the
Romans into Media. The ruggedness of the terrain prevented the
Sasanian king from engaging the raiders, who, considering the
lateness of the season and their unfamiliarity with the country,
withdrew loaded with spoils. The king could do nothing but leave
behind a strong garrison in anticipation of the renewal of the war
with the arrival of the spring thaw that would make the mountains
passable.
Another random document with
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domestic drama; The treasure of St Bartholomew; Lovers in
Florence.

“To face facts, though not always a pleasure, is a duty. To face the
French novelist’s interpretation of them seems to us in many cases
neither the one nor the other.”

− + Ath p731 N 26 ’20 160w

“Distinguished by technical dexterity.”

+ Booklist 17:156 Ja ’21

“The stories, if not put to the test of inner veracity, are thoroughly
readable.”

+ − Nation 111:353 S 25 ’20 300w

“The stories and things are well worth telling and are well told. The
book is the work of a keen and accurate reader of human nature and
of a master of satire.” A. W. Welch

+ N Y Call p10 N 21 ’20 380w

“As literature, the tales in the present volume stand far above ‘The
strongest,’ the novel which he published in America last year. If they
have a single fault it is that the author’s lifelong habit of speaking and
writing to convince people of something shows itself in the parable-
like character of some of his stories. His powers of characterization
are admirable.”
 + − N Y Times p7 S 19 ’20 1400w

“In an age like ours when literature is afraid of its name, its
pedigree, and its uniform, M. Clemenceau will be helped rather than
hurt by the association of no small measure of literary force with the
brusque frankness and imperious, half insolent, unconcern of the
man who is not answerable to reviewers.”

+ Review 3:565 D 8 ’20 350w

“The book is marked by its clarity, that absence of adjectives which

makes every idea understood at once. M. Clemenceau is shrewd, yet
generous, a quality that Mark Twain attained in some of his short
stories. He paints portraits not merely in two dimensions, but in
three.”

+ Springf’d Republican p9a N 14 ’20 290w

“There is always the impression that the things related are things
seen, not things invented, and that they are symbols of things not
seen. Some of the equipment of a complete master of the genre
indeed, he seems to lack.”

+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p666 O 14

’20 450w

CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE (MARK

TWAIN, pseud.). Moments with Mark Twain;
selected by Albert Bigelow Paine. *$1.50 Harper 817
 20–6374

One of the compiler’s excuses for offering this selection from the
writings of Mark Twain to the public is to show that the latter was
something more than a fun-maker. “The examples have been
arranged chronologically, so that the reader, following them in order,
may note the author’s evolution—the development of his humor, his
observation, his philosophy and his literary style. They have been
selected with some care, in the hope that those who know the author
best may consider him fairly represented.” (Foreword)

Booklist 16:305 Je ’20

“Well-chosen selections from his works chronologically arranged

to show evolution of style and thought as well as characteristic
humor. Useful for quotation hunters.”

+ Cleveland p84 O ’20 20w

Review 2:403 Ap 17 ’20 80w

CLEVELAND, FREDERICK ALBERT, and

BUCK, ARTHUR EUGENE. Budget and
responsible government. (American social progress
ser.) *$3 (2½c) Macmillan 353

20–8814
 “A description and interpretation of the struggle for responsible
government in the United States, with special reference to recent
changes in state constitutions and statute laws providing for
administrative reorganization and budget reform.” (Sub-title) The
preface by Mr Cleveland states that the work was begun as a report to
the National budget committee. Later its scope was expanded and Mr
Buck of the New York Bureau of municipal research, who had been
preparing a report dealing with administrative reorganization in the
several states, was asked to collaborate. In addition to the editor’s
note by Samuel McCune Lindsay, there is an introduction by ex-
President Taft, who during his term of office urged the adoption of
the budget system. The book is in five parts: Historic background
and interpretation of the recent movement for administrative
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in state governments; Detailed accounts of the characteristics and
operation of recent state enactments providing for a budget
procedure; Proposed national budget legislation; Conclusion. There
is no index, a want partly supplied by the analytical table of contents.

+ Am Hist R 26:148 O ’20 200w

Reviewed by A. C. Hanford

+ Am Pol Sci R 14:711 N ’20 500w

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 “Mr Cleveland states very plainly the facts regarding the necessity
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to realize that if the government of this country is to be administered
in an efficient and responsible manner some form of segregated
budget must be adopted.” G. B.

+ Boston Transcript p6 Je 23 ’20 350w

“For the student of budget legislation and administration in the

technical sense, the chapters by Mr Buck will be especially welcome.”
C: A. Beard

+ Nation 111:275 S 4 ’20 700w

+ R of Rs 62:109 Jl ’20 140w

“The book is an eloquent plea for more effective democracy, a

powerful argument against political bossism, and a valuable
contribution to the cause of the ‘independent’ voter. It should prove
of informative value to women.” C. E. Rightor

+ Survey 45:73 O 9 ’20 570w

The Times [London] Lit Sup p671 O 14
’20 50w

CLOSE, EVELYNE. Cherry Isle. *$1.90 (2½c)

Doran

20–20001
 Anthea Argent is just a young struggling singer when the famous
tenor, Charles Garston, meets and falls in love with her in cherry-
blossom time. Altho she realizes she cares more for her art than she
does for him, she consents to marry him. Her voice develops until
her fame matches her husband’s, but with the coming of their baby
she loses it entirely. Her coldness to her husband increases to bitter
hatred and they finally separate, but not before she has realized that
her child was born dumb. The other passion of her life beside her
voice is for revenge on the man who had wrecked her mother’s life—
her own unacknowledged father. She sets herself to ruin him and
accomplishes it in a dramatic way. But, having done so, she realizes
that the fulfilment of this ambition, as of her earlier one, turns to
ashes in her grasp. She sees herself as the selfish, hard woman that
she is, and the close of the story finds her pride breaking as she tries
to pick up the pieces of her life and patch them together again.

“The novel, though readable, has elements of artificiality.”

+ − Ath p590 Ap 30 ’20 110w

“For a piece of sensational fiction this novel is decidedly readable.

The opening chapters in the cherry orchard are charming bits of
description.”

+ N Y Evening Post p10 N 6 ’20 50w

Sat R 130:80 Jl 24 ’20 80w

CLOW, FREDERICK REDMAN. Principles of

sociology with educational applications. (Brief course
ser. in education) $1.80 Macmillan 301
 20–3277

“Mr Clow, who teaches in the State normal school at Oshkosh,

Wisconsin, believes that sociological theory can be made, to a far
greater extent than has hitherto been done, an instrument for the
solution of practical and technical problems. The present text-book,
which is divided into three parts, ‘The factors of society,’ ‘Social
organization,’ and ‘Social progress,’ is intended to provide students
with a basis upon which they can apply sociological principles to
groups and institutions of which they form part or with which they
are familiar. Each chapter of the exposition is followed by a list of
‘Topics’ to be assigned to individual students for special study, a
series of ‘Problems’ for discussion and an elaborate table of
bibliographical references. This careful work contains in addition a
select list of books generally useful for further reading in the subject
and indices of authors, books, periodicals and subjects.”—The Times
[London] Lit Sup

“The book is encyclopedic rather than systematic. It treats in

succession a great variety of topics, but one is left at the end of the
book with a confused idea and without any view of a general
systematic theory of society or of school organization. It would be
very difficult to put this book into the hands of elementary students
unless the author himself were so thoroughly inspired by the
importance of sociology that he could carry the student far beyond
the compass of the text itself.”

+ − El School J 20:713 My ’20 580w

+ School R 28:389 My ’20 280w
+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p404 Je
24 ’20 150w
 CLUTTON-BROCK, ARTHUR. Essays on art.
*$1.75 Scribner 704

20–6951

“In the preface of this volume, Mr Clutton-Brock asks, ‘How are we

to improve the art of our own time? After years of criticism I am
more interested in this question than in any other that concerns the
arts.’ He believes that art, like other human activities, is subject to
the will of man, and that the quality of art in any age depends chiefly
upon the attitude of the public towards it. His insistence on good
workmanship and sound construction in the things we see and
handle every day is a continuance of the gospel of William Morris,
and it was never more needed than it is now. He pours irony and
ridicule on the idea of art as a luxury; on the craze for cheap
machine-made reproductions of expensive ornaments; on professors
of art who live in hideous drawing-rooms; on the exalting of
processes above persons; and on the professionalism of artists, in
whom an arrogant skill and accomplishment take the place of
genuine expression. One of the best of the essays is a ‘Defence of
criticism,’ occasioned by an outburst of Sir Thomas Jackson
lamenting that art criticism could not be made penal for ten years, so
that people might think for themselves.”—Sat R

“Mr Clutton-Brock is safer as a thinker on conscience and duty

than on æsthetics, though he portrays the artist—Leonardo, Mozart,
or Poussin—with admirable insight.”

+ − Ath p1353 D 12 ’19 140w

Ath p8 Ja 2 ’20 1550w
 “It is so pregnant with genial wisdom, and without being unduly
dogmatic, so sincerely genuine in its viewpoints, that it is bound to
give real pleasure.”

+ Boston Transcript p6 Ap 28 ’20 200w

“These essays are vigorous, informative, and often very well

written.”

+ Dial 68:538 Ap ’20 80w

“His is a book worth thinking about, very straight and sober and
sincere, discussing one of the most serious of all subjects in a manner
worthy of the subject.” F. H.

+ New Repub 21:389 F 25 ’20 1800w

“With the strong ethical perceptions, Mr Brock combines

sensitiveness.”

+ Review 2:276 My 29 ’20 400w

“He writes with a refreshing absence of superiority, as one of the

public with a natural and human interest in art.”

+ Sat R 128:565 D 13 ’19 800w

“A better little book of ‘aesthetics for beginners’ could hardly be

imagined than Mr Clutton-Brock’s ‘Essays on art.’”
 + Spec 124:242 F 21 ’20 380w

“Possessed of a finely perceptive and reflective nature, he sets forth

truths that might be called spiritual were not the word spiritual in
some minds held to denote a lack of common sense. Perhaps it is Mr
Clutton-Brock’s distinction that he makes spiritual truths appear to
be common sense.”

+ Springf’d Republican p13a F 22 ’20

1050w

CLUTTON-BROCK, ARTHUR. What is the

kingdom of Heaven? *$1.75 Scribner 230

(Eng ed A20–528)

“‘Is the universe a fraud?’ is the question which Mr Clutton-Brock

asks and tries to answer in this book. Is life as we know it a welter of
pain and evil, a vast and stupid joke; or is there some sense, some
moral principle, behind this seeming chaos? We all desire to believe
that our private virtues rhyme with something in the universe. We
can be convinced that they do, and we can make the conviction come
true in fact, says Mr Brock, by believing in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a relation of man to the universe
analogous to the relation of man to art—a relation at once
passionately intimate and disinterested. The Kingdom of Heaven in
politics means the disappearance of struggle and competition, in the
individual the beginning of happiness.”—Ath
 “Mr Brock writes in such a way that it is often possible to wonder
whether his words have any very exact meaning, or whether they are
merely symbols fluttering in the void, searching vainly for some solid
reality on which to repose themselves.”

− Ath p315 My 19 ’19 180w

Reviewed by Bertrand Russell

Ath p487 Je 20 ’19 1700w

“It is a passionate and beautiful treatment of Jesus and his chief

doctrine, bearing the mark of the artist and the prophet. This book
must be read slowly, reflected upon earnestly; it is a significant
discussion of a supreme subject.”

+ Bib World 54:643 N ’20 330w

“Mr Clutton-Brock’s book has a fresh, arresting quality; it detains

the reader. It is worthy of attention as representing the highminded
and persuasive modernism that is working in the church.”

+ Int J Ethics 31:117 O ’20 550w

Springf’d Republican p17 Je 29 ’19 950w
Springf’d Republican p15 O 19 ’19
2600w
 COAKLEY, THOMAS FRANCIS. Spiritism; the
modern satanism. *$1.25 Extension press 134

“Dr Coakley finds what he calls ‘the present craze for spiritism’ to
be in substance much the same as those waves of hysteria and
necromancy that have occasionally swept the earth since the most
ancient times. He opposes it especially in its claim to be, as Sir Conan
Doyle calls it, ‘a new revelation,’ and finds spiritistic practices to be
full of danger of many sorts, while he thinks that a future life filled
with the sort of spirits that are chiefly in evidence at séances would
offer few attractions. He sets forth the attitude of the Catholic church
upon the subject and makes clear the reasons why it prohibits its
members from taking any part in spiritistic or psychical research
inquiries.”—N Y Times

+ Cath World 112:252 N ’20 110w

N Y Times 25:19 Jl 4 ’20 110w

COBB, IRVIN SHREWSBURY. Abandoned

farmers. *$3 (6½c) Doran 817

20–19071

In this “humorous account of a retreat from the city to the farm”

the reader accompanies the author on a long search for an
abandoned farm, and, when it is found at last, assists in every detail
of taking possession, of digging a well, planning, building and
furnishing the house and, at last, takes leaves of him with the
impression that, although the feat was not accomplished without
membership in the Westchester county despair association, it was all
worth while. Contents: Which is really a preface in disguise; The start
of a dream; Three years elapse; Happy days for Major Gloom; In
which we bore for water; Two more years elapse; “And sold to—”;
The adventure of Lady Maude; Us landed proprietors.

“Written with the usual Cobb humor. Described by one reader as ‘a

bit thin with an occasional raisin.’”

+ − Booklist 17:104 D ’20

+ N Y Evening Post p9 O 30 ’20 110w

“‘The abandoned farmers’ represent Mr Cobb at his happiest.”

+ Outlook 126:768 D 29 ’20 130w

“It is a tale all of which lies in the telling, and with Cobb in the role
of Tusitala no one can go wrong in expecting that every phase of
humor in the subject will be brought forth.”

+ Review 3:506 N 24 ’20 220w

COBB, IRVIN SHREWSBURY. From place to

place. *$2 (1½c) Doran

20–2846
 “Stories about ourselves” is the sub-title of this collection of
character sketches. The choice of subjects is unusual. In “The
gallowsmith” we have a sympathetically drawn picture of a self-
appointed hangman who plied his trade with the pride of a good
craftsman till suddenly one day his dormant imagination awoke and
—killed him. The other sketches are: The thunders of silence; Boys
will be boys; The luck piece; Quality folks; John J. Coincidence;
When August the second was April the first; Hoodwinked; The bull
called Emily.

Booklist 16:242 Ap ’20

Cleveland p71 Ag ’20 60w
Lit D p127 Mr 27 ’20 1300w

“These stories make interesting reading, though they are remote

from any trace of realism.” Alvin Winston

+ N Y Call p11 Mr 21 ’20 300w

“Here we have Mr Cobb in all his varying moods of farce and

pathos, reminiscence, stern logic, and ironical tragedy. The tale
which opens the book, ‘The gallowsmith,’ manifestly belongs to him
who wrote ‘The escape of Mr Trimm’ and the wonderful narrative of
‘The bell buzzard.’”

+ N Y Times 25:57 F 1 ’20 700w

+ Springf’d Republican p11a Mr 21 ’20
350w
 COBB, IRVIN SHREWSBURY, and
RINEHART, MARY (ROBERTS) (MRS
STANLEY MARSHALL RINEHART). Oh, well,
you know how women are! and Isn’t that just like a
man! *$1 (8c) Doran 817

20–4128

Mr Cobb, at one end of the book, enlarges on the foibles of women

—their narrow skirts, their high heels, their habits of impeding the
traffic and getting off street cars backward, and then ends with a
tribute to their work for the war. Mrs Rinehart, at the other end,
reciprocates with comments on the inherent conservatism of men,
and their sex clannishness, and then pats them gently on the head for
their eternal boyishness and confesses that “we do like them,
dreadfully.”

“While some of the jokes will seem trite, there are enough good
laughs to compensate.”

+ − Booklist 16:272 My ’20

“The tone of both little essays is delightfully urbane.” Joseph

Mosher

+ Pub W 97:993 Mr 20 ’20 200w

“It is all good fun, and neither writer could be dull if he (or she)
tried.”
 + Springf’d Republican p13a Ap 25 ’20
300w

“That clever novelist [Mrs Rinehart] gives us very much better

reading. She is full of shrewd remarks, and shows much more
sympathetic insight into man than Mr Cobb does into woman.”

+ The Times [London] Lit Sup p405 Je

24 ’20 340w

COBB, THOMAS. Mr Preston’s daughter. *$1.75

(2½c) Lane

20–19510

Monica Dasent, in love with Godfrey Raymond, becomes jealous

when Essa Maynard, a girl of doubtful past, begins to pay him
marked attention. Godfrey’s sole interest in Essa is because his uncle
Hugh has confessed a “certain responsibility” for the girl. After the
uncle’s death, it is discovered that he left Essa a large legacy, and
Godfrey tries to prove exactly what “responsibility” Uncle Hugh had
felt. This involves him in a family quarrel of long standing between
his uncle and his cousin Anthony, the cause of which he finds to be
the paternity of Essa. Anthony, the real father, is anxious to conceal
the fact from his wife, but it all turns out to be a tempest in a teapot
since his wife had known the circumstances even before their
marriage.
 Ath p687 My 21 ’20 50w

“Here are the ingredients of excitement. But somehow or other the

creator of these elements lacks the proper recipe for the most
effective mixing. His atmosphere sags; his stride is feeble: he never
swings into the long and winning pace that comes so easily to the
authors of American best sellers.”

− + N Y Evening Post p17 D 4 ’20 310w

“The author has a fluent pleasing style, and he knows his London
thoroughly. Can be commended to that large class which buys a
novel because the purchaser wants ‘something to read.’”

+ − N Y Times p25 Ja 16 ’21 450w

“Mr Cobb builds up a very good story with his accustomed skill.”

+ Sat R 130:262 S 25 ’20 80w

“The book is written with Mr Thomas Cobb’s usual lightness of

touch.”

+ Spec 125:118 Jl 24 ’20 80w

COBB, THOMAS. Silver bag. *$1.75 (2c) Lane

20–5233
 During an absence from London Valentine Brook turns his flat
over to his friend Derrick Chalmers. On the morning after his return
a pretty girl calls to ask for a silver bag left there during his absence.
It is made clear that it is not her bag, that she is calling for it for
another woman. The mystery of the story revolves about the owner of
the bag. Lionel Windermere suspects his wife, Valentine reluctantly
suspects Evelyn Stainer. Mrs Tempest calmly states that it is hers,
but there is reason to believe she is shielding one of the others. But
which one? The tangle is straightened out finally with no reputations
lost and no hearts broken.

“The mystery takes so long to clear up that the reader gets a bit
tired of it all, and begins to grew impatient at a point where he
should, by the rules of the mystery game, be so absorbed as to take
no account of time.”

+ − N Y Times 25:209 Ap 25 ’20 300w

“The style is sometimes crude, but the plot is ingeniously

constructed, and certainly has an unexpected solution. Yet our
interest is not always maintained at a high level, possibly because
none of the persons concerned makes any strong appeal to our
sympathy.”

+ − Sat R 128:251 S 13 ’19 220w

“Mr Cobb writes his new drawing-room comedy with his usual
detachment and accomplishment.”

+ − Spec 123:622 N 8 ’19 80w

 “While not melodramatic or sensational, ‘The silver bag’ contains
mystery and amusing situations. The book will please those with a
weakness for delving into society scandals and near scandals.”

+ − Springf’d Republican p9a Ag 29 ’20

270w

COCKERELL, THEODORE DRU ALISON.

Zoology, il *$3 World bk. 590

20–7593

A work by the professor of zoology in the University of Colorado,

published as one of the New-World science series of which John W.
Ritchie is general editor. It is designed as a text book for colleges and
universities but has several elements of popular appeal. One of its
unusual features is the interposition of biographical chapters, the
author believing that it is well for the students to know more of the
men who have contributed to scientific knowledge. Consequently he
has provided sketches of Darwin, Linnæus. Henri Fabre, Pasteur and
others. The book has good illustrations including a series of animal
photographs taken under the author’s direction in the New York
zoological park. References follow the chapters and there is an index.

+ Booklist 16:302 Je ’20

 CODY, HIRAM ALFRED. Glen of the high
north. *$1.90 (2c) Doran

20–18933

Tom Reynolds finds himself at odds with life after his four years at
the front. The vision of a beautiful face in a crowded street remains
his grip on reality. On top of this comes the suggestion of a friend
that he go in search of a Henry Redmond who, with his little girl, had
mysteriously disappeared fifteen years previous. Ostensibly Tom
goes in search of Redmond, but in reality his quest is for the face.
More casual glimpses of it intensify his zeal. It takes him into the
mining camps of the far north, plunges him into adventures in which
figure the girl, an old philosophic prospector, a villainous miner, and
a mysterious landed proprietor lording it in his stronghold behind
the Golden Crest. In the end the girl proves to be the daughter of the
landlord and the latter, the old prospector and the lost Henry
Redmond to be one and the same person. The girl is won, gold is
found in the bargain, the villainous miner is made harmless and life
is once more real to Tom.

“A commonplace, crudely written melodrama of the most obvious

motion-picture type.”

− N Y Times p26 S 12 ’20 200w

CODY, LOUISA (FREDERICI) (MRS

WILLIAM FREDERICK CODY). Memories of