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sions of Syria only. If his Barbalissus campaign is the first invasion of Syria, as I tried to prove above, why did he not mention the second campaign which loomed so large in the eyes of the Syrian historians, according to Alföldi? No probable explanation of this striking omission can be suggested. But we might suppose that Shapuhr in his account omitted the first
expedition altogether as irrelevant and of little importance, and that
the campaign of Barbalissus is in fact the second invasion of
Alföldi. One may find a support for this contention in the opening
words of Shapuhr in his account of the Barbalissus expedition: However the decisive argument against the identification of the second invasion of Alföldi with the Barbalissus campaign is yielded by the history of Dura. According to Shapuhr Dura was taken by the Persians in the Barbalissus campaign. If this campaign is identical with Alföldi's second invasion of Syria this capture must have happened in A.D. 258/9. However we shall see presently that Dura was captured by the Persians two years before, in A.D. 256. I conclude therefore that there was no invasion of Syria and capture of Antioch in A.D. 258/9, an invasion and capture very improbable in itself and hardly reconcilable with the general development of military operations in A.D. 260. Did Shapuhr evacuate Syria immediately after his campaign of 258/9? Why did he do it? Why should Antioch, taken and destroyed in A.D. 259, be again taken, according to such a reliable source as Philostratus, in A.D. 260? Who defended it? IV. The Evidence from Dura The second important source of information is the material found in Dura, which permits us to reconstruct with a certain degree of accuracy the life of the city in the last years of its existence, gives an exact date for its capture, and a vivid picture of the military operations on the side of the besiegers and the defenders of the city which led to its capture. I may begin with a brief review of the evidence regarding the date of the beginning of the siege of Dura. The material has been collected several times and is conclusive. The coins are of great importance. Several hoards were found in the houses which were partly destroyed and completely buried when a sloping embankment along the defensive walls of the city was built in order to protect these walls from the Persian siege machines. Among the coins of those hoards were several Antoniniani of Valerian and Gallienus minted in Antioch. Moreover in the Roman counter-mine inside of the city, in which perished several Roman soldiers, were found 82 coins, of which 37 were minted under Valerian, 24 of them in Antioch, mostly in A.D. 254 (one is dated), and 12 were minted in the second mint of Valerian mentioned above.60 The chronological evidence yielded by the coins is supplemented by some curious |
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60. See the summary of Professor A. R. Bellinger, below, pp. 62 ff. |
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The first "lie" of the Caesar may be interpreted as one which led to
the first invasion, the account of which has been omitted by
Shapuhr. This interpretation however has little probability. The 
of the first invasion was not the same as the