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Seleucia, Antioch, Cyrrhus, another Seleucia, Alexandria, Nicopolis, Sinzara, Hamath, Aristia, Dichor, Doliche, Dura, Corcusion, Germanicia, Batna, Chanar, and in a special section 5 or 6 cities of Cappadocia with which we are not concerned here. Then: .

What Shapuhr says in this passage is therefore as follows: "and the emperor lied again and acted in an unjust way towards Armenia, and we moved against the Roman Empire and annihilated a Roman army of 60,000 at Barbalissus, and burned and devastated and conquered¹⁹ the province of Syria and the provinces around it (or the cities in it) with their respective territories²⁰ and in this one campaign (we burned down etc.) the following fortresses and cities of the Roman Empire." There follows the list of fortresses and cities.²²

It is evident that Shapuhr reports on the events in the following way. According to him after negotiations about Armenia and a special act carried out by the Roman Emperor as regards Armenia, Shapuhr decided to begin military operations. He invaded the Roman Empire, conquered the Roman army at Barbalissus, the army being apparently not led by the emperor himself, since no emperor's name is mentioned in connection with the battle, forced his way into Syria after this victory and captured several cities of Syria. This all happened in one campaign . If Shapuhr in his inscription follows the tradition of the Assyrian kings "in one campaign" means at the same time "in one year."²³

The list of cities and castella allows us perhaps to trace with some probability the military operations.²⁴ (1) The campaign began not, as usual, in northern Mesopotamia with an attack on the Mesopotamian fortresses guarding the northern road leading into Syria, that is to say Nisibis, Rhesaena, Carrhae, and Edessa, which are not mentioned in

19. The formula used in Shapuhr's inscription for describing the fate of conquered countries and cities recurs hundreds of times with slight variations in the reports of Assyrian kings on their victorious expeditions. 20. The term as applied by Shapuhr to the Roman Empire, has different meanings in his report. apparently means the Roman Empire in general; in our passage stands for the province of Syria, while the following may mean the provinces adja cent to Syria or the subdivisions of the province of Syria, the cities and their territories. The meaning of and in our passage depends in the last instance on the restoration of the sentence which describes them. If we restore with Sprengling it probably means the subdivisions of Syria; if we restore it means probably the territories around Syria. A careful study of the meaning of the Greek term in the inscription of Shapuhr is of great importance. It cannot be done however by one not familiar with the Iranian languages.

21. The verb which rules etc. is missing; it is probable that the scribe did not want to repeat the preceding verbs and omitted it. This is more probable than to restore something like "took hold of" or "took away from." 22. Such lists appear regularly in the Annals of the Assyrians, first the names of the cities and then the total number of them; it is superfluous to quote instances; a very typical one will be found in the account on his first campaign by Sennacherib, Luckenbill, op. cit. II, p. 131, no. 261. As for or the (districts) see the Rassam Cylinder (Annals of Assurbanipal), Luckenbill, op. cit. II, pp. 307 f., no. 306. The discrepancy between the 37 cities of the text of the report and the 35 actually enumerated may be due to mechanical counting by the scribe of the words and not of the places (some place names in the list consist of two words). 23. See above, n. ii. 24. The list has been used for reconstructing the campaign of Shapuhr by Sprengling, loc. cit. pp. 369 f. and by Olmstead, op. cit. pp. 403 ff.

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