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of the Roman emperor and what Shapuhr regarded to be his first "lie," some obligation which the Roman emperor had taken on himself and which he had not fulfilled.

All the three ("campaigns"11) of Shapuhr, briefly reported by him in his inscription, are of great interest and present many problems. They certainly deserve a more detailed treatment than has been given to them by Professor Sprengling and Professor Olmstead. I cannot present such a treatment in this paper. My study is devoted to the second section, as I have stated it above. But in order better to understand the second section a few words must be said of the first and third also.

The narrative starts with the report of the first campaign, that is to say the war between Gordian III and Shapuhr, ll. 6 ff. The report is brief and full of reticences. It says that right after the accession of Shapuhr12 the Emperor Gordian collected from the whole Empire a strong army, which consisted chiefly of military units of the Danube and the Rhine frontier,13 and attacked the Persians and Shapuhr in Assyria (battle of Rhesaena?) "and inside the boundaries of Assyria means certainly in Mesichise (probably not a city but a region`) there

11 . The Greek and the corresponding Iranian word are certainly translations of the Assyrian word meaning "campaign" (see in the report on the third campaign: and in the report on the second campaign: It is well known that the early Annals of the Assyrian kings were arranged chronologically, the military events being reported year by year. However in the later Annals (see especially the Annals of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal) instead of the term year appears the term "campaign." See Luckenbill, op. cit., Introduction. It must be noted however that is not used in the sense "campaign" by the Greek writers and Greek inscriptions. Nearest to it is Plato, Legg. 746D where it means "leading of the army" and Vettius Valens, Anth. ed. Kroll, p. 339, 29: In these passages the term is more or less equivalent to the Latin terminus technicus ductus, in such standardized expressions as: ductu auspicio imperio (see Th. L.L., s.v. "ductus" and for the religious and political meaning of the formula, M. A. Levi, Auspicio Imperio Ductu Felicitate, R. Ist. Lombardo, LXXI, 1938, pp. 1 ff., esp. p. 14). However in later authors ductus in the plural is sometimes equivalent to "campaigns," see for example Amm. Marc., XXIII, 5, 7: hic (at Zaitha) Gordiani imperatoris longe conspicuum vidimus tumulum, cuius actus a pueritia prima, exercituumque felicissimos ductus, et insidiarum interitum, digessimus tempore competenti. One may think that Shapuhr's were suggested to the translator by the late Latin ductus.     12. Cf. the Annals of Assyrian kings; the military parts of them start with the accession of the king, see for example the Prism of Tiglath- Pileser I, Luckenbill, op. cit. I, p. 74, no. 221 : "in the beginning of my reign"; cf. Tukulti-Urta I, ibid. p. 50, no. 143: "at the beginning of my rule," etc. This expression is repeated later over and over again.
13. This is what, in my opinion, is meant by the words: meaning the provinces of the Danube limes and those of the Rhine limes, cf. my remarks (below, pp. 27 ff.) on the similar but more detailed description by Shapuhr of the army of Valerian at Edessa. There is no question of interpreting the words quoted above as meaning that Gordian's force consisted chiefly of German mercenaries. Though soldiers of German origin appeared occasionally in the Roman army of the early third century A.D. they were at that time not numerous and were kept in a subordinate position. See on the Roman army of the third century A. Alföldi, CAM, XII, p. 21g. The verb at the end of the sentence of which one letter only is preserved meant probably something like "collected," "gathered." I may suggest tentatively that is to say "collected in addition" (apparently to the Syrian army). The verb is a but are frequent in the peculiar Greek of Shapuhr's inscription.
14. For an identification of Mesichise and Misiche see Sprengling, op. cit. p. 363 ; Olmstead, op. cit. p. 256.

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