1 The Encyclopedia of the Roman Army, First Edition. Edited by Yann Le Bohec. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118318140.wbra0855 Khusro II HENNING BÖRM Khusro II Parvez (“the victorious”) was a Sassanian king, ruling Persia from 591 to 628. Khusro II was the grandson of Khusro I. After the general Bahram Chobin had started a rebellion in 589, King Hormizd IV, having lost the support of many priests and nobles, was deposed and replaced by his son Khusro in 590. Unable to reach an agreement with Bahram, Khusro fled to the Romans, although the two great powers were still at war. While Bahram usurped royal power in Persia, the Roman Emperor Maurice finally decided to support Khusro (Th. Sim. 4.2–12). In 591, imperial troops invaded the Sassanian Empire, joined forces with Persian followers of Khusro, and defeated Bahram (VI) in the Battle of Blarathos. Peace was restored soon afterwards between Romans and Persians, with Khusro abandoning most of Armenia, Georgia, and northern Mesopotamia (Sebeos 76.8–18). This was followed by a period of apparently cordial relations between the two powers. When the emperor was overthrown and killed by Phocas in 602, Khusro, claiming to seek venge- ance for his benefactor, declared war (Th. Sim. 8.15.7). Fighting began in 603, and at first Khusro faced a young man who was supposedly Maurice’s son Theodosius. Although his statue at Taq-i Bustan shows him as a clibanarius (cataphract), Khusro never took the field himself but relied on able commanders such as Shahin and Shahrvaraz. At first, the Persian armies, although profiting from internal strife within the Roman Empire, advanced rather slowly, systematically conquer- ing Mesopotamia and Armenia. When they crossed the Euphrates in 611, the new emperor, Heraclius, was determined to fight back, but in 613 the Romans suffered a heavy defeat in Syria. In 614, Sassanian troops captured Jerusalem, taking with them the “True Cross,” and, in 619, Alexandria was conquered, with Khusro obvi- ously intending to turn the Roman Near East into a part of the Sassanian Empire. When the Romans, willing to pay tribute, humbly asked for peace, he repeatedly rejected them. Persia appeared to have reached its apex of power, while Heraclius is reported to have contemplated mov- ing the capital to Carthage. But perhaps Khusro’s empire was already overstretched. The situation began to change in 622, when Heraclius took to the field in person and attacked Transcaucasia, forming an alliance with the Turks and threaten- ing the Iranian heartland. In 626, the Persians and their Avar allies vainly laid siege to Constantinople (Chr. Pasch. 626), and when a Sassanian army was defeated by Heraclius near Nineveh in December 627, Khusro decided to flee, thus losing the sup- port of the Persian nobility (Theoph. AM 6118). Since he refused to sue for peace, he was replaced by his son Kavadh II in February 628 and then executed. The Sassanian Empire fell into disar- ray soon after his death, allowing Heraclius to conclude an agreement that restored the Roman borders to their former condition. Khusro II is commonly held to have been the last major ruler of the Sassanian dynasty. He acted like the warrior-kings of the early Sassanian period, especially after c.610, abandoning the idea of coexistence with the Romans that had evolved over the centuries. But because of his overburdening of Persia’s resources, his reign eventually marked the beginning of the decline of the Sassanian Empire. See also heraclius; historians: late empire; persian wars: late empire. FURTHER READING Greatrex, G. & Lieu, S. (2002) The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars II. London. Howard-Johnston, J. (2006) East Rome, Sasanian Persia and the End of Antiquity. Aldershot. Kaegi, W. (2003) Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium. Cambridge. Whitby, M. (1988) The Emperor Maurice and his Historian. Oxford.