The Syriac Legend of Alexander’s Gate

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 The Syriac Legend of Alexander’s Gate
Apocalypticism at the Crossroads of Byzantium and Iran
TOMMASO TESEI
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DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197646878.001.0001
In memory of Angelo Arioli
 Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I: THE TEXT AND ITS CONTEXT

1. The Text, the Story, and Its Sources
2. Debates about Dating and Context of the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs
3. The 940 AG Prophecy
4. The Story of Alexander’s Gate and the Political Context of the Sixth Centu
ry
5. The Conflict with Tūbarlaq
6. The Syriac Alexander

PART II: STUDIES ON SINGLE THEMES AND MOTIFS

7. Alexander, the Danielic Visions, and the Gate against Gog and Magog
8. Apocalyptic Ideology
9. Alexander’s Horns
10. The Crown, the Throne, and the Last Roman Emperor
Conclusion

Appendix 1: English Translation of the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs (According to Bu

dges’s Critical Edition)
Appendix 2: List of Toponyms and Proposed Identifications
Notes
Bibliography
Index
 Acknowledgments

This book started by accident. I was writing another book (on the relationship
between the Syriac legends of Alexander’s gate and the Qurʾānic story of Ḏū-l-
Qarnayn) when I realized that my previous assumptions about the dating and
context of the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs, a Syriac text prominently at the center of
my analysis, were erroneous. My doubts, first confined to a footnote, soon
claimed their place in the text. The footnote became a paragraph, the paragraph
became a chapter, and the chapter became a monograph. This surprisingly fast
and, honestly, painful, intellectual process could not have happened had I not
been in the ideal circumstances. Most ideas in this book were conceived during
my stay at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where I found the most
stimulating atmosphere and the best work conditions that a researcher can dream
of. I am deeply grateful to the Institute, and to Sabine Schmidtke in particular,
for the opportunity that I was given. My stay at IAS was funded thanks to a
Patricia Crone membership. Since I was a Ph.D. student, Patricia has represented
a model for the scholar I want to be. Being awarded a fellowship in her memory
was, and will remain, the highest honor of my academic life.
It is hard to find the words to express my deepest gratitude to David Powers,
for his friendship and for his unreasonable generosity. During the past few years
David has been a constant source of support and advice, and constantly provided
invaluable help with his meticulous comments on my writings. So was also the
case with the present book. He has read (twice!) the entire manuscript and
offered a countless number of suggestions for improvements. It is largely his
merit if this study is a bit less dense and garbled than what it used to be in its
earliest stages.
I would not have written this book had it not been for my friend Stephen
Shoemaker, whose observations on the origins of the Neṣḥānā made me hesitate
for the first time about what I had until then considered as undisputable facts.
Besides instilling doubts in my mind and demolishing my scholarly assumptions,
Stephen is the best colleague. He has always been willing to discuss my ideas
during the entire development of this book project, and I have enormously
benefited from his feedbacks and comments. For these and other reasons, I thank
him profusely.
The research in this monograph is heavily indebted to the work of those
scholars who studied the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs before me, and to Gerrit
Reinink and Kevin van Bladel in particular. Both of these scholars have strongly
influenced my way of doing research, teaching me, among other things, the
importance of taking the risk of making hypotheses on the historical
circumstances in which ancient texts were composed. Although I ended up
disagreeing with the specific contextualization of the Neṣḥānā that Reinink and
van Bladel advocate in their studies, their scholarship set a fundamental example
for my own, and my intellectual debt to them is enormous.
Stefan Vranka and the project managers at Oxford University Press have
helped me along the entire process, and the two anonymous reviewers have
provided many insights from which I greatly benefited. Christopher Bonura has
read a preliminary draft of this book and sent me several valuable comments that
helped me in refining my ideas. Domenico Agostini, Guillaume Dye, Aaron
Hughes, George Kiraz, and Sergey Minov took the time to read sections or
chapters of this study and sent me useful feedback. Other scholars who
contributed in various ways to the study included in this volume are Khodadad
Rezakhani, Mario Casari, Andrea Piras, Lutz Greisiger, and Yuri Stoyanov, as
well as those who attended my presentations at the Near Eastern Studies Seminar
at IAS in 2018–2019 and provided useful feedback for this book project,
including Hasan Ansari, Marilyn Booth, Glen Bowersock, Martino Diez,
Alejandro García-Sanjuán, Christian Mauder, Matthew Melvin-Koushki,
Johannes Pahlitzsch, Michele Salzman, and Nukhet Varlik. The Fondazione per
le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII (Fscire) has given me the rare opportunity
of holding a two-day seminar, during which I could present, and receive
feedback on, many of the ideas presented in this monograph. I am grateful to all
these colleagues and friends for their help and support.
Although this book is largely the product of my most recent research activity,
my work on the Syriac Alexander texts started almost fifteen years ago, during
my MA studies in Paris, and continued throughout my doctoral studies in Rome
and Paris, and my five-year-long postdoctoral experience in Jerusalem. I am
particularly grateful to Aboubakr Chraïbi, for his wise guidance and mentorship
over the period of my education at INALCO. I should like to thank Prof. Gabriel
Motzkin and Dr. Leonard Polonsky, who conceived and realized the visionary
project of the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study at the Van Leer Jerusalem
Institute, where I could pursue my research after obtaining my Ph.D. degree. My
current institution, the Duke Kunshan University, has provided a friendly
environment in which to finalize the redaction of this monograph. I am grateful
to the many colleagues, friends, and students who have made my new life in
China so interesting and enjoyable. In particular, I would like to thank Kolleen
Guy, James Miller, Ben Van Overmeire, and, last but not least, my brilliant and
talented student Hajra Farooqui, who has a bright future ahead of her. I also wish
to thank my parents, Isabella Cipriani and Alberto Tesei, who over the years
have patiently observed their son making life decisions that took him further and
further away from home.
This book was written over the course of four years. It was a particularly
hectic period, marked by an unusual concentration of significant life events,
including three relocations to three different continents, one of which happened
in the middle of the global pandemic. Saying that completing a book in those
circumstances was a challenge would be an understatement. Certainly, I would
not have been able to achieve that goal had I not had some extraordinary
companions at my side, my wife Marie Malka Shalev, who left her country and
career to follow me in this journey, and our four, very much loved, dogs, Hutch,
Ox, Pudding, and April, who filled my life outside the academia with joy (and
chaos!).
This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved professor, Angelo
Arioli, who passed away a few months before its publication. The encounter
with him was one that indelibly marked my life, instilling in me the love for
research that turned a confused nineteen-year-old student into an aspiring
scholar. Among the many memories of him that I greatly cherish, Prof. Arioli
was the first one who talked to me about Ḏū-l-Qarnayn, sparking in me the
curiosity that ultimately led me to write this book.
Tommaso Tesei
Budapest, June 1, 2023.
 Introduction

In 1889, Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge published The History of
Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo Callisthenes, which
includes critical editions and translations of four Syriac texts containing stories
about Alexander the Great.1 The longest of these texts is a Syriac version of Ps.-
Callisthenes’s Alexander Romance. The other three works are two anonymous,
medium and short-length, prose narratives, and a metric homily spuriously
attributed to Jacob of Serugh (d. 521 CE). The present study focuses on the first
and longer of the two prose narratives, which Budge called A Christian Legend
concerning Alexander, but whose original title is Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs,
literally “the victory of Alexander.” Western scholars often refer to this text as
the Syriac Alexander Legend. This denomination has resulted in confusion
between the latter and the Syriac adaptation of the Alexander Romance. To avoid
misunderstandings, in this monograph I will use an abbreviated form of the
Syriac title and will use Neṣḥānā to refer to the work in question.
The confusion between the Neṣḥānā and the Syriac Alexander Romance is
related to the fact that the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs has been overlooked by
scholars. At present, since Budge’s 1889 work, no new critical edition or English
translation of the Syriac text has been produced2—although a French translation
has recently been published by Georges Bohas.3 No monographic study
dedicated to this text has been produced, and many aspects of the Neṣḥānā are
misunderstood by scholars. The several articles published by Gerrit Reinink
between the 1980s and the early 2000s on the topic of the Syriac Alexander texts
are surely an invaluable step forward in the analysis of the Neṣḥānā, and recent
studies by Kevin van Bladel and Lutz Greisiger have refined our knowledge of
the Syriac work.4 However, despite their valuable contribution to the study of the
Neṣḥānā, these studies embrace a theory which I myself advocated in previous
studies5 but that I now consider to be fundamentally wrong, namely that the text
was composed during the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641). One goal of
the present work is to rectify current scholarly views about the dating and
contextualization of the Neṣḥānā.
Setting the Syriac work in a well-established historical context and
determining the exact period and circumstances in which this work was
composed is an important endeavor. The Neṣḥānā is a seminal text for later
Christian and Muslim apocalyptic traditions. It contains the earliest recorded
versions of literary motifs that would become central to the medieval apocalyptic
tradition—the most notable being the motif of the gate erected by Alexander
against Gog and Magog (hence the title of this book). The Neṣḥānā also
represents an early witness to an influential political ideology that guided both
Byzantine and early Islamic imperial policies. At the same time, the Neṣḥānā
had an important impact on literary sources that are crucial to our understanding
of the rise of Islam. Indeed, the Neṣḥānā influenced (directly or indirectly) other
Syriac works that provide invaluable information about Christian reactions to
early Islamic expansionism—for example, the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius. In
addition, the Alexander story, as told in the Syriac text, inspired the famous
Qurʾānic pericope on Ḏū-l-Qarnayn (Q 18:83–102), and some scholars—
including myself—have argued that the Neṣḥānā is the source of this Qurʾānic
passage.6 For all these reasons, a critical study of this text will illuminate key
cultural and religious trends in Late Antiquity.
While the scholarly consensus commonly dates the Neṣḥānā to the time of
Heraclius, in this study I show that an earlier version of the text was produced
during the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565). This new historical contextualization
of the Neṣḥānā enables me to better delineate the development of late antique,
politicized forms of apocalypticism, which assign to the Christian Roman
Empire the task of establishing a cosmocratic rule in view of Jesus’s Second
Coming. I argue that the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs played a decisive role in
shaping this apocalyptic ideology. At the same time, by analyzing the contents
and the ideology of the text, I hope to contribute to our understanding of the
origins and developments of important literary motifs of medieval literature
worldwide, like the characterization of Alexander as a pious prophet-king (in
both Christianity and Islam alike), and the story of the gate that he erected to
confine the eschatological nations of Gog and Magog.
I also hope to shed light on lesser-known aspects of political debates in the
sixth-century Near East. Against the current scholarly wisdom, I argue that the
author of the Neṣḥānā did not celebrate the Byzantine emperor, but rather
criticized him and his policies. By portraying the hero of his legend—Alexander
—in ideal terms, the author sought to draw attention to Justinian’s shortcomings.
This new reading of this Syriac apocalypse offers historians a valuable insight
into important aspects of Justinian’s reign, as seen by an author who was not on
the emperor’s payroll. In this regard, my study provides a new approach to
aspects of political debates in sixth-century Byzantine society that have been
marginalized.
 Readers familiar with my previous studies may be surprised (or disappointed)
by my lack of engagement with the influence of the Neṣḥānā on the story of Ḏū-
l-Qarnayn, and the Neṣḥānā’s significance for the study of the emergence of the
Qurʾānic corpus. This is a deliberate choice. The present study focuses on the
Syriac text and on historical circumstances in the mid-sixth century CE. The few
references to Ḏū-l-Qarnayn will mainly be placed in footnotes, except for some
brief remarks in the conclusion. It goes without saying that the question of the
impact of the Neṣḥānā on the Qurʾānic pericope deserves a thorough
investigation, especially in light of the new insights that I provide in this work. I
hope to dedicate a specific study to this topic in the future.

Book Structure, Annotated Contents, and Note on

Transliterations
The book is divided into ten chapters, which are organized into two main parts. P
art I (Chapters 1–6) is mostly aimed at revising earlier scholarship on the
Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs and at determining the historical context in which the
Syriac work was originally composed. Part II (Chapters 7–10) analyzes specific
themes and motifs in the Neṣḥānā at the light of the newly established historical
context. Because of the character of the current analysis—which involves a
broad variety of literary and material sources from the historical environment in
which the Neṣḥānā was composed—the book includes several excursuses.
Consequently, the reader might find some passages to be conceptually dense.
The following annotated contents are meant to facilitate the navigation through
these occasional complexities.
In Chapter 1, I describe the manuscript tradition of the Neṣḥānā d-
Aleksandrōs. I present the Alexander story as narrated in the Syriac work and the
sources that the author used to compose his narrative. I also explore the
geography behind the episode of Alexander’s gate, as this is an important
element to determine the Syriac author’s historical and political context.
In Chapter 2, I review earlier scholarship on the Neṣḥānā, with special
attention to the debate over whether or not the Syriac work is a seventh-century
composition.
In Chapter 3, I demonstrate, by means of philological analysis, that the only
passage in the text that clearly indicates a seventh-century dating—a prophecy
referring to events that occurred between 626 and 629 CE—is in fact an
interpolation within an earlier composition dating to the end of the reign of
Justinian. This interpolation—I argue—demonstrates that several decades after
its composition, the Syriac work was modified in order to connect it to new
historical circumstances, and possibly to the widespread belief in the Byzantine
world that the ideal emperor described in the Neṣḥānā had returned in the figure
of Heraclius.
In Chapter 4, I demonstrate that the author of the Neṣḥānā uses the episode of
the eschatological gate erected by Alexander to address two major points of
controversy between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires at the time of Justinian
and Khosrow Anōshirvān: (1) their dispute over the control of the Caucasian
mountain passes (traditionally identified as the semi-mythical Caspian Gates);
and (2) the war between the two empires for the possession of the kingdom of
Lazica. These disputes between the two rival empires provide the political
framework for the author’s elaboration of the story of Alexander’s gate. I relate
the author’s engagement with contemporary issues to broader political debates in
the Byzantine world during the reign of Justinian. I point out that, while
producing a unique representation of thorny political controversies, the Neṣḥānā
d-Aleksandrōs reflects concerns and positions that are expressed in the works of
several contemporary authors.
In Chapter 5, I explore the section of text about the war between Alexander
and his Persian rival, Tūbarlaq. Against many previous scholars, I demonstrate
that themes and topoi adopted by the Syriac author do not relate to a specific
understanding of the notion of holy war in the seventh century. In fact, I show
that the Neṣḥānā conforms to literary trends observable in earlier Christian texts.
Then, I demonstrate that the peace agreements between Alexander and the
Persian king Tūbarlaq described in the Neṣḥānā reflect the reality of Roman-
Persian peace treaties in the sixth century—not the seventh century, as claimed
by many scholars. By formulating an idealized version of the peace contracts
stipulated by Justinian and Khosrow Anōshirvān, the Syriac author criticizes the
Byzantine policy of buying peace with gold. I connect the author’s criticism of
Justinian to broader dissatisfactions in the Byzantine world with the emperor’s
poor achievements in the conflicts with the Persians. I also demonstrate that the
author’s criticism of Justinian has a close parallel in the work of another sixth-
century Syriac writer, that is, the anonymous author of the Julian Romance.
Then, I analyze a prophecy uttered by Tūbarlaq at the end of the Neṣḥānā and
argue against the view that this prophecy echoes themes of Heraclius’s war
propaganda. Finally, I address the unsolved problem of Tūbarlaq’s identity and
offer a new solution for this question.
In Chapter 6, I situate the figure of Alexander in the Neṣḥānā in relation to
the well-known phenomenon of the imitatio Alexandri, adopted by Roman
historiographers and imperial propagandists to relate Eastern, “Persian,”
campaigns led by Roman generals and emperors to the glorious antecedent of
Alexander’s war against the Achaemenid Empire. I highlight the political
connotations of the image of Alexander as a kosmokrator in the mid-sixth
century. Through this peculiar characterization of Alexander, the Syriac author
not only expressed his anti-Sasanian feelings, which culminate in Alexander’s
prophecy about the imminent collapse of the Sasanian Empire, but also criticized
Justinian for his inability to repeat Alexander’s glorious deeds against the
Persians and for his poor achievements in the conflict against the Sasanian
enemy. In the Neṣḥānā the figure of Alexander is thus a nemesis of the
Byzantine ruler. I also note the parallel between the Neṣḥānā and the Julian
Romance, drawing attention to similarities between the characterizations of
Alexander and Jovian in the two works—both of which criticize Justinian.
In Chapter 7, I analyze the peculiar and unprecedented characterization of
Alexander as a pious (Christian) prophet-king and as the founder of the Roman
Empire, envisaged as an eschatological agent. I argue that the figure of the
Christian, apocalyptic, Alexander in the Syriac work is rooted in the
hermeneutics of the Danielic prophecies (Dan 2, 7, and 8) developed by
Christians in both the Byzantine and Sasanian empires to situate the two empires
in the framework of God’s plan for human salvation. I emphasize the parallels
between the Neṣḥānā and the conceptualization of Alexander’s kingdom in
Aphrahat’s (d. 345 CE) hermeneutic of Daniel. Finally, I argue that a better
understanding of the ideology and concepts behind the elaboration of the Syriac
Alexander helps us to better understand the development of the story of
Alexander’s eschatological gate. I demonstrate that some of the main features of
the episode of the gate are embedded with a symbolism that relates to the
author’s readings of the Danielic prophecies and to his views on the role of
Alexander’s empire in sacred history.
In Chapter 8, I study the apocalyptic ideology presented in the Neṣḥānā d-
Aleksandrōs and its relationship to pro- and anti-imperial sentiments in earlier
literature. I highlight the Syriac author’s unprecedented emphasis on the
eschatological role of the Roman Empire and on his innovative
conceptualization of Byzantium as a kingdom destined to establish a Christian
cosmocracy in preparation for the return of the Messiah and the establishment of
God’s Kingdom. At the same time, I emphasize the connection between the
apocalyptic vision articulated in the Neṣḥānā and that outlined two centuries
earlier in Aphrahat’s Demonstrations. I argue that the author of the Neṣḥānā
expanded upon the anti-Sasanian character of Aphrahat’s reading of Daniel not
only as a consequence of the renewed hostilities between the two empires, but
also in reaction to increasing rapprochement between the Sasanian crown and
the Church of the East. My reading of sixth-century sources indicates that
contemporary Persian Christians developed an understanding of Daniel’s
apocalyptic visions that sought to confer upon the Sasanian Empire a special role
in sacred history and a dignity equal to that attributed to the Roman Empire by
Byzantine authors. In reaction to these trends current among Persian Christians, I
argue, the author of the Neṣḥānā developed his highly politicized and militant
hermeneutic of Daniel 2, 7, and 8—which predicts the collapse of the Sasanian
kingdom.
In Chapter 9, I analyze the first part of the prayer that Alexander addresses to
God at the beginning of the Syriac work, with special attention to the motif of
Alexander’s horns in the Neṣḥānā. This motif emerges from ancient
iconographic representations of Alexander crowned with ram horns—as in the
effigies of the Greco-Egyptian god Zeus-Ammon. Unlike late antique Christians,
who typically displayed hostility toward this pagan symbolism, the author of the
Neṣḥānā christianizes the image of the horned Alexander by reading it through
the lens of biblical texts—among which is the Book of Daniel. As I show, the
author uses the motif of Alexander’s horns to formulate an innovative
hermeneutic of the Danielic vision of the ram and the he-goat in Daniel 8. This
hermeneutic results in the attribution of an apocalyptic value to the ancient horn
symbolism. I argue that this literary operation is related to the author’s
willingness to address contemporary political circumstances, especially
Byzantine-Sasanian relationships. Through a sophisticated combination of
biblical and Classical traditions, the Syriac author transforms the ancient
representation of the horned Alexander into an element of his anti-Sasanian
polemic.
In the final chapter, I address the second part of Alexander’s prayer,
specifically the king’s surrender of his crown and throne as a ceremonial act
prior to the return of the Messiah. I compare this motif to the well-known Last
Roman Emperor legend, and I compare the passage in the Neṣḥānā with sections
from the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius and the so-called Tiburtine Sibyl where
the Last Emperor theme appears. I argue that the Neṣḥānā contains the first
recorded version—although in an embryonic stage—of this legend. I connect the
scene of the surrender of the crown and throne in the Neṣḥānā to late antique
allegorical representations of the idea of translatio imperii, by means of the
symbols of the heavenly crown and the throne of the kosmokrator. I argue that
the Syriac author draws upon this semiotic universe to again express the idea
that Rome was destined to become a cosmocratic power with the goal to rebut
representations of Persian dynasts as universal kings.
I have limited as much as possible the use of non-Latin characters and have
included passages from the Syriac text of the Neṣḥānā only when I considered
their inclusion beneficial to the analysis. In transliterating Syriac words and
sentences I preferred to leave the transliterations unvocalized. I have vocalized
words and sentences only when they occur within the body of the text, with the
aim of not disrupting the fluidity of the reading. Unless otherwise stated,
translations of the Neṣḥānā are mine. A new English translation of the full Syriac
work is provided in Appendix 1 at the end of the book. I have occasionally
included in the chapters excerpts from that translation whenever the analysis
required a more direct access to the translated text.
 PART I
THE TEXT AND ITS CONTEXT
 1
The Text, the Story, and Its Sources

The Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs has been preserved in five manuscripts, all written
in East Syriac script and produced in relatively recent times. The oldest
manuscript, currently kept at the British Library in London, dates from the early
eighteenth century, while the most recent dates to 1886. The three remaining
manuscripts date from the mid-nineteenth century.1 Note, however, that at least
two of the five extant manuscripts were reportedly copied from samples of
unknown dating. The first case is that of the manuscript dated 1844 and currently
kept at Yale’s Beinecke Library.2 The manuscript was given to the American
Oriental Society by Justin Perkins, according to whom it had been copied from
an undated (and now unknown) manuscript found at Orūmīyeh (Urmia in
modern northwestern Iran).3 The manuscript’s colophon, transcribed and
translated by Budge in his book, does not tell us much about the original
manuscript from which Perkins derived his copy.4 Also, it is unclear whether
another manuscript provided by Perkins—this time to the German Oriental
Society (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft) in 1852—was copied from the
same sample.5 Budge informs us that he asked his friend Benjamin Labaree in
Orūmīyeh to make investigations about the original manuscript (or manuscripts)
from which Perkins made his copies, without, however, obtaining any
information.6
The second case concerns one of the two copies of manuscripts ordered by
Budge. Whereas in one case Budge tells us the date of the original manuscript
(i.e., 1848), in the other case he indicates only that the copy was made from “an
old Nestorian manuscript in a library at Alkôsh [Alqōš, in modern Iraq].”7 The
date of the original manuscript and where is it currently located, I am not able to
say. But regardless of the age in which the unknown manuscripts of the Neṣḥānā
were produced, the Syriac work is certainly much older than the known material
copies in which it has been transmitted.
Another interesting aspect of the manuscript tradition is that the Neṣḥānā has
constantly been transmitted as an appendix to the Syriac version of the
Alexander Romance. When exactly the Romance was adapted into Syriac is
uncertain. According to Theodor Nöldeke, the Syriac Romance was produced
from a Middle Persian intermediary translation toward the end of the sixth
century or the beginning of the seventh.8 Nöldeke’s study has recently been the
object of increasing skepticism, but the criticism has mostly concerned his
theory about the language from which the Syriac adaptation would have been
produced. Claudia Ciancaglini, the most active advocate of the alternative
theory, according to which the Syriac Romance was translated directly from
Greek, maintains that the translation was produced around the seventh century.9
In fact, one of the most striking elements in the Syriac adaptation of the
Romance is the systematic replacement of the name of the ancient Achaemenid
sovereign Xerxes with that of the Sasanian king Khosrow.10 Nevertheless, it is
hard to say whether this Khosrow should be identified with either Khosrow I
Anōshirvān (r. 531–579) or Khosrow II Parvēz (r. 590–628). Thus, lacking
definitive evidence for its dating, it is difficult to say whether the Syriac
Alexander Romance was produced before or after the Neṣḥānā—which, as will
be argued in this book, was composed around the second half of the sixth
century. Sebastian Brock suggests that the translation of the Romance into Syriac
prompted the production of a series of Syriac texts about Alexander, including
the Neṣḥānā.11 Yet, the process may very well have gone the other way, since the
Neṣḥānā met a considerable success in the seventh century and sparked an
interest for the figure of Alexander among Syriac authors. This interest may
have incentivized the translation of the Alexander Romance into Syriac.
This is not to say that the Romance was unknown at the time when, and in the
geographical area where, the author of the Neṣḥānā was active, that is, sixth-
century northern Mesopotamia or Roman Armenia (vide infra). The Romance
widely circulated in the Roman world, and Armenian adaptations were produced
from as early as the fifth century, proving that the text met an interested audience
in the region.12 Moreover, as will be evident in this study, the author of the
Neṣḥānā demonstrates a surprising knowledge of literary themes and motifs
derived from the Classical tradition. Thus, it is likely that he also had access to
some version of the Alexander Romance, or at least to some related traditions
about Alexander. But regardless of whether that was the case or not, it is
noticeable that only a very limited number of elements in the Neṣḥānā echo
elements found in those recensions of the Romance that antedate its composition.
In the end, it is important to stress that the Neṣḥānā is a completely separate
work from the Alexander Romance. The fact that in the manuscript tradition it is
presented as an appendix to the Syriac Romance only reflects the redactional
work of later copyists.

The Text
The Neṣḥānā is a medium-length narrative that can be divided into the three
main sections.
(1) In the opening section, Alexander summons the nobles of his council to convey his wish to explore
the outmost regions of the earth. The nobles warn him about obstacles that will prevent him from
accomplishing his desire, especially the Ocean, also called the Fetid Sea, whose deadly waters can
kill any creature. Alexander decides to proceed anyway. After addressing a prayer to God in which
he promises to subjugate the earth to glorify his divine name, Alexander gathers his army and travels
to Egypt, where he enrolls blacksmiths and specialist metalworkers. Afterward, the king and his
army reach the shore of the Fetid Sea, which, however, proves uncrossable. The journey proceeds
and Alexander reaches the “window of heaven,” namely the conduit that the sun enters to move from
the place of the sunset to the place of the sunrise.
(2) After Alexander’s extraordinary travel adventures to where the sun sets, we suddenly find him at the
place of the sunrise, where he has probably arrived after a march along the cosmic route of the sun’s
nocturnal path. From this location in the Far East, Alexander and his army travel westward and reach
northern Mesopotamia and the Caucasus. After encamping at the foot of a great mountain, Alexander
receives a visit from a local delegation of 300 elders, who inform Alexander that the land belongs to
the Persian king Tūbarlaq. Alexander asks the elders about the people living across the great
mountain, and he receives a long and detailed description of the Huns and their barbaric habits.
Noticeably, Gog and Magog are listed as two of the Hunnic kings. After listening to the elders,
Alexander summons his troops and informs them of his project to build a gate to close a breach in
the great mountain. With the help of the blacksmiths previously enrolled in Egypt, he erects a gate
made of iron and bronze. Once the task is accomplished, Alexander relays a prophecy in which he
predicts the future raids of the Huns—two of which are expected to take place in the years 826 AG
(514–515 CE) and 940 AG (628–629 CE). The prophecy predicts events associated with the end of
times, when at God’s command the gate erected by Alexander will collapse and the Huns will
emerge from behind the side of the mountain to which they had been confined. At this moment, a
general “world conflict” will begin. The conflict will end with the triumph of the Roman kingdom,
which will conquer the territories until the end of the earth, with no other kingdom able to oppose its
power.
(3) After sealing the mountain pass against the Huns and putting in writing his prophetic vision,
Alexander faces another challenge. The inhabitants of the region where he installed the gate inform
Tūbarlaq of Alexander’s presence in the region. At the instigation of those people, Tūbarlaq gathers
an immense army and marches against Alexander. Meanwhile, Alexander and his troops, unaware of
the Persian war preparations, are recovering from the fatigues of their previous exploits. It is only
thanks to divine intervention that the hero is alerted to Tūbarlaq’s plan. God himself talks to
Alexander in a dream and encourages him to call His name and to ask for His assistance. Alexander
wakes up and summons his troops, who number roughly one-tenth of Tūbarlaq’s army. The
numerical disadvantage is so great that the sentinels of the Greek king express their despair.
Nevertheless, Alexander orders his soldiers to burn incense to invoke divine intervention and to
welcome with its fragrance God’s arrival in the encampment. Then, surrounded by his troops,
Alexander takes off his crown and removes his purple vest in front of the Lord and begs him to
 deliver him and his army from their enemies. At the king’s words—“Victory belongs to the Lord!”—
the soldiers respond: “God, come to our aid!” Alexander continues his prayer and invokes God’s
help. God appears on the seraphs’ chair, preceded by angels and watchers. The divine apparition
instills courage in the Greek army, which then engages in combat with the Persian troops. God takes
an active part in the battle, terrorizing Alexander’s enemies with His voice. The Greeks are
victorious and Tūbarlaq is brought to Alexander in chains. Alexander spares Tūbarlaq’s life, and the
two kings sign a peace treaty that includes an entente on the common defense of Alexander’s gate
against the Huns. The Persian king then summons his astrologers and magicians, who relay a
prophecy that at the end of times Persia will be destroyed and the Romans will conquer the world.
Alexander travels to Jerusalem, where he bows down in front of God, and then returns to Alexandria.

This study is primarily concerned with sections 2 and 3, and with the passage on
Alexander’s prayer in section 1.

Sources
To embellish his narrative, the Syriac author drew upon several traditions. The
first section of the work includes elements from the story of Alexander’s quest
for immortal life.13 Note, however, that the two main motifs of this story—
Alexander’s attempt to reach Paradise and his failure to bathe in the source of
life—are not mentioned in the Neṣḥānā. The Syriac author clearly preferred to
exclude an episode that would have shed a negative light on his hero, a clear
trace of his editorial work.14
Scholars have identified several echoes of the ancient myth of Gilgamesh in
the different versions of Alexander’s quest for immortality.15 Several intriguing
allusions to the Babylonian Epic occur in the Neṣḥānā, suggesting that our
author had access to a lost source about Alexander’s travels that contained vivid
reminiscences of Gilgamesh’s adventures. This topic requires a dedicated
investigation, which is beyond the scope of this book. The present study is
primarily concerned with the other main narrative component of the Neṣḥānā,
that is, the story of Alexander’s gate, to which I now turn my attention.
The episode of the gate erected against the Huns ruled by Gog and Magog is
the result of a combination of previous independent traditions. One tradition
credits Alexander with building iron gates to confine the nomadic populations of
Central Asia. This tradition goes back at least to Josephus (d. ca. 100), who
describes the king of the Hyrcanians as the master of the pass that Alexander
(allegedly) sealed with iron gates.16 The tradition of Alexander’s iron gates had a
lasting legacy and is well attested in Late Antiquity. In the sixth century, the
Byzantine historians Procopius (d. 554)17 and Jordanes (d. second half of the
sixth century)18 report that Alexander decided to install iron gates to prevent the
incursion of the Huns located on the other side of the Caucasian mountain chain.
Both Procopius and Jordanes identify the so-called Caspian Gates as the spot
fortified by Alexander.
The exact location of these gates was a matter of debate in Antiquity. In the
first century the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (d. 79) complained about
people who mistakenly confused the Caspian Gates (Caspiae portae) with the
Caucasian Gates (Caucasiae portae)—the latter are located in the Dariali Gorge,
a mountain pass on the modern border between Russia and Georgia.19 Pliny’s
attempt to correct this toponymic confusion did not prevent further
identifications between the Caspian Gates and the Dariali pass. Five centuries
later, Procopius identified the Dariali Gorge as the Caspian Gates (πύλας τάς
Κασπίας) and claimed that the iron gates installed by Alexander were in that
gorge.20 According to Jordanes, these gates were guarded by the Lazi on behalf
of the Romans. This suggests that he too thought that the gates were near of the
kingdom of Lazica, most likely at the Dariali pass,21 as did several of
Procopius’s and Jordanes’s contemporaries.22
The author of the Neṣḥānā adopts some of the same narrative elements used
by these sixth-century writers in their descriptions of the Caspian Gates. For
instance, his description of the great mountain where Alexander builds his gate
brings to mind Jordanes’s description of Mount Caucasus—the mountain
complex which, in the Getica, includes the spot where Alexander installed the
Caspian Gates.23 In fact, Jordanes locates the passage fortified by Alexander
within the enormous Caucasian mountain complex: “such then is the great range,
almost the mightiest of mountain chains, rearing aloft its summits and by its
natural conformation supplying men with impregnable strongholds.”24
Alexander’s description of the size of the great mountain in the Neṣḥānā (“This
mountain is higher and more frightening than all the mountains I have ever
seen,” the hero says) recalls Jordanes’s description of the Caucasus. The
geographical expanse of the great mountain in the Neṣḥānā also matches
Jordanes’s description of Mount Caucasus, which is said to cover the area from
the Indian Ocean to Mesopotamia.
Additional narrative details in Jordanes’s text are worth noting. It is
significant that Jordanes refers to the myth of the Amazons in connection with
the motif of Alexander’s gates. He affirms that Alexander installed the iron gates
—which he would have named the Caspian Gates (Pylas Caspias)—on the site
of the Rock of Marpesia, named after the Amazon Queen Marpesia.25 This detail
is meaningful since the motif of the Amazons also appears in the story narrated
in the Neṣḥānā. Specifically, in the Syriac work the Hunnic women have only a
single breast and are more bellicose than the men. This description is clearly
inspired by traditions about the Amazons, and may possibly reflect the idea also
expressed by Jordanes that the Amazons were the wives of the Scythians.26
Jordanes also reports a tradition stating that the Huns were the offspring of
unions between unclean spirits and witches whom Filimer, king of the Goths,
had expelled to the Scythian desert. The link between Huns, witches, and
demoniacal entities may be recalled in the Neṣḥānā, where the author describes
the sorceries and rituals that the Huns perform before going to war in order to
evoke demons. In sum, it seems that both Jordanes and the author of the
Neṣḥānā had similar ideas about the Caucasus and the lore associated with the
motif of Alexander’s gates.
The description of Alexander’s gate in the Neṣḥānā closely resembles
Procopius’s report on the Dariali mountain pass.27 Like Procopius, the Syriac
author refers to a very narrow mountain pass that leads to the territories
inhabited by the Huns. Like Procopius, our author credits this fortified passage
with strategic importance in preventing Hunnic incursions and nomadic raids.
And, of course, like Procopius, our author also believes that this breach in the
mountain had been sealed by Alexander in the past. It is unlikely—albeit not
impossible—that the Syriac writer was aware of Procopius’s work, and it is
plausible that the similarities between their descriptions of the mountain pass are
a product of common knowledge about the Dariali Pass.
The Neṣḥānā refers to elements of the fortifications at Dariali that are not
reported by Procopius but that appear in more ancient sources. For example, the
Syriac work states that the gate built by Alexander does not completely seal the
mountain pass and allows incursions from the enemies. In fact, according to the
Syriac author, Alexander ordered his men to pound iron bars into the earth
beneath the gate to prevent attempts by the Huns to dig into the rock under the
threshold. According to our author, this defensive measure was not completely
effective: although preventing the passage of horsemen, foot soldiers could still
pass beneath the gate. This statement is most curious. One wonders why the
author would invent details about possible breaches in a defensive system that he
otherwise describes as marvelous. Could it be that the inexplicable detail he
provides is based on information he had about the gates allegedly built by
Alexander? An element in Pliny’s description of the Dariali fortifications may
provide an answer to this question. Pliny affirms that a river runs beneath the
gates that seal the mountain pass—as is true of the Dariali Gorge, through which
the river Terek runs.28 No watercourse on the spot fortified by Alexander is
mentioned in the Neṣḥānā. However, one wonders if knowledge of a river
running beneath the middle of the Dariali gates may lie behind the author’s
statement that it was possible for footmen to pass under Alexander’s gate. If so,
the Syriac writer may have based his description on common knowledge about
the fortifications at the Dariali mountain pass.
Another example: according to the text, a singular divine sign corroborates
the truthfulness of Alexander’s prophecy of the coming of the Huns and the final
eschatological events. In the text, Alexander refers to a sponge located at the
peak of the rock where the gate is situated, and from which blood pours down
upon the rock. He says that the Huns wash their heads in that blood. This would
be a warning sent by God, a sign that at the end of times blood will cover the
earth, just as the blood pouring from that sponge covers the rock. Unfortunately,
the text containing this passage is corrupt,29 and some elements may have been
lost. However, a shortened reference to this divine sign is preserved in the
adaptation of the story in the metric homily attributed to Jacob of Serugh
(henceforth Ps.-Jacob)—also known as the Alexander Song. Here we read about
an aqueduct flowing with blood located on the side of the mountain where the
Huns live. The aqueduct is compared to a torrent flowing against humans.30 The
description of this sponge/aqueduct pouring blood may reflect a characteristic
feature of the landscape at the Dariali gorge. Archaeologists identified sulfur
springs on the banks of the river Terek, which passes through the gorge. Since
Antiquity, reports on that natural phenomenon enriched the descriptions of the
site allegedly fortified by Alexander. It has been suggested that these springs
may have inspired Pliny’s report of the bad smell of the river at the Dariali Pass.3
1 Besides the smell of sulfuric emissions, another effect of those springs on the

Dariali landscape may have caught the attention of eyewitnesses, that is, the
color of the rocks at the riverbank. At the point where the spring water poured
forth, the rocks would have been blood red—no doubt, a reaction to the sulfur.
This phenomenon is still observable today.32 Thus, the source of the description
in the Neṣḥānā and in Ps.-Jacob’s homily may be reports about the curious
spectacle at the Dariali Gorge, where the sulfur springs conferred on the river the
color of blood.
Besides earlier traditions on Alexander’s iron gates, the Neṣḥānā draws upon
the biblical genealogy of the people confined behind the gate, commonly
identified as the peoples of Gog and Magog mentioned in biblical and extra-
biblical sources. By the sixth century CE, the names of Gog and Magog were
commonly associated with expectations of future invasions, infused with strong
eschatological connotations. Ezekiel 38 and 39 contain a prophecy about a
Prince Gog of the land of Magog and the bellicose northern population whom he
will lead on destructive attacks against all kingdoms. The Book of Revelation
attests to the increased exacerbation of the apocalyptic character of the Gog and
Magog motif over the following centuries. In Revelation 20:7–9, the names of
Gog and Magog—now apparently designating two distinct persons or
populations33—are mentioned in connection to the final events that will follow
the release of Satan from his confinement. Specifically, Gog and Magog appear
among the nations that Satan will deceive and lead into an eschatological war.
Nevertheless, the “apocalyptic turn” of the Gog and Magog motif may have not
been popular among Eastern Christians, who had scarce access to the Book of
Revelation.
The situation may have changed in the sixth century, following attempts by
Byzantine theologians to rehabilitate the Book of Revelation among Eastern
Christians who had never recognized it as canonical scripture. At the end of that
century, Andrew of Caesarea (d. 637) identified the Gog and Magog of
Revelation with the Huns, thus providing a parallel case to the story narrated in
the Neṣḥānā. Andrew, however, was apparently unaware of the role played by
Alexander’s gates in containing the eschatological invasion. At the same time,
contemporaries of the Syriac author who refer to Alexander’s iron gates, like
Procopius and Jordanes, have nothing to say about the connection between the
people confined by Alexander and the motif of Gog and Magog. Ostensibly,
Josephus and Jerome (d. 420) knew the traditions about the genealogical
identification of inhabitants of Central Asia with Gog and Magog and also
traditions about their confinement behind Alexander’s gates. Nevertheless,
neither of them connects these two traditions. More importantly, neither
Josephus nor Jerome appears to be aware of the role that Alexander’s actions
should play in a divine eschatological plan. One must say that all the ingredients
of the tale were already in place but had not yet been put together in a
comprehensive narration. No documentary evidence sustains the claim made by
some scholars that the story of Alexander’s apocalyptic gate was already in
circulation in earlier times.34
It should be noted, however, that according to Stephen Shoemaker the
apocalyptic text known as the Tiburtine Sibyl was composed already in the
fourth century CE.35 Since the oracular prophecy in the Sibyl refers to the
enclosure of Gog and Magog by Alexander, Shoemaker’s dating—if correct—
would establish the early circulation of this motif. However, the dating of the
composition of the Tiburtine Sibyl is contested. The issue is notoriously complex
and is related to complicated and hotly debated questions about the textual
relationship between the Sibyl and the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius (and vice
versa), and the emergence of the motif of the Last Roman Emperor, which
appears in both works (and which is mentioned—albeit only in an embryonic
stage—in the Neṣḥānā).36 Thus, at present, there is no absolute consensus on the
dating of the Tiburtine Sibyl, and no source that unequivocally predates the
Neṣḥānā refers explicitly to a connection between the people confined by
Alexander and the final, eschatological raids of Gog and Magog. Until the
contrary is established, the Neṣḥānā is the first written documentary evidence for
the apocalyptic story of Alexander’s gate. We will return to this question at the
end of Chapter 7.

The Geography behind the Story of Alexander’s Gate

After describing Alexander’s journey from the place of sunset to that of sunrise,
the author abandons mythical cosmology and begins to refer to toponyms that
can be identified on a map—one might say that Alexander leaves the realm of
fantasy and enters the real world. Alexander moves westward in the direction of
a mountain named Mūsās.37 This name has plausibly been related to the
Armenian Masis, a toponym that commonly designates Mount Ararat—“Noble
Masis” and “Little Masis” are the names of its two peaks.38 The Masis toponym
was known to the Greek geographers Strabo39 (d. ca. 24 CE) and Ptolemy40 (d.
ca. 170 CE) as Μάσιος. The similarity between the names Mūsās and Masis
strengthens the association between the two mountains. In this case, it is worth
noting that Mūsās appears transcribed as Masīs in Ps.-Jacob’s metric homily,
suggesting that an almost contemporary Syriac author familiar with the Neṣḥānā
identified the Mūsās mentioned in the text with the Masis. The Neṣḥānā’s
description of the Mūsās as a massive mountain located in inner Armenia
corresponds to the actual geographical location of Mount Ararat.
On their way to the Mūsās, Alexander and his troops reach a mountain named
Qlaudia, where they descend to the source of the Euphrates. John of Ephesus (d.
ca. 588 CE) describes the district of Qlaudia as an area of “high mountains of
towering size above the river Euphrates.”41 We are thus in the proximity of
Melitene. From here, Alexander moves to Halōras, where he explores the
sources of the Tigris. Halōras is the village known in Armenian sources as
Olor/Olorian/Olorean in the canton of Haštēn.42 Then, Alexander reaches the
river Kallath, which is mentioned in the Chronicle of Ps.-Joshua the Stylite
(composed in the early sixth century)43 and in the Ecclesiastical History of John
of Ephesus.44 This same river is known to Greek authors as Nymphius (νυμφίος)
and corresponds to the modern Batman Su, a tributary of the Tigris, which it
joins near its source. Once he arrives at the Kallath, Alexander climbs a
mountain named Rmt. The name Rmt is related to the term rāmtā (“height”).
The location of this mountain near the river Kallath, together with the
information that the mountain had a watchtower, suggests that this place
corresponds to the site Akbas in the Sasanian territory of Arzanane, on the bank
of the Kallath opposite Martyropolis. Indeed, according to Evagrius45 and
Theophylact Simocatta,46 Akbas was a site from which the entire city of
Martyropolis could be observed. The description of Rmt as a mountain with a
watchtower echoes these descriptions of Akbas.
From the top of mount Rmt, Alexander observes the surrounding territories
and decides to take “the route of the north,” which leads him through Armenia,
Adharbaijan, and Inner Armenia. This last location corresponds to the Roman
province of Armenia Interior, which in 536, during the reign of Justinian, had
been reorganized as the province of Armenia I, with its capital Justinianopolis
(former Bazanis or Leontopolis).47 Note that after visiting Adharbaijan,
Alexander passes by the Mūsās/Masis. It appears that after traveling eastward,
Alexander turned around and traveled westward. Although it is clearly not the
author’s intention to provide the reader with Alexander’s itinerary, the text
contains several toponyms—some of which I have been able to identify—that
confirm the route followed by the hero. The toponym Bēt Prdyʾ (after the
exclusion of the Syriac locative locution “Bēt”) apparently designates a place in
the area of the Paryadres (Παρυαδρής) mountains in the Pontus.48 Bēt Zmrṭ
plausibly corresponds to Zimara, a fortress on the Euphrates on the border
between Armenia Minor and Armenia Maior.49 Bēt Tqyl may correspond to
Teucila, south of Zimara. Bēt Qṭrmn is probably the fortress of Citharizum in
Asthianene, called Kitamon (Κίταμον) by Ptolemy and Kitharizon (Κιθαριξων)
by Procopius.50 Kitharizon is also mentioned in Justinian’s Novella XXXI, which
contains the details of the reorganization of the Armenian provinces, and
according to which Kitharizon belongs to the new province of Armenia IV, with
its capital as Martyropolis.51
The province of Armenia IV is important for us, since it is here that we
should locate the plain of Bhy Lbtʾ, where Alexander arrives following the path
along the Great Mūsās, and where, during the meeting with the elders, he
receives information about the mountain that separates them from the Huns. The
toponym Bhy Lbtʾ corresponds to Balahovit, known to Greek authors as
Belabitenē (Βελαβιτηνή).52 Balahovit (Balaxovit/Bałahovitin) is mentioned in
the late sixth/early seventh-century Armenian Geography of Ananias of Širak,53
and Procopius describes Belabitene as a minor province of no importance, ruled
by a satrap loyal to Rome.54 Since the Roman-Persian treaty of 387, the area had
been a semi-independent satrapy, and it had preserved its status even after 485,
when Emperor Zeno (r. 474–475 and 476–491) replaced the satraps of the other
five autonomous Armenian principalities with Roman officials (due to their
collusion with the rebellion of Illus and Leontius).55 It was only after the
reorganization of Armenian territories in 536 that Belabitene was incorporated,
together with the other principalities, into Roman domains and put under the
administration of Roman officials. The decree that sanctioned this administrative
change, namely Justinian’s Novella XXXI, reports that these territories bear
“barbarian names” and that their traditional organization into satrapies had been
established by a different political power, that is, the Persians. The language
adopted in the imperial decree describes the newly incorporated territories as
parts of an alien body, somehow still connected to Rome’s Eastern rivals. It is
thus not surprising that in his fictitious reconstruction of the past at the time of
Alexander, the author of the Neṣḥānā attributes possession of the area around
Belabitene to the Persian king Tūbarlaq.
Thus, the episode of Alexander’s gate is mostly centered around the regions
of Roman Armenia near the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates. This
location is not coincidental. In the early sixth century the area had been raided
by the Huns, as noted by the Neṣḥānā. In the geographical scenario depicted in
the text, this area is directly connected to the Caucasian regions—the traditional
location of Alexander’s iron gates—through the massive mountain complex that
encompasses most regions to the east.56 It is through a breach of this otherwise
insurmountable mountain—a breach later sealed by Alexander—that the Huns
pass to carry out their raids. By representing this breach as a corridor that allows
the Huns to flow into Inner Armenia, our author draws attention to the area that
had been the target of a recent Hunnic incursion. This literary operation finds a
parallel in the work of Evagrius Scholasticus (d. ca. 594) who, referring to the
same Hunnic invasion mentioned in the Neṣḥānā, affirms that the Huns crossed
the “Cappadocian Gates” (τάς Καππαδοκῶν πύλας), thus “correcting” the
information reported in his source—the Chronicle of John Malalas (d. 578)—
where the Huns pass through the Caspian Gates, thus drawing attention to an
area that had been the target of raids in the early sixth century.57
As noted by earlier scholars, the author of the Neṣḥānā was probably a native
of this area,58 as suggested by his accurate knowledge of the geography of the
upper Tigris region (by contrast to his poor knowledge of other regions).59
However, scholars may have overestimated the author’s connection to the
centers of Syriac culture in Northern Mesopotamia, like Amida or Edessa, and
underestimated his connection to local Armenian affairs and culture.60 The
militaristic bravado and religious fervor of the battle scenes in the Neṣḥānā are
unusual in the Syriac literary tradition but find close parallels in fifth- and sixth-
century descriptions of Armenian “national struggles” against the Sasanians.61
At the same time, our author shows an astonishing disinterest in military and
political developments on the Mesopotamian border during his lifetime. Indeed,
he has nothing to say about major events that shocked the region, like the siege
of Edessa, the plunder of the countryside around Martyropolis and Amida, and
the sacking of several Syrian cities, and of Antioch. Unlike contemporary Syriac
writers, he has nothing to say about the alleged Sasanian refusal to return Nisibis
to the Byzantines. By contrast, our author manifests strong interest in political
matters relating to the Caucasian regions. As we will see in the following
chapters, he inserts several references to issues relating to Byzantine-Sasanian
disputes over Lazica and the Caucasus, that might affect the stability of the
mountain passes in Roman Armenia. His geopolitical interests appear to be those
of someone well informed about the local Armenian setting.

The Geography behind the Story of Alexander’s Gate

 2
Debates about Dating and Context of the Neṣḥānā d-A
leksandrōs

Nöldeke’s 1890 study arguably was the first critical analysis of the Neṣḥānā. In
this influential work, the German scholar dated the Syriac work to the first
quarter of the sixth century CE, and specifically to the years between 515 and 521
CE. Nöldeke sought to establish both termini post and ante quem. Starting from
the latter, Nöldeke’s argument is directly connected to two other elements in his
analysis: (1) his assumption that the Alexander Song—that is, Ps.-Jacob’s metric
homily—was dependent on the Neṣḥānā; (2) his assumption that the Song was in
fact written by Jacob of Serugh. Based on these two assumptions, Nöldeke
concluded that the latest possible date for the composition of the Neṣḥānā was
the year 521 CE, the year of Jacob’s death. In fact, according to his line of
argument, the Neṣḥānā must have been composed before Jacob of Serugh used it
as a source.1
Nöldeke established the earliest possible date from the passage in the
Neṣḥānā that immediately follows the description of the gate erected by
Alexander to confine the Huns of Gog and Magog. The gate is engraved with
Alexander’s prophecy, noted earlier, which reports the dates of two Hunnic
invasions expected to occur “at the completion of 826 years” and “at the
completion of 940 years,” respectively. Nöldeke identified the Seleucid Era, or
Anno Graecorum (henceforth AG), as the system of numbering years that lies
behind the two dates mentioned by Alexander in the prophecy. When transposed
into the Common Era calendar, 826 AG is the equivalent of 514–515 CE, and 940
AG is the equivalent of 628–629 CE. As Nöldeke observed, the Hunnic assault
predicted for the year 826 AG corresponds to historical events that occurred in
515 CE,2 the year in which the Sabir Huns conducted raids across the Caucasian
mountains.3 Sources report that, as a consequence of the devastation brought by
these Huns, fortifications were strengthened in Melitene and in other
Cappadocian towns.4 In any case, it is evident that the story of Alexander’s gate
in the Neṣḥānā is informed by these facts relating to 515 CE, and that the raid of
826 AG predicted by Alexander in the Syriac text is a vaticinium ex eventu, that
is, a reference to a historical event that has already occurred, disguised as a
prediction by an authoritative figure from the past.
In contrast, Nöldeke rejects the idea that the date indicated in Alexander’s
second prediction (940 AG/628–629 CE) also stems from the same literary device.
According to Nöldeke, the 940 AG prediction represents a real prophecy
elaborated by the Syriac author. The recognition of the first prediction for 826
AG as vaticinium ex eventu, with the parallel classification of the second
prediction for 940 AG as a genuine prophecy, leads Nöldeke to set a terminus
post quem for the composition of the text at the year indicated in Alexander’s
first prediction, that is, 514–515 CE.5
Nöldeke’s dating is untenable. In a series of studies, Wilhelm Bousset, Carl
Hunnius, Mihály Kmoskó, Károly Czeglédy, and Gerrit Reinink,6 have identified
the flaws in Nöldeke’s analysis. These flaws undermine both the termini post
and ante quem established by the German scholar. A first critical factor for
Nöldeke’s dating of the Neṣḥānā concerns the authorship of the Alexander Song.
As noted, Nöldeke uses the death of the alleged author of the metric homily to
establish a terminus ante quem for the composition of the Neṣḥānā. Most later
scholars agree that the attribution of the Song to Jacob of Serugh is spurious.
According to the current scholarly consensus, the Syriac poem was composed in
the seventh century, immediately after the conclusion of the Byzantine-Sasanian
war in 628 CE. One must cast doubts on the attribution of the Alexander Song to
this specific period, since its principal argument relies on a passage of the Syriac
text that may have been interpolated.7 Nevertheless, several elements suggest
that the Song was not composed before the last quarter of the sixth century.8 This
dating undermines Nöldeke’s conclusion that the Neṣḥānā must have been in
circulation before Jacob died, since the text that it allegedly inspired was
produced several decades later. Moreover, some scholars have questioned
Nöldeke’s argument about the textual dependence of the Song on the Neṣḥānā,
and have favored the hypothesis of a common source.9
Another flaw in Nöldeke’s study emerges from a close analysis of the second
date in Alexander’s prophecy, that is, 940 AG or 628–629 CE. Pace Nöldeke, like
the first date, the second date is based on historical events. These events
occurred during the final phase of Heraclius’s conflict with the Sasanians. In
624–625 CE, the Byzantine emperor signed an alliance with the Western Turkic
Kaghanate.10 In 626, his Turkic allies broke through the Sasanian fortifications
on the northern Caspian-Caucasian frontier and entered Caucasian Albania and
Iberia. The Turkic raids continued after Byzantine-Sasanian peace treaty in 628,
and ended only in 629, after the Kök Turks had stormed Iberia’s capital Tfilis
(Tbilisi).11 The year 940 AG/628–629 CE “foretold” by Alexander in the Neṣḥānā
is consistent with the dates of this second wave of incursions by nomadic
populations from Central Asia. Nöldeke dismisses the possibility that with the
940 AG prognostication, the Syriac author was referring to the Turkic invasion of
626–629 CE.12 Nonetheless, the chronological overlapping between the Hunnic
raids of 940 AG and the Turkic invasions of the late 620s is too precise to be
coincidental. The second part of Alexander’s prophecy replicates the
juxtaposition between prophetical and historical events already observed in the
826 AG prediction. Pace Nöldeke, it is indisputable that Alexander’s second
prophecy was meant to evoke the Turkic raids of 626–630 CE.

An Earlier Version of the Neṣḥānā?

By the turn of the nineteenth century, scholars like Bousset and Hunnius had
identified the major flaws in Nöldeke’s analysis.13 However, more than half a
century later, Czeglédy complained that the arguments of these two scholars had
not been accepted “since the authority of Nöldeke was almost unassailable in
matters pertaining to Syriac philology.”14 This scholarly trend shifted during the
second half of the twentieth century. Czeglédy and Reinink have made a decisive
contribution to a consensus around the errors in Nöldeke’s theory. That the
Neṣḥānā in its current form was written in the seventh century is an indisputable
fact in current scholarship. More debated is the question of whether an earlier
version of the Neṣḥānā may have circulated previously. While acknowledging
that the text as we have it now should be dated to the reign of Heraclius, a
number of scholars have suggested that the Neṣḥānā is not an original seventh-
century composition, but rather a reworking of a more ancient text. In addition to
the possible interpolation of a passage that links the text to the seventh-century
context—on which see below—these scholars have sought evidence for an early
dating of the Neṣḥānā in sources that have literary and thematic parallels with
the Syriac work.
A first attempt of this kind focuses on two apocalyptic texts traditionally
attributed to the Syriac poet Ephrem (d. 373 CE). The first one is the Syriac
metric homily On the End. The second is the sermon On the End of the World,
preserved in a Latin translation. Elements of both texts may be compared to
elements in the Neṣḥānā. The metric homily, in particular, presents a number of
relevant intertexts that specifically concern the motif of the gate built against the
Huns and the latter’s cruelty and barbarous customs. Building on these textual
connections, Bousset argues for a fourth-century version of the Neṣḥānā.15 His
hypothesis, however, is undermined by the fact that none of the works attributed
to Ephrem dates to the fourth century. At present, scholars agree that both the
Syriac homily On the End and the Latin sermon On the End of the World were
composed in the seventh century.16
An early date for the Neṣḥānā has also been invoked to explain the textual
connection between this work and the Syriac homily of Ps.-Jacob. As noted,
Nöldeke argued that this homily is based on the Neṣḥānā. This argument has
been accepted by Hunnius and, more recently, by Reinink—although both
scholars disagree with Nöldeke’s dating of both texts to the sixth century,
advocating instead for their seventh-century composition.17 By contrast,
Bousset, Franz Kampers, Czeglédy, and, recently, Wouter Henkelmann and
Stephen Shoemaker, have rejected Nöldeke’s views, suggesting instead that the
two Syriac texts share a common source.18 While this is possible (and even
probable), none of these scholars has provided any substantive evidence in
support of this theory. At the current stage of research, one risks creating a
circular argument in which the idea of a source common to the two texts makes
the existence of an earlier version of the Neṣḥānā plausible, and the early
circulation of the Neṣḥānā confers plausibility on the hypothesis of a common
source with Ps.-Jacob’s homily. A detailed analysis of the textual relationships
between the two texts remains a desideratum.
A further possible textual witness to the existence of another (and potentially
earlier) version of the Neṣḥānā is the so-called Syriac Chronicle of Pseudo-
Dionysius of Tel-Maḥrē. Also known as Chronicle of Zuqnin, this is an
anonymous historical chronicle composed in the second half of the eighth
century in the monastery of Zuqnin, north of Amida.19 Section I.41.15–45.10 of
the Chronicle contains what appears to be an abbreviated version of the
Alexander story in the Neṣḥānā. A question only marginally discussed by
scholars is whether the author of the Chronicle—conventionally referred to as
Ps.-Dionysius—used the same version of the Neṣḥānā as appears in the
manuscripts used by Budge for his edition, or a different version of the text that
is not extant. If the Chronicle is in fact based on an alternative version of the
Neṣḥānā, then one wonders whether this other version predates the one edited by
Budge. According to Witold Witakowski, the difference in the names of several
figures in the Chronicle and in the Neṣḥānā suggests that Ps.-Dionysius used a
different version of the Neṣḥānā from that used by Budge. Referring to the case
of Alexander’s enemy, Darius, who in the Chronicle replaces the mysterious
Tūbarlaq of the Neṣḥānā, Witakowski concedes that “it cannot be discounted
that PD [i.e., Ps.-Dionysius] himself changed the names to suit other data in the
chronicle.” He observes, however, that “since many other names also differ from
those in Budge’s text (e.g. the names of the kings of the Huns, which ethnonym
itself does not occur in PD’s version), it seems more likely that all the changes
are taken over from an unknown version of the Legend [i.e., the Neṣḥānā].”20
I do not find this argument convincing, for several reason. First, who was
responsible for the onomastic change? Second, why, unlike Ps.-Dionysius,
would the person responsible for this change have been able to rename more
than a single character in the story? Third, why did he change the names in the
text? At the same time, there are good reasons to think that Ps.-Dionysius may
have introduced such changes. As we will see in following sections of this study,
the name of Alexander’s enemy in the Neṣḥānā, Tūbarlaq, signals the
denigratory intentions of the Syriac author and should be placed in the context of
antagonism between Persians and Romans in the pre-Islamic period. It comes as
no surprise that an author writing in the late eighth century, and after the fall of
the Sasanian Empire, may have wished to replace the unusual name Tūbarlaq
with the more familiar Darius, who is mentioned several times in the Chronicle.
As for the differences between the names of the Hunnic kings, it should be noted
that Ps.-Dionysius’s list of kings is much shorter than the list in the Neṣḥānā: the
author of the Neṣḥānā mentions fifteen Hunnic kings, while Ps.-Dionysius
mentions only five. Both authors mention Gog, Magog, and Gyg. The only
peculiarity in Ps.-Dionysius’s chronicle is the onomastic couple Tmrt and Tmrtn,
21 which bring to mind Tʾmrwn and Tyʾmrwn in the Neṣḥānā. The different

spellings in the two texts seem to reflect the fluidity in the transcription of the
“exotic” names of Hunnic chieftains, a phenomenon observed in other sources.22
A more promising research path is to compare Ps.-Dionysius’s work with
both the Neṣḥānā and Ps.-Jacob’s homily. In a seminal study published in 1932,
Andrew Runni Anderson briefly mentions that the Chronicle of Pseudo-
Dionysius shares narrative features with both Syriac sources, without explaining,
however, his view of these textual connections.23 A more articulate view was
formulated by Czeglédy, according to whom the Ps.-Dionysius version “has, in
some instances, close parallels in the prose variant [i.e., the Neṣḥānā], in other
instances, with the metric variant [i.e., Ps.-Jacob’s homily], while, in a few cases,
with neither of the two.” This leads Czeglédy to conclude that “the Syriac
Legend concerning Alexander the Great also had an old variant which is no
longer extant but was at the disposal of Pseudo-Dionysius.”24 However,
Czeglédy does not undertake any comparative textual analysis of the three
sources and does not indicate any concrete elements in support of his claim. I
could not find any element which suggests that this work more closely resembles
Ps.-Jacob’s homily. In my opinion, the Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius is an
abbreviated form of the Neṣḥānā transmitted to us. Be that as it may, as in the
case of the relationship between the prose and metric versions of the Alexander
story, a thorough and systematic analysis that compares these two texts with Ps.-
Dionysius’s short variant is highly desirable.
Finally, a passage of the Lives of the Eastern Saints, compiled by John of
Ephesus between 567 and 569, may be a witness for an early version of the
Neṣḥānā. Here John reports the story of a holy man who is shown a gelyānā, that
is, a “revelation,” predicting the arrival of the Huns.25 Note that the Neṣḥānā
locates the Hunnic invasion of 826 AG/515 CE near the springs of the Tigris, as
stated in John’s report on the Huns’ raids in the area of Amida. It thus appears to
be possible, or even plausible, that both John of Ephesus and the author of the
Neṣḥānā refer to the Sabir invasion of 515. Significantly, John lived in the
region affected by these invasions. Thus, it is likely that he had firsthand
knowledge of these events and of the reactions of the local population to the
Hunnic raids. These reactions may have included the formulation of prophecies
and oracles about the coming of the Huns. This was probably the case for the
gelyānā mentioned in the anecdotal story of the holy man that John included in
his Lives. Is the gelyānā mentioned by John actually the Neṣḥānā?
Some scholars have taken the information provided in John’s account as
evidence for the idea that an early version of the Neṣḥānā was in circulation
when John of Ephesus redacted the Lives.26 To the best of my knowledge, the
first scholar who tried to establish a connection between the Neṣḥānā and John’s
report was Czeglédy. Referring to the date of the first Hunnic invasion in the
Neṣḥānā, that is, 826 AG/514–515 CE, Czeglédy affirms: “we can hardly interpret
this very important date in any other way than by supposing that, in the lifetime
of John of Ephesus, that is, in the middle of the sixth century, the Syriac
apocalyptic legend concerning Alexander, was already in existence.”27 However,
several arguments can be advanced to dispute Czeglédy’s claim.
First, Czeglédy translates the Syriac term gelyānā as “apocalypse,” instead of
“revelation.” In other words, he interprets gelyānā as a literary work belonging
to the apocalyptic genre, not as a disclosure of future events. Czeglédy does not
provide a full translation of the relevant passage in the Lives of the Eastern
Saints and only refers to the edition of the Syriac text published and translated
by Ernest Brooks in 1923. Brooks translates the passage in question as: “a
revelation was shown to him.”28 Czeglédy must have been aware of Brooks’s
reading (the English translation is found to at the bottom of the same page that
contains the Syriac text which Czeglédy refers), but deliberately opted for
another reading.
The reason for Czeglédy’s word choice can be better appreciated when seen
in the context of the entire passage in the Syriac text. Following Czeglédy’s
reading, the sentence etḥzi leh b-gelyānā ( )
comes to be read as “an apocalypse was shown to him.” The passage in question
appears to depict a scene in which the holy man is shown a written work, an
apocalypse. I suspect that Czeglédy chose to follow this interpretation to support
the idea that an apocalyptic text about the Hunnic raids was circulating in the
mid-sixth century. This apocalypse would be nothing other than
the
Neṣḥānā. However, Czeglédy’s translation of gelyānā as “apocalypse” is neither
the only possible one, nor the most appropriate. Furthermore, even if John of
Ephesus understood the word gelyānā as an actual apocalyptic work, the
Neṣḥānā would still not qualify as the most immediate literary candidate.
One finds no references to Alexander, to the gate he allegedly built, or to the
eschatological nations of Gog and Magog in John’s work. The only element that
may connect the passage in the Lives of the Eastern Saints to the Neṣḥānā is the
prediction of a Hunnic invasion. However, during the life of John of Ephesus,
nomadic populations from Central Asia, commonly known as “Huns,” had long
been identified with the biblical populations of Gog and Magog.29 The
association of the latter with the Huns is made explicit by Andrew of Caesarea,
who was probably writing a few years after John’s death in 588. In his
Commentary on the Book of Revelation, Andrew writes: “Some think these are
the Scythian nation, the northernmost [peoples], or, as we call them, the Huns,
who among all the kingdoms on earth, as we see, [are] the most populous and
warlike, whom only by the hand of God we hinder from seizing the entire
civilized world until the loosening of the devil.”30 From this perspective, it
might be contended that the revelation of a Hunnic invasion mentioned by John
reflects the common association of the Huns with the apocalyptic theme of Gog
and Magog. In this case, any text mentioning invasions by these eschatological
nations—expected to occur toward the end of times—may have inspired the
passage in John’s Lives.
A possible candidate is Revelation 20:7–8, which predicts the eschatological
raids of Gog and Magog. Recall that the sixth century witnessed a renewed
interest in the Book of Revelation in the Byzantine world. Is it possible that the
revelation about the coming of the Huns mentioned by John of Ephesus was
inspired by Revelation 20:7–8? At present, this question must remain without an
answer. However, it casts some doubt on Czeglédy’s assertions about the
connection between the gelyānā mentioned in John’s Lives and the Neṣḥānā. Of
course, the situation envisaged by the Hungarian scholar is still possible, and it is
not my intention to dismiss it completely. However, the evidence presented by
Czeglédy is much less compelling than he assumes.

The Debate over the Seventh-Century Neṣḥānā

In the past four decades, attempts to identify indisputable evidence for the
existence of an early version of the Neṣḥānā have attracted little scholarly
attention. This lack of interest in possible antecedents of the Syriac text
coincides with increasing affirmation of the idea that the Neṣḥānā was composed
at the time of Heraclius. The numerous studies dedicated by Reinink to the
Syriac text since the 1980s have been a decisive factor for the spread of the
theory of a redaction under Heraclius.31 Reinink’s main hypothesis is that the
Neṣḥānā was composed soon after 628 CE, at the end of the conflict between the
Byzantines and the Sasanians, which had begun in 602. According to him, the
Neṣḥānā was designed as a pamphlet that celebrated Heraclius’s
accomplishments in the conflict. The author was a native of the area around
Edessa and a fervent supporter of the emperor. The main addressees of his work
were members of the North-Mesopotamian Miaphysite community, who, at that
time, strongly opposed Heraclius’s attempts to reconcile Miaphysites and
Chalcedonians through the monenergist formula.32 Reinink identifies another
aim of the Neṣḥānā: the need to answer chiliastic anxieties and pessimistic
feelings that were current among Byzantine subjects, and to provide a firm
answer to expectations about the advent of the eschaton and the imminent
collapse of the empire. The strong emphasis placed by the Syriac author on
Byzantium’s eschatological mission and its destiny to establish a cosmocratic
rule by the end of human history supported this purpose.33
Reinink’s contextualization of the Neṣḥānā has been widely accepted in
modern scholarship,34 and several scholars have refined his research approach
and have identified additional connections between specific elements in the
Neṣḥānā and events around the time of Heraclius. In an article published in
2007, van Bladel lists a series of arguments relating the episode of Alexander’s
eschatological gate in Neṣḥānā to the 630s.35 In his view, the Syriac text reflects
the point of view of a seventh-century witness of the Kök Turks’ invasion of
626–629 CE. Van Bladel supports this idea by referring to reports of those events,
transmitted in the seventh century Latin Frankish Chronicle of Ps.-Fredegar and
in the tenth-century Armenian History of Movsēs Dasxurancʿi. Both authors
mention Heraclius’s involvement in the destruction provoked by his Turkic
allies. Specifically, the emperor facilitated their incursions by opening the gates
of Darband, a Sasanian fortified town in the Caspian area. Intriguingly, Ps.-
Fredegar identifies the gates of Darband with the legendary iron gate built by
Alexander to repel the bellicose nomad populations of Central Asia.36 This
element bears witness to the existence of a seventh-century narrative relating
Heraclius to the gate allegedly erected by Alexander in the Caucasus. The
Neṣḥānā—van Bladel argues—reflects this same cultural trend by connecting
the Turkic invasion promoted by Heraclius to the Hunnic raids prophesied by
Alexander for the year 940 AG.37 In general, van Bladel presents the story of
Alexander’s wall in the Neṣḥānā as a product of seventh-century culture.38
Similarly, Greisiger connects the episode of Alexander’s gate in the Neṣḥānā
to the events of 626–629.39 In general, Greisiger accepts Reinink’s hypotheses.
His work represents the clearest example of the impact on recent scholarship of
Reinink’s theory on the date of composition and character of the Neṣḥānā.
Following Reinink, Greisiger considers the Neṣḥānā to be a work of pro-
Heraclius propaganda, composed shortly after the end of the conflict against the
Sasanians. He adds that the Neṣḥānā reflects propagandistic attempts to
represent Heraclius as a messianic king. Greisiger connects this representation to
what he considers to have been the emperor’s millenarian ambitions.40 While
repeating and elaborating some of the axioms of Reinink’s theorem, Greisiger
offers some interesting (although dubious) philological observations on the
section of the Neṣḥānā concerning Alexander’s 940 AG prediction (see below).41
The widespread acceptance of the Heracleian dating of the Neṣḥānā has
tempered interest in exploring earlier contexts for the composition of the text.
Only recently have scholars started to challenge Reinink’s arguments.
Henkelman has disputed Reinink’s assertion that the Neṣḥānā inspired the
composition of Ps.-Jacob’s homily, and has reactivated the idea that the two
Syriac works derive from a common source—albeit without achieving
completely satisfying results.42 Shoemaker has pointed out several flaws in
Reinink’s analysis. Specifically, Shoemaker observes that most of Reinink’s
evidence for a seventh-century context can be used with equal validity for the
previous century.43 Most critically, he argues, Reinink does not adequately
analyze the first date in Alexander’s prophecy (i.e., 826 AG/514–515 CE) and its
connection to the sixth century, nor does he adequately explain the problems
evoked by the second date in the prophecy (i.e., 940 AG/628–629 CE), which was
considered by several earlier scholars as a seventh-century interpolation.44 In the
following chapter, I will re-engage with the question of the twofold Hunnic
invasion mentioned in Alexander’s prophecy. Specifically, I will address the
specific passage of the 940 AG prophecy, and I will argue that a few important
words in this passage (including the date of 940 AG) are an interpolation inserted
during the reign of Heraclius to update the Neṣḥānā and to connect it to the
recent historical context.
 3
The 940 AG Prophecy

The prophecy that Alexander utters after erecting the gate against the Huns reads
as follows:
King Alexander brought [a scribe] who wrote on the gate: “The Huns will come out and will subjugate
the lands of the Romans and of the Persians. They will shoot arrows b’rmgsṭ’,1 then they will turn
around and return to their country. I have also written that at the completion of 826 years the Huns will
come out through the narrow path that ends in front of Halōras, from where the Tigris gushes like a
stream that makes a millstone grind. They will take prisoners from among the population, they will cut
off the roads and make the earth tremble with their raids. I have also written, announced and
prophesied that hwyʾ2 at the completion of 940 years another king, when the world will end by the
commandment of God, Governor of Creation. Creatures will enrage God. Sin will grow and wrath will
reign. Human sins will increase and will cover the skies. In his anger the Lord will stir up the
kingdoms that are behind this gate. For when the Lord seeks to kill men, he sends men against men so
that they slay one other. And the Lord will gather the kings and their companies that are behind this
mountain. At his signal they will all gather. They will come with their spears and their swords. They
will stand behind the gate and, looking at the skies, they will call the name of the Lord: “Oh Lord!
Open this gate for us!” And the Lord will send his sign from heaven and a voice will shout against this
gate, which will be destroyed and will fall at the sign of the Lord. It will not be by the key which I
created for it that this gate will be opened. And through this gate which I have made an army will go
out. From the lower iron threshold an entire span will be consumed by the hoofs of the horsemen [sic]
and of the horses with which they go out to destroy the land by the commandment of the Lord. And
from the higher threshold a span will be consumed by the edges of the spears of those who run and go
out through the gate. And when the Huns will come out as God has commanded, from the ends of
heavens the kingdom of the Huns, the kingdom of the Persians, and the kingdom of the Arabs will
come. The twenty-four kingdoms which are inscribed in this writing. They will fall one upon the other.
The earth will curdle in the blood and the excrements of men. Then the kingdom of the Greeks will
move and come. It will hold a hammer of iron in its right hand and a hammer of bronze in its left hand.
The kingdom of the Greeks will strike the hammers against each other and like iron dissolving in the
fire and like bronze that boils in the flame, so will dissolve the strength of the kingdoms facing the
kingdom of the Greeks, which is that of the Romans. And the kingdoms of the Huns and of the
Persians will be destroyed each by its own comrade. Only a few will escape among those who fled to
their country, while the kingdom of the Romans will destroy the rest. And my kingdom, which is
called of the house of Alexander, the son of Philip the Macedonian, will go out and destroy the Earth
and the ends of heaven. And none among the people and the nations that dwell in the creation will be
able to stand before the kingdom of the Romans.3
The double reference to the dates 826 AG = 514–515 CE and 940 AG = 628–629
CE in Alexander’s prediction has led scholars to wonder whether the work was
composed around the time of the first of the two dates (with specific reference to
the Sabirs’ invasion of 515 CE) and subsequently re-updated by the insertion of a
second prognostication—this time referring to the events of 626–629 CE. The
insertion would have been motivated by the intent to connect Alexander’s
prognostication to the Kök Turks’ invasions of 626–629 CE. This possibility was
explored by Bousset, Kampers, Kmoskó, and Czeglédy.4 With the exception of
Shoemaker, however, recent scholarship mostly favors the idea that the text of
Alexander’s prophecy represents a single unity dating to the time of Heraclius.
As noted, this position is largely based on Reinink’s studies concerning the
context of the origins of the Neṣḥānā. However, Reinink pays only marginal
attention to the text of Alexander’s prophecy and does not provide an extensive
analysis of its contents.
What most troubles Reinink is the way in which the 940 AG prediction
connects to the following part of Alexander’s prophecy, and the way in which
this potentially contradicts his overall hypothesis. Reinink seems to accept the
connection between the 940 AG prediction and the Kök Turks’ invasions of 626–
629 CE—with specific reference to the last wave of raids in 629.5 At the same
time, Reinink understands that the acceptance of the equation “940 AG prophecy
= Turkic invasions of 629” opens the door to an “apocalypse now” interpretation
of the text—in which the raids of the Kök Turks would designate the final attack
of Gog and Magog. This interpretation of Alexander’s prediction is not
consistent with a major tenet of Reinink’s hypothesis. According to him, the
author of the Neṣḥānā locates the eschatological triumph of
Alexander’s/Heraclius’s kingdom at an undetermined point in the future, since
proclamations about an immediate triumph would negate the peace policies
promoted by Heraclius, which were aimed at re-establishing the status quo ante
bellum. Thus, Alexander’s prophetical description of Byzantium’s conquest of
Persia and establishment of a Christian cosmocracy would reveal the author’s
hopes and expectations for the future, not for the present. The identification of
the Turkic raids of 626–629 CE with the final attacks led by Gog and Magog
contradicts Reinink’s hypothesis about the author’s projection of the
eschatological era in the future.
These possible complications lead Reinink to argue against the idea that the
940 AG prediction refers to the final eschatological flood of nations predicted in
the subsequent part of Alexander’s prophecy. In doing so, Reinink rebuts the
possibility that the author of the Neṣḥānā identified the Turkic raids of 626–629
CE with the final attacks led by Gog and Magog.6 At the same time, he fails to
bring solid evidence in support of his contention, which is based only on the
claim that the author of the Neṣḥānā did not intend to predict the imminent
arrival of the End. Admittedly, the text here contains syntactic ambiguities
(analyzed below) that make the understanding of the passage difficult. However,
nothing in the text clearly indicates that the 940 AG prophecy is separated from
the subsequent prediction of Gog and Magog’s final invasions, nor is there
unequivocal evidence that the prediction of the events following those of 940 AG
marks the beginning of a new vaticinium.
Indeed, the sentence “when the world will end by the commandment of God,
Governor of Creation,” immediately following the mention of the “other king,”
points to a direct relationship between the two sets of events. Had the author not
been convinced, as Reinink claims, that such a direct relationship existed, he
likely would have inserted an intermediary sentence to mark the distinction
between what would then appear as two separate prophecies, one about the
events of 940 AG and one about events to occur toward the end of days. Had this
been his intention, one would expect the transition between the two prophecies
to be marked by a phrase such as, “I have also written that,” which introduces
the 826 AG prophecy; or, better, “I have also written, announced, and prophesied
that,” which precedes the 940 AG prophecy. However, the fact that there is no
phrase signaling the transition casts serious doubt on Reinink’s reading.
Of course, since—as we will see—something appears to be missing in this
passage, one may speculate that a similar transitory element originally existed
but was lost during the text’s transmission. However, this position is difficult to
uphold. The only plausible explanation for such an omission is that the
hypothetical phrase that marked the separation between what were originally
meant as two different prophecies was removed by a redactor who believed that
the invasion of 940 AG would coincide with the final sorties of Gog and Magog.
This scenario, however, is implausible. Such a redactor would have had to be
active in the immediate aftermath of the Turkic invasions of 626–629 in order to
understand those events as an unequivocable sign of the impending End; and yet
the rest of the text lacks any content that might link the prophecy to the dramatic
developments of the late 630s (such as the Arab capture of Jerusalem). Indeed, if
this was the case, how should we understand the overall process of textual
transmission? Should we imagine that the text was produced in ca. 630 and that
it was almost immediately manipulated by our hypothetical redactor? This seems
highly unlikely. It is more likely that the person who composed the 940 AG
prophecy believed that the historical events behind that vaticinium coincided
with the eschatological invasions described in the subsequent part of
Alexander’s prophecy. And this raises a second possibility.
One may imagine that the prediction about the final eschatological events was
not meant to address the events of 940 AG because the 940 AG prophecy was not
part of the original core of the text; that is, it was interpolated. Someone who
thought that the Turkic invasions of 626–629 represented the realization of the
final part of Alexander’s prophecy might have projected his conviction into the
text by inserting the 940 AG prophecy. Reinink seems to accept the possibility
that the reference to these events is an interpolation,7 and this assumption would
remove the problematic overlapping of historical and eschatological eras that
Reinink tries to dismiss. Indeed, once we treat the 940 AG prediction as a
secondary interpolation, the final eschatological raids described in the last part of
Alexander’s prophecy are no longer identifiable with any actual historical event.
It is noticeable, however, that when addressing the possibility of an interpolation,
Reinink maintains that the Neṣḥānā must have been composed after the events
of 626–629 CE, and, specifically, after the Turkic raid of 629. According to him,
even if the sentence about 940 AG was added later, the Neṣḥānā should still be
dated to that same period.8
This reading raises several problems. If the 940 AG prediction was
interpolated by someone who believed that the final events predicted by
Alexander had been realized by the Turkic invasions, then this person must have
altered the text during or in the immediate aftermath of those events. But then
how should we reconstruct the history of the text’s development? Was the text
composed ca. 630, as Reinink maintains, and shortly after interpolated by a
reader who held a different position than the author about the actual relationship
between the raids of 626–629 and Gog and Magog’s final incursions? This
scenario is not plausible. It is much easier to assume that the text was composed
several decades earlier and then updated in the late 620s or early 630s.
Reinink does not consider the possibility that the sentence describing the
events of 940 AG may have been interpolated to update a text composed in an
earlier period in order to adapt it to a new historical context. Rather, he asserts
that the Neṣḥānā was conceived as a manifesto of pro-Heraclius propaganda.
The reading of the Syriac text as a document produced during Heraclius’s reign
is an indisputable corollary of Reinink’s theory. As a consequence, the only
support provided by Reinink in his analysis of the passage is to reiterate the
same hypothesis that would be weakened by the interpretation he seeks to refute.
This situation creates a circular argument in which the outcomes of the
hypothesis are used to dismiss possible counterarguments. Nevertheless, apart
from the date of 940 AG, there is nothing in the text that unequivocally connects
the Neṣḥānā to the period immediately after the end of the Byzantine-Sasanian
conflict in 628 CE. As will become evident over the course of this study, all other
elements that Reinink advances in support his theory of the “Heracleian” dating
make as much (or even more) sense if situated in an earlier context.
I have already mentioned the textual cruxes in the sentence related to the 940
AG prophecy. With few exceptions, most scholars have completely overlooked
the issue.9 Even Reinink, who has the merit to have pointed out what had passed
almost completely unnoticed in previous studies, does not carefully examine of
the syntactic ambiguities in the sentence.10 He analyzes the sentence containing
the 940 AG prediction only in passing in the two studies where the question is
raised. In general, Reinink does not solve the problem that he highlights, nor
does he adequately address the issue at stake, namely, whether an earlier version
of the Neṣḥānā was in circulation in earlier times.
The presence of a textual complication in the very sentence that may have
been interpolated is a crucial factor. Indeed, textual disruptions may have arisen
as a result of the manipulation of the text. Let us have a closer look at the
passage in question. The sentence reads as follows:

11.

The sentence may tentatively be translated word by word as: “I have also
written, announced and prophesied that hwyʾ at the accomplishment of 940 years
another king, when the world will end.” The meaning of hwyʾ is unclear, while
the syntax of the sentence is ambiguous. Hwyʾ is usually understood as a verb
that signifies “it will happen” or “there will be.” However, as we will see below,
if hwyʾ is a verb, grammatically it does not connect with the only possible
subject of the sentence, that is, malkā ḥrēnā, “another king.” Consequently, the
subordinate clause appears to be incomplete. Oddly, nothing is said about the
actions that this other king will accomplish. One has the impression that
something is missing.
Budge noted the syntactic problems in the sentence. In a footnote, he
observes that “there seems to be something wrong here in the text,” and proposes
to emend the text as: d-hwā malkā ḥrēnā, that is, to replace hwyʾ by hwā (hwʾ).12
Accordingly, he translates as follows: “And again I have written and made
known and prophesied that it shall come to pass, at the conclusion of nine
hundred and forty years, . . . another king.”13 Budge’s emendation is followed by
Bohas who, unlike Budge, understands malkā ḥrēnā as the subject of hwʾ and
translates the sentence as follows: “Et j’ai aussi écrit, annoncé et prophétisé qu’il
y aurait un autre roi, à la fin des neuf cent quarante années, quand le monde
viendra à son terme.”14
Neither translation offers a satisfactory understanding of the complex
sentence that contains the 940 AG prediction. Whatever interpretation one
follows, the passage still presents several ambiguities. For instance, who is the
other king mentioned in Alexander’s prophecy, who will appear in the year 940
AG? Moreover, it is not clear whether the prediction relates to the arrival of this
other king, or if it refers to unspecified acts that he is expected to accomplish—
no details are given about him, or about whether he will accomplish any deeds
upon his arrival. The reader is left wondering whether the description of the
actions that this king was expected to perform were lost in the transmission of
the text.
Of course, one should not expect too much clarity in the passage under
investigation. Logical or linear developments in the narrative are often not the
main issue at stake in the text of a prophecy. Apocalyptic texts frequently (and
intentionally) adopt an ambiguous language to allow for different possible
interpretations. And yet, this does not seem to be the case in the present instance.
The 826 AG prediction is constructed around the reference to a precise date and
provides a detailed description of facts that relate to well-identifiable
circumstances. Clearly, the author sought to dispel doubts about the events he is
referring to. Much the same observation applies to the nebulous 940 AG
prognostication. In spite of all the complications raised by this passage, the
reader can still understand the reference to the Turkic invasions of 940 AG/626–
629 CE. In summary, the interpretive problems with the second prediction in
Alexander’s prophecy do not appear to be related to any attempt by the author to
keep the sentence ambiguous or open to different interpretations. The observed
difficulties in understanding the text of the prophecy are rather a direct
consequence of the syntactic oddities of the passage, which in its present form
does not appear as self-standing. It is evident that something in the text was
altered during the process of textual transmission.
The only attempt to solve the riddles of Alexander’s ambiguous prediction
about the year 940 AG has been made by Greisiger. In short, he identifies
Heraclius as the “other king” mentioned in the prophecy, and connects his acts to
the final Hunnic raid described in the rest of Alexander’s prophecy.15 Like other
scholars, Greisiger relates the 940 AG prediction to the events of 626–629 CE. In
particular, he refers to reports about the Kök Turks’ attacks as they are
transmitted in the already mentioned Chronicle of Ps.-Fredegar and in the
History of Movsēs Dasxurancʿi. As noted, both authors saw a connection
between the passage of Heraclius’s Turkic allies through the Caucasus and the
classical motif of Alexander’s iron gates.16 On this basis, Greisiger speculates
that the missing information in the Neṣḥānā about the acts to be accomplished
by the “other king” in the year 940 AG coincides with the actual actions of
Heraclius at Darband. According to him, the sentence predicting the events of
940 AG originally included a description of the opening of Alexander’s gate by a
Greek king, who is none other than Heraclius. The predicate describing this act,
however, was later erased to exculpate the Byzantine emperor from the
accusation of having colluded with barbarians who brought destruction in the
region.17
Greisiger supports his argument by referring to two other passages in the
Neṣḥānā, both found in the continuation of Alexander’s prophecy. In the first
passage, Alexander predicts that the key forged when the gate was first built will
not open the door: “And the Lord will send his signal from heaven. A loud word
will be proclaimed against this gate, which will be destroyed and will fall at the
signal of the Lord. It will not be by the key which I have made for it that this
gate will fall.”18 Greisiger speculates that this narrative detail is intended to
refute contemporary claims that Heraclius had the keys to Alexander’s gate and
used them to let his Turkic allies pass through the fortified limes.19 In the second
passage, Alexander predicts that at the outset of his kingdom’s final triumph
over the other world empires, the kingdom of the Huns and the kingdom of the
Persians will destroy one another: “The kingdoms of the Huns and of the
Persians will be destroyed, one by the other. Among those who will flee to their
country, only a few will escape, and what remains of them will be destroyed by
the kingdom of the Romans.”20 Greisiger does not explain how this passage
relates to the others that are relevant for his hypothesis, but one assumes that he
also detects here the author’s desire to remove any possible connection between
the kingdom of the Romans (i.e., Byzantium) and the kingdom of the Huns.21
Greisiger’s analysis presents several problems. As for his identification of the
“other king” as Heraclius, it should be noted that there is no unequivocal
indication in the text that this king is a Roman emperor, and even less evidence
that he is Heraclius. Based only on the nebulous information found in this
passage, the text might very well be alluding to another Hunnic king. Or the
other king might be an apocalyptic figure. Alternatively, the text may be alluding
to Jesus, who in Acts 17:7 is identified as “another king,” words that the Peshitta
translates as malkā ḥrēnā, the same expression used by the author of the
Neṣḥānā. Thus, there are wide variety of possible hypotheses to explain the
identity of the “other king” mentioned in the 940 AG prophecy. Of course, one
cannot completely rule out that it refers to a Roman emperor, and to Heraclius in
particular, as Greisiger maintains. However, this is only one of many possible
readings.
Moreover, even if one wants to accept the Heraclius hypothesis, it may be
posited that the words malkā ḥrēnā were interpolated by a person who regarded
Heraclius’s military victory against the Sasanians as a repetition of Alexander’s
victory over the Persian Empire, and who wanted to emphasize the parallel
between the two sovereigns by having Alexander predict the arrival of Heraclius.
This possibility gains credibility in the light of scholarly suspicions about the
possible interpolation of the entire sentence about the year 940 AG, and in light
of the fact that the “other king” does not have a well-defined function in the
narrative. As noted, the role of this figure is mysterious: the text says nothing
about what acts—if any—he is expected to accomplish. Moreover, there is no
reason to rule out the possibility that the words malkā ḥrēnā function as a direct
object instead of subject. As I will explain below, the only apparent verb in the
sentence, hwyʾ, does not concord grammatically with a masculine subject like
malkā. Thus, no element in the text unequivocally indicates that the “other king”
is an active agent in the sentence, nor that the actions hypothetically attributed to
him concerned the opening of Alexander’s gate.
As for the other passage analyzed by Greisiger, and specifically the
description of the key, this motif may be taken as a statement of God’s control
over sacred history. The author may have wanted to remind his readers that the
final Hunnic raids are part of God’s plan for human salvation, and they are thus
an event that mankind can neither prevent nor facilitate. Even if Alexander’s
gate is a human artifact, in the end it is God and only God who can decree its
opening for the accomplishment of Gog and Magog’s eschatological invasion.
That said, even if one accepts Greisiger’s interpretation and reads the passage as
an assertion of Heraclius’s innocence about the Kök Turks’ offensive, there is
another complication: if this were the case, how can one reconcile the author’s
belief that the gate will not be opened by a human hand and Greisiger’s claim
that the text originally portrayed “the other king” as opening that very same
gate? Following Greisiger, in its original form the text would have informed us
that “the other king” opened Alexander’s gate, but then claimed that the gate
could not be opened with the key made by Alexander. Why would the author
insert two contradictory statements in his narrative? The problem is not solved
by Greisiger’s assumption that the omission of the verb was accomplished only
at a second stage by the “redactor of all the extant manuscripts’ prototype,” as it
still implies that the text originally included two mutually contradictory
elements. The only way to solve the problem would be to postulate that the
redactor also introduced the motif of the key into the text. However, this
possibility is improbable. In fact, the motif of Alexander’s key is mentioned in
another passage of the Neṣḥānā. Specifically, after erecting of the gate and
before declaring his prophecy, Alexander is said to have anchored to the rocks a
key twelve cubits long. Nothing in the text suggests that any of these mentions
of the key motif was inserted in the narration at a later point.
As for Greisiger’s claim that the prophecy about the final destruction of the
kingdom of the Huns was inserted to exculpate Heraclius from his involvement
with the Kök Turks, nothing in this passage points to such an intention. Rather,
the prediction signals the author’s expectations about the future and his hope that
Byzantium’s Turkic and Persian rivals will destroy each other. As we will see
later in this study, this expectation has its roots in the political and military
situation of the sixth century. In the end, Greisiger has the merit to have drawn
attention to a passage of the Neṣḥānā that had been little investigated by
previous scholars. However, his solution to the problem does not stand the
scrutiny of textual analysis.
Let us return to hwyʾ. Hwy’ may be read as hāwyā, feminine active participle
of hwā (“to be”), in which case it may refer to some future happening. For
instance, the Peshitta on Matthew 12:45 and James 5:3 adopts hāwyā to translate
ἔσται (“it will be”); in Matthew 13:22, 32, Mark 4:19, 32, and Luke 11:26,
hāwyā is used to translate γίνεται (“it becomes”); whereas in Luke 21:13, hāwyā
is used to translate ἀποβήσεται (“it will result”).22 The problem with
understanding hwyʾ as hāwyā is that there is no appropriate subject in the
syntagm. The only possible subject in the sentence would be malkā ḥrēnā,
“another king,” which, as a masculine noun, does not agree with hāwyā, a
feminine verbal form. Thus, even if one accepts the equation hwyʾ = hāwyā, one
must still speculate that the original subject of the sentence—a feminine noun—
was lost in the process of textual transmission. As for the relationship between
the hypothetically lost subject and the “other king” mentioned in the sentence, it
depends on whether one wants to understand the words malkā ḥrēnā as part of
the original core of the text or as an interpolation, for the reasons discussed
above. In the former case, the loss of an additional syntactic element—a verb or
a preposition—would explain the relationship between the two components.
Alternatively, we may read hwyʾ as a misreading of hwnyʾ ( ),
“Huns,” caused by a scribal failure in writing
the “n.” This reading is supported by
the fact that the word hwnyʾ figures in the previous prophecy about year 846 AG.
If this reading is correct, then the Huns would also be the subject of the second
prophecy. But what about the verb? What are the Huns supposed to do? We do
not know. In this scenario, we must still speculate that a component of the text
was lost in transmission. Perhaps, the prophecy originally implied that the Huns
would return; or that they would accomplish actions affecting the “other king,”
who in this case would be the direct object of the missing verb. The only thing
that is sure is that if hwyʾ = hwnyʾ, then the sentence lacks a verb.
Be that as it may, either a subject or a verb is missing from the text. Up to this
point I agree with Greisiger that the syntactic ambiguities of the sentence about
940 AG result from the omission of a key component of the text. However, I
disagree about the reason for this omission. The text contains no indication
whatsoever that the missing element was excluded to exculpate Heraclius for his
involvement with the Turks. Moreover, my analysis has identified weaknesses
and contradictions in Greisiger’s reconstruction. What then are the events that
led to the loss of some key elements, in the absence of which the sentence about
940 AG has no full meaning? I think that the answer is found in the very same
temporal construct that characterizes this sentence.
Like scholars before me, I am inclined to consider the reference to the year
940 AG as an interpolation. The structure of the 940 AG prediction invites this
interpretation. Indeed, the prediction nearly repeats the syntactic structure of the
826 AG prognostication. One finds the same temporal construct “at the
accomplishment of . . . years” (l-šwlmʾ d-. . . šnyn) appearing in both sentences.
It is easy to imagine how someone could formulate the temporal expression “at
the accomplishment of 940 years” on the model of the sentence “at the
accomplishment of 826 years,” already present in the text. This textual
manipulation resulted—I believe—in the omission of a verb or a subject.
There are two possibilities for the hypothetical original sentence, depending
on how one understands hwyʾ and whether one treats malkā ḥrēnā as belonging
or not to the original core of the text:
< >[...]
1))

“I have also written, announced and prophesied that [something] <(possibly related to) another king>
will occur when the world will end” + rest of the prophecy on the final events.

< >[...]
2) )

“I have also written, announced and prophesied that the Huns [will do something] <(possibly related
to) another king> when the world will end” + rest of the prophecy on the final events.

This reading is supported by several considerations, literary and historical.

Let us start by investigating the performativity of the individual components
of Alexander’s prophecy. Attention should be focused on the 826 AG prediction
and on its function in the text in its current shape. One must consider the extent
to which this prophecy would be functional or dysfunctional in the overall
narrative and in the author’s agenda, if the text were a single narrative block with
no interpolations—and thus originally including also the 940 AG prediction. Van
Bladel, who considers the text of Alexander’s prophecy as a coherent textual
unit, observes that the first date “holds no importance in the narrative.”23
According to him, the 826 AG prophecy “serves just as a key for the
contemporary audience of the text that they can use to verify the accuracy of the
second, more elaborate prophecy, associated with a later date.”24 In other words,
the first prophecy increases Alexander’s prophetic credentials and thus enhances
the persuasive power of his second prophecy. If this is so, several questions
arise.
The enhancement of prophetic credentials comes at a price, likely higher than
what the author of the 940 AG prophecy would have probably felt compelled to
pay. Indeed, the 826 AG prediction carries with it the unpleasant implication that
the magnificent gate erected by the mighty Alexander would not hold water. The
gate would not be able to contain the Hunnic incursions, and other invasions
would precede the one predicted for the End of Time. Our author acknowledges
this embarrassing situation, but he struggles to account for it. In the description
of the construction of the gate, our author adds the odd detail about the space left
for the passage of foot soldiers beneath the gate. Although this breach in a
defensive system may echo ancient descriptions of the fortifications at Dariali,
the author’s justification for including this detail might have been his desire to
explain why Hunnic invasions would occur, notwithstanding Alexander’s
erection of marvelous fortifications. The same motivation lies behind the
opening of Alexander’s prophecy, namely, with a prediction of an undated
Hunnic incursion which, just like that of 826 AG, will conclude with the invaders
returning to their homeland. Our author wanted to make it clear from the
beginning that other invasions would precede the one expected to happen toward
the End of Time, when God will decree the collapse of Alexander’s gate.
This uncomfortable explanation for what appears to be the mediocre
capacities of Alexander’s defensive system most likely points to an author in a
specific circumstance: someone aware of Hunnic incursions happened during, or
slightly before, his lifetime, invasions that did not (literally) open the door to the
beginning of the eschatological process. This author knew that the final invasion
expected for the End of Time had not yet taken place. This is not the profile of
the author of the 940 AG prophecy drawn by van Bladel, who considers the
second prediction to be related to the more general vaticinium on the final events
that follows in the text. According to him, the author of the prophecy believed
that the Turkic invasions of 626–629—which allegedly occurred only a few
months or years before the time the author was writing—coincided with Gog and
Magog’s final raids. In this case, however, why would the author insert a
prophecy about a Hunnic invasion that happened more than a century earlier, an
invasion that did not play any role in the realization of the eschatological drama?
Such a prediction has more disadvantages than advantages. As a matter of fact,
the date provided for the second prophecy (i.e., 940 AG) is accurate enough to
convince the reader that the invasion predicted by Alexander was the invasions
of 626–629 CE, whereas the earlier prophecy puts the author in the embarrassing
situation highlighted above. In other words, within the text in its current form,
the 826 AG prophecy is highly dysfunctional. Someone convinced that the
current invasion was the last one would likely prefer to bury any mention of
earlier incursions that might cause the reader to question Alexander’s
achievement of building his gate. Of course, one might argue that the author still
felt compelled to provide an explanation for the Hunnic invasions that occurred
in previous centuries. One should consider, however, another problematic
element of the single authorship hypothesis, namely the accuracy of the author’s
historical memory.
Consider the words that open Alexander’s prophecy: “The Huns will come
out and will subjugate the lands of the Romans and of the Persians. They will
shoot arrows b’rmgsṭ’, then they will turn around and return to their country.”
This first prediction probably refers to the great Hunnic invasion of 395. Like the
raids of 515, the invasion of 395 ravaged the native land of the author of the
Neṣḥānā.25 Unlike the events of 515, however, the author cannot precisely
identify the time of the first invasion to which he alludes, as is suggested by the
fact that he leaves the prediction undated. The vagueness surrounding this first
prophecy is not surprising, since the author was writing at least twelve decades
after the events, that is, after 515. From this perspective, however, one wonders
how plausible it is that a person living after 626, that is, after the date indicated
in the 940 AG prediction, would have dated with precision a Hunnic incursion
occurring eleven decades earlier, in 826 AG/515 CE, an invasion whose impact
was a pale reflection of the great invasion of 395. It is more likely that the
original author of the text was writing only a few decades after the events of 515
(as was the author of the 940 AG prediction, which was interpolated shortly after
the Turkic invasion of 626). Other arguments support this reading.
Heraclius’s Turkic allies targeted Sasanian Transcaucasia. During the first
wave of the invasion, in 626, the Turks raided Albania and Atropatene.26 A year
later, in 627, the Turks broke through the Sasanian fortifications at Darband and,
after joining forces with Heraclius’s army, they laid siege to Tiflis (Tbilisi), the
capital of Iberia. The city was not conquered, but the joint Roman-Turkic
coalition ravaged the surrounding area before departing.27 The armies of the
Khagan reappeared in front of the city walls the following year, in 628. The city
could not repel this second siege and was captured and plundered by the Turkic
soldiers. The Turks only withdrew in 629, when, after a brief attempt to annex
Albania, they were recalled to the Central Asian steppes to deal with a dynastic
crisis.28 Unsurprisingly, in 626–629 the fury of Heraclius’s Turkic allies was
directed against those Transcaucasian territories traditionally tied to the
Sasanians, but spared the Transcaucasian provinces traditionally under Roman
administration. This scenario is not consistent with the information received by
Alexander from the old men in the Neṣḥānā, who repeatedly report that the Huns
targeted both Persian and Roman territories. More important, in the Neṣḥānā the
narrative about the Hunnic incursions focuses on the tributary rivers of the Tigris
in the Roman province of Armenia Quarta, with a specific focus on the region
around Olor and Bahalot/Belabitene. These are not the lands reached by the raids
of 626–629. These are the territories ravaged by the Sabir Huns in 515. It is to
these raids that the author of the Neṣḥānā refers when he describes the old men
answering Alexander’s question as to whether the Huns had invaded their
territories during their lifetime: “these fortifications which were destroyed in our
land and in the land of the Romans were destroyed by them; by them were
uprooted these towers.”29 In the mind of the author, these raids must have
happened in the recent past, and, as a native of the area, it is likely that he
personally witnessed the devastations wrought by the Huns in 515.
The text contains other indications that the events of 515 or shortly after serve
as the background of the story of Alexander’s gate. In addition to Gog and
Magog, the Neṣḥānā lists the names of other thirteen Hunnic kings. Most of
these names are not identifiable, and one has the impression that at least some of
them are literary fabrications of the author. However, one or two names seem to
be based on actual historical figures. The first is a certain Hunnic chieftain—
probably a Sabir—who conducted diplomatic relations between both the
Romans and the Persians shortly after the Sabir incursions of 515.30 This
chieftain acquired a certain notoriety among Byzantine historians for accepting
money in exchange for military services from both the Romans and the Persians.
His duplicity resulted in his execution by the Sasanians in 520.31 His name is
reported in the sources as either Zilgibis (Ζιλγίβις) or Ziligdes (Ζιλίγδης)—both
names are spelled in a variety of ways in the manuscript tradition.32
The second case is another Hunnic chieftain whose name is reported by
Byzantine chroniclers in reference to events occurring around 527. This Hun, an
ally of Kavadh, was defeated in battle by the Sabir queen Boa, an ally of
Justinian.33 The name of the chieftain is once again reported differently in
sources, either Glom (Γλώμ) or Glones (Γλώνης).34
The fluidity in the transcription into Greek of the names of these Hunnic
leaders is not an isolated case. Many variations are reported in sources for the
names of other North Caucasian Hunnic chieftains. Apparently, it was difficult
for Greek chroniclers to transcribe these foreign names. It is hard to establish the
original names behind the transcriptions examined above. Peter Golden suggests
Oğulom for Glom/Glones, but he finds no satisfactory explanation for
Zilgibis/Ziligdes.35 Be that as it may, Hellenized calques of these names seem to
be echoed in the Neṣḥānā as the names of two of the fifteen Hunnic kings. The
name Slgdw recalls that of Zilgibis/Ziligdes and the name Gmly recalls that of
Glom/Glones. Since the author was aware of the Sabir invasion of 515, it is not
surprising that he may have had knowledge of two North Caucasian Hunnic
leaders who became (in-)famous in the immediate aftermath of those events.
These references to contemporary Hunnic chieftains support the hypothesis of a
sixth-century contextualization of the text.
The above observations about geographic and onomastic elements in the
Neṣḥānā indicate that hints to early sixth-century Hunnic invasions are not
confined to the passage containing the 826 AG prediction. References to those
events in other passages of the text would exclude the possibility—about which
the reader might have been wondering—that the passage containing the 826 AG
prediction was interpolated as well. At the same time, for the reasons exposed in
the following pages and chapters, the sixth century appears as the context in
which the story of Alexander’s eschatological gate against Gog and Magog was
shaped. In fact, sources suggest that the motif of Alexander’s iron gates had
already been associated with the Sabir invasions of 515 in the sixth century.
John Malalas reports that the Sabir Huns broke into Byzantine provinces after
passing through the Caspian Gates.36 Malalas does not mention Alexander in
relation to the Gates, but it is plausible that he was familiar with the traditional
attribution of their construction to the Macedonian king, which was widely
known in the sixth century. Malalas’s contemporaries, Procopius37 and Jordanes,
38 attribute the construction of the Caspian Gates to Alexander, although neither

mentions his gates in relation to the Sabir invasion of 515. It stands to reason,
however, that this connection could arise in the mind of a contemporary writer
like the author of the Neṣḥānā, who witnessed those events, who may plausibly
have thought that the Sabir forces had passed through the iron gates built by
King Alexander in the past. The reference by John of Ephesus to a gelyānā
“foretelling” of these Hunnic raids represents another piece of the puzzle.39
Despite the doubts that I have expressed above about John’s report, the fact that
he associates the invasion of 515 with a prognostication of future events suggests
that his contemporaries understood those events in apocalyptic terms.
It is likely that John’s contemporaries associated Hunnic attacks of 515 to the
New Testament motif of Gog and Magog. Recall that it was specifically during
the sixth century that writers like Andreas of Caesarea and Oecumenius started
the rehabilitation of the Book of Revelation in the Eastern Christian hemisphere,
that is, the principal scriptural promulgator of the apocalyptic image of Gog and
Magog. In a period of acute chiliastic anxieties, as during the reign of Justinian,
a retroactive examination of the recent Sabir invasion easily may have generated
apocalyptic interpretations. The story of Alexander’s gate in the Neṣḥānā reflects
mid-sixth-century cultural ideas. At the same time, the episode of the gate in the
Neṣḥānā not only situates the recent Hunnic invasion within the framework of
sacred history, but also addresses specific historical events that were unfolding
during his lifetime (see below).
Most recent scholars have paid little attention to the first prognostication in
Alexander’s prophecy (i.e., the 826 AG prediction), no doubt because they prefer
to set the text within the framework of Heraclius’s reign. The previous century as
a possible context for the Syriac composition has been almost completely
ignored. The reference to a Hunnic invasion that occurred in the sixth century
has mostly been considered a memory of the past, inserted in the text to provide
prophetical authority according to the mechanism of the vaticinium ex eventu.
Nonetheless, as noted, for many reasons, the events of 515 provide a much better
background for the narrative than those of 626–629. In my view, the ambiguous
sentence about 940 AG represents an attempt to adapt the story narrated in the
Neṣḥānā to the events of the third decade of the seventh century. The 940 AG
prediction was added by someone who wished to insert a reference to the Kök
Turks’ invasions of 626–629 CE. This task was facilitated by the fact that the text
of Alexander’s prophecy addressed a similar invasion that occurred in the
previous century, that is, the Sabir incursion of 515 CE. The original text of
Alexander’s prophecy must have included only one prediction ex eventu—
concerning the invasion of 515—which was followed by a genuine
prognostication about the final raids of the Huns, inspired by the motif of Gog
and Magog. The prediction about this great Hunnic invasion that was expected
to occur at the End of Time likely prompted the interpolation. It is plausible that
the author of the 940 AG prediction understood the recent Turkic raids as a
realization of Alexander’s prophecy and identified the Kök Turks’ invasion of
626–629 with the final attack of Gog and Magog predicted by Alexander.
Van Bladel has carefully reconstructed the cultural and historical scenario in
which the motif of Alexander’s eschatological gate first achieved wide
circulation, that is, in the seventh century.40 In general, I welcome his insights as
a sign of renewed interest in the Neṣḥānā in that period. However, the story of
Alexander’s wall and the related prediction in the Neṣḥānā originally had
nothing to do with the events of Darband and with the Turkic invasions of 626–
629. It was due to later developments that the episode of Alexander’s gate in the
Neṣḥānā came to be read in light of the context of Heraclius’s reign. The events
of 626–629 made the Neṣḥānā attractive reading, since the narrative elements in
the text could be “recycled” to address the current political situation. It was at
this time that the passage of Alexander’s prophecy concerning the Hunnic
invasion of 940 AG (i.e., 626–629 CE) was interpolated into the text. Once the
interpolation is excluded, there is nothing in the Syriac work that can be
unequivocally linked to the 630s. By contrast, the previous century represents a
much more suitable context for the episode of Alexander’s gate described in the
Neṣḥānā. As we will see in the following chapters, the Syriac text addresses the
military and political situation at the time of Justinian.
 4
The Story of Alexander’s Gate and the Political Conte
xt of the Sixth Century

By the time the author of the Neṣḥānā was writing, the area traditionally
identified as the location of Alexander’s iron gates had become a matter of
contention between Byzantines and Sasanians. In particular, a dispute emerged
in the fifth century over Sasanian control of the Caspian Gates and, specifically,
over Sasanian claims to be defending both empires against Hunnic raids. In
exchange for this (alleged) service, the Sasanians repeatedly demanded
payments from the Romans, while the Romans repeatedly rejected their requests.
These quarrels over the surveillance of the Caucasian passes intensified in the
sixth century and became a major source of contention. The lack of well-defined
agreements on this issue came to represent a primary cause—or at least a pretext
—for the outbreak of conflicts between the two empires.1 The premise of the
conflict, however, originated in earlier times, probably in the last part of the
fourth century. It is useful to retrace the principal stages through which this
dispute evolved in order to achieve a better understanding of the context in
which the Syriac author was writing and to focus on the political issues that he
meant to address. What follows is a long (albeit necessary) excursus on this
question.

Claims, Conflicts, and Treaties over the Defense of the Caspian

Gates
Recent archaeological investigations and radiocarbon dating analyses have
shown that fortifications were erected at the Dariali Gorge between 390 and 396
CE—probably on the bases of an earlier fortress that was demolished to make
room for the new one.2 In all likelihood, the establishment of this defense system
is connected to the great Hunnic invasion of 395 CE. It is not clear, however,
whether the pass was fortified in response to the raids, or if the Huns broke
through it before the fortifications were completed. Archaeological data do not
indicate what political entity promoted the (re-)fortification of the Dariali Gorge
at the end of the fourth century, but sources indicate that it was the Persians who
built the fortress there. John Lydus (d. after 552) mentions talks held between
Byzantines and Sasanians at this time, to seek an agreement on the defense of
the pass from “the barbarians who were overrunning it.”3 Lydus talks about a
project to jointly patrol the area by establishing two fortresses—one built by
each empire. No agreement was reached, however, and only the Persians would
eventually erect fortifications to guard the pass “insofar as they were more
exposed to the barbarians’ incursions.”4
As we will see below, there are good reasons to doubt the historicity of most
elements in Lydus’s report. However, the information that he provides about the
construction of a Persian fort at the Dariali Pass seems to be accurate. According
to him, the fortress bore the name of Biraparakh (βιραπαράχ), a toponym that
occurs (with slight variations) in other contemporary sources. Priscus (d. after
472) mentions a Persian fort called Ioureiopaach (Ἰουροειπαάχ) located at the
Caspian Gates,5 and in the Syriac translation of the Alexander Romance Darius
writes to the Indian King Porus, asking him to send soldiers to the Caspian
Gates, here called Vīrūphagar.6 Moreover, Lydus records that the Biraparakh fort
was built to stop ongoing incursions of barbarians, here probably referring to the
Hunnic invasion of 395.7 If so, then his indication matches the dates and the data
established by the archaeological excavations at the Dariali Gorge.
Other sources confirm the establishment of a Persian fortress in the area from
at least the first half of the fifth century. The Armenian historian Łazar P‘arpec‘i
(second half of the fifth century) reports a letter from the Armenian noble Vasak
Siwni (d. 452) to the Armenian leader Vardan Mamikonian (d. 451). In the letter
Vasak confirms that he had been in control of the “Alan/Albanian Pass” (i.e., the
Dariali Pass) when he was marzpān of Albania.8 From the letter reported by
Łazar, we can ascertain that in the mid-fifth century a Sasanian officer was
entrusted with the administration of the Dariali Gorge. Sasanian control over the
Pass in that period finds further confirmation in a notice reported by Priscus,
according to whom an attack of the Saraguri was diverted in 463, when the
nomadic people arrived at the Caspian Gates and “found that the Persians had
established a fort there.”9 Earlier in his work, Priscus informs us about the
Ioureiopaach fort located at the Caspian Gates, and in the subsequent lines he
reports that the Persians demanded a Roman subvention to defend this fortress,
probably in 467, after an attack of the Saraguri—who, in spite of the
fortifications that they encountered at the Gates, advanced along another route
and raided Iberia and Armenia.10 When putting together all the information
provided by Priscus, it stands to reason that the fortifications encountered by the
Saraguri at the Caspian Gates were none other than the Ioureiopaach fort, and
that by the term “Caspian Gates,” Priscus means the Dariali Gorge, where the
fortress of Biraparakh/Ioureiopaach was located.
It thus appears that by the mid-fifth century—but likely by the end of the
previous century—Persian defense systems had been erected to seal the Dariali
Pass. Material evidence confirms a Sasanian presence in the fort beginning in the
following century. Grave objects found at Dariali include Persian objects
probably dating to the sixth century, including a coin featuring Kavadh I (r. 488–
496, 498–531) dated to 529 CE.11 At the same time, the Sasanians may not have
exercised continuous control over the pass, and they may have lost possession of
the Biraparakh fort for a certain period of time. Procopius reports that during the
reign of Anastasius I (r. 491–518) the area was ruled by a Hun chieftain named
Ambazuces. He adds that, toward the end of his life, Ambazuces offered to hand
over the fortress and the Caspian Gates to the Romans, but Anastasius declined
the offer because of the challenges of sustaining an army in that remote area. At
this point, the Sasanians seized the occasion to regain control of the
fortifications, and upon the death of Ambazuces, Kavadh I overpowered the
latter’s sons.12
Sasanian interest in controlling the Dariali fortress was no doubt part of wider
efforts by the Sasanian kingdom to secure the Caucasian passes against nomadic
incursions. These efforts were not limited to the construction of the Biraparakh
fortress. Archaeological excavations conducted during the 1970s at the site of
the Khumara fortress, in the Kuban valley north of Karachayevsk, have exposed
the ruins of a Zoroastrian fire temple, located at the gate of the fort and dating to
the Sasanian period. Subsequent archaeological excavations in the early 1980s
resulted in the discovery of further evidence of a Sasaninan presence in the area,
specifically an inscription in Middle Persian attributing the construction of the
fortress to a certain Bahrān.13 According to János Harmatta, Bahrān was a
commander in chief of the Persian king Pērōz I (r. 459–484) and the fort should
be dated to the mid-fifth century.14 By contrast, Gadjiev Murtazali argues that
the Sasanian fortifications in the Kuban River valley were erected in the 560s,
during the reign of Khosrow Anōshirvān.15 While the debate about its dating
remains open, the Khumara fortress points to the presence of a Sasanian outpost
in the northwestern Caucasus. Harmatta correctly regards these fortifications “as
a faraway advanced military post that inhibited the approach to the Alān Gate
[i.e., the Dariali Gorge].”16
 The Persian fortresses at the Dariali Pass and in the Kuban valley were part of
a complex system of fortifications built by the Sasanians on their northern limes.
The walls at Darband are probably the most famous and best documented
example of this defensive complex in the Caucasian area. Archaeologists have
dated them to the reign of Yazdegard II (r. 438–457), and specifically to the
period between 439 and 450, the first Persian attempts to seal the pass between
the western shore of the Caspian Sea and the eastern end of the Caucasus.17
These fortifications were destroyed in 450 during a rebellion of Armenians and
Albanians. On that occasion, rebel troops marched to the Chor pass at Darband
and killed the Sasanian garrison.18 The Armenian historian Ełishe (fifth or sixth
century)19 reports that when Yazdegard received notice of the rebellion, he “was
exceedingly chagrined, not only over the ravaging of the lands and the loss of
troops, but even more at the destruction of the Pass: only with difficulty over a
long time had they been able to fortify it, but then it had been taken easily and
razed, and there was no likelihood of its being rebuilt.”20 New walls were
reconstructed during the second reign of Kavadh I (498–531), and subsequently
three building phases have been identified by archaeologists, the last one dating
to the end of the reign of Khosrow Anōshirvān.21 This new, more extended,
complex of fortifications may also have been motivated by the recession of the
Caspian Sea by mid-sixth century—a natural phenomenon that arguably
intensified the need to seal the passage exposed by the declining sea level.22
In sum, it appears that from at least the fifth century onward the Sasanian
kingdom engaged in considerable efforts to secure its northern frontiers in the
Caucasus.23 During the reign of Pērōz I (r. 459–484), the extension of Sasanian
control to almost the entire Transcaucasus redoubled the importance of
exercising close control over the mountain passes to prevent nomadic raids.24 At
the same time, control of the Caucasian routes also was important for the
prevention or suppression of rebellions. At several stages in their clashes against
the Sasanian occupiers, the local populations of Armenia, Iberia, and Albania
sought the military support of Hunnic tribes from beyond the Caucasian rocky
barrier. Similar circumstances are described in several sources. According to the
fifth-century History of the Armenians, attributed to a certain Agat‘angełos,
during a conflict against the founder of the Sasanian Empire, Ardashir I (r. 224–
242), the Armenian king Khosrov led a force of Armenians, Iberians, and
Albanians against the Gates of the Alans (i.e., the Dariali Pass) and against the
Guard of Chor (i.e., the Darband wall). This attack was directed at the mountain
passes to provide access to Hunnic troops for raids into Persian territory.
Similarly, Ełishe and Łazar P’arpec’i mention that after destroying the
fortifications at Darband in 450, the leaders of the Armenian-Albanian rebels
sent an embassy to the Huns to stipulate an alliance against the Sasanians.25
Ełishe also reports that a few years later, ca. 459, during an anti-Persian rebellion
led by Vače, ruler of Albania, the Albanian rebels breached the Chor pass at
Darband and encouraged Mazkʿutʿkʿ’s troops to raid Sasanian territory. At this
point, however, probably between 461 and 463, the Persians enlisted the aid of a
contingent of nomadic warriors to retaliate against the rebels, and Pērōz
fomented the Xaĭlendur’s raids on Albanian territory through the Dariali Gorge.2
6
Thus, the fortresses that blocked the Caucasian passes not only prevented
nomadic incursions, but also regulated them according to political needs. By
establishing control of the mountain passes, the Persians could allow or block, at
their convenience, the passage of allies or enemies. Once they achieved
monopoly on these strategic corridors, the Sasanians had in their hands a
powerful card to play at the foreign policy table, especially in their relationship
with the Byzantine Empire, whose eastern territories were also susceptible to
Hunnic raids. Throughout the fifth century, the Sasanians sent ambassadors to
Byzantium to demand financial and military contributions toward the defense of
the Caspian Gates and to patrol the area against nomadic incursions. While it has
occasionally been claimed that these excursions resulted in written agreements
between the two empires, it is likely that no such entente was ever reached.27
Rather, the two superpowers engaged in frequent negotiations that in some
periods resulted in temporary payments by the Byzantines in support of Sasanian
military activities against the Huns on the northern frontiers.
The passage cited above from John Lydus suggests that inconclusive talks
were held from the last quarter of the fourth century. Lydus also reports that “this
affair dragged on until the reign of our Emperor Anastasius [r. 491–518], being
talked over, decreed about and, in short, having been prevaricated over.”28 Other
sources confirm that the Roman contribution to the defense of the Caucasian
passes remained an open issue over the period of time indicated by Lydus.
Priscus records that in 464–465, Pērōz’s emissaries claimed that “the Romans,
through a contribution of money, should show interest in the fortress of
Ioureiopaach, situated at the Caspian Gates, or they should at least send soldiers
to guard it.”29 As noted, the same request was repeated two years later, following
the Saraguri raids in Iberia and Armenia, when the Sasanians asked for Roman
subsidies to defend the Dariali Gorge. Priscus affirms that the Persian
ambassadors “repeated what had often been said by their embassies, that since
they were facing the fighting and refusing to allow access to the attacking
barbarian peoples, the Romans’ territory remained unravaged.”30 The Sasanian
requests were rejected, with the Romans claiming that each empire must defend
its own lands. However, a few years later, during the reign of emperor Zeno (r.
474–491), the Roman position apparently changed.
According to Ps.-Joshua the Stylite, Pērōz received Byzantine payments for
his wars against the Hephtalite Huns.31 Indeed, Zeno provided money to pay the
ransom of the Persian king, who, in 469, was captured in combat after suffering
a major defeat by the Hephtalites. In the following years, Pērōz conducted other
ill-fated campaigns against the Huns, culminated in the disastrous battle of Herat
in 484, during which the Sasanian sovereign died on the battlefield. Ps.-Joshua
reports that after Pērōz’s death, Zeno ended the payments, rejecting the requests
for money advanced by Pērōz’s brother, the new Persian king Balash (r. 484–
488). According to Ps.-Joshua, Zeno rejected Balash’s demands because of the
Sasanian refusal to surrender Nisibis, in disregard of a treaty that stipulated the
return of the city to the Byzantines at the end of 120 years from its occupation by
the Persians in 363.32 It is doubtful, however, that such a treaty ever existed. As
Blockley observes, it is more likely that Zeno exploited the difficulties that the
Sasanian empire was facing during the reign of Balash and during the first reign
of Kavadh (488–496).33 One wonders whether the Byzantine decision to end the
subsidies to the Persians for their military activities against the Huns was also
connected to the Sasanian loss of control of the fortifications at Dariali, which
probably occurred in that same period. Notably, it was only during the second
reign of Kavadh (498–531), and arguably after the Persians had reacquired
control over the Dariali Gorge in the circumstances described above, that the
Byzantines renewed payments for guarding the Caspian Gates.
Either way, after being deposed by a court conspiracy in 496, Kavadh was
restored to the throne with the help of the Hephtalites two years later, in 498.34
Kavadh reportedly approached Anastasius to ask for the money he needed to
repay his Hunnic allies. According to Procopius, Anastasius’s advisors
recommended against the concession of such payments, as they would further
improve the relationship between Byzantium’s Sasanian rivals and the Hun
Hephtalites. Instead, “it was better for the Romans”—the advisors observed
—“to disturb their relations as much as possible.”35 The Roman rebuttal of
Persian demands provoked Kavadh’s decision to lead an expedition against the
Byzantine Empire. War broke out in 502 and a seven-year truce was proclaimed
four years later, in 506.36 John Lydus informs us that the question of a Roman
contribution to the defense of the Biraparakh fortress figured prominently in the
truce negotiations. According to the Byzantine historian, “the strife came to an
end when certain modest favours were granted to Kavadh by Anastasius.”37 As
Blockley observes, “if Lydus is referring to the truce payments, then Kawad had
achieved what his predecessors had failed to do by obtaining regular payments
for seven years from the Romans, which were earmarked for the upkeep of the
Caspian Gates.”38 However, Blockely points out that there is no unequivocal
evidence indicating that the truce payments were formally linked to the defense
of the Caucasian passes.39 Anastasius probably considered those payments as the
price of the truce, as he likely preferred to avoid the establishment of a precedent
for the payment of an annual subsidy to the Persians. Be that as it may, the
agreement ended with the expiration of the truce in 513. The lack of a well-
defined agreement over the issue of the Caspian Gates would provide the
Sasanians with the pretext to reopen hostilities fourteen years later, in 527.
Zachariah of Mytilene (d. after 536) informs us that in that year, Kavadh sent
an ambassador who “insistently made demands for the payment of the tribute of
five gold centenaria which was given to him by the king of the Romans on
account of the cost of the Persian army guarding the gates facing the Huns.”40
When the Roman refused, the Persian king ordered his Arab allies to plunder
Byzantine territory. The Byzantines retaliated by attacking Arzanene. Hostilities
continued for five years. The question of the Caspian Gates was brought up
during the negotiations of 530. According to Procopius, during these talks,
Kavadh reminded the Byzantine ambassador Rufinus about Anastasius’s refusal
to purchase the Caspian Gates because of the high cost of maintaining a garrison
there. The Persian king then complained that the Romans were benefiting from
the Persian efforts to secure the pass, but that the expenses were paid entirely by
the Sasanians.41 Furthermore, since 505 the question of the defense of the
Caucasian passes had intersected with another thorny issue in the relationship
between the two empires. In that year, Anastasius ordered the construction of
fortifications at the frontier village of Dara.42 As Kavadh complained to
Byzantine diplomats, two armies were now required to defend the Persian
borders: one against the Huns at the Caspian Gates, and one against the
Byzantines in Dara. During the talks of 530, Kavadh demanded that either the
fortifications at Dara should be dismantled, or the Byzantines should contribute
to the maintenance of the defense of the Caspian Gates—by sending either
money or soldiers to guard them.43
Two years later, in 532, Justinian and the new Sasanian king, Kavadh’s son
Khosrow Anōshirvān, signed a peace agreement. The treaty stipulated that the
Romans withdraw the base of the dux of Mesopotamia from Dara to Constantia,
that is, into Byzantine territory, further from the Sasanian border. The Romans
also committed to pay the Sasanians the amount of 110 centenaria (ca. 11,000
pounds of gold). According to Procopius, Khosrow insisted that the purpose of
that payment was to avoid compelling the Romans to either dismantle the
fortifications at Dara or share the costs of the patrol of the Caspian Gates.44 It
thus appears that Khosrow was continuing his father’s attempts to link the peace
between the two empires to the Byzantine payment of subsidies—ideally in the
form of annual tributes—for the Sasanian defense of the Caucasian passes. This
disputed issue, however, was not solved by the treaty signed by the Persian king
and Justinian. As noted, the title of “Eternal Peace” masked a fragile agreement
that could not fulfill such optimistic expectations. In fact, the peace was
ephemeral and short. A few years later, when the two empires reopened
hostilities, the question of the Caspian Gates would still figure as a main source
of contention.
In 540, after the sacking of Antioch, Khosrow tried to extort additional
money from Justinian for securing the Caucasian passes against the Huns.
Procopius reports that Khosrow asked the Romans to pay an annual amount of
gold, in return for which “the Persians will maintain a constant peace with them,
guarding the Caspian Gates themselves and no longer feeling resentment
towards them on account of the city of Dara.”45 An agreement was reached and
the Sasanians retired from Antioch with fifty centenaria and the promise of an
annual tribute of five centenaria to come. Twenty-two years later, in 562, when
the two emperors signed the so-called Fifty-Year Peace, the defense of the
Caucasian passes again occupied a prominent position, appearing as the first
clause of the treaty. According to Menander Protector (mid-sixth century), the
clause read as follows: “Through the pass at the place called Tzon and through
the Caspian Gates the Persians shall not allow the Huns or Alans or other
barbarians access to the Roman empire, nor shall the Romans either in this area
or on any other Persian borderlands send an army against the Persians.”46 In the
preliminary negotiations, the Romans had agreed to pay an annual amount of
30,000 gold numismata (ca. 400 pounds of gold).47 Notably, the Romans appear
to have managed once again to keep this payment separate from the question of
the defense of the Gates. As Blockley observes: “The yearly payments were not
towards the defense of the Caucasus but for peace, on condition that the terms of
the treaty were adhered to on both sides. The Persians, who had perhaps at this
point completed a program of military colonization in the Caucasus, agreed to
defend the area without designated remuneration; and this issue was never raised
again.”48 This was indeed the last time—at least according to sources—that the
Sasanians advanced demands for contributions to the defense of the Caspian
Gates.
In sum, the defense of the Caucasian borders from Hunnic incursions was a
main point of contention between the two empires during the fifth and sixth
centuries. The situation appears to have been exacerbated since the beginning of
Kavadh’s second reign, in 498, when the Sasanians increasingly adopted the
Roman refusals to provide subsidies as casus belli. Both Kavadh and his son
Khosrow reportedly initiated hostilities when their demands for funds were
declined. What is certain is that Sasanian attempts to extort money for the
defense of the Caspian Gates preoccupied Justinian for most of his reign. One
dispute between the two rivals concerned the manner in which the Roman
payments to the Sasanians should be formally presented. Sources suggest a
dynamic in which the Persians tried to establish a connection between the
defense of the Gates and the gold received as part of the peace treaties, while the
Romans tried to keep the two elements separate. Byzantine emperors were
probably trying to avoid any agreement that would formalize the guarding of the
Caucasian passes as a unilateral Persian endeavor funded by Roman gold, and
rebutted Sasanian attempts to obtain regular payments by insisting on the
extraordinary and time-limited character of the subsidies.49 The main issue was
probably the Roman desire to prevent these subventions from becoming
permanent annual payments, since that might expose Byzantium to the risk of
being represented as a tributary state of the Persians.
The Romans had good reason to fear this outcome. Such humiliating
conditions had already materialized in the third century, when the Roman
purchase of peace was represented in Sasanian inscriptions and coins with Rome
in a state of capitulation and submission.50 Tributes played a prominent role in
Sasanian political culture, in which the payment of gold was equated to a status
of subordination. This idea was refined at the Persian court during the late
Sasanian period and found expression in the complex political cosmology of the
Book of Kings. As Richard Payne observes: “In its mythologized representations
of Roman–Iranian relations, the Book of Kings identified the payment of tribute
as the means through which the reunification of the world could be realized
without eliminating the rival systems of political leadership with which the
Iranian kings had to contend.”51 Most likely the Byzantines did not understand
the complexities of this ideological system, but they understood that payments to
the Sasanians might be represented as a sign of political subjugation.
Byzantine authors engage with this risk, which no doubt animated lively
political discussions in Byzantine society. Ps.-Joshua the Stylite categorically
rebuts the idea that the subventions paid to the Persians at the time of Zeno were
equivalent to tributes. He writes: “The kings of the Persians have been sending
ambassadors and receiving gold for their needs; but it was not in the way of
tribute that they received it, as many thought.”52 Ps.-Joshua mentions a treaty
between Byzantines and Sasanians that stipulated mutual assistance on the two
empires in case of need. He also says that Romans respected this treaty by
providing the Persians with money, even if they never found themselves in need
of Persian help.53 Ps.-Joshua clearly tries to attribute the Sasanian collection of
Byzantine money to their weakness, not to their political superiority.
In spite of the report’s underlying agenda, Ps.-Joshua’s reference to a mutual
aid agreement has some credibility. In chapter XVIII of his Chronicle, John
Malalas twice refers to a similar arrangement. The author quotes a letter that
Khosrow allegedly sent to Justinian in 529. In the letter, the Persian king refers
to a written document—purportedly found among the Sasanian records—stating
that the two empires committed to provide mutual military or financial help upon
request. Khosrow complained that the Roman emperors Anastasius and Justin (r.
518–527) did not observe this agreement, and he affirmed that this was the
reason that the Persians had opened hostilities.54 Later in the same chapter,
Malalas reports that, in 532, when Justinian and Khosrow signed the Eternal
Peace, “the two rulers agreed and said explicitly in the treaty that they were
brothers according to the ancient custom and that if one of them needed military
assistance in money or men, they should provide it without dispute.”55
The broad outlines of the entente mentioned by Malalas are similar to the
agreement reported by Ps.-Joshua the Stylite. It may be that both authors refer to
actual contemporary arrangements on the table of “international” relations
between the two empires. If the Eternal Peace did in fact include such a clause, it
would have given the Persians the right to ask for financial or military subsidies
in case of necessity, and the Sasanians would have been authorized by law to
demand payments for the defense of the Caucasian passes. Such a compromise
may have functioned to prevent the payments made to the Persians from being
turned into regular tributes and, ultimately, to avoid the risk of being presented
as tributary vassals. As Blockley observes, “the form would not be offensive to
the Romans, since, providing the payments did not become regular, the Persians
could not represent them as a one-sided commitment.”56 However, it is also
possible that similar arrangements never existed and that both Ps.-Joshua and
Malalas report a similar literary artifact, which was elaborated in order to
provide a semblance of legal legitimacy to the Roman payments and to avoid the
portrayal of these payments as tributes to the Persians.
Be that as it may, fears of being reduced to a tributary status continued to
pervade Byzantine political discourse. Procopius articulates this fear in the
reported dialogue between the Byzantine ambassadors and Khosrow during the
negotiation of Antioch in 540. After hearing Khosrow’s request for annual
payments, the Roman diplomats said: “So the Persians desire to hold the
Romans liable to the payment of tribute to them.”57 Khosrow responded: “No,
but the Romans will have the Persians as their own soldiers for the future,
providing them with a fixed payment for their service; for you provide an annual
payment of gold to some of the Huns and to the Saracens, not as tributary
subjects to them, but in order that they may guard your land unplundered for all
time.”58 It is unlikely that Khosrow ever uttered these words or that he compared
the annual tribute he demanded to the payments made by the Romans to Hunnic
and Arab tribes. Rather, the ideology described above, which represented the
Roman Caesar as a subject or a tributary partner of the Persian king of kings,
provided the intellectual framework for Khosrow’s insistence in demanding a
tribute from Byzantium. The words that Procopius puts in Khosrow’s mouth can
hardly represent the rationale of the Sasanian king. Clearly, the Byzantine
historian is addressing a Roman audience and he has a specific agenda. He wants
to reassure the reader that the annual payments by the Byzantines for the
liberation of Antioch would not turn into a permanent tribute to the Sasanians.
To this end, Procopius makes Khosrow himself argue against this possibility, and
he even inverts the situation. In his dialogue, the Persian king offers the services
of his army to the Romans, as if they were mercenary troops. The dialogue puts
the Sasanians on the same level as the Arab and Hunnic contingents that
patrolled Byzantine border territories in exchange for money.
Procopius goes to great lengths to present the issue of the Caspian Gates in a
way that does not shed negative light on Byzantine policy. The above-mentioned
report about Anastasius’s refusal to purchase control over the Dariali Pass from
the Hun Ambazuces functions as an explanation for the Romans’ lack of direct
involvement in the defense of the Caucasian passes. The text represents
Anastasius’s decision as a wise, rational choice dictated by the emperor’s
awareness of the logistical difficulties in sustaining a garrison stationed far from
Roman territory. One suspects that Procopius may have sought to deflect
criticisms from elements in Byzantine society who may have wanted to see the
empire pursuing a more aggressive policy in the Caucasus and not to leave the
Persians with a monopoly over the control of the strategic mountain passes.
Among the Byzantine authors who wrote about the Caspian Gates
controversy, John Lydus is the one who adopts the most polemical tones.
Willingness to address and reject Sasanian attempts to extort Roman money
surely shaped his hostility. This agenda is clearly at play in the passage of the De
magistratibus populi romani in which Lydus describes the talks allegedly held
by Byzantines and Sasanians in the late fourth century to establish an entente for
the defense of the Caucasian area. Lydus not only explains how the Caspian
Gates issue originated, but also demonstrates the groundlessness of Sasanian
requests. In fact, Lydus attributes the entire problem of the defense of the
Caucasian mountain passes to Sasanian ineptitude and inability to guard a
territory that—before Julian’s ill-fated Persian campaign of 363—belonged to
the Romans. According to Lydus:
as long as the Romans controlled Artaxata and the regions even beyond, they were able, since they
were on the spot, to resist them [the barbarians who might come through the Caspian Gates]. But when
they evacuated these and other regions under Jovian, the Persians were unable to defend both their own
and the former Roman territory, and unbearable turmoil constantly gripped the Armenians subject to
each state.59

Here Lydus implies that responsibility for preventing Hunnic invasions through
the Caucasian passes lay upon the shoulders of the political entity in control of
the area—a role that the Romans had performed as long as they were present in
the region. He also emphasizes that the Sasanian interest in establishing a
garrison at the Dariali Gorge was motivated by their exposure to the risk of
attack through the Gates. Implicitly, he dismisses the benefits that the Romans
would derive from the Persian fortification and defense of the pass. Finally,
when acknowledging that Roman payments were made at the time of Anastasius,
he emphasizes that the emperor conceded these payments “for the sake of peace”
and not to honor agreements previously stipulated with the rival empire. Lydus
apparently considered any kind of treaty covering the issue raised by the
Sasanians as illegitimate in the first place.
When he describes the events allegedly occurring in the fourth century, Lydus
keeps an eye on the present, as clearly emerges—among other things—from his
reference to Kavadh’s attempts to obtain payments from Justin, which
immediately precedes his report on the beginning and developments of the Gates
controversy.60 His attention to contemporary circumstances, however, calls into
question the historical accuracy of the situation he describes. Apart from what he
tells us about the establishment of a Persian fortress at the Dariali Gorge—
which, as we have seen, seems to be reliable—several elements of his report are
suspect and find no confirmation in other sources.61 In fact, no other author
mentions any diplomatic discussion over the defense of the Caspian Gates for
the period indicated by Lydus. Although early talks may very well have
occurred, the way in which they are presented is clearly influenced by the
political discourse of the mid-sixth century. More critically, it appears that
several “facts” provided by Lydus do not relate to actual events that occurred in
the late fourth or early fifth century, but are instead a back-projection of
contemporary historical circumstances.
Consider, for instance, what Lydus says about the Sasanian attack on Syria
and Cappadocia as a retaliation for the Roman failure to build their fortress and
to seal the Caucasian pass. This information is dubious for several reasons. First,
Lydus reports that the Byzantine emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395) sent a
certain Sporacius (whom he identifies as “the first Sporacius”) to negotiate with
the Persians. This name is not attested in other sources—although it has been
conjectured that the Roman diplomat sent by Theodosius was an ancestor of
Flavius Sporacius, consul in 452.62 Second, no other source refers to any Persian
aggression on Byzantine territory in the period indicated by Lydus. Andreas
Luther suggests that Lydus may be referring to the great Hunnic invasion of 395.
63 If so, the circumstances described by the Byzantine author still appear suspect.

In fact—and third—the idea that the Sasanians opened hostilities to retaliate for
the Roman refusal to contribute to the defense of the Caspian Gates appears to
be informed by events that were happening during Lydus’s lifetime. Specifically,
it recalls Kavadh’s and Khosrow’s policy to consider as casus belli the Byzantine
rejections of their demands for funds. Thus, it appears that Lydus is rewriting the
past in light of the present.
Other elements in Lydus’s report strengthen this conclusion. For instance, the
claim that the two empires contemplated a project to join forces to construct two
fortresses at the Dariali Gorge is dubious. The talks in which this project would
have been discussed allegedly occurred at a time when the two superpowers had
just reached an agreement about the reciprocal spheres of influence in the
Caucasus—notoriously, the treaty of 363, which sanctioned the Roman
expulsion from Armenia.64 It is doubtful that any of the contenders would have
encouraged any kind of military presence of the rival in the region. As Blockley
observes: “It is hard to see why the Persians, one of whose objectives in the
treaty of 363 was to get the Romans out of Armenia and who complained
strongly when they began to interfere in 369–370, would have been willing to
recognize a legitimate Roman interest in the area at such an early date.”65 Rather
than referring to events that occurred in the fourth century, Lydus likely modeled
his report on contemporary events.
The idea of a joint defense of the Caucasian passes echoes the agreements
described by Ps.-Joshua the Stylite and Malalas about the commitments of the
two empires to provide mutual military assistance.66 And Lydus’s words find
partial parallels in the above-mentioned passage of Procopius’s Wars, in which
Kavadh complains to the Roman ambassador Rufinus about the Roman refusal
to either dismantle the Dara fortifications or “that the army sent to the Caspian
Gates should be sent by both of us.”67 It thus appears that the idea of a shared
defense of the Gates was in the air at the time of Justinian and it is probable that
Lydus projected this idea backwards to the time when the dispute over the
Caucasian passes originated. His report on the Caspian Gates is therefore a
product of historical revisionism that weaves together notices of past events and
elements of contemporary political discourse in a description of the origins and
the developments of the controversy, with the clear intention of rejecting the
Sasanian demands for subsidies.

Back to the Neṣḥānā

Clearly, the defense of the Caucasian passes and the Sasanian demands to obtain
Roman subventions figure as prominent elements in relations between the two
empires during the fifth and, especially, the sixth centuries. This unsolved
political problem also generated much controversy and gave rise to an intense
debate in Byzantine society, as attested by the authors analyzed above. The
circumstances relating to the disputes over the defense of the Caspian Gates
should be considered as background for the emergence of the story of
Alexander’s gate in the Neṣḥānā. This is apparent from a passage in the Syriac
work, toward the end of the text, which describes the peace talks between
Alexander and Tūbarlaq after a battle fought by the Greeks and the Persians.
After defeating Tūbarlaq and agreeing to a peace treaty, Alexander reaches an
agreement with the defeated enemy in order to establish a joint defense of the
gate that he erected in the Caucasus. According to this entente, the two kings
agree to send six thousand soldiers each to guard the gate, and to share the costs
of provisions for these troops—with each sovereign committing to provide food
and drink for his soldiers. This passage of the Neṣḥānā echoes the long and
controversial attempts between Constantinople and Ctesiphon to reach an
agreement over the defense of the Caspian Gates from attacks by the nomads
from Central Asia.
Several aspects of the agreement stipulated by Alexander and Tūbarlaq point
to the influence of Byzantine political discourse. For instance, the mutual entente
is presented as a supplement to the conditions which Alexander accepts to end to
the conflict and to let Tūbarlaq live. It is only after the terms of the peace have
been established that the two kings sit and discuss the possibility of a joint
defense against the Huns. Notably, the author of the Neṣḥānā does not connect
the entente reached by the two former enemies over the question of the gate to
the fifteen-year tribute that the Persian king committed to pay to Alexander in
exchange for peace (and for his life). For the author of the Neṣḥānā, the defense
of Alexander’s gate is independent from the maintenance of peace with his
Persian adversary. The author’s position appears to reflect precisely the
Byzantine point of view on the much-debated issue of the Caspian Gates and
follows the way in which the Byzantines tried to deal with it during their
negotiations with the Sasanians, that is, their efforts to keep the question of the
Caucasian passes separate from payments made to end hostilities. As a person
ostensibly familiar with contemporary events and political discussions, our
author models his representation of agreement between Alexander and Tūbarlaq
on common Byzantine reactions to Sasanian demands for money for the defense
of the Gates.
Despite attributing the fortification of the Caucasian defensive systems to
Byzantium’s ancestor, Alexander, and despite describing a situation in which
Persia is at the mercy of the Greco-Roman Empire, the Syriac writer does not
portray his hero demanding any payment for the defense of the gate from his
defeated enemy, Tūbarlaq. As we will see later, in the description of the treaty
between Alexander and Tūbarlaq, our author inverts the clauses of actual peace
agreements signed by Byzantines and Sasanians over the course of the sixth
century, and presents the Persians as paying the Romans a tribute that in fact was
paid by the Byzantines. The fact that the author does not invert the historical
reality for the defense of the Gates may be taken as a (not so veiled) criticism of
ongoing Sasanian requests for money for the patrol of the Caucasian passes. The
perceived unreasonableness and groundlessness of the pretensions advanced by
Sasanian sovereigns are highlighted by the contrast with the virtuous example of
Alexander and his rational policies about the gate that he constructed. His
agreement with Tūbarlaq is meant to represent a model of cooperation between
the two empires, which sought to defend their respective borders against the
danger of Hunnic incursions.
The Syriac writer’s description of the Greco-Persian entente was also
influenced by the sixth-century political debate surrounding the Caspian Gates.
The idea of a shared patrol, with shared costs, recalls pacts of mutual financial
and military assistance reported by Malalas and Ps.-Joshua the Stylite, and the
alleged project of a simultaneous, “bi-imperial” military presence in defense of
the Caucasus reported by Lydus. These kinds of agreements or projects may
have never been in actual use or development, but they were surely features in
the contemporary discussion about how to solve the old dispute of the Gates.
The author of the Neṣḥānā was ostensibly familiar with the elements of this
debate and modeled his text on these patterns. The entente reached by Alexander
and Tūbarlaq idealizes how the two empires should deal with the attacks of
nomadic warriors through the Caucasian passes, and also represents the Syriac
author’s proposed solution to the Roman-Persian quarrels over this issue. His
literary elaboration may also reveal his dissatisfaction with the pacts stipulated
under Justinian and may reflect an intent common to many of his
contemporaries, that is, to call on Byzantine emperors to play a more active role
in the Transcaucasian arena. As we will see in the following chapters, this would
not be the only critique of Justinian in the Syriac work.
Some seventy years ago, Czeglédy observed that the understanding reached
by the two kings in the Syriac work recalls actual historical agreements between
Byzantines and Sasanians about the defense of the Gates.68 In fact, the situation
is more complex than that envisaged by the Hungarian scholar. Pace Czeglédy,
Persian-Roman talks over the defense of the Caspian Gates never resulted in “the
custom of the Roman and Persian rulers to join in the maintenance of the
Caucasian fortifications.”69 As noted, Roman-Persian ententes over this thorny
issue were reached on different occasions, but mostly as temporary agreements
that never fully solved the problem—with the exception, perhaps, of the Fifty-
Year Peace of 562, after which the Caspian Gates issue was never raised again.
The conflictual character of the negotiations over the question of the Caucasian
passes and the difficulties encountered by the two empires in reaching a lasting
compromise are key factors in understanding the exact historical scenario behind
the Neṣḥānā. The reference to this particular element of the Byzantine-Sasanian
peace talks clearly indicates that at the time when the Syriac author was writing,
the Gates still represented a sensitive question in the relationship between the
two empires, contrary to Czeglédy’s claim that this section of the Neṣḥānā
addresses the historical context of the 630s, and specifically the conflict between
Heraclius and Khosrow Parvēz. In fact, nothing suggests that Heraclius (or any
Byzantine emperor who ascended the throne after the Fifty-Year Peace) ever
faced Sasanian recriminations over the defense of the Caucasian passes.
Moreover, the peace agreements stipulated by Heraclius at the end of the conflict
do not include any clause about the defense of the Caucasian passes.70 By
contrast, the Neṣḥānā specifically recalls a proviso which, as we have seen,
figures in various peace settlements between the two empires during the sixth
century, which appears as the most likely context for the composition of at least
this section of the Syriac work. Moreover, as we will soon see, the author of the
Neṣḥānā specifically links his position on the issue of the Caspian Gates to
another disputed point of contention between the two empires in the sixth
century.

The Story of the Blacksmiths from Egypt in the Context of the

Sixth-Century Lazic War
At the beginning of the Syriac work, before starting his journey to the edges of
the earth, Alexander briefly visits Egypt. Here, the chiefs of his army advise him
to recruit blacksmiths who specialize in iron and bronze. Alexander thus asks the
king of Egypt, Sarnaqōs, for seven thousand smiths. The recruitment of the
workers comes with an agreement between the two kings. Alexander commits to
return the blacksmiths to Egypt once he completes his tour. However, if the
blacksmiths request not to be returned to their country of origin, Alexander and
Sarnaqōs agreed that they would inhabit a territory that Alexander would grant
them. In this case, the blacksmiths would not pay tribute to Alexander, but they
would give him customs duties (ṭyrwnʾ). The terms of the agreement are oddly
specific but, as will become clear later in the text, have a specific function. In
fact, at the end of the Neṣḥānā, after the blacksmiths have helped Alexander to
build the gate against the Huns, and after Alexander’s victory in battle over
Tūbarlaq, we learn that Alexander gives the blacksmiths the lands of Bēt Dmʾ
and Bēt Dwšr to cultivate and dwell in. On this occasion, the author reiterates the
terms of the agreement with Sarnaqōs according to which the blacksmiths do not
pay tribute to Alexander.
While it may appear as a secondary element in the narrative, the story of the
Egyptian blacksmiths allows us to better understand key elements of the text.
First, the story clarifies the geography behind the episode of Alexander’s gate. I
have not been able to establish the exact location of Bēt Dmʾ, one of the two
territories that the blacksmiths receive from Alexander, while Bēt Dwšr, the
other territory assigned to the blacksmiths, may correspond to Dioscurias
(Διοσκουριὰς), the ancient name of Sebastopolis, a Roman city in the Colchis. In
fact, this is exactly the geographical location that emerges from the study of the
literary background of the story of the Egyptian blacksmiths.
Previous scholars have not identified in the episode of the Egyptian
blacksmiths a readaptation of an older legend already reported by Herodotus (d.
ca. 425 BCE) and, subsequently, by Diodorus Siculus (d. ca. 30 BCE). According
to the former, the semi-mythical Egyptian pharaoh Sesostris embarked upon a
military campaign in Asia Minor and Europe, where he defeated Scythians and
Thracians. On his way back to Egypt, Sesostris arrived at the Phasis River (the
modern Rioni River, in Western Georgia), where he divided his army and left
some soldiers to settle the region. Herodotus uses this story to advocate for his
theory that the inhabitants of the Colchis are of Egyptian descent.71 Diodorus
Siculus reports the same story and affirms that the Colchians descend from the
soldiers left by Sesostris near lake Maeotis (i.e., the Sea of Azov). As support for
this theory, Diodorus mentions that the Colchians, like the Egyptians, practice
circumcision. Significantly, Diodorus Siculus affirms that Sesostris’s expedition
reached the same territories that would later be conquered by Alexander. In
doing so, he provides an early example of overlap between the military
campaigns of the two mythical kings. The association between the two
characters is not peculiar to Diodorus; it is explicitly formulated in the oldest
recension of the Alexander Romance (α). Here, Alexander encounters Sesostris,
whose name is spelled as Sesonchosis. The pharaoh, divinized and sitting among
the gods, bears the same title, kosmokrator, that is applied to Alexander.72 As
Krysztof Nawotka observes: “In the Egyptian logos of the Alexander Romance,
which found its origin in Hellenistic times, Sesonchosis became the ideological
predecessor of Alexander the kosmokrator.”73 These earlier overlappings
between the two characters may explain how the story of Sesostris’s soldiers
came to be incorporated within a tradition concerning Alexander.74
The story of Sesostris’s campaigns was known to a number of sixth-century
historians, including Jordanes, who mentions this story in the section of his work
that immediately precedes the description of the Caspian Gates.75 His version of
the legend, however, differs slightly from those found in Herodotus and
Diodorus Siculus, as Jordanes adapts the story of the Egyptian settlers to his
main narration about the Goths. Jordanes affirms that Sesostris was defeated by
the Gothic king Tanausis, that Tanausis later subjugated most of Asia, and that
some of his soldiers settled the conquered provinces. The descendants of these
soldiers, according to Jordanes, are the Parthians. A more faithful report of the
legend is provided by Agathias, who uses the story of Sesostris’s soldiers to
explain the ethnogenesis of the people of Lazica. Agathias affirms that “the
inhabitants of Lazica were called Colchians in ancient times, so the Lazi and the
Colchians are the same people.”76 His version of the legend is a foundation myth
for the establishment of the Lazi kingdom, which at the time he was writing
occupied the entire Colchian area.77
The legend of the Egyptian soldiers who arrived in Colchis with Sesostris’s
army and settled in that region is the basis for the episode of the blacksmiths
from Egypt in the Neṣḥānā. The name of the Egyptian king, Sarnaqōs, is clearly
an adaptation of the alternative name under which Sesostris appears in the
sources, that is, Sesonchosis. The Syriac version of the Alexander Romance
attests to the instability of the name Sesonchosis in the Syriac tradition. In the
Syriac Romance, Sesonchosis is spelled as either sysnqws,78 sysnqwsys,79
sysyqwss,80 sysyqwnws,81 sysnyqws,82 or sywsynyqws.83 Clearly Sarnaqōs
(srnqws) represents still another variation of Sesonchosis, or is intentionally
derived from this. Even if, for narrative purposes, in the Neṣḥānā the Egyptian
soldiers are turned into blacksmiths—while Alexander plays the role of Sesostris
—the broad outline of the stories is still similar. The Syriac author has
reformulated the story of Sesostris’s Egyptian settlers in order to portray the
Colchians/Lazi as the descendants of the Egyptian blacksmiths who reached the
area with Alexander and who built his gate against the Huns. This portrayal
brings to mind the claim made by Jordanes that the Lazi controlled the Caspian
Gates on behalf of the Romans. In the Neṣḥānā, Alexander’s blacksmiths are the
ancestors of the Colchians/Lazi, just as Sesostris’s soldiers are the ancestors of
that same people in Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Agathias. Importantly, the
story’s literary background confirms what has been posited above, namely, that
the imagery used by the author in the episode of Alexander’s gate is related to
the Caucasus. Clearly, the author has conflated the traditions about Alexander’s
iron gates and the Colchians’ Egyptian origins, both of which were associated
with the same geographical area.
Even after reconstructing the literary background of the story, the episode of
the Egyptian blacksmiths remains puzzling, as it lacks any clear role in the
narration. Of course, the enrollment of workers specializing in iron and bronze
explains why Alexander is able to erect a gate made of these materials after
arriving in the Caucasus. However, the story could have been told without any
mention of the blacksmiths’ country of origin. Indeed, Alexander’s brief visit to
Egypt and encounter with Sarnaqōs does not generate any other narrative
development. If the author made his hero pass by Egypt, where the only thing he
does is to hire local workers, it is because he really wanted to relate these
workers to that country. For what purpose? Why did the author want us to
believe that the inhabitants of Lazica are the descendants of the workers enrolled
by Alexander in Egypt?
The Syriac writer explains the enrollment of workers from Egypt by making
Alexander’s generals say: “King Alexander, since the army cannot travel without
smiths, command that they come with us from Egypt, since there are not on the
surface of the Earth smiths like those from Egypt.”84 This explanation, however,
is hardly satisfying. Even if the author wants to convince the reader that
Alexander’s gate was made by the finest blacksmiths on earth, one wonders why
he provided so many details about the workers’ status, the country in which they
decided to settle, and the king to whom they would pay taxes. Nothing of the
sort occurs in any version of Sesostris’s story, which provides no information
whatsoever about the “administrative” status of the Egyptian settlers. Clearly, the
Syriac author added these to emphasize the conditions in which Alexander’s
blacksmiths agreed to settle the Lazi region. But why was it so important for him
to highlight the blacksmiths’ decision to settle in the lands that they received
from King Alexander and to pay him customs duties? The sixth-century
historical context of the story helps us to explain this point. I now turn to the
historical events that lay behind the episode of Alexander’s gate. To this
purpose, we must return to Agathias.
When referring to the alleged Egyptian origins of the inhabitants of Lazica,
Agathias affirms: “these Lazi, Colchians, Egyptian migrants or what have you,
have become a bone of contention in our day and age, and innumerable battles
have been fought for the sake of their land.”85 Here, Agathias refers to the
tensions between Byzantines and Sasanians over the control of the kingdom of
Lazica, over which both imperial powers asserted a claim in the sixth century.
Disputes over the reciprocal spheres of influence in Lazica resulted in a series of
wars, interrupted by precarious truces and diplomatic agreements. The longest of
these armed confrontations lasted more than two decades, from 541 to 562, with
the Lazi rebelling at different stages against both the Byzantines and the
Sasanians and fighting on both sides of the battlefield according to the mood of
the moment.86 The quarrels had already begun when, in 524/525, an Iberian
uprising against the Persians and their defection to the Romans brought the two
empires to confrontation in the Caucasus.87 As a consequence of the so-called
Eternal Peace, signed by Justinian and Khosrow Anōshirvān in 532, the Romans
retained full control over Lazica.88 The peace, however, was not destined to be
eternal. In 541, dissatisfaction with Roman rule and anger at the thievery
committed by imperial officials led the Lazi to request Persian intervention. The
Lazian king Gubazes II (r. ca. 541–555) formally handed over his kingdom to
Khosrow.89 However, six years later, dissatisfied with Khosrow’s policies in
Lazica and concerned by the missionary activities of the Zoroastrian priests,
Gubazes switched back to the Roman side and reconciled with Justinian. The
Byzantine emperor then sent an army to support the renewed alliance with the
Lazian king.90 Nevertheless, suspicions of conspiracy and defections persisted in
the background of the Byzantine-Lazic alliance. Tensions between Byzantium
and the Lazi were exacerbated in 555, when the Lazian king was murdered by
order of Roman commanders. Two years later, in 557, hostilities in Lazica
ceased as part of a general armistice signed by the Romans and the Persians.91 In
561/562 emissaries of both empires met in the Byzantine fortified city of Dara,
on the northern Mesopotamian border, to discuss the terms of a stable peace. The
status of Lazica figured prominently in the negotiations.92
In sum, the conflict in Lazica was long and complex. It started with issues of
political influence; it proceeded with alternate demonstrations of loyalty and
disloyalty, in a climate of suspicion and fear of treason; and it ended with
unsolved questions related to legitimacy and sovereignty. It is fair to say that the
“Lazic question” was one of the most debated and contested matters in
Byzantine-Sasanian relations in the mid-sixth century. Unsurprisingly, when
describing the origins of the Lazic conflict, Agathias offers a blatantly pro-
Roman explanation that attributes the causes of the war exclusively to the
Sasanian shah Khosrow:
The Persian Emperor Chosroes had already appropriated and occupied much of their territory,
including some of the most strategically important positions. Far from entertaining any idea of relaxing
his hold on the place, he was intent on completing its subjugation. On the other hand the Roman
Emperor Justinian thought it unbearable and quite immoral to abandon Gubazes, the then king of the
Lazi, and the whole of his nation, seeing that they were subjects of the empire and linked by a common
bond of friendship and religion. Instead he did his utmost to drive out the enemy as quickly as
possible.93

Agathias highlights the status of the Lazi as “subjects of the empire and linked
by a common bond of friendship and religion.” In a context such as the Lazic
War, these claims of traditional and cultural bonds were invoked to justify an
armed imperial intervention. From this perspective, a subtle political implication
emerges from Agathias’s reference to the legend of Lazi’s alleged Egyptian
origins. By emphasizing Lazica’s ancestral connection with a country currently
part of the Byzantine Empire, he claims Byzantium’s right to intervene in the
politics of a region against its Eastern rival.94
The author of the Neṣḥānā extends this claim and further politicizes the
legend of the Lazi’s Egyptian lineage. He models aspects of the story of the
Egyptian settlers on the events of the war in Lazica to create a connection
between a fictitious past and an actual present. In fact, the regulations of the
blacksmiths’ settlement in Alexander’s lands coincide with the administrative
situation of Lazica under Roman influence in the 530s. Procopius informs us that
Roman control over the Lazi was mostly manifested through Byzantium’s
official recognition of the Lazian king at the moment of his ascent to the throne.
Besides this act of ceremonial investiture, the Lazi “dwelt in the land of Colchis
as subjects of the Romans, but not to the extent of paying them tribute or
obeying their commands in any respect.”95 However, according to Procopius, the
situation changed in the years immediately following the signing of the Eternal
Peace in 532. Roman presence in Lazica morphed into a real protectorate, with
the deployment of Roman troops in the region and the establishment of the
fortified city of Petra. From Petra, the Roman magister militum per Armeniam,
John Tzibus, established control over trade and imposed import duties and other
trade taxes on the Lazi.96 Procopius indicates Lazian anger for Roman rapacity
as a major cause for Gubazes’s decision to invoke to Khosrow’s intervention in
541.
The Neṣḥānā reflects this historical reality in at least three narrative elements.
(1) The agreement between Alexander and Sarnaqōs (according to which the
Egyptian blacksmiths would not pay tribute to Alexander but they would give
him customs duties) remarkably reflects the situation of Lazica described by
Procopius, in which the Lazi are not asked to pay tribute to the Romans but are
subject to the payment of trade duties. (2) The malevolent behavior of the
inhabitants of the region, who summon Tūbarlaq’s intervention against
Alexander, likely represents the author’s critique of the Lazic defection in favor
of the Persians. (3) The number of Egyptian blacksmiths recruited by Alexander
in the Neṣḥānā (i.e., 7,000) is identical to the number of soldiers that Justinian
sent to support the Lazi’s anti-Persian uprising in 547, when Gubazes decided to
return to Roman alliance. In fact, according to Procopius, Justinian sent 7,000
soldiers to Lazica, under the command of the magister militum per Armeniam
Dagisthaeus, accompanied by a local contingent of 1,000 Tzani.97
More important, however, are the political implications of the author’s
rewriting of the legend of the Egyptian origins of the Lazi. According to him, not
only are the people of Lazica descendants of the Egyptian blacksmiths who
accompanied Alexander on his expedition; but also their ancestors decided to
settle in the territories that Alexander conceded to them and to pay customs
duties to him. The ancestors of the Lazi were Alexander’s vassals, whom the
author portrays as the mythical founder of the Byzantine Empire. By stressing
Alexander’s possession of the territories given to the Lazi’s ancestors and their
decision to pay him taxes, the Syriac author affirms the legitimacy of
Byzantium’s claim to rule over these lands and people. His point of view does
not differ much from Justinian’s claims in his Novella XXVIII for near-complete
control over Lazica.98
It thus appears that the author of the Neṣḥānā has rewritten the story of the
Egyptian settlers of the Colchis in order to address Roman-Persian disputes over
the control of Lazica in the second half of the sixth century. At the same time,
the events of the Lazic War are not the only ones that frame the episode of
Alexander’s gate narrated in the Neṣḥānā. As seen, the Syriac author also points
to tension between the two empires over the issue of the Caspian Gates. His
decision to combine two earlier traditions—that of Alexander’s iron gates in the
Caucasus and that of the Egyptian settlers of Colchis—clearly was driven not
only by the fact that both legends refer to the same geographical area, but also by
his willingness to address two major political problems that concerned those
very same regions during his lifetime. The author masterfully reworks
previously independent literary materials and adapts them to contemporary
historical circumstances.
The author’s decision to connect the two disputes over the Lazian kingdom
and over the Caspian Gates ostensibly reflects the influence of contemporary
Byzantine political discourse. There is evidence that these two points of
contention between the two empires were closely related. This, of course, comes
as no surprise, given the geographical proximity of the Lazian kingdom to the
controversial Caucasian passes. But it was not a mere matter of geography.
Lazica and the Caucasian passes were also connected by questions of political
influence and military considerations. Procopius informs us that before their
desertion in favor of the Persians, the Lazi had collaborated with the Byzantines
in securing imperial borders. It is noteworthy that Procopius emphasizes that the
Lazi would guard the Roman borders against Hunnic incursions without
receiving either military or financial support from the Romans.99 It is difficult
not to see in this assertion an allusion to Sasanian demands to receive money or,
less frequently (and less insistently), troops from the Romans as a contribution to
the defense of the Caspian Gates. Procopius connects this passage to the other
passages in his work in which he describes the claims advanced by several
Persian sovereigns to provide a service that the Romans already received for free
from their collaboration with the Lazian kingdom.
Equally important, the loss of Roman influence over Lazica would result,
among other things, in leaving the Persians in full control over the regions that
could secure the empire from Hunnic attacks. Procopius gives voice to these
fears in the same section of his work. He claims that one of Khosrow’s main
interests in securing Sasanian control over Lazica was connected to the region’s
strategic location and its possible role in containing Hunnic attacks if the
Caucasian defense systems were overcome. Controlling the area would also have
allowed the Persians to redirect Hunnic raids toward the lands of the Romans,
according to their own needs. In the words of the Byzantine historian: “The
Persian empire would be forever free from plunder by the Huns who lived next
to Lazica, and he would send them against the Roman domains more easily and
readily, whenever he should so desire. For he considered that, as regards the
barbarians dwelling in the Caucasus, Lazica was nothing else than a bulwark
against them.”100 Whether or not these claims are true, Procopius’s attribution of
similar plans to Khosrow shows that in the eyes of a contemporary Byzantine
war commentator, the disputed control over the Lazian kingdom was closely
related to the defense of the Caucasian passes against the Huns.
The evidence provided by Procopius about the Lazi’s role in securing the
Byzantine frontiers against Hunnic raids brings to mind the report by Jordanes,
according to whom the Lazi controlled the Caspian Gates on behalf of the
Romans. The reliability of this claim is questionable, as no other source, as far as
I know, describes the Lazi as in control of the Gates. It is possible that Jordanes
was confused on this point by the role that the Lazi had traditionally played in
securing the Byzantine northern frontiers as part of their agreements with the
empire. At the same time, one wonders whether Jordanes—who probably
resided in the imperial capital during the Persian wars—could have been
unaware of the ongoing dispute surrounding the Caspian Gates or uninformed
about the political situation in the Caucasus. Rather than a sign of his ignorance,
the information he provides about the Lazi’s alleged role in patrolling the Gates
may reveal his intention to rebut the Sasanian demands for Roman money. By
attributing to the Lazi control over the Caspian Gates and by emphasizing the
collaboration of the Lazian kingdom in securing the imperial borders, Jordanes
may have wanted to suggest (without directly entering into the discussion) the
groundlessness of Sasanian claims to defend Byzantium from Hunnic incursions.
Be that as it may, the information reported by Jordanes about Lazi’s control of
the Gates on behalf of the Romans corroborates the idea that in sixth-century
Byzantium, the two issues of Lazica and the Caspian Gates were intertwined.
This provides the intellectual framework for the choice made by the author of
the Neṣḥānā to link together two independent narrative traditions in order to
address those very same questions of political controversy. In his eyes, the
ongoing disputes over Lazica and over the defense of the Caucasian passes were
interconnected, as they were in the eyes of Procopius, Jordanes, and, most likely,
many other witnesses to those events who did not leave written records of their
points of view. Thus, the sixth century appears as the most plausible date for the
narrative of Alexander’s gate described in the Neṣḥānā. The historical context of
the sixth century indeed appears as the ideal scenario for an author to write a
story about Alexander’s erection of a formidable gate against the Huns—a
barrier that most contemporaries identified with the disputed Gates in the
Caucasus—with the help of loyal blacksmiths who are presented as the ancestors
of a population inhabiting a very contested region.
 A better understanding of the historical context in which the author adapted
the legend of Alexander’s iron gates also helps us to better understand the
circumstances that brought him to insert this story into the narrative. The Syriac
writer does not only use this motif to introduce his apocalyptic vision of
Byzantium’s glorious future. He focuses not only on the future and the
eschatological era, but also on the present. Against the Sasanian claim to play an
exclusive role in defending the Caucasus mountain passes from Hunnic raids,
our author revives the ancient legend according to which, long before the
Persians, Alexander had erected fortifications in the area. The construction of
majestic defense systems was a source of prestige for the political authority that
could claim it.101 Sasanian achievements in erecting monumental walls at
Darband were no doubt much celebrated by Sasanian propagandists. The legend
of Alexander’s iron gates offered the author of the Neṣḥānā an opportunity to
assert counterclaims in favor of the Roman Empire. Our author reminds us that
through the efforts made by their mythical ancestor, Alexander, to erect a
defensive structure in the Caucasus, the Romans had made an everlasting
contribution to the safety of the two empires, and of humanity in general.
Alexander’s barrier was destined to resist the final storm of Gog and Magog
until God’s decree. Against Sasanian claims to be defending both empires from
the Hunnic incursions, our author asserts Byzantium’s historical merits in
dealing with those very aggressors. When situated in the historical context that it
was intended to address, the author’s elaboration of the motif of Alexander’s
gates acquires its full meaning. Besides its undeniable eschatological value—
which will be examined in further detail later in this work—the story of
Alexander’s gate told in the Neṣḥānā also bears strong political connotations.
 5
The Conflict with Tūbarlaq

The struggle between the Greco-Roman and the Persian empires described in the
Neṣḥānā is widely regarded by scholars as an allegorical representation of the
seventh-century conflict between Byzantines and Sasanians. This idea was
expressed in the 1950s by Czeglédy, who published the notes of the late
Hungarian scholar Mihály Kmoskó in 1954, and then expanded upon them in an
article of his own in 1956.1 Czeglédy follows Kmoskó in considering the
Neṣḥānā in its present form as a seventh-century adaptation (together with Ps.-
Jacob’s metrical homily) of a previous text composed during the sixth century.
He observes: “an adaptation of this kind is a natural phenomenon in apocalyptic
literature: after the passing of the date foretold in the latest vaticination, the
subsequent adapters insert new prophecies into the text.”2
As we have seen in Chapter 3, this was surely the case for the text of the
Neṣḥānā that concerns the 940 AG prophecy. This interpolation is also
highlighted by Czeglédy in his study. By contrast, the Hungarian scholar is
vague about the period to which the section of the text describing the war
between Alexander and Tūbarlaq should be attributed. Is this also a seventh-
century insertion? Or was this section already present in the sixth-century
prototype of the text and only later was identified with the conflict in which
Heraclius opposes Khosrow Parvēz? Was the equation promulgated by Czeglédy
—“Alexander vs. Tūbarlaq = Hercalius vs. Khosrow Parvēz”—intended in the
original text, or was it only in the later period that the two enemies in the
Neṣḥānā came to be identified with the Byzantine and Sasanian rival emperors?
Czeglédy never addresses these questions. However, several elements in his
analysis suggest that he considers the war between Alexander and Tūbarlaq to be
largely a literary reproduction of the seventh-century Byzantine-Sasanian
conflict. In fact, when describing the entente between Alexander and Tūbarlaq
on the joint patrol of Alexander’s gate, Czeglédy refers to (undocumented) post-
629 renewals of previous Byzantine-Sasanian agreements on the defense of the
Caspian Gates.3 Moreover, Czeglédy considers the fifteen-year-long tribute that
Tūbarlaq committed to pay to Alexander as an unfulfilled prophecy through
which the Syriac author expressed the expectation of a Roman conquest of
Persia in 643.4 This position is untenable.
Several elements suggest that the sections about the conflict between
Alexander and Tūbarlaq go back to the historical period when the primordial
version of the text was composed, that is, the sixth century. As we have seen, the
agreement between the two kings on the defense of Alexander’s gate can only
refer to the context of the wars between Justinian and Khosrow I. Similarly—as
will become clear later in this chapter—the tribute paid by Tūbarlaq to
Alexander is also connected to the peace agreements signed by Byzantines and
Sasanians in that same period. Pace Czeglédy, the payment of a tribute described
in the Neṣḥānā is not a prognostication of events expected to occur in the
seventh century.5 Finally, secondary editorial interventions in the text of the
Neṣḥānā are detectable. This is the case for the 940 AG prophecy—the insertion
of which is betrayed by the syntactic ambiguities in the text—or for the removal
of an episode, which I have illustrated elsewhere.6 Nothing in the text suggests
that the description of Alexander’s conflict against Tūbarlaq was partially or
completely modeled on a historical context different than that of the original
prototype of the text. In other words, this section of the Neṣḥānā is not an
interpolation. At best, the triumph of Alexander over Tūbarlaq described in the
Syriac work may have come to be associated with Heraclius’s victory over the
Sasanians when, several decades later, the text attracted the interest of readers
who had just witnessed the end of another Roman-Persian conflict.
However, the idea that the war scene in the Neṣḥānā was inspired by
Heraclius’s Persian campaigns is entrenched in scholarship. Reinink considers
the section of the Neṣḥānā on the conflict against the Persians to be an
allegorical representation of Heraclius’s campaigns against the Sasanians. The
goal of the author, according to Reinink, was to convince his audience that the
deeds accomplished by Alexander in the past had been repeated by Heraclius in
the present.7 Reinink adds that the description of the war between Alexander and
Tūbarlaq reflects the views of court propagandists who wanted to celebrate
Heraclius’s success against the Sasanians. If so, many literary elements in the
section of the Syriac work about the conflict with the Persians reflect acts
performed by Heraclius and are ultimately connected to the high sacralization of
warfare promoted by the emperor. He argues that the holy war topos adopted by
the Syriac author echoes similar representations of Heraclius’s campaigns
endorsed by imperial propagandists.8 In general, Reinink builds his argument on
the corollary assumption that the Syriac work is a unitary document composed
soon after the end of the conflict in 628. As we have seen, this argument is
untenable. However, even if we ignore the problems with dating the Neṣḥānā to
the 620s, Reinink’s reading of the war scene in the Syriac text is still problematic
because there are no specific elements that connect the text to the time of
Heraclius. Most points of contact between the Neṣḥānā and the reign of
Heraclius indicated by Reinink can be traced back to earlier times.
Heraclius’s policies during and immediately after the conflict no doubt
included an unprecedented degree of religious rhetoric and a previously
unparalleled mélange of religion and warfare.9 During the reign of Heraclius,
sacred language is embedded in militarism to an extent unparalleled in earlier
times. As Walter Kaegi observes, “it is important to use caution about the notion
of Holy War prior to the seventh century.”10 Indeed, it is only under Heraclius
that we observe an unequivocal commitment by an emperor and his entourage to
promote the idea of a sacred combat, which previously had appeared largely as
an idealized representation made by Christian literati. The real difference
concerns the way and the extent to which official court propaganda adopted the
topos of divine protection over Roman armies. Heraclius’s entourage surely
brought this rhetoric to extreme levels, reaching the dialectical tones of a
crusade.
The description of the war scene in the Neṣḥānā may bring to mind the
rhetoric adopted by Heraclius’s propagandists. However, two points may be
raised against Reinink’s reading. First, it is not necessary to postulate that the
author of the Neṣḥānā was a participant in imperial propaganda, as Reinink and
his followers seem to believe. As we will see later, the Syriac author likely
composed his work to criticize, rather than celebrate, a Byzantine emperor—
specifically Justinian. Second, the attempt to connect Christian military tropes
with the warfare of Roman emperors is hardly a peculiarity of the seventh
century. The author of the Neṣḥānā uses literary topoi that circulated previously
in Christian society. These topoi were intended to celebrate the recently
converted Roman Empire as the protector of the true faith. It is in this
intellectual framework that we should trace the origins of the idea expressed by
the Syriac author that Byzantium enjoyed divine favor in its struggle against its
enemies because of its special relationship with God.
Efforts to confer an aura of divine investment on Roman military activities
are documented from the outset of the Christianization of the Roman Empire
under Constantine (r. 306–337 CE).11 The sources mention numerous cases of
miraculous intervention on the battlefield in favor of the Roman Christian army.
Unsurprisingly, divine aid in favor of the empire is also reported to have
occurred during battles fought against Sasanian armies, since the more the
empire was depicted as a blessed Christian kingdom, the more its Zoroastrian
rivals became unfaithful enemies.12 Documented since at least the fourth
century, the blend of Christianity and warfare in the representations of Roman
military activities intensified during the reign of Justinian. Even if most
Byzantine authors who wrote in this period adopted a Classical style and, as
Michael Whitby observes, “may have underplayed the religious aspects,”13 there
are clear indications that an ideology centered around the idea of God’s support
for the Roman armies was an important component of Justinian’s propaganda.
Even the classicizing author par excellence, Procopius, did not refrain from
referring to miraculous events aimed at proving the idea of divine assistance for
the emperor’s campaigns.
Frendo has pointed out that the promise of God’s assistance in favor of
Byzantium’s ruler figures most prominently in the sections of Procopius’s work
that refer to the wars against the Sasanian rival.14 For example, consider the
passage of the Wars about the exchange of messages between the Byzantine
generals Belisarius and Hermogenes and the Sasanian commander Pērōz, which
reportedly occurred in June 530. Procopius describes the Byzantine generals
expressing the idea that the justness of their war will guarantee that the Christian
God will come to their aid. As Frendo observes, “what is perhaps most
remarkable about all of this is Procopius’ determination to drag religion into
Byzantine-Iranian relations and to give it such prominence in a series of
diplomatic exchanges aimed ostensibly at averting a confrontation with the
enemy but in reality leading inexorably to battle and to a Roman victory.”15 In
other sections of his work, Procopius mentions miraculous events that prevented
the Sasanians from conquering a number of Byzantine cities. For instance, he
connects the failure of the Persian attack on Edessa in 544 to a miraculous divine
intervention. Procopius attributes this miracle to the promise of eternal
protection for the city allegedly made by Jesus in a letter to its king Abgar.16 As
Frendo rightly observes, Procopius’s elaboration of the legend of Abgar is
strongly influenced by anti-Sasanian feelings, with the idea of “divine support in
a struggle against the unbeliever” that came to be “added as a further weapon to
the panoply of Roman invincibility.”17
A similar goal lies behind the notice reported by Evagrius Scholasticus (d.
590 CE), according to which the Byzantine general Narses (d. 573 CE) would not
engage in battle without receiving a sign from the Holy Virgin—divine signs
which, according to Evagrius, were regularly sent due to the general’s piety and
his habit of honoring Mary.18 The representation of Narses here does not differ
very much from that of Alexander in the Neṣḥānā. In this case, it clearly appears
that the Syriac work displays the common topos of the pious ruler or general
who, in reward for his devotion, receives divine assistance on the battlefield. The
scene in the Neṣḥānā, in which Alexander is visited by God in a dream and then
proceeds to organize prayers and votive offerings before the battle against
Tūbarlaq, relates to the idea common among Byzantine authors that miraculous
events and heavenly interventions would secure victory for the Romans on the
battlefield.
It thus appears that in shaping the scene of the battle between the Greco-
Roman Empire and the Persians, our Syriac author follows a well-established
literary tendency that sought to increase the religious dimension of military
activities of the Christian armies and to confer on them the benevolence of God.
Neither the ideological assumptions nor the specific description of the battle
scene in the Neṣḥānā are peculiar to the time of Heraclius. In light of these
considerations, scholarly attempts to use these general concepts to strengthen the
connection between the Syriac work and the reign of Heraclius appear to be
shaking at their foundations, since the parallels between Alexander’s and
Heraclius’s wars can easily be applied to most conflicts between Byzantines and
Sasanians. This is also true for a very specific element in the narration, indicated
by Reinink as an echo of Heraclius’s war propaganda.

“God, Come to Our Aid!”

Before engaging in combat against the Persian enemy, Alexander’s soldiers
exclaim: “God, come to our aid!” (ʾlhʾ tʾ l-ʿwdrnn).19 According to Reinink,
these words echo the Latin exclamation Adiuta Deus. This is the battle cry
prescribed to Byzantine soldiers in the Strategikon of Maurice, a military treatise
composed between the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh.
20 Reinink also connects the words uttered by Alexander’s army in the Neṣḥānā

to the Latin inscription Deus Adiuta Romanis, which appears on the silver
hexagram introduced by Heraclius in 615 CE.21 While this theory is accepted in
the most recent works dedicated to the study of the Neṣḥānā,22 there are reasons
to doubt its validity. Three arguments can be brought against this claim.
First, the battle scene in the Neṣḥānā appears to be based more on biblical
topoi than on actual Byzantine military practices. The analysis of the vocabulary
in the description of God’s intervention on the battlefield in the Neṣḥānā,
demonstrates that the Syriac author borrowed from the Peshitta on 1 Samuel
7:10.
 Neṣḥānā: “And the voice of the Lord moved along, thundering among them (w-ʾzl hwʾ qlh d-mryʾ kd
rʿm bynthwn), so that the kings and their troops trembled in front of God’s camp.”23
1 Samuel 7:10: “And the Lord thundered with a mighty voice (w-rʿm mryʾ b-qlʾ rmʾ) that day against
the Philistines and threw them into confusion”;

In addition to the reference to 1 Samuel 7:10, the sequence of events described

in the Syriac work is clearly an elaboration of 1 Samuel 7:7–11, which describes
the Philistines’ attack on the Israelites. Samuel’s invocation of God’s
intervention and the sacrifice of a lamb are recalled in the Neṣḥānā by
Alexander’s prayer and by his order to the troops to burn incense to invoke
divine assistance. In both cases, the request is granted and God comes to the aid
of the supplicants and destroys their enemies.
It thus appears that the situation depicted by the Syriac author, including the
way in which Alexander and his troops prepare for the battle in the Neṣḥānā, is
based on a literary model, not on Byzantine military practice. Alexander’s
invocation of divine aid and his offer of incense to the Lord reflect narrative
material drawn from the biblical passage, not the prescriptions of the
Strategikon. Admittedly, the scene described in the Neṣḥānā may contain some
elements derived from the contemporary historical context and may reflect
practices common among Byzantine soldiers. If so, however, this does not
resolve the discrepancy between the actions performed by Alexander’s soldiers
in the Neṣḥānā and the prescriptions in the Strategikon—and with this we arrive
at my second point of contention against Reinink’s hypothesis.
The Strategikon prescribes that before the army leaves the camp, all soldiers,
led by the priests, the general, and the commanders, recite the Kyrie eleison in
unison. After this, each meros (“division”) shouts three times the formula
Nobiscum Deus. Soldiers are then instructed to be silent and to shout and cheer
only when the clash with the enemy is imminent.24 At this moment, the officers
are instructed to shout: adiuta, “help us,” and the soldiers respond in unison:
Deus, “oh God.”25 Note the significant difference between the acts performed by
Alexander and his soldiers before the combat in the Neṣḥānā and the
prescriptions found in the Strategikon.
In the Syriac work, Alexander first instructs his soldiers to burn incense as an
offering to request God’s assistance. Then he deposes his crown and his purple
robes and lays down in front of God as he invokes his help against the enemy.
During his prayer, Alexander is surrounded by his soldiers. Once he completes
his prayer, Alexander shouts: “Victory is the Lord’s!” and his soldiers answer:
“God come to our aid!” The differences between the Neṣḥānā and the scene
described by the author of the Strategikon are substantial. None of the acts
performed by Alexander coincides with those prescribed in the Greek military
treatise. Notably, Alexander’s soldiers shout their battle cry while they are still in
the camp and not immediately before the fight—as prescribed in the Strategikon.
Apparently, unlike the author of the Strategikon, the Syriac author had no direct
military experience. At best, he may have had a vague knowledge of the praxis
adopted by Byzantine soldiers and of their battle cry—and this consideration
leads us to my third contention against Reinink’s analysis.
Battle cries with religious connotations predate the end of sixth century, that
is, the time when the military treatise attributed to Maurice was composed. For
example, the battle cry Nobiscum, “[God is] with us,” was shouted at the
beginning of the charge from at least the late fourth century, as certified by
Vegetius in the Epitoma rei militaris.26 The author of the Strategikon devotes an
entire section of his second book to the negative effects of this battle cry. He
affirms that “the battle cry, ‘Nobiscum,’ which it was customary to shout when
beginning the charge is, in our opinion, extremely dangerous and harmful.”27 As
for the formula adiuta . . . Deus, which the author prescribes elsewhere in his
manual,28 this more likely reflects a common practice than an innovation—
although these specific words are not reported in earlier sources. In the end, it is
difficult to relate the scene described in the Neṣḥānā to a specific historical
period (or to a specific military treatise) on the basis of allusions to the soldiers’
instructions, which could have been common praxis over a much larger time
span.

The Peace Treaty between Alexander and Tūbarlaq

After his defeat in battle by Alexander, the Persian king Tūbarlaq lies in chains
in front of his victorious rival. When Alexander wants to execute him, Tūbarlaq
protests that no benefit will be derived from his execution. He instead proposes
that Persia pay Alexander a tribute for the next fifteen years. Alexander accepts
the offer. The two kings then reach an agreement in order to establish a joint
defense of the gate that Alexander has erected in the Caucasus.
Alexander’s peace arrangement with Tūbarlaq is odd, to say the least. One
wonders why Alexander would commit to any agreement with a defeated enemy
who pleads to have his life spared. Recall that the historical Alexander
annihilated and annexed the Achaemenid Empire without signing any peace
agreement with his rival Darius III—who was assassinated by his own soldiers
without ever meeting with Alexander. It is highly improbable that the Syriac
author was unaware of Alexander’s conquest of Persia, an event that was
celebrated in both historical chronicles and in the romanticized traditions of the
Alexander Romance. Curiously, instead of depicting Alexander’s glorious
conquest of the Persian Empire, our author portrays an event that never occurred,
that is, Alexander’s reduction of his rival neighbor to tributary vassal—and not
even permanently, but only for a limited period of time.
At first glance, it appears that the author has downplayed the achievements of
his hero: the collection of a tribute constitutes a lesser accomplishment than the
takeover of the Persian empire. Nonetheless, as I will demonstrate in the
following pages, this situation is clarified when it is placed in the political
context of the mid-sixth century. First, however, I must briefly address the
sentence in the text that follows Tūbarlaq’s offer to pay tribute to Alexander for
fifteen years.
The sentence has generated much discussion in modern scholarship. In his
edition, Budge gives the sentence as follows:

(w-kn mn btr
29
ḥmštʿsr šnyn thwʾ bbl w-ʾtwr d-npšk), which he translates as: “and then, after
the fifteen years, Babylon and Assyria shall be. . . .”30 Note that Budge does not
translate the last part of the sentence, specifically the word d-napšāk, literally “of
yourself.” Budge does not provide any explanation for his decision to leave the
sentence partially untranslated, but this choice is probably related to the fact that
the manuscript tradition reports a different reading: d-napšāh ( / d-
31
npšh), “of herself,” instead of d-napšāk. This alternative reading appears in
four out of five manuscripts of the Neṣḥānā (i.e., A, B, C, and E), whereas the d-
napšāk reading appears only in D. Budge does not explain the philological
criteria that dictated his privileging of the minority reading and relegating the
majority reading to the apparatus criticus. Whatever it may be, most scholars
have ignored the variae lectiones in the manuscript tradition and have accepted
the d-napšāk reading.
Nöldeke interprets the treaty as implying that Babylon and Assyria will be
ceded to Alexander at the expiration of the fifteen-year period of paying tribute.3
2 Clearly, Nöldeke interprets d-napšāk here as referring to Alexander, with the

result that the sentence signifies: “and then, after the fifteen years, Babylon and
Assyria will be yours [Alexander].” Hunnius follows suit. According to him,
Tūbarlaq’s commitment to give Alexander sovereignty over Persia at the
expiration of the fifteen years proves that the Neṣḥānā was composed around
626 CE—that is, in the year indicated in the 940 AG prediction. In fact—Hunnius
argues—the author’s expectation about the annexation of the Sasanian kingdom
does not make sense in the context that followed the peace treaty of 628, which
re-established the status quo ante bellum.33 As we will see later, Hunnius’s
argument is erroneous, as the treaty in the Neṣḥānā has nothing to do with the
treaty signed by Heraclius in 628.
Czeglédy, who also follows the lectio selected by Budge, interprets d-napšāk
as indicating that Persia will be delivered to Alexander after the agreed period of
fifteen years. However, contrary to Nöldeke and Hunnius, Czeglédy regards this
clause as a genuine vaticinium that the author of the Neṣḥānā puts into
Tūbarlaq’s mouth. Through the words pronounced by the Persian king, the
Syriac author expressed his hope that Byzantium would soon subjugate
Ctesiphon. In his mind, this would take place in 643, that is, fifteen years after
the conclusion of Heraclius’s victorious campaign in 628. According to
Czeglédy, the author’s wish was thwarted by the unexpected Arab expansion in
the area and the Arabs’ defeat of the Sasanian Empire.34
Czeglédy’s reading is implausible. It should be observed that the author of the
Neṣḥānā makes a clear distinction between (pseudo-)historical time and
prophetical time. Consider, for example, the prophecy that Tūbarlaq proclaims
after signing the peace treaty. According to his prognostication, Alexander’s
kingdom will plunder Persia toward the End of Time—a prediction that
corroborates the prophecy of Alexander engraved on the gate that he erected.
The predicted subjugation of Persia clearly belongs to the eschatological era and
is rendered part of the process that will culminate in the cosmocratic rule of the
successors of the house of Alexander (i.e., Byzantium). By contrast, the terms of
the peace treaty between Alexander and Tūbarlaq make no reference to the final
conflict. What will happen to Persia at the end of the fifteen years of tributary
status is not a prognostication for the future: it is what the author wants us to
believe to have happened in the past.
The interpretations proposed by Nöldeke, Hunnius, and Czeglédy have been
criticized by Reinink, who objects that these scholars have blindly followed
Budge’s critical edition without taking into account the prevailing lectio d-
napšāh. This reading, he argues, is the preferred reading. Reinink suggests that
the text originally signified that:
[a]fter this period of fifteen years Persia will be d-napšāh, “of herself,” again, that is, independent and
no longer tributary of Alexander. Until the end of these fifteen years Alexander can assert his claim on
Persia, should Persia be negligent of her duty to pay tribute. Through the peace-treaty between
Alexander and Tūbarlaq, although she will temporarily pay tribute to Alexander, she will remain an
independent state.35

In fact, nothing in the Neṣḥānā suggests that the treaty between the two kings
included the details described by Reinink. No element suggests that “Alexander
can assert his claim on Persia, should Persia be negligent of her duty to pay
tribute.” The only thing that can be extrapolated from the Syriac text is that
Tūbarlaq will pay tribute to Alexander for a period of fifteen years, at the end of
which his kingdom will either be annexed by Alexander or regain its full
independence, depending on the lectio that one follows. In addition, Reinink
does not explain why the reading of d-napšāh should be preferred over d-
napšāk. He asserts that d-napšāh is the “better reading,” without specifying the
criteria that led him to this assertion.36 One suspects that Reinink considers d-
napšāh qualitatively superior to d-napšāk because it is reported in a majority of
manuscripts. But the fact that a lectio appears more often can hardly be taken as
proof of its originality. Of course, it may be that the author of the Neṣḥānā used
the expression d-napšāh to clarify that Persia would regain its independence
after the agreed-upon period of tributary status—although one wonders why he
would have inserted a clarification that adds nothing to the narrative. But the
reading d-napšāk makes as much sense or even better sense. There is indeed a
more plausible explanation than the one provided by Reinink for the correct
understanding of the sentence in question.
The insertion in the narrative of the fictitious historical event of the Persian
tribute to Alexander raises a problem for the author; namely, it contradicts the
common knowledge about Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire. The
author could hardly have expected his readers to be ignorant of this historical
event, broadly reported in historiographical and literary traditions alike. As a
consequence, he may have felt the need to answer a question that likely would
have occurred to anyone who read his work: How could Alexander have made
Persia a tributary if he annexed that very same kingdom? The Syriac writer
solves the problem by creating a fictional historical reality in which Alexander
first obtains a tribute from Tūbarlaq for a period of fifteen years and then takes
possession of his kingdom. If my interpretation is correct, then the reading d-
napšāk relates to the author’s need to reconcile historical knowledge and the
pseudo-historical element of the tribute. Of course, this reading implies that the
Syriac writer wanted to persuade his audience about the occurrence of an event
that never occurred: that is, Persia’s payment of a tribute to Alexander. As will
become clear in the following pages, this was indeed the case, since the tribute
paid by Tūbarlaq to Alexander plays a very important role in the agenda of the
Syriac author.
Reinink’s focus on the reading d-napšāh is directly connected to the historical
contextualization that he seeks to establish for the Neṣḥānā. His reading of the
treaty signed by Alexander and Tūbarlaq brings to mind the stipulations
established in the peace treaty of 628 signed by Heraclius and Kavadh II (r.
February–September 628). According to Reinink, this treaty restored the status
quo ante bellum, and this general idea is reflected in the Syriac text.37 However,
Reinink provides no detailed discussion of the conditions and terms of the peace
treaty of 628 that he claims to be similar to those described in the Neṣḥānā. This
is not a minor oversight, since reconstruction of the clauses of the peace
agreements made by Heraclius (not only in 628, but also in the following year)
are far more complex than Reinink indicates.
The negotiations that resulted in the suspension of hostilities and the peace
arrangements did not follow a linear development. Rather, they were strongly
conditioned by the absence of a political entity strong enough to implement the
clauses of the treaty on the Persian side. While we can reconstruct with a certain
degree of confidence the timing and dynamics of the negotiations, the sources
are frustratingly silent about the exact provisos of the various peace treaties. The
dramatic events that were about to occur, culminating in the collapse of the
Sasanian state and its replacement by the early Islamic and then Umayyad
Empire, made the peace agreements reached by Heraclius irrelevant. Arguably, it
is because of these extraordinary circumstances that so few specific details have
been transmitted about the treaties signed by the Byzantine emperor. It appears
that contemporary and later commentators paid more attention to the abrupt
establishment of a new geopolitical scenario than to failed attempts to perpetuate
the old world order. Be that as it may, it seems that none of the (three) treaties
stipulated by Heraclius in 628–630 has much in common with the dynamic
described in the Neṣḥānā.
The peace talks opened in an atmosphere of political instability in the
Sasanian state following Heraclius’s decisive victory on the plain of Nineveh on
December 12, 627. This military success led to the deposition of Khosrow
Parvēz during the night of February 23–24, 628, and his replacement by his son
Shērōē, who assumed the dynastic name of Kavadh II. Negotiations seem to
have been concluded by May 15, 628, when a dispatch sent by Heraclius to
Constantinople was read publicly in Saint Sophia. The treaty proved hard to
apply, however.38 The Persian commander-in-chief in Egypt, Shahrbarāz (d.
630), refused to acknowledge Shērōē’s authority and to implement the peace
decree. Things took a more complex turn when Shērōē suddenly died in
September 628 and his eight-year-old son Ardashir (r. September 628–April 630)
took the throne as his successor with the dynastic name of Ardashir III. At the
same time, Shērōē’s death allowed for a resolution of the political impasse
created by Shahrbarāz’s refusal to surrender the Byzantine provinces under
occupation. Heraclius opened new negotiations directly with the Persian
warlord, whom he met at the Arabissus Tripotamus Pass in the summer of 629.
The entente between the two military leaders was sealed through the marriage of
Heraclius’s son, Theodosius, to Shahrbarāz’s daughter, Nike, and the peace was
celebrated through the building of a church that the two leaders named Eirene
(“Peace”).39 Again, things did not go as planned. Shortly after the meeting at
Arabissus Tripotamus, Shahrbarāz seized power in Ctesiphon and executed the
young shah Ardashir III. However, the warlord sat on the Persian throne for little
over a month. On June 9, 630, he was assassinated. Shahrbarāz’s regime
managed to survive temporarily and the power passed to his wife, Boran, who
was Khosrow’s daughter. It was Boran who secured the continuation of the
peace negotiations by sending a delegation led by the catholicos Ishoʿyahb II to
meet Heraclius in Aleppo. The meeting resulted in the drafting of a new treaty.
It was only during the third round of negotiations that Heraclius obtained the
re-establishment of the limes of 591–602. From what we can discern,
negotiations with Shērōē resulted in a return (with some adjustments) to the 360
frontier, whereas Shahrbarāz proved to be a much tougher peace partner, who
succeeded in retaining possession of the Roman provinces of Mesopotamia and
Orhoene and of the cities of Amida and Edessa. Arguably, the unstable position
of Boran as the regent of the Sasanian state strengthened Heraclius’s negotiation
position and provided him the opportunity to obtain what he had failed to
achieve during the previous negotiations.40 Thus, if there ever was a return to the
status quo ante bellum, this happened only toward the end of 630, and not in
628, as Reinink maintains. But even if we leave aside these problems in
Reinink’s historical reconstruction, it appears that almost nothing in the
historical scenario that he traces matches the situation described in the Neṣḥānā.
For instance, if one follows Reinink in reading d-napšāh, then the Syriac text
implies that Tūbarlaq’s kingdom would recover its full independence at the end
of a period of fifteen years, during which it would pay tribute to Alexander. In
this case, there are two major discrepancies with regard to what seems to have
been the historical reality. First, in the Neṣḥānā, the restoration of the status quo
is planned for the future. This differs from what Heraclius and Shērōē,
Shahrbarāz, and Boran possibly agreed upon, that is, the restoration of the
frontiers of pre-591 and of 591–602, to take immediate effect after the signing of
the peace treaty. Second, the central element of the treaty in the Syriac work is
the fifteen-year-long tribute that Persia commits to pay, an element that has no
parallel in the treaty of 628, in which neither of the two signatories—Heraclius
or Shērōē—agreed to pay any amount of money to the rival in exchange for
peace. As reports of the peace agreements signed in 628, 629, and 630 do not
include the payment of any tribute, this marks a significant difference between
the Syriac text and the historical reality of the 630s.
The only element in Roman-Persian negotiations that may compare to the
tribute described in the Syriac work is found in a notice about the treaty that
Heraclius signed the year later, in 629 (which Reinink does not mention). In the
Breviarium, Nikephoros of Constantinople (d. 828) reports that Shahrbarāz’s
allegedly promised to give Heraclius “money from Persia with which he might
repair whatever he had destroyed in the land of the Romans.”41 It is significant,
however, that in no Byzantine source, not even in the ideologically oriented
poems by Heraclius’s panegyrist George of Pisidia (d. 634), do we find any
claims that the Sasanian was forced to pay a tribute. This is surprising, as one
would expect to portray Shahrbarāz’s offer of war reparations as a sign of
Persia’s subjugation by Heraclius’s propagandists. This was not the case, and
Shahrbarāz’s offer—if it was ever made—did not resonate among Byzantines, as
indicated by the fact that it is reported only once and in a later source. It is thus
difficult to relate the dynamic described in the Neṣḥānā and, in particular, the
fifteen-year tribute that Tūbarlaq commits to pay to Alexander, to this dubious
aspect of the negotiations held between Heraclius and Shahrbarāz in 629.

Alexander’s Peace Treaty and the Political Context of the Mid-

Sixth Century
It appears that none of the treaties signed by Heraclius has much in common
with the scene described in the Neṣḥānā. By contrast, as I will now demonstrate,
the terms of the treaty described in the Syriac work are informed—although in
an idealized way—by the terms of several peace agreements between the two
empires during the sixth century. More broadly, these terms reflect the political
situation of that period. We begin by observing that in the Neṣḥānā the peace
treaty is followed by the agreement between Alexander and Tūbarlaq to establish
a joint patrol at Alexander’s gate. Reinink tries to connect this element of the
Syriac text to the historical reality of the 630s.42 Recall, however, that none of
the treaties reportedly signed by Heraclius between 628 and 630 contains any
clause about the defense of the Caspian Gates that resembles the arrangements
between the two kings in the Neṣḥānā. By contrast, I argued in the previous
chapter that the entente between Alexander and Tūbarlaq about the defense of
Alexander’s gate against the Huns reflects the political reality of the sixth
century and reveals the author’s intent to address a main point of controversy in
Byzantine-Sasanian relationships. The manner in which the author describes the
agreement to share the costs of guarding the gate is informed by contemporary
Byzantine political discourse and represents an idealized solution to thorny
political quarrels over the control of the Caucasian passes. The peace treaty
between Alexander and Tūbarlaq follows a similar pattern of “historical
revisionism,” that is to say, it ascribes conditions more favorable for the Romans
than the actual historical circumstances. In fact, the main proviso of the treaty,
which obligates Persia to pay tribute to the Romans for fifteen years, inverts the
terms found in peace agreements between Constantinople and Ctesiphon
throughout the sixth century.
As noted, at several stages of the conflicts between Byzantines and Sasanians
in the sixth century, the former made payments to the latter. Gold disbursements
were part of the peace settlements in 532 and 562, while additional sums of
money were given to the Persians to secure the cessation of hostilities in 545 and
551, for which the Romans granted Khosrow Anōshirvān twenty centenaria of
gold.43 Tributes played an important role in Sasanian political culture, which
regarded countries subject to annual payments of gold as vassals of the Persian
shah. It thus comes as no surprise that the Sasanians did not miss an opportunity
to portray Roman payments for peace as proof of political subjugation and to
assert that the Byzantines were tributaries of the Persian kingdom. John of
Ephesus reports that during an official visit to the Turks, the Byzantine
ambassadors accidentally learned about similar claims made by Sasanian
diplomats at the Turkic court. On that occasion, the Turkic king reportedly asked
the Roman legates: “Is it true what the Persians say, that the king of the Romans
is their slave and pays yearly tribute as a slave?”44 At these words the Roman
ambassador Zemarchus would have expressed his indignation and reminded
them of the time “when Trajan, a Roman king, invaded them, he overthrew and
vanquished them, that to this very day they tremble and shake before the statue
of himself which he set up in their land.”45
The words that John of Ephesus puts in the mouth of the Roman ambassador
expose his attempt to mitigate the humiliation provoked by the Sasanian claims
and to seek comfort in the memory of past times when the Romans had invaded
Persian territories.46 John was not the only writer in Byzantine society who tried
to rebut Sasanian allegations of having subjugated the Roman state to tributary
conditions. As noted, several authors, from Ps.-Joshua the Stylite to Procopius,
addressed the risk that Byzantine war payments be portrayed as tributes. This
was also the official imperial position. The goal of Justinian’s policy was not to
allow the money he had disbursed for peace appear as yearly tributes to the
enemy. As Procopius indicates with regard to the armistice of 551: “The Romans
gave the Persians outright the entire amount of gold agreed upon, in order not to
appear to be paying them tribute each year.”47 To the dismay of the Byzantine
emperor and despite all of his efforts, many of his subjects appear to have
thought otherwise. Procopius reports that the people of Constantinople were
particularly dissatisfied with the fact that Persians had successfully imposed a
tribute on the Romans, as “they perceived that they had in no hidden sense
become tributary to the Persians.”48
Manifestations of dissatisfaction with Justinian’s praxis of exchanging money
for peace help us to better understand the treaty signed by Alexander and
Tūbarlaq in the Neṣḥānā. The author of the Neṣḥānā was one of many in
Byzantine society who expressed discontent at the provisions of the peace
agreements stipulated by Justinian. Similar to his contemporary John of Ephesus,
he reacted to the deplorable conditions accepted by the emperor by reminiscing
on the glorious past in which it was Persia that was subjugated by the Romans,
and not vice versa. To emphasize this point, he devised a fictional scenario in
which Alexander coerces his Persian enemy to pay the humiliating tribute. The
decision to make Alexander collect the payment of a tribute from the Persian
king, instead of immediately subjugating his empire, clearly reveals the author’s
desire to reverse the current political situation, in which the Sasanians could
claim to have reduced Byzantium to a tributary state. The way in which he
rewrites history is very telling of his feelings. In other sections of the work, it
appears that the author had no doubt that one day a Byzantine emperor would
repeat the deeds of his mythical ancestor, Alexander, and take over the Sasanian
Empire. However, it was not enough for him to emphasize Persia’s previous
enslavement to Alexander and its unavoidable return to a subject condition in the
future. In his artificial historical reality, Persia must pass through the payment of
a yearly tribute that would offset the current humiliating conditions of Justinian’s
kingdom. But this was not the only issue at stake. Through this revisionist
reading of the Macedonian hero’s accomplishments, our author also sets an
example for current rulers to adopt more aggressive policies toward the Sasanian
enemy.
The author of the Neṣḥānā was not the only writer of his time to use this kind
of literary strategy in reference. A close parallel to the model of the tribute paid
by Tūbarlaq in the Neṣḥānā is found in contemporary Syriac literature. The
anonymous author of the work known as The Julian Romance engages in a
rewriting of past history—specifically addressing the Roman emperors Julian (r.
361–363) and Jovian (r. 363–364)—which is very similar to the rewriting found
in the Neṣḥānā. In his romanticized and revisionist presentation of events, the
author of the Julian Romance mentions a future and unspecified period in which
Persia will be economically subjugated to the Romans. The relevant passage
occurs in the prophecy brought to Jovian by an angel who, among other things,
announces that Constantinople will force Ctesiphon to pay a ten-year-long
tribute.49 Scholars have offered different explanations for the specific historical
events that the Syriac writer had in mind with this prophecy. The most
convincing explanation is the one advanced by Nöldeke, and recently revisited
by Philip Wood, according to which Jovian’s prophecy should be dated to 504–
532.50 According to this reading, the prophecy addresses several events and
political issues and, as Wood rightly observes, its overall tones “can be seen as a
general desideratum for Roman-Persian relations.”51
This passage of the Julian Romance and the Neṣḥānā share many elements.
Like the Syriac Alexander, the Jovian of the Romance is represented as a pious
Christian emperor who receives divinely inspired prophecy. As Wood
intriguingly suggests, Jovian’s prophecy may contain a polemical answer to
Sasanian attempts to extort money for the defense of the Caspian Gates52—a
controversial question that also interested the author of the Neṣḥānā. Finally—
and most importantly for the present discussion—the ten-year tribute that Persia
is committed to pay in the Romance recalls the fifteen-year tribute that Tūbarlaq
commits to pay to Alexander in the Neṣḥānā. The similarity is particularly
striking if one takes into account that historically the Sasanians were never
compelled to pay any tribute to Byzantium. Thus, the situation described in the
two Syriac works cannot have been informed by actual historical events.
Wood suggests that the payment of the tribute prophesied in the Romance
reflects “the author’s own hopes for the outcome of Roman-Persian warfare.”53
This strikes me as unlikely since it implies that the prophecy was composed in
wartime, before the treaty signed by Justinian in 532. However, the specific
mention of a tribute recalls (although inversely) a prominent clause of that exact
peace agreement. In this case, it is more probable that the ten-year-long tribute in
Jovian’s prophecy represents an overturning of the conditions accepted by
Justinian in the Eternal Peace, and expresses the author’s wish that the situation
be reversed in the near future. From this perspective, the author of the Julian
Romance shared the disappointment expressed by the author of the Neṣḥānā for
the mediocre military achievements of the Byzantines in the sixth century, and
like the latter, he reacted by designing an ideal image of Byzantine-Sasanian
power relationships that included the reduction of the Persian neighbor to the
status of tributary vassal.
 It is not impossible that one of the authors knew the other’s work and used it
as a model for his idealized scenario in which Ctesiphon, not Byzantium, was
compelled to pay tribute to its rival. However, it is more probable that the
literary solution adopted by both writers reflects broader political debates current
among sixth-century Syriac intellectuals. The main centers of Syriac culture at
the time were directly exposed to Sasanian invasions due to their geographical
location. Thus, it is understandable that these intellectuals were disappointed by
Justinian’s inability to solve the problem represented by the “Oriental” threat. I
therefore find extremely problematic the view predominant in modern
scholarship that the Neṣḥānā was intended as a pamphlet of pro-imperial
propaganda—a view that is largely dictated by the incorrect attribution of the
Syriac work to the time of Heraclius’s successful campaign against the
Sasanians. During the seventh century, the work may very well have been read
as a celebratory allegory of Heraclius’s military achievements. However, its
original goals must have been different.
When the Neṣḥānā is situated in its true period of composition, that is, the
mid-sixth century, the author’s real agenda emerges. His rewriting of key points
of the treaties signed by Justinian was not designed to celebrate the emperor by
whitewashing his failed diplomacy, but rather to reproach his lack of
assertiveness during the negotiations by comparing him with the illustrious
example of Alexander. Justinian’s ineptitude—our author implies—brought the
empire to a condition that was the polar opposite of the political dominance
achieved during the time of Alexander, who defeated the Persians and imposed a
humiliating tribute on them. Far from serving as official imperial propaganda, as
Reinink and other scholars maintain, the author of the Neṣḥānā was criticizing
the contemporary political power.
The Julian Romance provides an important parallel case. As Wood
emphasizes, its author intended for his work to serve as a criticism of Justinian,
rather than praise.54 The Neṣḥānā and the Romance may thus be treated as
examples of a common literary tendency that was current in the centers of Syriac
culture at the time: criticism of the faults of the current political leadership
through fictional re-elaborations of the past. In light of Justinian’s repression of
political opponents and dissident intellectuals (e.g., Procopius, who likely
published his Secret History only after the emperor’s death due to fear of
imperial retaliation), it should come as no surprise that these Syriac authors
adopted similar literary techniques to express their disappointment with the
emperor’s policies. As I will argue in the following chapter, the virtuous figures
of Alexander in the Neṣḥānā and of Jovian Romance are also intended to
endorse the authors’ negative assessments of Justinian’s leadership. In the case
of the Syriac Alexander, his portrayal as a victorious and flawless king was not
intended to provide a flattering parallel to the current ruler, but rather to
highlight by means of comparison the latter’s flaws.

Tūbarlaq’s Prophecy
After signing the peace treaty with Alexander and coming to an agreement with
him about the shared defense of the gate erected against the Huns, Tūbarlaq
makes a prediction that, in its broad outline, corroborates the contents of
Alexander’s prophecy: toward the End of Time the kingdom of the Romans will
subjugate the other world kingdoms; the king of Persia will be killed; Babylon
and Assyria will fall; and the kingdom of the Romans will reign until the End of
Time, when it will relinquish its power to the Messiah.
Some scholars relate Tūbarlaq’s prophecy to another prophecy that
Heraclius’s rival, Khosrow Parvēz, allegedly relayed during his escape to
Byzantine territory, after being dethroned by Bahrām Chōbin in 590.
Theophylact Simocatta reports that on his way to Constantinople, Khosrow
replied to mocking remarks made by the Byzantine general John Mystacon as
follows:
Be assured that troubles will flow back in turn against you Romans. The Babylonian race will hold the
Roman state in its power for a threefold cyclic hebdomad of years. Thereafter you Romans will
enslave Persians for a fifth hebdomad of years. When these very things have been accomplished, the
day without evening will dwell among mortals and the expected fate will achieve power, when the
forces of destruction will be handed over to dissolution and those of the better life hold sway.55

Tūbarlaq’s and Khosrow’s prophecies present the remarkable similarity of a

Persian king who predicts the future defeat of his kingdom by the Romans.
However, that both texts refer to the same historical circumstances, as is often
maintained, is doubtful. In light of my proposed historical contextualization of
the Neṣḥānā, doubts may be cast on the hypothesis that Tūbarlaq’s prophecy
refers to the context of the 630s.56 Similarly debatable is whether the two
prophecies pursue the same goals. Clearly, the goal of Tūbarlaq’s prophecy is to
predict the future advent of a golden age for the Roman kingdom. By contrast,
several doubts surround the intentions behind the prophecy reported by
Simocatta.
A first question is whether Khosrow’s prophecy was composed before or after
the conclusion of the Byzantine-Sasanian conflict in 628/629, and to which
events it refers. The question affects our understanding of the original intent of
the author of the prophecy. The hebdomadal chronological system used by
Khosrow in his divination is complex and leaves the door open to a wide range
of interpretations. P. J. Alexander and Cyril Mango take the year 591—that is,
the year in which Khosrow would have spoken these words—as a starting point
of the prophecy. In this case, the three hebdomads of Persian supremacy would
correspond to 591–612, whereas the fifth hebdomad of Roman supremacy would
correspond to 619–626.57 These dates do not fit well in the context of the
seventh-century Roman-Persian wars, since the conflict started only in 602 and
concluded in 628/629. Alternatively, Mary and Michael Whitby argue that the
period of Roman supremacy corresponds to the last years of the conflict (i.e.,
622–628), when Heraclius was indeed able to reverse the course of the war
through a series of counteroffensives. The two scholars understand the predicted
period of Roman supremacy as a prophecy of a messianic Golden Age and
compare it to the predictions found in the Neṣḥānā—which, they say, was a
work revised shortly after Heraclius’s victory in 629/630.58 It follows from this
reading that Khosrow’s prophecy was composed after the conclusion of the
conflict, and this is the solution indicated by Michael Whitby in another study.59
The problem with the Whitbys’ reading is their identification of the period of
Roman hegemony as the fifth hebdomad: if this period covers the years 622–
628, then the previous four hebdomads lead us back to 594, when the conflict
had not yet started. The two scholars circumvent the problem by postulating that
the prophecy implies an unmentioned first hebdomad of peace that preceded the
conflict.60 Although clever, this solution is not convincing, and as Reinink points
out, is overly sophisticated.61
As for Reinink, he suggests that the year 603, in which the Persian offensive
started, or the year 604, in which the Persians achieved their first successes, may
be taken as the starting point of the threefold hebdomad of Persian supremacy.
This gives 603/604–624/625—although Reinink expresses caution in fixing
exact dates through the hebdomad system.62 From this point onward, however, it
is not clear how Reinink understands the two further hebdomads of the
prophecy. One assumes that the year 625/626 marks the beginning of a new
hebdomad that follows the threefold hebdomad of Persian supremacy. But to
which one of the two remaining hebdomads does it correspond? Is it the
beginning of the fourth hebdomad not mentioned by Khosrow? Or is it the fifth
hebdomad of Roman supremacy, as suggested by Reinink’s recognition that the
year 626 was a turning point in the conflict? No explanation is given. To
complicate matters, Reinink does not adopt a clear position on the related
question about when the prophecy was composed and, thus, whether or not it is a
vaticinium ex eventu—although he seems to lean toward a date that precedes the
end of the conflict.63
Reinink largely focuses on rejecting the Whitbys’ reading of Khosrow’s
prophecy as a prediction of Byzantium’s glorious future, similar to the one found
in the Neṣḥānā. In his view, the final sentence of the prophecy can hardly be
interpreted as a description of a messianic Golden Age. Since phraseology and
imagery of this closing pronouncement express common Christian topoi about
the imminence of the End, the prophecy can only signify that after a conflict in
which the balance of power would shift back and forth, the world would come to
an end. The intended message of the prognostication was the opposite of the
message expressed in the Neṣḥānā, since the author of Khosrow’s prophecy did
not have any expectation about a period of Roman cosmocracy.64 Reinink’s
skepticism about the Whitbys’ reading is legitimate. Not much in Khosrow’s
prophecy suggests the kind of Golden Age depicted in the Syriac work.
Alternatively, Reinink suggests that the author of Khosrow’s prophecy intended
to point out the ephemeral character of both Roman and Persian successes in the
war given the imminent arrival of the End. However, it is difficult to reconcile
this view with the idea expressed by Reinink that Khosrow’s prophecy served as
a tool of pro-Byzantine propaganda to captivate popular support in favor of
Heraclius during the conflict against the Sasanians.65 One wonders how the
author’s views about the imminent collapse of the two empires could have
served the goals of Heraclius’s propaganda.
One possibility not yet been explored is to situate the date of composition of
Khosrow’s prophecy, or at least its final revision, to the period immediately
following the conclusion of the conflict. Scholars have suggested that Simocatta
did not complete his History before the first Arab conquests in the late 630s.66 If
so, then one can envisage an alternative explanation for the hebdomad system in
the prophecy. The most reasonable starting point for Khosrow’s prediction is
602, that is, the beginning of the Persian campaign. This year inaugurates the
first cycle of a threefold hebdomad, that is, the years 602–622, during which the
Persians would be victorious over the Romans. Historically, this fits well with
the developments of the conflict until 622, a year that coincides—possibly not
accidentally—with the beginning of Heraclius’s first counteroffensive. The years
623–629 would correspond to an unmentioned fourth hebdomad, during which
the odds progressively turned in favor of the Romans culminating in the peace
treaties of 628/629. Heraclius’s successes in the war and the conditions that he
imposed on the Sasanians generated hope for a period of Roman supremacy,
discernible in the fifth hebdomad of the prophecy, which would correspond to
years 630–636. With the fifth hebdomad we arrive at the apocalyptic imagery
that follows the hebdomad of Roman dominion. Notably, the year 636/637
coincides with the Arab siege and conquest of Jerusalem, an event that easily
could have been interpreted as a sign of the imminence of the Eschaton.
Contemporary sources attest to the fact that the Arab conquests generated
apocalyptic anxieties in the Christian communities of the Near East. These
anxieties are reflected in the final gloomy scenario predicted by Khosrow. This is
—I think—a plausible alternative scenario for the elaboration of Khosrow’s
prognostication, as reported by Simocatta. The prophecy may also have begun as
an instrument of pro-Heraclius propaganda that did not originally include the
final apocalyptic closure, as suggested by the odd silence over the fourth
hebdomad (recall that the text addresses the events of the first three hebdomads
and those of the fifth hebdomad, but makes no reference to anything that
happened during the fourth hebdomad). It is possible that the prophecy originally
included only four hebdomads, a period that incidentally coincides with the
roughly twenty-eight years of the duration of the conflict. Perhaps the period of
Roman supremacy was originally included in the fourth hebdomad and was later
delayed to a fifth hebdomad in order to accommodate the new historical
developments and to reach the annus horribilis of 636/637. The dramatic events
of that year may have prompted a re-elaboration of Khosrow’s prophecy to turn
it into a prediction of the approaching of the End.
Khosrow’s prophecy in Timocatta’s History shares several common features
with Tūbarlaq’s prophecy in the Neṣḥānā. Reinink maintains that the two
prophecies are contemporary expressions of Byzantine propaganda disseminated
during the reign of Heraclius,67 an opinion that is favored by Greisiger.68
Shoemaker (though apparently not persuaded) explores the possibility that
Tūbarlaq’s prophecy was added in the seventh century to the original core of the
text with the specific aim of celebrating Heraclius’s victories.69 In my view, it is
improbable that Tūbarlaq’s prophecy refers to events of the reign of Heraclius.
Of course, the similarities with Khosrow’s prophecy reported by Simocatta are
evident. However, one should also consider a meaningful difference between the
two texts. Specifically, the description of alternating cycles of Persian and
Roman supremacy in Khosrow’s prophecy is clearly identifiable with the course
of events in the seventh-century Byzantine-Sasanian conflict, which saw the
Persians prevailing at first, only to be eventually defeated by the Romans. As I
have illustrated elsewhere, this specific description is peculiar to several
prophecies composed in the first half of the seventh century that retrospectively
describe the specific dynamic of that conflict, which was initiated by Khosrow
Parvēz in 602 and which concluded with Heraclius’s victorious campaign in 628.
70 Now, nothing related to this specific literary description can be identified in
the prophecy uttered by Tūbarlaq in the Neṣḥānā, where we only read about a
future Roman victory over the Persians. The difference is not a marginal one.
But even if one decides to ignore this significant point of discrepancy between
the two prophecies and to focus only on their similarities, a larger literary and
historical contextualization would still mitigate the temptation to trace a straight
line between the two texts.
Predictions about the victory of the Romans over the Persians are not peculiar
to Heraclius’s war propaganda. The miraculous goose egg bearing the words
“Romans will conquer,” reported by Ps.-Joshua the Stylite, is a fine example of
the kind of oracular prognostications circulating at the time of the Anastasian
War (502–506).71 Moreover, the apocalyptic ideology that the Roman Empire
would be the last world kingdom and would remit its power to Jesus after his
Second Coming had been circulating since at least the fourth century. As we will
see below, it already occurs in Aphrahat’s Demonstrations with which the
Neṣḥānā shares several thematic connections. More importantly, however, the
common motif of a Persian king uttering a prophecy relates to the more general
trope of the Persians as the descendants of the Chaldean diviners. According to
Simocatta, Khosrow “was well versed in the burdensome folly of the Chaldaeans
concerning the stars.”72 Similarly, in the Neṣḥānā, Tūbarlaq summons a circle of
sorcerers and astrologers who help him to divine the future.
Syriac sources contain numerous references to this motif, and several
Sasanian rulers are credited with mastering astrology. For instance, The Cave of
Treasures, an anonymous Syriac work composed in the Sasanian Empire during
the sixth or the seventh century, portrays Ardashir as a priest of the era of
Nimrod to whom demons teach the illicit arts of astrology and divination.73 In
the Julian Romance we read that Shapur sent a message to Jovian, who was
serving as Julian’s ambassador to the Sasanians. In the message, the Persian king
predicts the future glory of Jovian and “anticipated the entire order and the
manner of your warfare by means of the course of the stars of the astronomical
sphere.”74 The king’s divination approximately describes Julian’s ill-fated
Persian campaigns and their aftermath.75 On the literary level, the prophecy
brings to mind the prophecy related by Tūbarlaq in the Neṣḥānā and the
prophecy attributed to Khosrow by Simocatta. In all three cases, a Persian king
discloses to a Roman general or king, by means of divination, the outcome of a
future conflict between Persians and Romans. Of course, Shapur’s vaticinium
lacks the eschatological dimension that characterizes Tūbarlaq’s and Khosrow’s
prediction. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that the author of the Neṣḥānā adopted
a motif that was current well before its appearance in Simocatta’s History. But
there is more. Both the Neṣḥānā and the Julian Romance attribute prophetical
abilities to the Roman heroes of their stories, that is, Alexander and Jovian, and
to their Persian rivals (i.e., Tūbarlaq and Shapur). This is a remarkable and
peculiar narrative element: two rival Persian and Roman kings are credited with
the gift of clairvoyance—either by divination or prophecy, respectively. As far as
I know, no other text has this narrative feature. Given the parallels between the
Neṣḥānā and the Julian Romance, the convergence of the two Syriac works on
this additional point is particularly meaningful. Equally important, this
distinguishing double prognostication would appear to exclude the possibility
that one of the two prophecies in the Neṣḥānā was added at a later date.
Tūbarlaq’s prophecy must belong to the original sixth-century text.

The Identity of Tūbarlaq

One unsolved problem in the Neṣḥānā is whether the Tūbarlaq figure is a literary
representation of a specific historical figure. To the best of my knowledge, no
other source mentions the name Tūbarlaq—with the exception of Ps.-Jacob’s
metrical homily, which is related to the Neṣḥānā by a direct and common textual
link. The name Tūbarlaq is an unsolved riddle. As far as I know, the only recent
attempt to establish the identity of the mysterious Persian king of the Neṣḥānā
has been made by János Harmatta in a 1996 article. Harmatta proposes that the
Syriac (twbrlq) may be a misreading of the cursive Pahlavi script.
The Pahlavi name Khosrow was mistakenly read “Tūbarlaq” as result of the
similarity in the shape of several letters in that writing system. Harmatta refers
specifically to the name of Khosrow Parvēz as it is inscribed on Sasanian coins,
which “may be read more as twbrlkʾ than ḥwslwy, inasmuch as the cursive ḥ,
written carelessly, may be read as t because its loop-like head was often
negligently left open.”76
If Harmatta is correct, one may observe that if the name Tūbarlaq is a
misreading of Khosrow, then this Khosrow may very well have been Khosrow
Anōshirvān, and not Khosrow Parvēz. In his study, Harmatta considers the
possibility that a previous version of the Neṣḥānā may have been in circulation
in the sixth century.77 However, he does not consider the hypothesis that
Tūbarlaq is Khosrow Anōshirvān. This is unfortunate, as the “Tūbarlaq equals
Khosrow Anōshirvān” hypothesis would resolve a complication in Harmatta’s
theory. If one maintains that the Neṣḥānā was composed in the sixth century, that
Tūbarlaq is a misreading of Khosrow, and that this Khosrow is Khosrow Parvēz,
then one must assume that all instances in which the name Tūbarlaq occurs in
the Syriac text are seventh-century emendations of an earlier version. However,
this does not seem to be the case, or at least it is not necessary, since a
misreading of Khosrow fits perfectly with the original context of the Neṣḥānā.
At any rate, it is hard to believe that the author of the Neṣḥānā, who generally
appears to be well informed about the political situation and contemporary
events, did not know the name of the Sasanian king and mistakenly read the
inscription on Persian coins. A different explanation is in order.
Harmatta pays no attention to the singular piece of information provided by
the author of the Neṣḥānā about Tūbarlaq’s genealogy, that is, his description of
Tūbarlaq as a member of the house of (ʾḥšwrḥ). Who is this ʾḥšwrḥ?
Budge suggests that the name ʾḥšwrḥ is a corruption of the biblical Ahasuerus
(78.(‫ אחשורוש‬This suggestion is accepted by Bohas.79 This reading is appealing.
In the Book of Daniel, Ahasuerus is identified as the father of Darius the Mede,8
0 an obscure character that in several sources, including the Peshitta, is confused

with Darius III and is identified as Alexander’s adversary in the prophecy of the
ram and the he-goat in Daniel 8:3–7.81 If one accepts the equation ʾḥšwrḥ =
Ahasuerus, then the description of Tūbarlaq as a member of the house of ʾḥšwrḥ
echoes the description of Darius the Mede as the son of Ahasuerus. If so, then
the author of the Neṣḥānā is reproducing the confusion between Darius the Mede
and Darius III that was current among Syriac intellectuals. There is a problem,
however.
In the Peshitta, the name Ahasuerus is rendered as (ʾḥšyrš), and
82
this is the spelling used by most Syriac authors. The name ʾḥšwrḥ used by the
author of the Neṣḥānā is sufficiently similar to ʾḥšyrš to suggest a correlation,
but is sufficiently different to ask why the author did not report the “correct”
spelling of Ahasuerus. This misspelling goes hand in the hand with the absence
of the name Darius. Did the author of the Neṣḥānā misspell ʾḥšyrš out of
ignorance? Was he not familiar with the real name of Alexander’s rival, Darius?
I do not think so, insomuch as our author demonstrates a very good knowledge
of Scripture. I doubt that he was not familiar with the “correct” spelling of
Ahasuerus. It is similarly implausible that he was unaware of the name Darius
(III or the Mede), who in sources—including the Peshitta—is unequivocally
indicated as the Persian opponent of the Macedonian king. For these reasons, I
suspect that we are dealing with a deliberate distortion of the figure of Darius,
the son of Ahasuerus—not a mistake by the author.
My hypothesis is that the names twbrlq and ʾḥšwrḥ are both puns. ʾḤšwrḥ
clearly appears to be a distortion of ʾḥšyrš. Through the phonetic passage ʾḥšyrš
→ʾḥšwrḥ the author may have sought to evoke negative concepts related to the
root š-r-ḥ—such as immoderation and luxury. As for Tūbarlaq, note that the final
letter -q in the name is a transposition into Syriac of the final syllable -ag found
in several Iranian names, for example, Āb-dānāg, Ābrōdag, Ādur-Ardag, Mihr-
bādag, Vahnāmag, and, of course, Papag, the father of the founder of the
Sasanian dynasty, Ardashir (r. 211–224).83 That said, rather than a marker of its
Iranian origin, the final -q of Tūbarlaq may represent an attempt to Iranize, that
is, to make sound Iranian, a name invented by the author. It might be no
coincidence that this name bases on the Syriac root t-b-r, which signifies to
break, to fragment, to ruin, and so on.84 As for the addition of the letter [l]
between the root t-b-r and the final “Iranizing” syllable -q, this may be explained
as a consequence of assonance. Indeed, the final element of Tūbarlaq (i.e., -brlq)
brings to mind, for instance, the Middle Persian word bandag (“servant”), which
is found in several composite names, for example, Dād-bandag, Vēh-bandag,
Vīrāz-bandag, Yazdān-bandag.85
But why would the author have elaborated this derisory name for Alexander’s
enemy? Because—I believe—Tūbarlaq of the house of ʾḥšwrḥ is a parody, a
caricature forged on the calque of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, who was
commonly confused with the historical Darius defeated by Alexander. The name
“Tūbarlaq of the house of ʾḥšwrḥ” was conceived by the Syriac author as a
deliberate attempt to ridicule the Sasanian crown by producing the laughable
image of an ancient Persian sovereign. Notably, this caricature distorts the image
of the dynasty with which the Sasanians were associated by Khosrow’s Christian
propagandists: the Achaemenians.86 Probably, the function of the Tūbarlaq
figure is to sarcastically dismiss representations current among Persian
Christians of the Sasanians as the heirs of that glorious imperial Persian past. As
we will see, this is not the only element in the Syriac work that indicates the
author’s polemic attitude toward Christians living in the Sasanian Empire.87
 6
The Syriac Alexander

According to the conventional scholarly wisdom, the figure of Alexander in the

Neṣḥānā functions as an avatar of Heraclius and his exploits in the Syriac work
are allegorical representations of the Byzantine emperor’s military successes in
his campaigns against the Sasanians in the late 620s. This idea has been
advanced by Reinink in several publications. According to him, the Neṣḥānā is
based on an implicit parallel between the figures of Alexander and Heraclius, the
ultimate goal of which is to exalt the latter by comparison to the former.1 The
Syriac author sought to persuade his audience that Alexander’s deeds in the past
would be repeated by Heraclius in the present.2 In the Syriac work, Reinink says,
Heraclius is “a new Alexander.”3
According to Greisiger—who fully embraces Reinink’s reading—the
Alexander-Heraclius typology reflects the permanent trace left by Alexander’s
glorious deeds in the collective imagery of the people of the eastern
Mediterranean.4 It is certainly possible that in the eyes of many contemporaries,
Heraclius’s successes in the conflict against the Sasanians evoked the memory of
Alexander’s conquests. However, only few literary sources from the time of
Heraclius draw connections between Heraclius’s and Alexander’s campaigns.
The only contemporary recorded comparison between the two sovereigns occurs
in two poems of George of Pisidia, that is, Heraclias (I.110–21) and Expeditio
Persica (III.48–53). In neither of these poems, however, does George present
Heraclius as a new Alexander. Rather, he uses the well-known rhetorical device
of the syncresis to diminish the figure of Alexander and to exalt Heraclius.5
Furthermore, in George’s poems, Alexander is not the only figure used to exalt
the virtues of Heraclius. The emperor is also compared to the biblical Noah6 and
Elias,7 and to classical heroes like Heracles8 and Timotheus.9 Thus, in literature,
comparisons between Heraclius and Alexander did not play a major role, and
imperial propagandists did not endorse the parallel between the two sovereigns
on a large scale.
 This does not mean, however, that the model of Alexander was not used at all
to celebrate the emperor. Possible examples of the propagandistic employment
of the image of the Macedonian are found in material evidence. The most
striking example is a marble stele with the bust of Alexander bearing horns,
found in the atrium of the ruins of a transept basilica excavated at the
archaeological site of Katalymata ton Plakoton in Cyprus.10 The complex
monument includes mosaic decorations featuring symbols which archaeologists
have associated with Heraclius’s propaganda. These include the shield of David
(which recalls the famous representation of Heraclius as the new David), the two
pumpkins (a symbol of a sinful nation, arguably Persia), and a pair of Persian
sandals.11 In this context, the bust of Alexander was probably meant as a
celebratory allusion to Heraclius’s successful campaign against the Sasanians.
Charles Anthony Stewart finds further examples of Heraclius’s representation
as a new Alexander in contemporary textile production. He draws attention to a
cloth preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which contains
the image of an equestrian Byzantine emperor flanked by two Persian prisoners.
The museum curators identify the emperor as Heraclius. Stewart points out some
common features between the iconography on the cloth and the bust at
Katalymata ton Plakoton and infers that the London textile reflects contemporary
Byzantine equestrian representations of Alexander.12 If so, then we would have
another example of Heraclius’s comparatio Alexandri. Less convincing is the
case—also mentioned by Stewart—of a fabric rondel at the Textile Museum in
Washington, D.C., which features two specular equestrian figures and an
inscription identifying them as Alexander of Macedonia. Relying on Reinink’s
Alexander-Heraclius typology, Stewart speculates that the double representation
of the same Alexander-like horseman suggests a connection between the
Macedonian conqueror and Heraclius. If so, one wonders, however, why the
name of Heraclius does not appear alongside that of Alexander.13
Be that as it may, there is sufficient evidence to posit that parallels with the
Macedonian king were features of Heraclius’s contemporary propaganda—albeit
not as widespread as other encomiastic comparisons, like the one with King
David that figures in both literary sources and objects.14 How should we situate
this evidence in relation to the present investigation? Both Eleni Procopiou, who
supervises the excavations at Katalymata ton Plakoton, and Stewart, who
published an analysis of the Alexander statue found in the complex, connect the
marble bust to the figure of Alexander in the Neṣḥānā, with special reference to
Reinink’s Alexander-Heraclius typology.15 While there may be an indirect
connection between the Cypriot bust and the Neṣḥānā—especially the
representation of Alexander bearing horns—the question should be revised in
light of what has so far emerged in this study. The most immediate consequence
of my findings in the previous chapters is that Reinink’s Alexander-Heraclius
typology in the Neṣḥānā is fundamentally wrong. The image of the protagonist
of the Syriac work could not have been modeled on that of Heraclius for the
simple reason that the text was composed approximately half a century before
the reign of this emperor. Of course, one cannot exclude the possibility that, after
witnessing Heraclius’s exploits in the conflict against the Sasanians, seventh-
century readers sought in the Neṣḥānā a prefiguration of those contemporary
events. In that case, the hero of the Syriac apocalypse may have come to be
regarded as an alter ego of Heraclius. Contemporary propaganda that promoted
Heraclius as a new Alexander may have supported this interpretation of the
Syriac work.
At the same time, the propagandistic exploitation of Alexander’s conquest of
Persia with reference to contemporaneous politics on the eastern frontier of the
empire are by no means a peculiarity of the seventh century. For centuries, the
well-known phenomena of imitatio Alexandri, comparatio Alexandri, and
aemulatio Alexandri circulated in Roman political discourse, while the figure of
Alexander had long figured at the center of meta-historical representations of
clashes between Roman and Persian dynasties.16 In many cases, it was the very
people whom the sources compare to the Macedonian who themselves sought
this comparison. Roman generals and emperors actively embraced the Alexander
model, especially when engaged in campaigns against enemies on the eastern
borders. The imitatio Alexandri became a prominent motif of imperial
propaganda, especially during conflicts against the late Arsacid and early
Sasanian dynasties. It was in relation to clashes against Iranian dynasties that the
appeal of the figure of Alexander exercised its greatest influence on Roman
politicians. Cases of imitatio Alexandri are increasingly reported beginning at
the end of the first century, when direct confrontations began between the empire
and the Arsacids. Trajan (r. 98–117) seems to have deliberately pursued the
parallel with Alexander during his Parthian campaign.17 It was under the
Severan dynasty, however, that the employment of the imitatio Alexandri as a
propaganda tool in conflicts against the Arsacid enemy reached its highest
levels. Caracalla developed an obsession with the image of Alexander,18 and
Severus Alexander (r. 222–235) was the first to adopt the use of the Alexander
motif in anti-Sasanian propaganda.19
Publicists of both Tetrarchic emperors and Constantinian dynasts did not fail
to recall elements of the Alexander theme in connection with the Sasanian
challenge.20 It was, however, only during the campaign led by Julian against the
Sasanians in 363 that the Alexander imagery reacquired major prominence.
Writings by the emperor in his own hand, as well as those by his friend Libanius,
point to deliberate attempts to draw a comparison as part of more general
propaganda aimed at undermining Sasanian claims to legitimacy.21 Julian was
assassinated during the retreat that followed the Roman defeat at the battle of
Samarra, in June 363. His ill-fated campaign against Shapur II also marked the
beginning of a long lull in hostilities between the empires. With the exception of
two brief interruptions in 421–422 and in 440, peace lasted until the beginning of
the sixth century, when a new series of conflicts broke out.
Other consequences of Julian’s fatal defeat included the acknowledgment of
the power of the Sasanian dynasty and the increasing acceptance of coexistence,
which would culminate in the Byzantine-Sasanian mutual acknowledgment later
represented by the image of the Two Eyes of the Earth. It is not surprising that in
this new context the imitatio Alexandri lost its appeal for Roman emperors, who
now understood that it would be impossible to reproduce the glorious deeds of
the Macedonian conqueror.22 At the same time, the long peace did not encourage
Roman politicians to adopt models that might trigger militaristic dreams among
their subjects. Even in the sixth century, when the two empires returned to a
quasi-permanent conflict, imperial publicists did not turn to the model of
Alexander to promote hope of complete victory over the Persian rival and
annexation of its empire. During the reign of Justinian, the example of the
Macedonian functioned as a negative model: a model to criticize—rather than
celebrate—the emperor’s military activities and his expansionist policies. A few
passages in Procopius’s Wars, in which Justinian’s campaigns are associated
with the deeds of Alexander, attest to this tendency.
The first passage contains the report of a delegation sent by Vitiges (r. 536–
540), king of the Ostrogoths, to Khosrow, urging him to take up weapons against
the Romans. Vitiges reportedly warned Khosrow about Justinian’s expansionist
goals, saying: “He [i.e., Justinian] has conceived the desire of seizing upon the
whole earth, and has become eager to acquire for himself each and every state.”2
3 Similar charges against the Byzantine emperor are made in our second passage.

Here we read about a delegation, led by a certain Bassaces, that the Armenians
sent to Khosrow in 539, after Justinian sent his general Bouzes (d. 556) to
suppress an uprising in Roman Armenia. Like Vitiges’s ambassadors, members
of the Armenian cohort accused Justinian of harboring cosmocratic ambitions:
“The whole earth is not large enough for the man [i.e., Justinian]; it is too small a
thing for him to conquer all the world together. But he is even looking about the
heavens and is searching the retreats beyond the ocean, wishing to gain for
himself some other world.”24 Clearly Procopius’s reports on the Ostrogoth and
Armenian visits to Khosrow are based on the same literary model. Procopius
uses a well-known topos commonly associated with Alexander, that is, the hero’s
ambition to reach and conquer the limits of the globe. The implicit association
with the Macedonian conqueror is evident in the description of the Armenian
delegation. Behind Justinian’s desire to explore heavens and oceans to find new
areas to conquer lies the infamous motif of Alexander’s attempt to ascend the
heavens and to explore the regions beyond the ocean—a motif that is prominent
in the traditions related to the Alexander Romance and that is also found in the
Neṣḥānā.
In another passage of his work, Procopius rebuts the charges allegedly
advanced against his patron on the basis of the same comparison with the
Macedonian—this time, however, presented in a positive way: “Yet they were
bringing as charges against Justinian the very things which would naturally be
encomiums for a worthy monarch, namely that he was exerting himself to make
his realm larger and much more splendid. For these accusations one might make
also against Cyrus, the King of the Persians, and Alexander, the Macedonian.”25
When portraying the perspective of Justinian’s detractors, Procopius adopts
literary motifs elsewhere attributed to Alexander and draws a connection
between the two emperors’ expansionist policies. The association with
Alexander consequently results in a negative assessment, as it builds on the
motif of the Macedonian’s extravagant aspirations. Although Procopius’s reports
on the Ostrogothic and Armenian embassies to the Sasanian king are ostensibly
literary constructs, they nonetheless attest to contemporary anti-militaristic
sentiments in Byzantine society and opposition to Justinian’s policy of territorial
expansionism. In this framework, the example of Alexander sheds a negative
light on the Byzantine emperor. This was not the first time (nor would it be the
last) that this rhetorical strategy was used to criticize an emperor. In earlier
centuries, Christian authors had drawn unflattering parallels between Julian and
Alexander.26 In these polemically oriented comparisons, the figure of Alexander
was regularly denigrated and his conquests were portrayed as vain and ill-fated
adventures—in sum, a real nemesis of the imitatio Alexandri. Critics of
expansionism seem to have adopted these very arguments, and they would
continue to do so after the emperor’s death: a few decades later, the negative
example of Alexander was still presented against possible dreams of universal
imperialism.
Theophylact Simocatta reports a speech allegedly delivered by emissaries of
Khosrow Parvēz to the senate in Byzantium in 590, asking for Roman support
against the usurper Bahrām Chōbin (d. 591). According to Theophylact,
Khosrow’s ambassador advocated maintenance of the status quo between the
Byzantines and the Sasanians and warned the Senate against any alteration of the
international order, with specific reference to the possible triumph of one empire
over the other. To strengthen this claim, the ambassador mentioned Alexander
and his excessive ambition: “He attempted to subjugate the temporal universe to
a single unitary power. But, sooner than this, ambition was quenched along with
power, and affairs proceeded once more divided up into a leadership of multiple
tyranny, so to speak.”27 Howard-Johnston argues that the ambassador’s speech
does not fit the context of 590. Instead, he suggests that the Persian
ambassador’s words reflect the historical situation of 628, following Heraclius’s
military success, when the Sasanian Empire was at the mercy of the Byzantines.2
8 The report may very well reflect the political discussion at the time of
Heraclius. However, the rhetorical device used by Theophylact to construct the
discourse of the Sasanian emissaries is the same used by Procopius in the
previous century to represent the perspective of opponents of Justinian’s
expansionist policies.

The Syriac Alexander: Justinian’s Nemesis

Justinian did not pursue the model of Alexander. This is what we can deduct
from the sources. Besides the short comparison with Alexander and Cyrus made
by Procopius in the passage mentioned above, neither literary sources nor
iconographic representations of the emperor indicate any attempt to establish an
imitatio Alexandri. This is not to say that imperial propagandists did not
celebrate Justinian’s (alleged) achievements in the wars against the Sasanians.
Indeed, we have traces of an intense propagandistic campaign, probably aimed at
hushing the critiques against the emperor’s war policies on the eastern borders.
Reports on two (or more) equestrian statues that once adorned the streets of
Constantinople witness to this kind of imperial propaganda. The first statue,
which was probably erected to celebrate the victory over the Sasanians at Dara
in 530, was placed in the hippodrome of Constantinople. The monument no
longer exists, and we must rely on notes and descriptions in sources. The
Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, composed between 785 and 843, mentions an
equestrian statue of Justinian in the area of the Kathisma that was erected to
celebrate a victory over the Persians.29 Reference to the same statue likely
occurs in the text known as the Anthology of Planudes, a collection of Greek
poems and epigraphs compiled in the tenth century and supplemented two
centuries later by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes (d. ca. 1305 CE). Here,
mention is made of an equestrian statue in the hippodrome. The Anthology
mentions two epigrams that were originally engraved on the monument and that
connect the erection of the monument to a victory against the Sasanians. The text
of the first inscription reads as follows:
O Emperor, slayer of the Medes, these gifts does Eustathius, the father and son of thy Rome, bring
unto thee: a steed for thy victory, a second Victory holding a wreath, and thyself seated on this steed
that is as swift as the wind. May thy might, O Justinian, stand high, and may the defenders of the
Medes and Scythians remain forever chained to the ground.30

One finds similar proclamations in the second epigram:

Bronze from the Assyrian spoils has fashioned, all at once, a steed, an emperor and Babylon destroyed.
It is Justinian, and Julian, who bears the yoke of the East, has set him up as a witness to the slaying of
the Medes.31

Whether this second epigram was originally attached to a different equestrian

monument is a matter of scholarly debate.32 What seems plausible is that both
epigrams refer to the victorious battle of Dara, the only occasion in the course of
the almost uninterrupted conflicts against the Persians during the reign of
Justinian, in which the Romans won an indisputable victory on the battlefield.33
Be this as it may, the two inscriptions reported in the Anthology of Planudes both
manifest propagandistic tones. Justinian is portrayed as the subjugator of the
Persians and the destroyer of Babylon—a metaphor that bears strong biblical
connotations. According to the first epigram, the statue probably included
representations of “Medes and Scythians” (i.e., Sasanians and their Hunnic
allies) “chained to the ground.” The opening sentence of the second epigram,
according to which “bronze from the Assyrian spoils” was used to fashion the
statue, provides us with another insight into the monument. Its sculptors
probably constructed it by melting bronze items seized as booty following the
battle. As Canepa observes, “the material from which the statue was made
provided tangible proof of Justinian’s dominance over the Sasanians, as it was
taken as booty in battle.”34 The propaganda message that the sculptors were
commissioned to communicate with this statue (or these statues) surely made
sense in the immediate aftermath of the victory at Dara. But one year later, in
531, when the Persians inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Romans, and in the
years to come, when Justinian suffered further humiliations on the Eastern front,
more than one Constantinopolitan arguably started to see the statue(s) and
its(/their) epigram(s) as a blatant exaggeration of what the emperor had really
achieved at Dara.
Nevertheless, imperial propagandists continued to promulgate the image of a
victorious Justinian by means of sculptural representations. There is another, and
more famous, equestrian statue erected a few years later, probably in 543, and
placed on the top of a massive column that crowned the Augustaeum. The statue
itself was demolished by the Ottomans in the early sixteenth century. However,
Procopius, who was a contemporary, describes the statue in his panegyrical
composition, The Buildings (I.2.1–12).35 This report helps us to understand how
imperial propaganda intended the statue to be understood, if not upon its
erection, at least in the context of the late 550s when the first book of The
Buildings was composed. The passage that describes the horseman on the
column reads as follows:
He looks toward the rising sun, directing his course, I suppose, against the Persians. And in his left
hand he holds a globe, by which the sculptor signifies that the whole earth and sea are subject to him,
yet he has neither sword nor spear nor any other weapon, but a cross stands upon the globe which he
carries, the emblem by which alone he has obtained both his Empire and his victory in war. And
stretching forth his right hand toward the rising sun and spreading out his fingers, he commands the
barbarians in that quarter to remain at home and to advance no further.36

According to Procopius, the statue in the Augustaeum celebrated what Byzantine

subjects were called to recognize as the emperor’s victories against the Persians.
Whether this was the original message that the sculptors were commissioned to
communicate or merely Procopius’s interpretation is irrelevant for us. Our
interest is in the emphasis that Procopius puts on the “Persian reading” of the
monument. He focuses largely on Justinian’s campaigns against the Sasanians,
rather than his more successful military activity in North Africa and in the Italian
Peninsula. This suggests that propaganda regarding the Persian campaigns was
badly needed to rebut criticism of Justinian’s mediocre performances against
Khosrow Anōshirvān. Exaggerating Justinian’s achievements, Procopius depicts
the emperor as the subjugator of the barbarians on the imperial eastern limes,
that is, the Persians. But that is not all. Procopius connects Justinian’s alleged
successes against the Sasanians to the role of divinely appointed kosmokrator,
represented by the globe surmounted by the cross that Justinian holds in his left
hand.
This characterization of the emperor brings to mind another equestrian figure
engraved in the famous Barberini ivory, and usually identified as Justinian.37 In
the central panel, a crowned emperor riding a horse holds a spear in his right
hand and points it to the ground. Below the horse, seated on the ground, is a
woman, commonly identified as a personification of Terra. Terra holds the
emperor’s right foot, thereby indicating the willing subjugation of the entire
earth to Byzantine power. Near the tail of the emperor’s horse is a man wearing
traditional Iranian garments who touches the emperor’s spear and raises his left
hand in a gesture of submission. Two more figures in Iranian costume appear in
the lower panel, portrayed as presenting gifts—including a diadem—to the
emperor. The three Iranian figures obviously represent the submission of Persia
to the Byzantine emperor. In an upper panel, Christ is at the center and two
angels are at his sides. As Canepa observes, “the vertical axis running between
the beardless apocalyptic Christ in the center of the top celestial panel and the
victorious emperor on horseback in the central terrestrial panel implies that the
emperor’s actions are functionally linked with the apocalyptic appearance of
Christ above.”38 The message communicated by the sculptor of the Barberine
ivory is the same message communicated by Justinian’s equestrian statues. In all
these objects the emperor is portrayed as kosmokrator and subjugator of Persia,
appointed by divine authority.
In all likelihood, this kind of propaganda was very much needed to rebut the
critiques of the many of Roman subjects who were not ready to forgive the
emperor for lack of success in the conflicts against the Sasanians. In the previous
chapters we have already heard the voices of these dissenters, which were
expressed in reaction to Justinian’s policy of using gold to purchase peace on the
eastern front. Now, the question to ask is how we should situate the
representation of the Alexander in the Neṣḥānā vis-à-vis these propagandistic
skirmishes. Was the Syriac work just another piece of pro-imperial propaganda
that aimed to disguise Justinian’s mediocre achievements with a glorious
narrative? My answer to this question is negative.
As I have argued, the author of the Neṣḥānā was one of the dissenters
disappointed by the course of events on the eastern limes. His profile coincides
with that of someone belonging to the circle of people who expressed
dissatisfaction with Justinian’s peace treaties with Khosrow, which were
perceived by many Byzantine subjects as a reduction of Byzantium to a tributary
vassal of Ctesiphon. The militaristic tones that the author uses in his work leave
little room for doubt about his personal convictions. His prefiguration of Persia’s
future destruction by the Romans signals his dreams of expansion on the eastern
border and the dissolution of the current political order. It is easy to imagine
what he thought about Justinian’s attitude toward his Sasanian rival—no doubt
too soft. The figure of Alexander was an obvious channel through which to
express his criticism.
As seen, in sixth–seventh-century Byzantium, Alexander was often invoked
as a model of deplorable behavior in the arguments advanced by critics of
expansionism. This is not surprising. In previous centuries, his example had
already been used to make both celebratory and defamatory comparisons.39 In
Byzantine society, Alexander’s ambivalent image could serve as either a positive
or a negative model for partisans of militarism and anti-militarism alike. It is
therefore reasonable to assume that at the time of Justinian, critics of
expansionism were not the only ones who might find the figure of Alexander
appealing. For those who dreamed of a different course of action on the Persian
border, the figure of Alexander would have come to mind as the most obvious
example of a sovereign who had solved the “Oriental question.” This explains
our author’s choice to adopt the Macedonian conqueror as a model.
However, for our author a simple comparison with the glorious achievements
of the Macedonian conqueror against Persia was not sufficient. He constructed
an ideal image of Alexander, who, unlike Justinian—according to the author’s
revisionism—successfully subjected the Persians to a tribute, and not vice versa.
As seen, the description of the peace terms imposed by Alexander on Tūbarlaq
in the Syriac work is indeed a revisionist rewriting of the clauses in the
Byzantine-Sasanian treaties of both 532 and 562, and in the armistice of 551. In
this section of the Neṣḥānā, the author reverses in favor of the Romans what he
considered to be the humiliating conditions accepted by Justinian. One of his
goals was to criticize the emperor for his lack of assertiveness toward the enemy.
By attributing to Alexander an event that never occurred, that is, the reduction of
Persia to a tributary state, the author emphasized the parallel with Justinian and
the distance between the glory of the former and the misery of the latter.
With his historical revisionism, the author may have wanted to rebut, and
even ridicule, the efforts of official court propagandists to present Justinian as
the subjugator of Persia. One imagines that such depictions of Justinian were
fairly common in the areas reached by imperial propaganda—for instance, the
Barberine ivory was produced in the East but was probably sent to the western
provinces by the seventh century. The author of the Neṣḥānā was likely aware of
these representations of the emperor, which must have been regarded as
shameless gloating and a flagrant distortion of the situation on the Oriental
limes. Against these vain imperial claims, our writer portrayed Alexander as a
divinely appointed world conqueror. In the Syriac work, the hero receives a
mandate from God to enslave the other kingdoms, and it is by grace of divine
intervention that he defeats Persia. The author highlights the groundlessness of
Justinian’s cosmocratic claims by comparing him to Alexander. Unlike Justinian,
the Macedonian hero not only saved his empire from a humiliating tributary
condition, but also imposed a tribute on, and eventually enslaved, Persia. Unlike
Procopius, our writer does refer to anything that might remind the reader of
Justinian’s successes in North Africa and Italy. This is striking: Had he wanted to
celebrate the emperor’s achievements in those regions, he easily could have
adopted traditions found in the Alexander Romance—also in its Syriac
translation40—that depict Alexander as traveling to and subjugating both Rome
and Carthage. However, this was not the case. At the same time, with his
description of Alexander’s travel to the far West and his astonishing journey to
the terrestrial limits, the very place where the sun sets, he may have wanted to
overshadow Justinian’s military activities in the Western provinces. Our author
contrasted the glorious image of Justinian disseminated by imperial
propagandists with that of Alexander, the real kosmokrator. In sum, in the
Neṣḥānā, Alexander does not appear as an avatar of Justinian, but as his
nemesis. Through this image of Alexander, our author offers his audience an
ideal alternative to the current ruler: the model of an emperor who embodies the
virtues necessary to lead the Christian Roman Empire in its divinely sanctioned
mission. His point of view does not differ from that of many Syriac intellectuals,
who could question the person of the emperor but not the institution of the
emperor.41 Although they might disagree with the policy of a certain emperor,
these intellectuals would still identify with the Christian Empire.42
The comparison with contemporary Syriac literature offers perhaps the
strongest argument in support of the reading proposed above. In fact, our author
was not the only Syriac writer of his time to adopt this literary approach to
criticizing Justinian. The Julian Romance presents an interesting parallel. Philip
Wood has argued that the author of the Romance compares the reign of Julian to
that of Justinian, with the goal of criticizing the latter.43 An obvious extension of
Wood’s reading is that the critique of Justinian is achieved via the contrast
between Julian and Jovian. The association with Julian, impious and pagan
monarch, generates a characterization of Justinian that is antithetical to the ideal
of the just and devout sovereign, personified by Jovian in the Julian Romance. In
the eyes of the author of the Romance, Justinian is as similar to Julian as he is
dissimilar from Jovian. His proximity to the former’s flaws distances him from
the merits of the latter. The author of the Neṣḥānā elaborates the same literary
operation through the character of Alexander, who also embodies the concepts of
an idealized monarch, serving as a virtuous example against Justinian. This
ideological convergence among the two works is not surprising, especially when
considering the many narrative, thematic, and ideological parallels between the
Neṣḥānā and the Julian Romance that I have analyzed in the previous chapter.
When it comes to their protagonists, the two works present the two heroes of
their narration, that is, Alexander and Jovian, in a similar manner. The idealized
figure of Alexander constructed by the author of the Neṣḥānā brings to mind the
image of Jovian in the Julian Romance. Both figures are flawless Christian
sovereigns who receive divine support and prophetic visions, and who perform
the same pious act of deposing the royal crown in front of their Lord.
Unsurprisingly, the characterization of both Alexander and Jovian reflects the
similar political agendas of the two Syriac authors, especially their criticism of
Justinian’s policies. As noted, it is not impossible that the author of either the
Neṣḥānā or the Julian Romance knew the work of the other and used it as a
source of inspiration. It is more likely, however, that the common elements in the
two texts reflect broader political debates among contemporary Syriac
intellectuals. Unsatisfied with Justinian’s policies, but still loyal to the
Christianized Roman Empire, these intellectuals could oppose to the current
ruler the typological figure of a divinely inspired monarch.
 PART II
STUDIES ON SINGLE THEMES AND MOTIFS
 7
Alexander, the Danielic Visions, and the Gate against
Gog and Magog

As observed in the previous chapter, the choice by the author of the Neṣḥānā to
adopt Alexander as the protagonist of his anti-Sasanian epic is likely indebted to
the centennial tradition of the imitatio Alexandri, which provided a well-defined
model of a military leader who tamed Rome’s Persian enemies. At the same
time, however, the traditional figure of Alexander as the subjugator of Persia in
the Syriac work was combined with an ideal of the pious and just monarch,
peculiar to the author’s cultural environment. The result is the introduction of a
significant element of innovation into the historiographical and propagandistic
model of the imitatio Alexandri, namely the characterization of Alexander as a
Christian sovereign. In the Neṣḥānā, Alexander is then portrayed as a devout
monarch who derives his power from the Christian god. He prays that this god
will expand the borders of his kingdom and commits to welcome the arrival of
his Messiah. He benefits from divine warnings about imminent dangers—
specifically, in the dream on the eve of the battle against Tūbarlaq—and God
himself enters the battle at his side and ensures his victory over the Persians.
After his triumph, he travels to Jerusalem to pray, and it is in Jerusalem that his
silver throne is brought after his death in order to accommodate Jesus’s coming.
The author of the Neṣḥānā thus portrays the Macedonian hero as a real ante
Christum natum rex christianissimus, arguably for the first time.1 This
characterization of Alexander as a pious Christian ruler is a literary innovation.
Previously, the particular features of the protagonist in the Syriac text were not
found in most traditions about Alexander. The typological model of the just king,
also expressed in the representation of Jovian in the Julian Romance, helps us to
trace the development of the Christian Alexander that appears in the Neṣḥānā.
But to fully grasp the genesis of this complex character, his role as future
subjugator of Persia and as the prophet of Rome’s glorious, eschatological
destiny, we must consider the insertion of biblical prophecies into anti-Sasanian
polemics. The study of earlier hermeneutics of the Book of Daniel, in particular,
and their interpretations of Alexander’s role in sacred history will provide crucial
elements to delineate the development of the character of Alexander in the
Neṣḥānā. To this end we must move back in time a few centuries to the moment
of the Christianization of the Roman Empire.

Alexander and the Danielic Visions

In 311, the Roman emperor Galerius (r. 305–311) issued the so-called Edict of
Serdica, which put an end to the great Diocleation Persecution of Christians that
Galerius himself had inspired and encouraged in 303. With the Edict of Milan in
313, which followed Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312,
Christianity was declared religio licita, and Christians living in the empire were
granted religious tolerance. These events represent a watershed in the history of
the Roman Empire. They were harbingers of a process that culminated in the
adoption of Christianity as state religion in 380 under Theodosius I (who reigned
over the Eastern Empire from 379 to 392 and over the whole empire from 392 to
395). Constantine’s conversion to Christianity inaugurated the production of
literary works by Christian authors, like Eusebius and Lactantius, who began to
represent the empire as a Christian kingdom and the emperor as the protector of
Christians. It was at this time that an image of Alexander that was largely
unknown to the Roman audience now entered the anti-Persian political
discourse.
A few decades after Constantine’s adoption of Christianity, Christian
polemists referred to Alexander to ridicule Julian’s own attempts to emulate the
conqueror.2 This instrumental use of the image of Alexander was related to
previous Christian oratory. As Christian Thrue Djurslev has pointed out, early
Christian authors extracted from the Classical tradition about Alexander a
variety of themes that they developed and deployed in polemical discourse
against paganism.3 At the same time, Alexander figured in the writings of
intellectuals engaged in another area of Christian thought, that is, scriptural
exegesis. Interpretations of biblical prophecies developed by Christian exegetists
in the pre-Constantinian period provided an alternative and significantly
different framework for the memory of the Macedonian conqueror.
The most influential of these scriptural prognostications is found in chapters
2, 7, and 8 of the Book of Daniel. All three books contain visions that describe,
by means of allegorical images, the rise and fall of different worldly kingdoms.
Cross-reading these prophecies, exegetes elaborated a schematic representation
of sacred history articulated around the succession of four different global
powers—to be followed by a fifth and everlasting world kingdom established by
God. At the same time, the obscure imagery of the visions left enough room for
speculation about the identity of the four world kingdoms. Alexander was
repeatedly associated with one of the four political entities described in the
Danielic schema, but there was disagreement over which of these four
superpowers he represented. Doubts mostly concerned the visions in Daniel 2
and 7 and whether Alexander should be identified with the third or the fourth
kingdom mentioned in the two texts. The confusion arose as a consequence of
the adaptation of the Danielic prophecies—which had been composed around the
time of the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167–164 BCE
—to the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Roman Republic as a
hegemonic political entity. Whereas an early interpretive approach identified
Alexander’s empire with the final worldly kingdom—which likely was the
original intention of the Danielic authors—a later exegetical view attributed the
last position of the Danielic schema to Rome, thereby “relegating” Alexander to
the third slot. The two views persisted side by side, and the place of Alexander
in the four kingdoms schema remained fluid and fluctuated between the last two
slots. As for the role of Alexander in the Danielic prophecy in Daniel 8, which
contains the vision of the ram and the he-goat, most Christian exegetes had no
hesitation in identifying the he-goat as Alexander.4
Exegesis provided an alternative source of information about Alexander than
those to which the Roman audience were accustomed. As Djurslev observes,
“what went on in Biblical exegesis mattered as much for Alexander’s legacy as
some of the more popular receptions in the Alexander Romance and oratory in
the pre-Constantinian phase of Christian thought.”5 Scriptural interpretation
contributed to the spread of a new image of Alexander, that was significantly
different from the image emerging from the Classical tradition. With conversions
to Christianity rising and an associated increase in familiarity with biblical texts,
a substantial number of people came to regard Alexander as a king whose
actions were dictated by divine providence.6 The Macedonian conqueror now
began to play a role in sacred history and in God’s plan for human salvation. In
the immediate aftermath of Constantine’s conversion, this new image of
Alexander resulted in a surprising merger of the Classical topos of the imitatio
Alexandri and Christian interpretations of the Danielic prophecies.
The emperor’s conversion in 312 dramatically changed the living conditions
of Christian communities. The effect was felt—positively—not only by
Christians in the Roman Empire, but also—less positively—by their co-
religionists in the Sasanian Empire. After the events of 312–313, Christians
under Sasanian rule came to be regarded as a possible fifth column. When
persecutions began in 338 CE under Shapur II (r. 309–379 CE), Persian Christian
communities began to look to Roman emperors as potential protectors. A direct
witness to these circumstances was the Syriac intellectual Aphrahat (d. ca. 345),
a Christian living in Sasanian territory at the time of Shapur’s persecutions. Like
many of his co-religionists subject to Persian sovereignty, Aphrahat directed his
hopes at Constantine, whom he saw as the legitimate protector of Christians
under the Sasanian yoke.
Aphrahat’s anti-Sasanian sentiments are observable in his Demonstration V,
“On War” in which he provides a highly politicized interpretation of the
Danielic prophecies in Daniel 2, 7, and 8. Here, Aphrahat follows the
widespread hermeneutic according to which the Roman Empire represents the
last kingdom in the Danielic schema. Reflecting the spirit of the time and the
enthusiasm with which Christians received the news of Constantine’s
conversion, Aphrahat identifies Rome as the last world power, destined to
triumph over all other kingdoms. At the same time, his reading of the Danielic
visions was motivated by anti-Sasanian feelings. Importantly for our analysis,
the figure of Alexander would come to play a pivotal role in his ideologically
oriented hermeneutics.
Central to Aphrahat’s hermeneutical reading is a peculiar interpretation of the
Danielic scheme, which is characterized by ideological continuity between the
third and fourth empires: those of the Greeks and the Romans. Analyzing the
vision of the four beasts in Daniel 7, Aphrahat describes the identity of the third
beast—a leopard with four wings and four heads—and the fourth beast—a
mighty beast with large iron teeth and ten horns—which represent the empire of
Alexander and the empire of the children of Esau (i.e., the Romans),
respectively:
Concerning the third beast, [Daniel] said, “It resembled a leopard, but it had four flying wings on its
back, and that beast had four heads.” [This] third beast was Alexander the Macedonian, for he was as
strong as a leopard. [ . . . ] [Daniel] said that the fourth beast “excelled in strength and might and
power, eating and devouring. And whatever was left over it trampled with its feet.” It represents the
kingdom of the descendants of Esau. For after Alexander the Macedonian became king, the kingdom
of the Greeks was his, since Alexander was also one of the Greeks. The vision of the third beast was
fulfilled in him, since the third and the fourth [beasts] were one.7

This combination of the Greek and Roman kingdoms has a strong political
connotation. The centrality of this interpretation appears clearly in the passage of
Aphrahat’s work in which he engages with the vision in Daniel 8:3–8. The vision
describes the victorious attack of a one-horned he-goat on a two-horned ram.
The biblical text reveals the allegory behind the vision: the he-goat represents
the king of Greece, and the ram represents the king of Media and Persia (Dan
8:20–21). Following a widely accepted reading, Aphrahat identifies the ram with
Darius III and the he-goat with Alexander. He explains the he-goat’s striking the
ram as an allegorical image of the defeat of the Achaemenids by the
Macedonians.8 At the same time, departing from mainstream hermeneutic,
Aphrahat develops an original interpretation of the passage. He connects the
vision in Daniel 8:3–8 to the vision in Daniel 7 and creates a meta-historical (or
better, trans-scriptural) reality in which, after being defeated by the he-goat, the
ram of Daniel 8 will be defeated again by the fourth beast of Daniel 7:
Thus, the horns of the ram were broken. However, though his horns have been broken, he raises
himself up and exalts himself against the fourth beast, who is strong and powerful, with teeth of iron
and hooves of bronze. [This beast] devours and breaks [things] into pieces, and whatever is left over he
tramples with his feet. O ram, whose horns have been broken, draw back from the beast and do not
irritate it, or it may devour you and grind you into pieces! The ram was not able to stand before the
young goat; how will it stand before the terrible beast, whose mouth utters mighty words and who
crouches over whatever it finds like a lion over its prey?9

Aphrahat uses this complex hermeneutic to address the contemporary political

situation. In his eyes, the ram represents Shapur II, who now confronts the
Christianized Roman Empire: the fourth beast of Daniel’s vision. The rhetorical
question posed by Aphrahat (“the ram could not stand before the he-goat; how
shall it stand before that terrible beast?”) has strong political and ideological
implications. Craig Morrison notes: “This question is not posed in the book of
Daniel—the ram and fourth beast never meet. But the issue is central to
Aphrahat’s application of this biblical text to his historical moment: how can the
ram—now, no longer Darius, but Shapur II—stand against the fourth beast—
Rome!”10
The parallel drawn by Aphrahat between the past conflict between Alexander
and Darius and the present confrontation between Constantine and Shapur II is
key to his interpretation of sacred history.11 The Persian kingdom, routed by
Alexander in the past, is destined to be defeated once again in the present, this
time by the Romans. The ideological continuity between Alexander’s kingdom
and the Roman Empire finds its practical expression in their common destiny to
confront and prevail over the Persian enemy. Thus does Constantine become a
new Alexander who will annihilate Shapur in the same way that the Macedonian
had annihilated Darius III. To an extent, Aphrahat follows previous generations
of intellectuals in treating Alexander as a model for Roman emperors who
engaged in military campaigns against the Persians. At the same time, he never
explicitly develops the classical model of the imitatio Alexandri and he
expresses the parallel between past and present circumstances only by means of
biblical interpretation. This is the most innovative aspect of Aphrahat’s exegesis,
in which the Macedonian conqueror comes to be associated with a pro-Roman
and anti-Sasanian reading of the Danielic visions.
Thus, Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and Shapur’s persecution of
Christians in the Sasanian Empire created the conditions for a revival of the
Alexander figure. The powerful combination of Classical knowledge and
scriptural authority was put to use as a propaganda instrument against the
Persian enemy. Aphrahat appears to have been the first author—or at least the
first extant author—to have used this new Danielic-Alexandrian paradigm to
pursue an anti-Sasanian agenda. He would not be the last.
Two centuries later, John Malalas made a similar—though less well
articulated—use of the figure of Alexander in conjunction with the prophecies in
Daniel, specifically in Daniel 7. At the beginning of Book VIII of his
Chronographia, Malalas writes:
In the fourth year of the reign of Dareios the Mede, son of Assalam, God raised up Alexander, toparch
of the emperor of Macedonia, the son of Philip, against the Assyrians, Persians, Parthians, and Medes [
. . . ]. Alexander immediately set out like a leopard and captured many lands with his generals. He
defeated Dareios, emperor of the Persians, the son of Assalam, and captured him, all his empire, all the
land of the Assyrians, Medes, Parthians, Babylonians and Persians and all the empires on earth [ . . . ].
Alexander freed the cities and territories and all the land of the Romans, Hellenes and Egyptians from
subjection and slavery to Assyrians, Persians, Parthians and Medes; he restored to the Romans all that
they had lost.12

Malalas’s description is strongly influenced by the Danielic schema of the four

kingdoms and its vision of history based on the idea of the succession of world
empires. The opening of Book VIII of the Chronographia refers to the transition
from the Persian to the Macedonian empire. As mentioned, depending on how
one interprets the Danielic schema, the Persian/Macedonian translatio imperii
may represent the passage from either the third to the fourth empire or the
second to the third empire. The earliest interpreters of the Danielic schema
identified the Macedonian Empire as the last world kingdom, whose ascent
would follow the decline of Persians, who had occupied the third slot in the
schema. However, a later interpretive model—also embraced by Aphrahat—
identified the Romans as the last world kingdom, with the consequential
downgrading of the Macedonians and Persians to the third and second slots in
the schema. Malalas, who follows the later interpretation, identifies Alexander’s
kingdom with the third empire. This clearly appears in the identification of
Alexander with the leopard—the animal that in Daniel 7 represents the third
world kingdom. Malalas adopts the same interpretive line as Aphrahat, who also
identifies Alexander as the Danielic leopard.
The opening statement of the passage by Malalas (“God raised up Alexander
[ . . . ] against the Assyrians, Persians, Parthians, and Medes”) has strong
ideological implications. Malalas places Alexander’s campaigns within the
framework of God’s plan for sacred history, with the rise of Alexander occurring
in accordance with a divine plan. In addition to reflecting an understanding of
human history as a process that is directed by divine intervention, Malalas
proposes that the fall of Darius’s empire at the hands of the Macedonians is a
consequence of divine will. At this point, one wonders whether Malalas adopted
the same strategy as Aphrahat in creating a meta-historical pattern in which the
events of the past are destined to be repeated in the present, with the Byzantines
and Sasanians now playing the roles of the Macedonians and Persians. The
answer seems to be affirmative, as appears from the final statement of the quoted
passage.
The reference to the Romans as a people freed by Alexander, together with
Hellens and Egyptians, is odd, as is the statement that Alexander “restored to the
Romans all that they had lost.” No historical events can be associated with
Malalas’s words: Alexander never freed the Romans from any oppressor, nor had
the Romans, at the time when Malalas was writing, reacquired any possession
that had been seized by the Persians. While it is possible that Malalas was
relying on inaccurate historical knowledge, his claims are in open contradiction
to information he reports elsewhere in the Chronographia. At the end of the
previous chapter (i.e., Book VII), Malalas states that at the time of Darius the
Mede, “the Romans became dominant and extended the boundaries of their
territory.”13 This information contradicts the claim that when Alexander defeated
Darius, he restored the territories that the Romans had lost. Malalas’s reference
to the Romans in his description of Alexander’s campaigns is not historically
accurate. Rather, the author is constructing a meta-historical reality in which
present and past are superimposed, and contemporary concepts and ideas are
projected backwards to the time of Alexander.
Malalas had a specific reason for crediting Alexander with restoring Roman
sovereignty over lands that had never belonged to the Romans. The Romans that
he mentions in this passage are not the inhabitants of Rome at the time of
Alexander, but rather the Byzantines, whom he considers the heirs of Alexander.
Implicitly, the author assigns to Byzantium the legacy of Alexander and the right
to rule over the “Asian” territories that once belonged to the Macedonians.
Behind his statement lies the same concept of ideological continuity between
Macedonians and Romans/Byzantines constructed by Aphrahat. Like Aphrahat,
Malalas locates the Macedonian hero in the framework of an anti-Sasanian
propaganda. The idealized connection between the reign of Alexander and the
reign of the Romans, related to one another by their common opposition to the
Persian kingdom, also appears in another curious claim made by Malalas,
according to which the Romans supplied Alexander with an army to fight against
Darius.14 Here, Malalas attributes to the Roman Empire an active role in the
defeat of Achaemenid Persia. His description of the rise of Alexander against
Darius reflects an aggressive expansionistic agenda regarding contemporary
events. It looks forward to the eventual restoration of Roman control over the
Eastern territories of Alexander’s empire, which were then under Sasanian
occupation.

Back to the Neṣḥānā

The Neṣḥānā shares several elements with Aphrahat and Malalas concerning the
political use of Alexander in relation to the Danielic visions. The author of the
Neṣḥānā describes the same kind of ideological cohesion between Alexander’s
empire and the Roman Empire that we have observed above. In the Syriac work,
it is Alexander himself who expresses this cohesion, which repeatedly occurs in
his prophecy about the events expected to happen after the collapse of his gate.
In the prophecy, Alexander gradually replaces the mention of the kingdom of the
Greeks with that of the kingdom of the Romans, until he explicitly affirms: “The
kingdom of the Greeks which is the kingdom of the Romans.”15 Subsequently,
Alexander describes the kingdom of the Romans as “my kingdom, which is
called the kingdom of the house of Alexander the son of Philip.”16 This
conflation of the Roman Empire and Alexander’s kingdom brings to mind
Aphrahat’s hermeneutic of Daniel 7 and his claim that the third and the fourth
beasts—which he identifies with the kingdom of the Greeks and the kingdom of
the Romans, respectively—are the same.
The unity between the empire of the Greeks and that of the Romans is
fundamental to the agenda of the author of the Neṣḥānā and to the vision of
sacred history that he wants to promulgate. The scenario that he describes is
close, in both its images and goals, to the one observed in Aphrahat’s
Demonstration V. Like Aphrahat, our author wants to send a clear message that
addresses fears about the future of Byzantium caused by the aggressiveness of its
Persian neighbor: the kingdom of Alexander, which is now the powerful Roman
Empire, cannot be defeated. In Aphrahat’s treatise, Rome’s destiny to be
unvanquished (“to this day it continues, and will continue forever”)17 is based on
the interpretation of the Danielic prophecies, according to which Roman rule
will endure until Jesus’s Second Coming and the establishment of the eternal
kingdom of the “Son of Man.” At this moment, the “ancient of Days” will sit on
the throne.18 The Neṣḥānā adheres to this pattern and manifests much the same
vision of sacred history. The author assigns to Alexander the role of predicting
the future fortunes of the empire. At the beginning of the Syriac work, in a
prayer addressed to the Lord, the hero mentions that his kingdom will be handed
to the Messiah, who will sit on a silver throne, the throne that he—Alexander—
established in Jerusalem. Then, in the prophecy which he declares after erecting
the gate against the Huns, Alexander asserts that the kingdom of the Romans
will prevail over the other worldly kingdoms and conquer the earth.19 In the
background of Alexander’s prayer and prophecy lies the same concept of sacred
history found in Aphrahat’s Demonstrations—a concept that is based on a
similar reading of Daniel and on the idea that the Greco-Roman Empire is the
final kingdom, destined to endure until Jesus’s Second Coming.
There is much in common between the views expressed by the author of the
Neṣḥānā and those expressed by Aphrahat and—to a lesser extent—Malalas.
These common elements help us achieve a better understanding of the
development of the figure of Alexander in the Neṣḥānā—especially its
intersection with biblical prophecies. The evolution of the figure of the
Macedonian king can be better appreciated when one compares the Neṣḥānā to
the older tradition of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem. This tradition is recorded in
Jewish sources, that is, Josephus’s Antiquities, the Megillat Ta‘anit, and
Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 69a), but is also included in a later recension (ε) of
the Pseudo-Callisthenes,20 and was known to a number of early Christian
writers.21 Josephus reports that during his campaign against Darius, the
Macedonian king paid a visit to Jerusalem. Disappointing his Phoenician and
Chaldean allies, who thought they would be allowed to plunder the city,
Alexander greets the procession of priests and citizens that came to meet him at
the entrance of Jerusalem. The king even salutes the Jewish high priest before
receiving his greetings (a break with royal protocol) and magnifies the name of
God engraved on a plate. To the dismay of one of his generals, Parmenion, who
asks him why he was admiring the Jewish high priest, Alexander answers that he
is not praising the man, but the god that he represents. Alexander explains that
when he was still in Macedonia, he had a dream in which that priest exhorted
him to invade “Asia,” promising him dominion over those territories. Upon his
arrival in the city, Alexander goes to the Temple and offers sacrifices to the
Jewish god, in accordance with the high priest’s directions. He is then shown the
passage in the Book of Daniel which predicts that a man from the land of the
Greeks will destroy the empire of the Persians—a clear allusion to the vision of
the he-goat and the ram in Daniel 8:3–12. Alexander embraces the prediction
with joy.22
The situation described by Josephus lacks any historical basis. The most
obvious indication of its fictional character is the fact that the vision of the ram
and the he-goat was composed almost two centuries after Alexander’s death. The
prophecy is based on a vaticinium ex eventu and represents a description a
posteriori of Alexander’s victory over Darius. At the same time, the account of
Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem represents an early testimony to a motif that we
also find in the Neṣḥānā, that is, the hero’s awareness of biblical prophecies
predicting the success of his empire. The Syriac work, however, differs on at
least three points. These differences point to the peculiar features that the literary
figure of Alexander absorbed during its development in the cultural context of
the late antique Near East.
First, in the Neṣḥānā, Alexander is not shown any scriptural prediction about
the glorious future of his kingdom. It is he himself who predicts that his
kingdom is destined to rule over the other kingdoms. The hero of the Syriac
work is a prophet whose words are consistent with those of the prophetic biblical
tradition. Second, in contrast to Josephus’s account of Alexander’s visit to
Jerusalem, the Alexander of the Neṣḥānā is aware not only of his immediate
success in the war against Persia, but also of the glorious destiny of his kingdom.
In his prophecy, the empire of which he is the founder is the kingdom destined to
endure until Jesus’s Second Coming. Third, in the Neṣḥānā, Alexander’s
familiarity with biblical prophecies has strong anti-Sasanian connotations. The
vision that he has engraved over the eschatological gate emphasizes that the
Persian power will be uprooted by the Greco-Roman Empire as the latter
marches toward world hegemony. Alexander’s awareness of Rome’s role as the
last and lasting world power is used to communicate the fact that the Romans
will repeat his success in subjugating Persia.
In the Neṣḥānā, the Alexander figure functions very differently from the same
figure in the time of Josephus. In contrast to Josephus, in the Syriac work the
Macedonian hero is an openly monotheistic (Christian) sovereign with prophetic
skills and a mission in accordance with God’s plans for human history. It is
difficult to say to what extent these developments are original elaborations of the
author of the Neṣḥānā or whether they reflect wider imagery about Alexander
among his contemporaries. Certainly, the Syriac apocalypse is the first recorded
document in which the Alexander figure possesses the features of a Christian
prophet-king. However, this characterization was the culmination of a long and
continuous process in which many elements and cultural tendencies came to be
associated with the figure of the Macedonian king. The Christianization of the
Roman political apparatus was a decisive step in this process. It is from this
moment onward that the use of the imitatio Alexandri as an instrument of anti-
Persian propaganda was combined with biblical prophecies commonly
associated with Alexander. Roman citizens could now hope that the empire
would prevail over Persian dynasties not only by repeating the glorious deeds of
Alexander, but also by accomplishing the prophecies described by the prophet
Daniel.
This “biblicization” of the anti-Persian, and specifically anti-Sasanian, use of
the Alexander figure was apparently inaugurated by Aphrahat in the fourth
century. Similar references to this type of propaganda occur in the work of
Malalas, who was probably of Syriac origins, but not in the works of other
historians writing in Greek. This suggests that the process of exchange between
the imitatio Alexandri and the anti-Sasanian readings of the Danielic prophecies
was current mostly (if not exclusively) among Syriac speakers. It is no
coincidence that it is in a Syriac text, and not in a Greek one, that this process
found its culmination. The figure of Alexander in the Neṣḥānā is a combination
of these earlier developments with concepts about the idealization of the royal
figure that also appear to have been peculiar to the Syriac cultural environment.
The prophetic turn in the characterization of Alexander and his Christianization
points to the influence of the typology of the sovereign-prophet that also
characterizes the Jovian figure in the Julian Romance. At the same time, the
process that resulted in the representation of Alexander as a Christian,
apocalyptic character is fundamental to a better understanding of the genesis of,
and ideology behind, the central narrative episode in the Neṣḥānā, that is, the
story of the gate against the Huns of Gog and Magog. We are now in a better
position to return to this narrative element and try to address some unsolved
questions about it.

The Gate against Gog and Magog

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the story of the gate that Alexander erects against
the Huns of Gog and Magog combines two previously independent elements: (1)
the idea that Alexander erected iron gates in the Caucasus to prevent the attacks
of nomads from Central Asia; (2) the identification of these people with the
biblical Gog and Magog. To these two elements, one may add a third one, that is,
the idea—witnessed from the Book of Revelation onward—that toward the end
of time the Antichrist will rally the people of Gog and Magog to participate in an
eschatological battle against “the camp of the saints and the beloved city” (Rev
20:7–10). The Neṣḥānā is the first extant document in which these elements are
combined. It states that the Huns are governed by fifteen kings, the first two of
whom are Gog and Magog. Alexander builds a gate to contain their incursions
until God’s decree. The idea that the Huns will be rallied by the Antichrist is not
mentioned by the Syriac author. Also not mentioned is the motif of their final
battle against Christianity. In the Neṣḥānā, the Huns of Gog and Magog are an
instrument of divine providence who engage in the “global” conflict that will
precede the rise of the Roman kingdom. In fact, our author appears to have
modified the canonical unfolding of the eschatological drama in the Book of
Revelation to make room for the idea that the Roman kingdom will establish a
cosmocratic dominion to prepare the world for Jesus’s Second Coming.
References to other biblical passages and exegetical concepts external to
Revelation are inserted in the text. The Hunnic invasion is explained by the
prophecy of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:14 (“out of the north disaster shall break out
on all the inhabitants of the land”), a prophecy to which Alexander explicitly
refers in his own prediction engraved on the gate. The global conflict involving
twenty-four kingdoms evokes the final eschatological war of nation against
nation and kingdom against kingdom prophesied by Jesus in Matthew 24:6–7.
The idea that only one of these kingdoms will endure until the End of Time is
inspired by the Christian receptions of the Book of Daniel—although the
Neṣḥānā does not refer to the translatio imperii, since several world kingdoms
appear to coexist until the final accomplishment of sacred history.
Tropes in two passages of the episode of Alexander’s gate refer directly to the
imagery of the Book of Daniel. In the prophecy that the Macedonian king
engraves over the gate, the kingdom of the Greeks is described as carrying in its
hands two hammers—one made of iron, the other of bronze—and striking one
against the other. The meaning of this image is explained in the text: “And the
kingdom of Greece shall smite the hammers one upon the other, and as iron
which is melted by fire, and as bronze which bolts in the flame, so shall the
power of the kingdoms melt away before the might of the kingdom of the Greeks
which is that of the Romans.”23 The smiting of the two hammers and the melting
of the two metals represent the capacity of the Greco-Roman Empire to destroy
the other kingdoms of the world—which the text identifies as the Persians, the
Huns, and the Arabs. The choice of iron and bronze as the two metals of which
the hammers are made is not coincidental. It refers to two elements of the
Danielic eschatological imagery: (1) the representation of the last two world
kingdoms as bronze and iron, respectively, in the metaphoric description of the
four kingdoms as a statue composed of four different metals in Daniel 2:32–33;
and (2) the representation of the fourth beast as an entity with iron teeth and
bronze claws in Daniel 7:24.24
Like Aphrahat and most Christian exegetes, the author of the Neṣḥānā likely
identified the third and the fourth kingdoms of Daniel 2 with the empires of the
Macedonians and the Romans, respectively, and the fourth beast of Daniel 7 with
Rome. If so, the two hammers made of bronze and iron held by the kingdom of
the Greeks would appear as an intentional representation of: (1) the continuity
and unity of the last two world kingdoms according to the pattern already
described by Aphrahat and embraced by the author of the Neṣḥānā (it is hardly a
coincidence that the allegorical image of the two hammers is immediately
followed by the author’s announcement to the readers that the kingdom of the
Greeks is that of the Romans); (2) the destiny of the kingdom of the Romans to
fulfill the Danielic prophecy of the mighty fourth beast, and to prevail over the
other world kingdoms until the arrival of the Son of Man and the establishment
of God’s heavenly dominion. The picture that emerges from the use of these
tropes brings to mind the hermeneutic of Daniel developed two centuries earlier
by Aphrahat, who had promulgated the ideological identity of the third and the
fourth kingdoms and identified this unified kingdom (founded by Alexander)
with the mighty fourth beast.
The author of the Neṣḥānā adopts the Danielic metaphor of the two metals
also in the description of Alexander’s gate, which is said to have been crafted
from a combination of bronze and iron components. Earlier references to the
mythical gates erected by Alexander refer only to iron gates. The introduction of
bronze as an additional component is an innovation that apparently was dictated
by the author’s desire to strengthen the ideological cohesion between the third
and fourth empires of the Danielic schema, and to recall once again the
identification of the kingdom founded by Alexander with the mighty fourth
beast.25 From this reference to the Danielic imagery, Alexander’s gate emerges
as another symbol of the unity of the Greek and Roman empires, and of its status
as the final human kingdom of world history before the coming of the Messiah.
The allegorical fusion of the two metals into the barrier erected by Alexander,
mythical founder of the two kingdoms, also signals the crucial role that the
Greco-Roman Empire is destined to play in God’s plan for human salvation,
namely to contain the eschatological invasion from the other side of the rampart
until God’s final decree.
Thus, the gate is a symbol of the empire’s commitment to the role that God
assigned it. This is a crucial point to our understanding of another scriptural
reference made by the Syriac author. The reference is to the katéchon, the
withholding power which, according to 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7, prevents the
coming of the Antichrist until God’s decree. Beginning at least with Tertullian
(d. ca. 220 CE), Christian exegetes identified this katéchon with the Roman
Empire and attributed to it the role of delaying Satan’s arrival.26 A further
refinement of this reading, in conjunction with the exegetical line that identifies
the Roman Empire as the fourth beast of the Danielic vision, is the idea that
toward the end of human history the katéchon would be removed and the
Antichrist would arrive in concomitance with the fall of the last world kingdom.2
7 From the perspective of Christian eschatology, the removal of the katéchon
also entailed the coming of those fierce nations of Gog and Magog which,
according to Revelation, the Antichrist would gather and send to battle after his
release.
This complex of ideas is very much at play in the story of Alexander’s gate.
In restraining the Huns of Gog and Magog until the moment of their final sorties,
the gate serves the same function as the katéchon in the Roman Empire. The
collapse of Alexander’s gate coincides, both thematically and ideologically, with
the removal of the katéchon. The Syriac author’s allusion to 2 Thessalonians
2:6–7 is perfectly integrated in the eschatological scenario that he is describing.
The gate erected by Alexander is not merely a barrier to stop the incursions of
nomadic people thought to be involved in an eschatological invasion. By means
of the gate, the Roman Empire will fulfill its task as the withholding force
designated by God to prevent those dramatic events from happening until a
divine decree. God’s removal of the gate initiates the cycle of conflicts from
which Rome will emerge victorious and confirmed in its status as the last world
kingdom, the fourth beast destined to remit its power to Jesus—as promised by
Alexander in his prayer.
The goal of the apocalyptic vision about Alexander’s gate is to magnify the
role of Rome in sacred history.28 This message is communicated through explicit
claims put in the mouth of Alexander in the form of vaticinia. In addition,
however, the very idea of a barrier erected to postpone the starting of the
Apocalypse—which is at the core of the Alexander story—evokes the concept of
katéchon and exegetical speculations about the role of the Roman Empire in
performing that same task. The allusion to these specific ideas raises another set
of questions: Was the original intent of the story of Alexander’s eschatological
gate29 to emphasize Rome’s divine mission? Or was that motif only added at a
later date? What was the role of the author of the Neṣḥānā in this development?
Did he report or build upon an earlier tradition according to which Alexander
constructed a gate to delay the apocalyptic invasions of Gog and Magog? Or did
he invent the story out of whole cloth? And when did the story originate?
As briefly mentioned in Chapter 1, some scholars have posited that the story
of Alexander’s eschatological gate existed before the time of the Neṣḥānā. At
what exact time these supposedly early versions of the episode started
circulating, however, is a matter of debate. Friedrich Pfister suggested that the
story originated among first-century Alexandrian Jews.30 His argument is based
largely on the information provided by Josephus in two different works: (1) the
report that the Alans, identified by Josephus as a Scythian people, broke through
the iron gates erected by Alexander;31 (2) the fact that Josephus indicates the
Scythians as the progeny of Magog.32 Pfister concluded that the legend of
Alexander’s gate was already part of Jewish culture at the time of Josephus. This
view, however, was rejected already by Anderson, in his classical studies on
Alexander’s gate, and is now considered obsolete.33 In fact, Josephus does not
attach any eschatological significance to either the mention of Alexander’s iron
gates or the identification of the Scythians as the descendants of Magog, a claim
largely motivated by ethno-historical speculations inspired by the genealogy list
in Genesis 10:2.34
According to Anderson, the story originated in the late fourth century, in the
aftermath of the great Hunnic invasion of 395.35 Theoretically, it is possible that
the disastrous incursions of those fierce nomadic people through the Caucasian
mountain passes—traditionally identified as the location of Alexander’s iron
gates—may have inspired the legend of the eschatological gate. However, no
documentary evidence suggests that those events were associated with the
apocalyptic motif of Gog and Magog.36 No mention of Gog and Magog occurs
in the writings of the Syriac poet Cyrillona, a contemporary of the Hunnic raids,
who dedicated a poem to those events, whereas Jerome, who identified the
invaders with the people confined behind Alexander’s gates, does not attribute
any apocalyptic significance to the invasion. As Christian Djurslev has argued,
the only two references to Alexander’s gates in the late fourth century, namely
by Jerome and by the anonymous Latin writer known as Ps.-Hegesippus, suggest
that the story had not yet acquired the character of a legend about the End. As
Djurslev observes, these earlier accounts “were rather used as a topic of
ethnographical, geographical, and social discourse.”37
This leaves us with the cursory reference in the Tiburtine Sibyl to the release
of the unclean people of Gog and Magog from the North, where they had been
confined by Alexander. However, as noted, the dating of the text to the late
fourth century is disputed, and most scholars still think that the passage in the
Sibyl is derived from either the Neṣḥānā38 or from the Apocalypse of Ps.-
Methodius.39 This last possibility is suggested by a small detail in the Sibyl, that
is, the odd description of Alexander as rex Indus, “Indian king,” in the earliest
version of the work.40 The phrase rex Indus can hardly be taken as a reference to
Alexander’s Indian campaign. Rather, it should be interpreted as an indication of
the king’s alleged ethno-geographical origins. But why describe Alexander as an
Indian king? I think that the reason is to be found in the Ps.-Methodius, which
presents the Macedonian hero as the son of an Ethiopian princess. The
description of Alexander in the Sibyl reflects this bizarre genealogy, with the
transformation of the hero’s Ethiopian descent into an Indian origin, as a
consequence of the common confusion between India and Ethiopia attested in
several late antique sources.41
In sum, there are serious doubts about the possibility that the story of
Alexander’s eschatological gate was already in circulation in the late fourth
century and, indeed, before the date of its first recorded version dates (i.e., the
mid-sixth century). Let us now return to our main question: What role did the
author of the Neṣḥānā play in shaping the narrative of this episode? Besides the
absence of earlier versions, two elements suggest that the Syriac author not only
was the first one to record the story, but also was its inventor. As noted in Chapte
r 4, the story originated to fulfill a specific function, that is, to address the
political context of Roman-Persian disputes over the Caspian Gates. The episode
of the eschatological gate, with its references to the role that Rome would play in
the divine plan for human salvation, is fully consistent with that political goal.
Of course, one may object that the legend may have already existed as a general
prediction of events of the End and that our author adapted it to his agenda. An
important indicator points in the opposite direction.
The story of Alexander’s eschatological gate emerges from a specific literary
practice: the adoption of a motif from the Classical tradition and in its re-reading
through the lens of biblical exegesis. This practice gave rise to the belief that the
nomadic peoples enclosed by Alexander behind iron gates are the very people
whose arrival is prophesied in the books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and in
Revelation. This is not an isolated case in the Neṣḥānā. The same practice is at
the core of the author’s re-reading of the Classical motif of Alexander’s horns,
which, as we will see, is interpreted through a variety of biblical passages, and
which, like the motif of the iron gates, is transformed into an element of anti-
Sasanian polemic.42 A similar case is that of the story of the blacksmiths from
Egypt, which, as we have seen, is also borrowed from the Classical tradition,
specifically from the story of Pharaoh Sesostris, which was adapted in a way to
address the political context of Roman-Persian disputes over the king of Lazica.
The similarity in the literary practice behind these three passages in the Neṣḥānā
suggests that the story of Alexander’s gate did not originate as an independent
episode, but rather was a product of the very same pen that conceived the
adaptation of the other two motifs drawn from the Classical tradition. The
simplest explanation is that it was the Syriac author himself who adapted these
ancient motifs to a new and different purpose.
 8
Apocalyptic Ideology

The conventional wisdom holds that the apocalyptic atmosphere permeating the
Neṣḥānā reflects the reaction of the inhabitants of the Roman Near East to the
historical events of the early seventh century. According to this reading, the
vivid descriptions of the destructions caused by the Huns and of their horrific
customs and practices echo the traumatizing experiences endured by the
inhabitants of the lands raided by Heraclius’s Turkic allies in 626–629.1
Accordingly, apocalyptic anxieties current among Roman subjects during and
after the Byzantine-Sasanian conflict are identified as one of the main factors
that prompted the writing of the Neṣḥānā. A wave of pessimistic feeling about
the future of the Roman Empire, which many believed was destined to collapse
with the coming of the End, prompted the Syriac author to develop a reassuring
story about the glorious role that the empire was still to play in the development
of the eschatological drama.2 The author was engaging with pious believers who
had to be persuaded that God’s eschatological promise would not be fulfilled
anytime soon, and that its fulfillment would be preceded by a period of
prosperity, which Heraclius’s victory had inaugurated but which was still to
come to its full fruition. The proponents of this view maintain that the targets of
our author’s efforts were not only the skeptics and God-fearing monks resigned
to the unavoidable fall of established human societies. Our author had an even
more practical goal. The (probably fictitious) episode of the diplomatic incident
that occurred in Edessa in 628, when purportedly Heraclius was denied
communion by the Miaphysite metropolitan Isaiah, demonstrates—according to
this view—that pro-imperial propaganda was badly needed to restore the
emperor’s glory and prestige in a hostile milieu ripped apart by sectarian
religious quarrels. The author of the Neṣḥānā would also have written his work
to perform this task.3 According to Reinink and the scholars who follow him, the
goal of the author’s literary initiative should be sought in his pro-Heracleian
agenda. By celebrating the emperor’s military achievements, the author sought
to reduce doubts about what the future held for his reign and simultaneously to
call reluctant clergymen to embrace the policies of religious union that Heraclius
was promoting at that time. In the background lay the concept of Byzantine
imperial eschatology, that is, the idea that toward the end of human history the
Byzantine Empire would prevail over the other world kingdoms. Partisans of the
Heracleian contextualization of the Neṣḥānā relate the apocalyptic vision about
the glorious kingdom founded by Alexander to this imperial ideology. The
prophecies in the Syriac text that predict the advent of a Christian cosmocratic
kingdom reflect the eschatological policies (allegedly) pursued by Heraclius in
the years immediately following the end of the conflict.
In my view, the conventional wisdom is untenable. The Neṣḥānā was
composed several decades earlier than the events that served as a background to
the text according to the advocates of the Heracleian hypothesis. As noted, key
elements in the text address the political scenario of the mid-sixth century.
Conversely, most elements adduced in favor of a seventh-century redaction have
been shown to make as much sense, and frequently better sense, when
transposed into the context of the sixth century. The strong eschatological
inclinations of the text and its focus on the final events can easily be related to
the circumstances of the reign of Justinian.
Apocalypticism was not invented ex nihilo during the time of Heraclius. A
century earlier, strong waves of apocalyptic anxieties shook the minds of many
people in Byzantine society. In the late fifth century, an anonymous author,
probably a native of Bythinia, wrote an apocalyptic text known as The Seventh
Vision of Daniel, in which he portrays a sorrowful scenario for the empire. Here,
the (fictionalized) murder of the emperor Zeno (r. 474–491) is followed by a
period of violence and chaos that precedes the coming of the Antichrist and the
Final Judgment.4 Fears about the imminence of the End spiked during the reign
of Justinian. In a passage of his Histories, Agathias reports that an earthquake
that devastated Constantinople in 557 generated apocalyptic responses.5 Wars,
plagues, and natural disasters during Justinian’s reign raised the expectation that
scriptural predictions of the End were being confirmed in the present. Political
speculation and propaganda may also have contributed to eschatological fears
and chiliastic anxieties. The subject has been discussed recently by Shoemaker
and does not need to be addressed here.6 It is sufficient to say that an apocalyptic
atmosphere permeated the reign of Justinian. Although I am not fully convinced
that eschatological piety played a substantial role in the formulation of imperial
policies,7 expectations of the End were surely common among the emperor’s
subjects and possibly also among Christian communities in the Sasanian Empire.
This is a perfect scenario in which to situate the emergence of a text like the
Neṣḥānā.
Similarly, imperial eschatology was not invented ex nihilo during the time of
Heraclius. Beginning with Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, the
sacralization of politics and the politicization of the sacred became a cornerstone
of the ideology of the new Byzantine Christian empire. Christian literates began
to regard Roman emperors as protectors of the true faith and increasingly
engaged in efforts to link the destiny of the empire to God’s plan for human
salvation. The extent to which these ideas formed a coherent ideological system
is debatable. We also do not know the extent to which these ideas had an actual
impact on imperial politics or represented an idealized framework through which
Christian literates tried to conceptualize the role of the newly converted empire
in sacred history. Be that as it may, ideas concerning Rome’s positive
eschatological role were current in Roman society. And if it is true that these
ideas had achieved unprecedented popularity in the seventh century, it is also
true that this only happened in the last years of Heraclius’s reign, in the
aftermath of the early Arab conquest, as a reaction to this new threat.
With regard to eschatology and apocalypticism, the question is where to
situate the Neṣḥānā in the transmission and development of the idea of Roman
Christian cosmocracy, from its earliest written witnesses in the fourth century to
its most popular examples (e.g., the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius) in the late
seventh century. How does the Neṣḥānā relate to the ideas expressed by authors
like Aphrahat? In which environments did those ideas primarily circulate? How
did the author encounter them? In which context? To what kinds of readers and
religious communities did the author address these ideas? And to what end?
How does his formulation of these ideas compare to contemporary
understandings of sacred history? And to what extent did the Neṣḥānā influence
those in later times who dealt with the same problems and questions? In what
follows I will try to provide some answers.

The Background of the Author’s Apocalyptic Ideology

In the late second century, writing in Carthage, in the Roman province of Africa,
Tertullian stated that Christians should pray for the stability of the Roman
Empire in order to delay the arrival of the Antichrist.8 Referring to Rome’s
alleged role as katéchon, Tertullian concluded that a strong empire would be able
to fulfill its eschatological mission. At the same time, it was probably not
eschatological concerns that motivated Tertullian to take this position. Rather,
his statement should be understood within the literary framework of a work like
the Apologeticus, which is mostly addressed to Roman provincial authorities as a
plea for religious tolerance for the Christian community. Despite their obvious
underlying utilitarian reasons—above all the need to prove the loyalty of
Christian subjects—Tertullian’s words are one of the earliest manifestations of a
pro-imperial attitude based on the attribution to the empire of a positive
eschatological function. Of course, we are still very far from the kind of
speculation that would lead to conceptualizing the empire as a fundamental actor
in sacred history that was invested with a divine mandate. We begin to see,
however, how the entanglement of Christian eschatology and political
considerations might result in the expression of sympathetic feelings toward a
political authority that previously had been regarded as a hostile entity. After all,
the identification of Rome as the Pauline katéchon secured, if nothing else, the
survival of the empire until the final moments of sacred history, as did its
identification with the fourth and last kingdom of the Danielic schema. And if it
is true that its identification as the last power before the End signaled its
unavoidable downfall and thus fueled pessimistic or even anti-imperial feelings,9
it is also true that the role of last kingdom in sacred history opened the door to
more positive interpretations. This is exactly what happened at the time of the
Constantinian dynasty.
Aphrahat’s Fifth Demonstration on War contains one of the earliest exegeses
of the Danielic prophecies that seeks to establish the empire’s divine mission.
This divinely sanctioned mission was to institute a kingdom that would prevail
over the other rival kingdoms and that, enduring until the beginning of the
eschatological drama, would deliver its power to Jesus at the moment of his
Second Coming. As we have seen, behind Aphrahat’s pro-Roman reading of the
Danielic prophecies lies the delicate situation of his religious community in the
Persian Empire. Facing a wave of persecution by the Sasanian authority, the
Syriac writer put his hopes in the newly converted Roman emperor, Constantine,
and describes an idealized scenario in which, due to its divine mission, Rome
will soon defeat Persia and guarantee protection to the Eastern Christians
persecuted by Shapur.
Aphrahat was not the only author in the 320s/330s to attribute to Constantine
a special role in God’s plan for human salvation. Some of his contemporaries on
the other side of the Roman-Sasanian border engaged with similar theological
speculations. To different extents, and in different ways, Eusebius, Lactantius,
and Ephrem sought to present the sovereigns of the Constantinian dynasty as
God’s mandated representatives on earth and as enforcers of divine will.10
However, none of these authors articulated a vision of the empire’s
eschatological role like in the one articulated by Aphrahat. In fact, none of
Aphrahat’s contemporaries attempted to portray Roman victory over Persia as an
unavoidable step in the accomplishment of Rome’s divinely sanctioned mission.
If, in the case of Eusebius and Lactantius, the lack of interest in this theme was
motivated by the fact that they were not directly exposed to the Sasanian threat,
the same cannot be said in the case of Ephrem, who was an inhabitant of Nisibis
at the time of Shapur’s three sieges of the city (in 338, 346, and 350). And yet,
Ephrem never expresses a vision of sacred history like Aphrahat’s and never
suggests that the empire will destroy the Persian kingdom on its way to
cosmological supremacy. At least two centuries would pass before we would
find such a view expressed again, and in even stronger terms, by the author of
the Neṣḥānā.
As observed in the previous chapter, the eschatological visions articulated by
Aphrahat and the author of the Neṣḥānā have much in common. Let us recap
here the most striking points of comparison. Both authors posit a conceptual
unity between the empires of the Greeks and that of the Romans and present
Alexander as the founder of this Greco-Roman kingdom—although Aphrahat
specifically mentions the last two powers of the Danielic schema, whereas the
author of the Neṣḥānā does not. Both authors believe that this kingdom is
destined to last until Jesus’s Second Coming. Finally, both authors agree on the
fact that the Roman Empire will repeat the deeds of its mythical founder
Alexander and defeat Persia once again. However, whereas Aphrahat seeks to
reassure his audience that Shapur’s army cannot defeat the Romans, the author
of the Neṣḥānā describes a scenario in which Rome’s eschatological destiny
means that it will annihilate Persia and annex its territory. Even more than in
Aphrahat’s Demonstration, in the Neṣḥānā the focus is on the Roman-Persian
conflict. Our author’s insistence on the idea of Roman eschatological
cosmocracy is indissolubly connected to his interest in proving that at some
point in the future, Alexander’s kingdom will subjugate Persia once again, and
this time for good.
Now, two centuries elapsed between the moment when Aphrahat produced
his anti-Sasanian hermeneutic of Daniel and the time when our author was
writing. In the intervening period, Aphrahat’s work did not receive much
attention: it was rarely mentioned by later authors, sporadically translated to
other languages, and appears to have been mostly unknown to subsequent
generations.11 Interestingly, however, his Demonstrations were translated in the
late fifth century into Armenian.12 The closeness between Aphrahat’s ideological
system and that of the author of the Neṣḥānā may be explained by the fact that
the work of the former circulated in the geographical area in which the latter
probably lived. Nevertheless, it is still unclear to what extent Aphrahat’s
Demonstrations had an actual impact on writers in the Armenian region.13 It is
not necessary to posit that the author of the Neṣḥānā based most of his
eschatological views on Aphrahat to explain the commonalities between the two
texts. It is certainly possible that our author independently formulated similar
ideas based on a shared heritage of Christian theological and eschatological
ideas. Be that as it may, neither alternative explains the fact that no other author
in the period between Aphrahat and the Neṣḥānā formulated a scenario like
Aphrahat’s, in which the status of the Roman Empire as divinely favored
eschatological agent functions as an expression of anti-Sasanian feelings. The
question arises: How was this understanding of the role of the Roman Empire in
sacred history transmitted from the fourth to the sixth century?
Early fourth-century readings of Rome’s glorious eschatological mission
seem not to have outlived the dynasty that had inspired them, that is, the
Constantinids. Church fathers writing in the late fourth and early fifth centuries
show little interest in pro-imperial ideology. Authors like Cyril of Jerusalem (d.
386), John Chrysostom (d. 407), Jerome (d. 420), and Theodoret of Cyrrhus (d.
457), who identify Rome as the fourth Danielic kingdom and the katéchon, do
not have much to say about the empire’s divine mandate.14 As we move forward
in time, the number of elements glorifying Rome’s eschatological role decreases.
In his Commentary on Daniel, Jerome emphasizes that the empire is destined to
fall.15 When analyzing the vision of the fourth kingdom in Daniel 2, represented
by the iron and clay feet of the statue seen by Nebuchadnezzar in a dream,
Jerome observes: “But its feet and toes are partly of iron and partly of
earthenware, a fact most clearly demonstrated at the present time. For just as
there was at first nothing stronger or hardier than the Roman realm, so also in
these last days there is nothing more feeble, since we require the assistance of
barbarian tribes both in our civil wars and against foreign nations.”16
Similarly, Theodoret explains the iron-clay blend as a trope for the initial
strength and later weakness of the empire: “The soles of the feet are also of iron,
but mixed with clay. Now, in this he [i.e., Daniel] is not referring to another
kingdom but to the same one, that would be weaker than itself and mixed with
the weakness of clay.”17 Theodoret mentions the decadence of the empire several
times in his commentary on Daniel 2, and he describes a scenario in which Jesus
himself will provoke its unavoidable collapse: “At his second coming he will
strike the image of its clay feet—that is, he will appear at the very end of the iron
kingdom, already rendered weak. He will destroy all governing powers, consign
them to a kind of oblivion, and provide his eternal kingdom for the worthy.”18
There is very little glory in the role that Rome plays in the eschatological vision
of these authors. We are far from the glorifying tones used less than a century
earlier by Eusebius and Lactantius.
The difference in the approach to Roman invincibility or vulnerability is
evident when we compare Jerome’s and Theodoret’s hermeneutic to Aphrahat’s.
In his Fifth Demonstration, Aphrahat struggles to explain the presence of an
apparently weak component—clay—in the representation of what he otherwise
believed to be a kingdom made invulnerable by the divine favor bestowed upon
it. His solution is as shaky as the statue with fragile feet whose image he
analyzes, but it clearly betrays his intention to prevent any interpretation of the
passage that would shed an iota of weakness on the empire.19 It is exactly the
opposite procedure from the one implemented by Jerome and Theodoret, who
interpret the clay as a sign of the troubled circumstances experienced by the
Roman state during their lifetimes. In general, the available textual evidence
suggests that after a first wave of enthusiasm created by Constantine’s
conversion to Christianity, the reading of the empire as the favored
eschatological player faded. It is difficult to discern whether or to what extent
ideas like those formulated in the wake of Constantine’s conversion continued to
circulate. If they did, they left few traces in written documents, which otherwise
attest to ignorance of, or a systematic choice to disregard, pro-imperial
interpretations. This tendency probably emerged in conjunction with the
increasing difficulties faced by Roman emperors in the second half of the fourth
century.
The political scenario between the late fourth and the early sixth centuries
accounts for the lack of recorded attempts to predict Roman subjugation of
Persia by means of scriptural interpretation. After Julian’s disastrous Persian
campaigns, and the tough terms that Shapur II imposed on Jovian in the treaty of
363, the two empires managed to maintain a status of almost permanent peace
which, with the exception of sporadic disruptions (in 421 and in 440), endured
until the Anastasian war of 502–506. This period of peace witnessed the
emergence of the complex ideological systems summarized in the metaphor of
the Two Eyes of the Earth, invoked by Roman and Persian courts to
conceptualize their mutual existence and mutual recognition.20 It is not
surprising that in this atmosphere, aggressive and militaristic interpretations of
sacred history did not proliferate. For sure, apocalyptic tendencies continued to
emerge, especially in the context of large-scale events, like the great Hunnic
invasions of 395, or in preparation for the turning of the century in 500 CE,
which many believed to coincide with the world’s sixth and final millennium.21
Nevertheless, people were more concerned with finding in biblical prophecies
explanations for the events that would precede the fall of the Roman Empire,
rather than corroborations of any fantasy of glorious eschatological war against
Persia. The above-mentioned Seventh Vision of Daniel is a witness to this
tendency.
In the meantime, much had changed in the religious community that had
produced the only recorded precursor of the Neṣḥānā. Since the time of
Aphrahat, the conditions of Christians in the Persian kingdom had improved
steadily.22 Over the fifth and sixth centuries, Christian elites came to occupy
prominent positions in the Sasanian society, and Persian Christianity
increasingly articulated its Iranian identity. The conspicuous number of converts
from Zoroastrianism enhanced the Persian character of Christianity in the
Sasanian Empire.23 Although converts were often the target of persecutions by
Zoroastrian clergy—the catholicos Mar Abā (d. 552) is a notorious case—many
were loyal to the Sasanian authorities. The most striking example is that of a
certain Grigor, who, during the reign of Kavadh I (r. 488–531), served as a
Sasanian general in the war against the Romans.24 At the same time, Christian
ecclesiastical authorities provided theological support for their loyalty to the
Sasanian crown, as exemplified by Mar Abā’s glorification of Khosrow through
means of biblical imagery.25 The evidence to be discussed below demonstrates
that East Christian clergymen began producing interpretations of Daniel that
reflect these tendencies and that attribute to the Sasanian state a more positive
role in sacred history.
In sum, in the two centuries that followed Aphrahat’s composition of his
militant anti-Sasanian Demonstration on War, several factors worked as
deterrents to the circulation of ideas similar to those expressed in that work. If
so, how can we explain their re-emergence in the Neṣḥānā, a work that in all
likelihood was composed in the mid-sixth century? Indeed, in the Neṣḥānā the
anti-Sasanian component is even more prominent than in Aphrahat, with Roman
subjugation of Persia appearing as the most prominent element of our author’s
eschatology. Our author dedicates two distinct prophecies to the prediction of the
collapse of the Persian kingdom. One suspects that other crucial events in the
narrative, like the final Hunnic invasion that will weaken Persian military
capacity, and the idea that Rome is destined to establish a cosmocracy to endure
until Jesus’s return, serve to corroborate the idea that Persia will fall and suffer
Roman predominance. How else can we explain the author’s invocation and
intensification of ideas that enjoyed a limited circulation at the time of their first
formulation and that had passed out of circulation?
First, the two empires had returned to a state of permanent belligerency. As
discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, the author of the Neṣḥānā reacted to the situation
by constructing an idealized reading of the past that serves as both a critique of
the Romans’ poor achievements in the current conflict and as an expression of
hope for greater success in the future. The conviction that at some point
Byzantium would annihilate Persia, as proclaimed in Alexander’s and Tūbarlaq’s
prophecies, suggests that the author probably lived in precarious conditions,
similar to the ones experienced by Aphrahat during his lifetime. Indeed, he was
probably living in an area exposed to or directly affected by military activities.
However, unlike Aphrahat, he could not address his hopes to a Roman emperor
like Justinian who had failed to effectively protect the Christians in the eastern
regions of the empire and beyond. He thus created the image of a past sovereign
who predicted that Rome would emerge once again as a hegemonic power. Our
author drew the image of a glorious future still to come as a reaction to the
bitterness of his current circumstances. Whether he took inspiration from
Aphrahat’s work in describing the irresistible eschatological march of the Roman
armies is impossible to ascertain—although I find this possibility likely. What is
certain is that the historical circumstances of his lifetime made possible the re-
emergence of similar ideas.
The radical character of the Neṣḥānā in matters of Persian affairs can be
explained by the reignition of Roman-Persian conflicts over the course of the
sixth century and by the fact that our author in all likelihood lived in an area that
was directly affected by these military operations. But this is only a partial
explanation. Many other authors wrote under the threat of Sasanian armies
without manifesting the level of aggression displayed by the author of the
Neṣḥānā. Indeed, I am not aware of another literary work from Late Antiquity
that so unequivocally calls for the eradication of the Persian dynasty from the
surface of the earth and for the annexation of the Persian kingdom to the Roman
Empire. What prompted our author to elaborate such extreme predictions (i.e.,
expressions of wishes for the future) that are so focused on the defeat of the rival
kingdom? As I will suggest below, he felt the need to answer and rebut the
increasingly pro-Sasanian inclinations of the Church of the East. To understand
this point, we must focus on the only other sixth-century author who left us an
interpretation of the developments of sacred history in which the role of the two
empires is clearly formulated. This author is the extraordinary character known
to us under the name of Cosmas Indicopleustes.
 Cosmas’s Interpretation of Daniel
Cosmas was an Alexandrian merchant who claimed to have traveled to India
(hence his appellative, Ἰνδικοπλεύστης, lit. “the one who sailed to India”). At
some point in his life, Cosmas abandoned his business in trade and took
monastic vows. Circa 540s–550s, he composed a descriptio orbis, the so-called
Christian Topography, in which he sought to prove the truth of biblical
cosmology against the spread of Aristotelian cosmological models. A
particularly interesting aspect of this work are Cosmas’s extensive references to
the Danielic visions, in which he provides a detailed interpretation of those
scriptural passages, focusing on the role of the Persian and Roman empires in
sacred history. In many ways, Cosmas’s interpretation of the Danielic idea of the
translatio imperii does not differ much from Aphrahat’s. Like Aphrahat, Cosmas
assigns the most prominent position in the succession of world kingdoms to the
Roman Empire. Like Aphrahat, Cosmas presents the Roman Empire as the last
and lasting power of human history, predestined to play a pivotal function in
God’s plan for human salvation. In Cosmas’s interpretation, however, the Roman
Empire acquires an even higher status than in Aphrahat’s.26 Unlike Aphrahat,
Cosmas understands the kingdom of the Romans to be neither a continuation of
that of the Macedonians, nor the entity that will transmit its power to the Son of
Man on his return. According to Cosmas, the Roman Empire is not the fourth
kingdom in the Danielic schema, the one that precedes the establishment of
God’s fifth and eternal kingdom. For Cosmas, the Roman Empire is the fifth
kingdom.
“The empire of the Romans thus participates in the dignity of the Kingdom of
the Lord Christ,” Cosmas tells us, “seeing that it transcends, as far as can be in
this state of existence, every other power, and will remain unconquered until the
final consummation, for he says that it shall not be destroyed for ever.”27
Cosmas has no doubt about the empire’s privileged condition and its destiny to
endure, overcoming even the toughest threats to its existence.28 It is a widely
held scholarly conviction that Cosmas’s interpretation of the Danielic visions
relates to pro-imperial hermeneutics elaborated by Roman propagandists. Paul
Magdalino argues that the broad outlines of Cosmas’s reading of Daniel follow
Justinian’s official propaganda.29 However, a closer examination of the relevant
passage in the Christian Topography casts doubt on this argument. Indeed, most
scholars have focused only on what Cosmas tells us about the extraordinary
identification of Rome as the fifth blessed kingdom, but have ignored what he
has to say about the Persians. The fact that Cosmas, while expressing a flattering
depiction of Roman emperors, depicts Sasanian kings in almost as favorable
terms has passed largely unnoticed. Let us take a look at his position toward the
other major power of the sixth-century great power system.
Cosmas addresses the role of the Persian kingdom in sacred history
immediately after his discussion of the Romans. He starts by informing us that
the royal family ruling over Persia is not of Persian lineage and does not descend
from the ancient rulers of Persia (i.e., the Achaemenians, whose kingdom was
destroyed by Alexander). Rather, the Sasanians emerged from another power,
that of the Magi.30 At first glimpse, the identification of the Sasanian crown with
the empire of the Magi and the simultaneous negation of its Persian lineage
bring to mind some elements of Roman propaganda. Indeed, in the fourth
century, the Roman emperor Julian and his protégé Ammianus Marcellinus
rebutted the Achaemenid lineage (allegedly) claimed by Sasanian sovereigns,
and, conversely, attributed to the latter a Parthian (i.e., Arsacid) descent.31 Thus,
Cosmas may be following pre-established patterns of Roman anti-Persian
propaganda. This, however, does not seem to be the case. Cosmas’s remarks on
the dynasties that ruled over Persia do not bear any polemical connotation, as
becomes clear from the rest of his passage on the Persians.
Unlike Roman propagandists, Cosmas’s description of the Sasanian kingdom
as a new entity, with no connection to Persia’s Achaemenid past, has no
derogatory intentions.32 According to him, the kingdom of the Magi occupies a
place of honor in sacred history, second only to the kingdom of the Romans,
because the Magi traveled westward to pay homage to Jesus at his birth.33 By
connecting the Sasanian dynasty to the Magi, Cosmas seeks to exalt, rather than
discredit, the Iranian rulers. By developing this fictitious image of the Sasanians’
ancestors, Cosmas emphasizes the high moral stature of the Sasanian Empire,
which he attributes to the Magi’s adoration of Jesus. This puts him at odds with
Roman propagandists. It is difficult to believe that this expression of sympathy
toward the Sasanian kingdom originated in the environment of Roman
propaganda, especially when we consider that Byzantine-Sasanian relations had
newly deteriorated at the time when the Christian Topography was composed.
Against the background of these renewed, large-scale hostilities, it is surprising
that Cosmas’s attitude toward Byzantium’s rival is so meek and lacking in
militaristic tones. Had his interpretation of the Danielic visions been inspired by
the axioms of Roman imperial propaganda, one would expect the passages of his
work dealing with the Sasanian dynasty to be characterized by a completely
different kind of rhetoric, far more polemical and aggressive than what we find
in the Topography. Cosmas’s respect for the Sasanian state can hardly reflect the
official position of Justinian’s government. These doubts are reinforced by his
reference to the story of the Magi and the nativity of Jesus.
In the Byzantine world, the legend of the Magi’s adoration of Jesus served a
specific political message. Consider the sixth-century Justinian mosaics in the
churches of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo and San Vitale in Ravenna. In
Sant’Apollinare, the three Magi—wearing trousers and Phrygian hats, symbols
of their Persian origins—offer their gifts to Jesus (enthroned with the Virgin
Mary). At first glimpse, the image does not appear to have particular political
connotation. Upon closer examination, however, one notices an attempt to model
the iconography of the adoration of the Magi on “the convention of the Sasanian
envoys rendering proskynēsis in front of the earthly emperor to express this
subordination.”34 Similarly, in San Vitale, the adoring Magi appear on the brim
of Empress Theodora’s chlamys. According to Matthew Canepa, this curious
representation of the adoration was meant to suggest the “subjection of the
Iranian religion and sovereign to the Roman religion—Christianity—and
Christ’s earthly representative, the Roman emperor.”35
However, a different reading of the Magi narrative circulated among Persian
Christians, who added Iranian features to the story.36 The version of the story in
the Cave of Treasures has recently been analyzed by Sergey Minov, who
highlights the significance of the Magi narrative in the context of Christian
communities in the Sasanian world. According to Minov, the attribution of
Iranian origins to the Magi mentioned in Matthew 2:1–12 (where the Magi
narrative is first attested) prompted a “local [i.e., Persian] patriotism,” which he
characterizes as “a marked propensity for putting additional emphasis on and
treating positively those themes or figures that are related in one way or another
to the regional context of the author or of his intended audience.”37 This
observation is not new.38 What is new in Minov’s analysis is his insistence on
the political implications of the Magi for Christians living under Sasanian
sovereignty.
The names of the Magi in the Cave of Treasures, Hormizd, Yazdgird, and
Pērōz, correspond to those of three Sasanian sovereigns: Yazdgird I (r. 399–420),
Hormizd IV (r. 579–590), and Pērōz I (r. 438–457). These three sovereigns
adopted—or at least were said to have adopted, as in the case of Pērōz—policies
of religious tolerance toward Persian Christians.39 Minov connects the obvious
anachronism in the Syriac text (the Sasanian dynasty rose to power only two
centuries after the birth of Jesus) to a tendency common in Persian Christianity
and well attested in sources from the sixth and early seventh centuries: the
representation of Sasanian monarchs as figures benevolent toward local
Christian communities and, in some cases, even guided by divine inspiration. In
other words, these sources Christianize the Persian rulers.40 Minov concludes
that the Magi narrative in the Cave of Treasures reflects the efforts of Persian
Christians to create a paradigmatic image of a Christian-friendly Iranian dynasty.
Thus, during the sixth century, the legend of the Magi was adopted in various
forms in Byzantine and Sasanian contexts to convey different political messages.
On the one hand, Byzantine artists portrayed the motif of the Adoration as an
example of the subjugation of an Eastern kingdom to Rome’s moral and political
superiority. On the other hand, Persian Christians invoked the Magi narrative to
signal their increasing loyalty to the Sasanian Empire, in an effort to endear
themselves to its leaders. Minov is certainly right in relating the different
political uses of the story in the Roman and Persian kingdoms to the different
sociopolitical conditions of Christian communities in the two empires.
Which one of these positions is reflected in Cosmas’s reference to the legend
of the Adoration? Note, first, that some elements in Cosmas’s work are
consistent with contemporary Syriac exegesis on the story of the adoration, for
example, the reference to the royal status of the Magi in the Topography. In Late
Antiquity, Greek-speaking Christians did not attribute royal dignity to the Magi.
By contrast, beginning around the second half of the fifth century,
representations of the Magi as a political authority became prominent in certain
circles of Syriac Christianity.41 Thus, Cosmas adopted an imagery that was alien
to the Greek culture of the time and that, by contrast, was acquiring increasing
prominence among contemporary Eastern Christians. In addition, the attribution
of royal status to the Magi had implications in the specific context of Persian
Christianity, where the story of the Magi was used to Christianize the ruling
dynasty. This tendency is easily identified in Cosmas’s words. The connection
that he draws between the Sasanian dynasty and the Magi who adored Jesus
replicates the same anachronism that in the Cave of Treasures leads the Magi to
acquire the names of Sasanian dynasts. Put in different terms, both Cosmas and
the author of the Cave of Treasures identify the Magi of the nativity of Jesus as
members of the Sasanian dynasty. The political implications of this choice by the
two authors are likely the same and coincide with the tendency described above.
This picture is at odds with the scholarly hypothesis that Cosmas’s work
reflects the propaganda of Justinian’s regime. The reason for this inconsistency,
in my view, is that this hypothesis is incorrect. Remarkably, unlike the case of
the Magi iconographies in Byzantine mosaics, one finds no representation of the
Sasanian dynasty as subject to Rome in Cosmas’s words. Quite the opposite,
indeed. Through the Adoration of the Magi, Cosmas exalts the Sasanian Empire
as an entity with a status almost equal to that of the Roman Empire. Also
remarkable is the literary context in which Cosmas inserts his reference to the
story of the Magi, that is, his interpretive reading of the Danielic schema of the
succession of world kingdoms. His Sasanian-friendly approach to the Magi
narrative goes hand in hand with his similarly conciliatory interpretation of the
Danielic visions, exemplified, as noted, by its contrast with Aphrahat’s militant,
pro-Roman, and ultimately anti-Sasanian hermeneutic of Daniel. In my view,
these arguments speak against the hypothesis that Justinian’s propagandists
influenced Cosmas’s ideological intellectual system. His source of inspiration
must be sought elsewhere. But where?
At the beginning of book II of his Topography, Cosmas claims that what he is
about to discuss is based on the teachings of a man from the land of the
Chaldeans, named Patrikios. At the time he was writing—Cosmas informs us—
this Patrikios was appointed catholicos of the Christians living in Persia.42
Scholars agree that the Patrikios met by Cosmas is the person whom we have
briefly encountered on the previous pages and whom we will meet again in the
following chapter: Mar Abā.43 After his conversion to Christianity and before
his appointment as catholicos, Abā traveled widely in the Byzantine world. He
visited Constantinople and Alexandria, and studied in Edessa and Antioch, both
major centers of Christian culture. Between 525 and 530, Abā met Cosmas in
Alexandria. The latter soon became one of his pupils. The importance of
Cosmas’s tutelage under Patrikios/Abā for the formulation of his interpretation
of the Danielic schema has been discussed by Christopher Bonura.44 Based on
the similarity between Cosmas’s and Aphrahat’s understanding of the Daniel
prophecies, and on their common affiliation with the Church of the East, Bonura
concludes that the ideas expressed in the Christian Topography most likely
derive from a Persian, rather than Greek, environment.45
I find this hypothesis compelling. As Vittorio Berti has shown, it is possible
to recover passages of Abā’s lost writings from the Christian Topography.46 In
the present case, Cosmas likely derived his understanding of the succession of
the kingdoms from Abā’s teachings. However, the line of continuity traced by
Bonura between Aphrahat’s and Cosmas’s/Abā’s interpretations of Daniel is less
convincing, because it leaves aside a very important aspect that emerges from a
comparative analysis, namely, the substantial differences between the rationales
behind the interpretations of the two (/three) authors. In fact, Cosmas’s attitude
toward the Sasanian dynasty is at odds with Aphrahat’s trenchant and
unambiguous condemnation of Shapur’s regime. His understanding of the role of
the Sasanian Empire in sacred history lacks the aggressive rhetoric deployed by
Aphrahat. More importantly, Cosmas’s reading of the Danielic prophecies
undermines Aphrahat’s militaristic hermeneutic. Thus, if one sees a line of
continuity between Cosmas’s and Aphrahat’s attribution of a noble status to the
Roman Empire, the same is not true when it comes to the kingdom of the
Persians.
This difference calls for an explanation. Cosmas’s benevolent attitude toward
the “empire of the Magi” reflects the better conditions and deeper integration of
Christians in the Sasanian Empire. His attempt to promote an idealized Iranian
political entity, almost a peer of the Roman Empire, and occupying a prominent
position in sacred history, reflects the local patriotism that lays behind the
adoption of the legend of the Magi by Persian Christians. His hermeneutic of
Daniel is consistent with the tendency highlighted by Minov to represent
Sasanian sovereigns as benevolent rulers toward local Christian communities.
Lying behind Cosmas’s approach to the Danielic schema, we can see the
teaching of his mentor Mar Abā. Abā’s intellectual background makes him an
obvious candidate for the elaboration, or at least the transmission, of the ideas
reported by Cosmas. Abā was a Zoroastrian who converted to Christianity; he
was born to a family of Persian origins near Radan, in the province of Bēt
Arāmāyē. He was an educated and learned man who, prior to his conversion,
worked as a government functionary in his native province—where he was the
secretary of the local marzpān. As a Christian of Persian origins, Abā would
have shared the view that conferred on the Persian Empire considerable dignity
and prominent status in God’s plan for human salvation. Like many Zoroastrians
who converted to Christianity, he would have taken pride in those figures of his
ancestral religion—the Magi—who first acknowledged and adored Jesus. Abā’s
understanding of sacred history likely reflected what must have been the attitude
of many Christians in the Sasanian Empire, situated between patriotic feelings
toward their ancestral land and, at the same time, the unavoidable charm of a
fully Christianized Empire.
Cosmas’s effort to present the Sasanian crown as a Christian-friendly entity
anticipates the policies that Abā would later pursue as catholicos, when,
however, he probably had to recalibrate his views. Emphasizing their lineage
with the Magi of Jesus’s adoration might captivate the imagination of his
Christian fellows, but it could hardly impress Khosrow, the sovereign whose
benevolence he was trying to secure. As we will see in the next chapter, it was
rather to the memory of the Achaemenians that the catholicos eventually
resorted to celebrate his sovereign. Moreover, if at the time of his tenure as
catholicos Abā still held sympathetic feelings toward the Roman Empire, he
would have been reluctant to disclose them, especially since his critics among
the Zoroastrian clergy would not miss the opportunity to accuse him of siding
with the enemy. Thus, it is doubtful that at the peak of his career Abā would
have openly declared the same views of sacred history as those reported by
Cosmas.

Back to the Neṣḥānā

It is hard to say how widespread were interpretations of Persia’s virtuous role in
sacred history, as described by Cosmas. What is likely is that in the mid-sixth
century many Persian Christians, especially converts and intellectuals, would
have related more to the theories taught by Mar Abā than to those taught by
Aphrahat two centuries earlier. The safest assumption is to consider the ideas
circulated by the catholicos as reflections of a community that was trying to
make sense of its role within the larger framework of Sasanian society. That is
not to say that every individual in that community was ready to embrace a rosy
picture of Sasanian-Christian relations. Not everyone would have been satisfied
with the representation of the Sasanian dynasty as an early acknowledger of
Jesus, supposedly attested by the story of the Magi’s adoration, nor would they
have been enthusiastic about Abā’s complaisant (if not complicit) praise of
Khosrow as a sovereign inspired by the Messiah. Several Persian Christians, like
those who participated in Anōshazād’s revolt in Gundeshapur in 550, surely
aligned themselves on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum. We have no
evidence suggesting that any of the rebels had access to Aphrahat’s Fifth
Demonstration on War and to the anti-Sasanian interpretations of Daniel
contained therein. If they did, they no doubt would have found Aphrahat’s ideas
far more convincing (or convenient) than Abā’s.
At the same time, not many people on the other side of the border, in the
Roman Empire, would have been as keen as Cosmas about an interpretation of
sacred history that conferred honors on the rival kingdom that were greater than
what even the most fervent partisan of the coexistence of the two empires would
have been willing to concede. The author of the Neṣḥānā was arguably such a
person. Animated by strong anti-Sasanian sentiments, our writer would have felt
outrage at the friendly attitude displayed by authorities of the Church of the East
toward the Sasanian dynasty—a dangerous inclination that was spreading from
Persia to Roman territory. Persuaded that this situation required a strong
reaction, our author formulated a concept of sacred history whose anti-Sasanian
traits are even more accentuated than the already militant eschatological vision
elaborated by Aphrahat. A main element accounting for this radicalization is to
be sought in our author’s willingness to rebut conciliatory visions of sacred
history spread in Sasanian, and even in Byzantine, society by influential
clergymen such as Abā. If so, his work would have been addressed not only to
the Christians of Roman Armenia and northern Mesopotamia, hostile to the
centralizing power of Constantinople. Nor would his main aim have been to
conciliate the recalcitrant Miaphysites with the Chalcedonian policies—and
indeed the author’s lack of any interest in Christological matters argues against
this reading. Important addressees of the Neṣḥānā are—I believe—Christians in
the Persian Empire, who are encouraged not to be loyal to their current rulers
who, at some point in the future, will be defeated by the Christian Roman
Empire, according to divine will. As we will see in the following two chapters,
the author’s desire to react to the exceedingly Sasanian-friendly attitude of the
Church of the East emerges from other elements in the narration. These include
several of his literary choices, such as the attribution to Alexander of elements of
royalty commonly associated with Persian sovereigns and the simultaneous
derogatory characterization of Tūbarlaq as an inept king.
 9
Alexander’s Horns

The prayer that Alexander addresses to God at the beginning of the Neṣḥānā
may be viewed as the ideological manifesto of the author. The prayer starts with
Alexander declaring an awareness of his divine mission. The horns that grow out
of his head manifest the power that God gave him to subjugate the other world
kingdoms, and it is to God that the king turns to request support before starting
his glorious march of conquest. His goal is not personal glory or political power,
but the glorification of the Lord’s name and securing the legacy of His memory.
It is a truly religious and global campaign, a program to establish an empire that
is the representation of God’s will on Earth. Alexander’s prayer reaches its
climax when the hero promises to relinquish his power to the Messiah upon his
arrival, symbolized by the pledged offer of Alexander’s throne and crown. This
promise binds not only Alexander, but all future Greco-Roman emperors.
Alexander understands that the arrival of the Messiah may not materialize during
his lifetime, so he swears that his throne will be brought to Jerusalem after his
death and that his crown will be raised upon that throne. These acts set a
precedent for all future Roman kings and emperors, who are obligated to send
their crowns to Jerusalem after their deaths to be raised over the throne that
Alexander appointed for the Messiah.
In this chapter I will analyze the first part of the prayer and its reference to
Alexander’s horns.

Alexander’s Horns

King Alexander bowed, and worshipping said: “Oh God, master of kings and judges, you who raise up
kings and dismiss their power, I perceive with my mind that you made me great among all kings, and
that you caused horns to grow on my head, so that I may gore with them the kingdoms of the world.
Give me the power from the heavens of your sanctity so that I may receive strength greater than the
kingdoms of the world, and I will humiliate them and glorify your name forever, oh Lord!1

The reference to horns on Alexander’s head occurs twice in the Neṣḥānā.

Toward the end of the Syriac work, in the section that describes Alexander’s
prophetic dream of Tūbarlaq’s imminent attack, we find words similar to those
uttered by Alexander in his prayer. Here, however, it is God who speaks these
words to Alexander: “I made you great among all kings, and I caused horns of
iron to grow on your head, so that you may gore with them the kingdoms of the
world.”
The two sentences about Alexander’s horns are almost identical. There are
two main differences, however. The first difference is that Alexander and God
switch the roles of speaker and listener. The second difference is a detail that is
reported only in the passage at the end of the Neṣḥānā, that is, the material from
which Alexander’s horns are made, namely, iron—a detail that is missing from
Alexander’s prayer. This detail and its absence at the beginning of the Syriac
work are important elements for our analysis.2
Horn symbolism appears in ancient iconographic representations of
Alexander as the son of the Egyptian god, Ammon. In these representations,
Alexander is crowned with ram horns, as is typical in Ammon effigies. The
association between Alexander and the Egyptian god probably occurred after
Alexander’s conquest of Egypt. The sources report that Alexander visited
Ammon’s oracle at the oasis of Siwah, where he was “adopted” as the son of that
god. What motivated Alexander to visit Ammon’s sanctuary in the Egyptian
desert is not clear. Was it to acquire legitimacy to rule over the country? Or was
it for other reasons? The debate is open.3 What seems certain is that Alexander’s
acquisition of the title of Ammon’s son is connected to his elevation to the status
of pharaoh. It is with the iconographic traits typical of pharaonic regalia that
Alexander is represented in the temple reliefs at Luxor.
Representations of the horned Alexander may have served propagandistic and
political purposes. As Fulińska observes: “it might seem a logical step to
‘translate’ this exaltation and its political impact into Greek terms by employing
the long-established syncretic image of the horned Zeus-Ammon.”4 However,
there is no compelling evidence that during his lifetime Alexander himself
adopted or endorsed the symbolism of Ammon’s horns—although this is
possible. The only mention of Alexander wearing Ammon’s horns occurs in the
words of Alexander’s contemporary, Ephippus of Olynthus, which are quoted by
the Greek grammarian Athenaeus (third century CE). According to Ephippus,
Alexander used to appear at symposia disguised as Ammon, wearing ram horns
and other emblems of the god.5 Nevertheless, scholars are skeptical about the
value of Ephippus’s testimony because of his notorious hostility toward
Alexander and his resentment of the latter’s wearing exotic garments.6
 The most ancient material evidence for the image of the horned king are coins
minted by Alexander’s successors, the Diadochi, and, especially, in
Lysimachus’s Thrace (r. 301–281 BCE) and Ptolemy’s Egypt (r. 305–282 BCE).
These coins circulated from 297 BCE. Their dissemination was so conspicuous as
to provoke the minting of imitations by rulers in the Arabian Peninsula.7 The
numismatic typology featured on the Diadochi’s coins was not as enduring.
Representations of the horned Alexander were not promulgated by later
Hellenistic rulers, while representations of the horned Ammon also appear to
have been rare. The horn symbolism still appears on octadrachms minted by
Ptolemy’s daughter, Arsinoe Philadelphos, who ruled Egypt from 275 to 268
BCE.8 However, over the following two centuries no verified numismatic
example of this kind has been found. It is only during the reign of Mithridates VI
Eupator of Pontus (r. 120–63 BCE) that Ammon’s horns reappear on coins
produced in a Hellenistic royal mint9—a revival that probably should be
attributed to Mithridates’s notorious imitatio Alexandri. This is the last time that
this numismatic model appears to have been adopted by a ruler. Thus, it was
probably not through coins that the iconic image of the horned Alexander was
transmitted to the late antique world, but rather by means of artistic and literary
expression. The historical records attest to the persistence of this imagery as a
common cultural model in the Roman world.
Several artworks from Late Antiquity display the iconography of the
Alexander Magnus corniger. Among these are a gold pendant preserved at the
Walters Art Museum in Baltimore10 and an onyx cameo preserved at the British
Museum in London.11 It is, however, sculptural portraiture that provides us with
the best examples of this iconographic phenomenon. One example is a life-size
marble head representing Alexander with Ammon’s ram horns, preserved at the
Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen. The head is possibly a Roman copy of a Greek
original, produced around the second half of the second century CE.12 Another
example is the already mentioned bust of a horned man—in all likelihood
Alexander—found at Katalymata ton Plakoton in Cyprus.13 Although it is not
clear whether this marble bust was produced at the same time as the building in
the archaeological complex—which probably dates to the seventh century—or if
it was later added as a decorative element,14 it demonstrates that the image of the
horned Alexander was still relevant in Late Antiquity. Statues of this kind may
have been more common than the extant material evidence suggests.
Clemens of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE) attests to the popularity of the horned
Alexander sculptures when he affirms: “Alexander wished to be thought the son
of Ammon and to be modeled with horns (κερασφόρος) by sculptors, so eager
was he to outrage the beautiful face of a man by a horn.”15 The hostility
displayed by Clemens of Alexandria toward this iconography was not an isolated
case, but is representative of common Christian antipathy toward such pagan
symbolism. It is in light of the tensions that accompanied the transmission of
elements from the Classical heritage to an increasingly Christianized world that
we should understand the efforts made by the sculptor of the Katalymata ton
Plakoton to emphasize the anthropomorphic features of the statue. As Stewart
convincingly argues, the sculptor’s departure from previous models of
naturalistic iconographies of Alexander’s horns, and his decision to represent
them as some kind of horned diadem, were intended to emphasize Alexander’s
humanity and thereby discredit pagan tendencies to venerate the Macedonian as
a god. By representing Alexander as a man wearing a horned diadem, the
sculptor was able to de-paganize, so to speak, the pagan symbol—Ammon’s
horns—and to remove any element relating to the deification of Alexander.16
Sculpture is not the only medium in which Ammon’s horns continued to be
connected to the person of Alexander in Late Antiquity. Literature also played a
major role. The horn symbolism appears as an important feature of the rec. α of
the Alexander Romance. Here ram horns are worn by the Egyptian high priest
Nechtanebus, who, in the Romance, is described as Alexander’s biological
father. It is by wearing these and other regalia associated with Ammon that
Nechtanebus appears to Alexander’s mother, Olympias, in the guise of the god
and has intercourse with her.17 For the author of the rec. α, Alexander’s alleged
descent from the Egyptian god was a consequence of the stratagem through
which Nechtanebus convinced Olympias that she had intercourse with Ammon
and that she bore the god’s child.
In the Romance, most references to Ammon’s horns are about Nechtanebus,
not Alexander. There is only one passage in the text that explicitly associates
Alexander with the horns. This occurs toward the end of the Romance when,
after Alexander’s death, Macedonians and Persians quarrel over the place of the
king’s burial: whereas the Macedonians wish to bring Alexander back to
Macedonia, the Persians want to carry his body to Persia and to venerate him as
a god together with Mithra. It is at this point that Alexander’s general, Ptolemy,
consults the oracle of the Babylonian god (as Mithra is described in the
Romance) about the appropriate burial place for Alexander. The oracle instructs
Ptolemy to carry Alexander’s body to Alexandria and the king is here identified
as “the horned king” (βασιλέα κερασφόρον).18
The passage describing Alexander as a horned king is preserved in the
Armenian version of the Alexander Romance,19 which is based on the rec. α, but
not in the Syriac version, which is a translation of that same recension. Even if
we cannot establish whether the Syriac translation of the Romance was produced
before or after the time when the author of the Neṣḥānā was writing, the absence
of the passage describing Alexander as a horned king may indicate hostility in
the Syriac-speaking world toward the image of Alexander bearing the horns of
the Egyptian god Ammon. Like the sculptor of Alexander’s bust at Katalymata
ton Plakoton, our author may have lived in a community that did not look kindly
on representations of the horned Alexander. If so, it comes as no surprise that the
author of the Neṣḥānā had to find a way to adjust the ancient pagan symbolism
of Ammon’s ram horns in his portrayal of Alexander. The strategy he followed
differed from the one adopted by the sculptor of the Cypriote bust, however.
Instead of representing Alexander’s horns as a human feature, our author stresses
their divine origins while advancing a conceptual re-elaboration of the motif.
As apparent from the analysis of other components of the text, the Syriac
author is very skilled at using previous traditions and in conferring new
meanings on them. In this case, our writer Christianizes the horn symbolism and
removes any element that may connect it to the topos of Alexander’s descent
from Ammon. The author reworks the image of the horned Alexander so that the
horns symbolize the authority, conferred upon him by a Christian God, to
conquer other worldly kingdoms. The horn symbolism is reconceptualized as the
source of regal authority that flows from the true Christian God. The Syriac
author’s attitude toward the horn symbolism may be compared with that
displayed three centuries earlier by Clemens of Alexander. In contrast to
Clemens’s haughty remarks about what he considered deplorable representations
of Alexander, the author of the Neṣḥānā embraces the pagan symbolism of
Ammon’s horns and turns it into a symbol of God’s power. According to him,
Alexander’s horned crown does not indicate that he was the progeny of a pagan
god, but rather that he was appointed by the real God. In connection with
Alexander’s horns, our author makes several references to scripture. In fact, the
literary work performed by the author in connection with the motif of
Alexander’s horns was complex, involving some subtle, intertextual connections
to the biblical tradition.

1 Kings 22:11/2 Chronicles 18:10

Two parallel passages in the Hebrew Bible, in 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18,
describe how, following the advice of his ally King Jehoshaphat of Judah, Ahab,
the king of Israel, summons a council of 400 prophets and consults with them
about the expedition that he is preparing against the Aramaean city of Ramoth
Gilead. The prophets give the king a favorable verdict and encourage him to
proceed with the attack. The leader of the council, Zedekiah son of Kenaanah,
endorses the suggestion through a curious mise-en-scène:
Zedekiah son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron, and he said, “Thus says the Lord: With
these you shall gore the Arameans until they are destroyed.” (1 Kings 22:11/2 Chronicles 18:10)

Zedekiah’s announcement contains two elements that are features of the

passages in the Neṣḥānā under investigation: (1) the iron horns; and (2) God’s
incitement to use those horns as weapons against an enemy. A brief look at the
language of the two biblical passages in the Peshitta makes the correspondence
between the Syriac text and the story of Zedekiah even more intriguing.
The expression “horns of iron” (qrntʾ d-przlʾ) is identical in the two texts.
Almost identical are the words “you will gore with them” in the Neṣḥānā (tdqr
b-hyn)20 and “you will gore with these” in the Peshitta (b-hlyn tdqr). The
linguistic connections between this passage and the Neṣḥānā are evident. The
Syriac author clearly meant to evoke the scriptural passages.
But why did the author chose to transfer elements from these specific biblical
passages into the story of his hero’s crowning by God? The episode of
Zedekiah’s masquerade has a very negative connotation. Zedekiah’s vision of
Ahab’s success turns out to be wrong, and the king of Israel dies in battle against
the Aramaeans. The Alexander of the Neṣḥānā appears as a sort of nemesis to
Zedekiah. Unlike the iron horns worn by Zedekiah, those worn by Alexander are
not a human artifact; they have grown on Alexander’s head by God’s decree.
Alexander’s horns have a divine origin. The different origins of Zedekiah’s and
Alexander’s horns typify another point of contrast between the two characters,
that is, their falsely inspired (Zedekiah’s) and divinely inspired (Alexander’s)
prophecies. In fact, contrary to the ill-fated campaign of Ahab, wrongly advised
by the false prophet Zedekiah, Alexander is destined to achieve victory in battle
because he is divinely inspired and is provided by God with the necessary means
to defeat his enemies.
But why did the author contrast the case of Alexander with that of a marginal
character in the Bible? An obvious answer is that the Syriac author was trying to
make sense of the ancient motif of Alexander’s horns through a biblical text that
also features horns worn by a human. The author of the Neṣḥānā reverses the
situation described in the biblical episode and turns a negative element in the
narrative—Zedekiah’s artificial horns—into a positive feature of the story of
Alexander. But there might be more, if we accept the (plausible) hypothesis that
our author had knowledge of the Alexander Romance, or at least of related
traditions. In this case, as a connoisseur of biblical stories, our author certainly
would not have overlooked the narrative similarity between the mise-en-scène of
Zedekiah in the Bible and that of Nechtanebus in the Alexander Romance. The
story of Nechtanebus’s seduction of Alexander’s mother, Olympias, through the
ruse of wearing Ammon’s regalia—including ram horns—to disguise himself as
the god, is similar to the episode of the false prophet Zedekiah. By reversing the
situation described in 1 Kings 22:11/2 Chronicles 18:10, the author of the
Neṣḥānā produced a virtuous version of the story to contrast that of the Egyptian
priest described in the Romance.
Unlike the author of the Alexander Romance, who explains Alexander’s
claims to be the son of Ammon through the story of Nechtanebus’s fraud, the
author of the Neṣḥānā brings the question of the hero’s alleged divinity—already
controversial among early Christians21—into a Christian context, replacing the
theme of Alexander’s divine lineage with that of his divine appointment. This
paradigmatic shift is reflected in the different nature of the horn symbolism in
the Romance and in the Neṣḥānā, which replicates the dichotomy that the Syriac
created between his work and the biblical story of Zedekiah. Unlike the horns
worn by Nechtanebus in the Romance (and by Zedekiah in the Bible),
Alexander’s iron horns in the Syriac work are not a carnivalesque accessory. The
horns that the hero bears on his head are the symbol of the power that God gave
him and of his destiny to conquer the world. According to the Syriac author,
Alexander understood the meaning of the horns that God made grow on his head
(“I perceive with my mind that you caused horns to grow on my head”).

Micah 4:13
Another biblical reference behind the description of Alexander’s iron horns in
the Neṣḥānā are the final verses of Micah 4 (vv. 11–13). These verses are framed
as a conclusive remark on God’s promise to rescue the Jewish people and to
restore them to their land (vv. 6–10):
v. 11: Now many nations are assembled against you saying, “Let her be profaned, and let our eyes gaze
upon Zion.”

v. 12: But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord; they do not understand his plan, that he has
gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor.
v. 13: Arise and thresh, O daughter Zion, for I will make your horn iron and your hoofs bronze; you
shall beat in pieces many peoples, and shall devote their gain to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of
the whole earth.
The militaristic bravado in v. 13 finds clear resonances in the Neṣḥānā,
specifically in the words that God addresses to Alexander before the battle with
Tūbarlaq. The parallel is further emphasized when we compare the Neṣḥānā
passage with the Peshitta’s rendition of the relevant words, “for I will make your
horn iron and your hoofs bronze; you shall beat in pieces many peoples.” The
Peshitta’s words: “I will make your horns22 of iron” (qrntky ʾ ʿ d d-przlʾ) bring to
mind the Neṣḥānā’s words: “and I caused horns to grow on your head” (qrntʾ d-
przlʾ ʾwʿyt b-ršk),23 while the Peshitta’s: “and you will pound many people” in
the Peshitta (w-tdqyn ʿmmʾ sgyʾʾ) resembles the Neṣḥānā’s: “so that you may
gore with them the kingdoms of the earth” in the Neṣḥānā (d-tdqr b-hyn mlkwtʾ
d-ʾrʿ ʾ).24 The language used by the author of the Neṣḥānā clearly signals that of
the Peshitta, especially “horns of iron” (qrntʾ d-przlʾ) in the Neṣḥānā, and “your
horns . . . of iron” in the Peshitta (qrntky . . . d-przlʾ), and “you will gore” (tdqr)
in the Neṣḥānā, and “you will pound” in the Peshitta (tdqyn).
In addition to linguistic affinities, the passages in Micah 4 and in the Neṣḥānā
display close thematic affinities. In both cases, God encourages his protégés not
to fear their enemies, and he reassures them that he will provide the means to
achieve victory on the battlefield. In both cases, the divinely sponsored weapons
are horns made of the same material, that is, iron. By referring to Micah 4, the
Syriac author draws a parallel between Israel and Alexander’s kingdom in the
Neṣḥānā as two divinely favored political entities, both benefiting from God’s
military assistance in battle. This is not the only occasion on which the author
characterizes Alexander’s kingdom in a manner that is ultimately based on
biblical representations of the exclusive relationship between Israel and God. A
similar transfer to Alexander’s kingdom occurs in the scene of the battle against
Tūbarlaq, which immediately follows the dialogue between God and Alexander.
As noted in Chapter 5, the Syriac author draws another parallel between the aid
that Alexander receives in the combat against his enemy and that received by the
Israelites from God in their battle with the Philistines, as described in 1 Samuel
7:10.
In two consecutive scenes, our author refers to scriptural passages that
describe divine favor for the people of Israel engaged in battle. The author
adopts this topos of divine military aid to Israel and transfers it to his hero,
Alexander. These cursory references to the Scripture hint at the status of
Alexander’s Greco-Roman Empire (i.e., Byzantium) as the New Israel—
apparently anticipating a topos that would become commonplace in later
Byzantine imperial discourse.25 Through the words in Micah 4:13, and the image
of Zion’s iron horns in particular, the author of the Neṣḥānā reconceptualizes
ancient, pagan representations of the horned Alexander, and turns Alexander’s
horns into a symbol of the alliance between him and the Christian God. The ram
horns of Amon’s effigies become the emblem of Byzantium’s special
relationship with God.

Daniel 8:3–7
To this point, we have focused on the second mention of Alexander’s horns in
the Neṣḥānā, which occurs in the words that God addresses to Alexander before
the latter goes to battle against Tūbarlaq. Let us now turn to the first mention of
Alexander’s horns in the prayer that the hero addresses to God before
undertaking his journey to the edges of the Earth. Compared to the second
passage, Alexander’s prayer lacks an important element, that is, the information
that the horns that God makes grow on Alexander’s head are made of iron. The
absence of this information is very relevant. Indeed, because of the location of
Alexander’s prayer at the beginning of the narrative, the reader learns that
Alexander’s horns are made of iron only several pages later, toward the end of
the text. As the previous analysis has demonstrated, the specification of the
material of which Alexander’s horns are made is a signal to the reader of the
biblical passages that the Syriac author wants to evoke. As seen, the words
“horns of iron” function as a cursory reference to Micah 4:13 and to 1 Kings
22:11/2 Chronicles 18:10. Without reference to iron, the hint to these scriptural
passages is lost. This is exactly what happens in Alexander’s prayer at the
beginning of the Neṣḥānā.
But what does the reader understand, then, when reading Alexander’s claim
to have been crowned with horns by God, if the specification of “iron horns” is
missing in the passage? It is unlikely that the author forgot to include this
important detail, while nothing suggests that anything was lost in the
transmission of the text.26 Is it possible, then, that the author inserted cursory
references to Micah 4:13 and to 1 Kings 22:11/2 Chronicles 18:10 at the end of
the text, because with his first mention of the motif of Alexander’s horns he
wanted to direct the reader’s attention to other biblical passages? The answer to
this question—I think—is affirmative, and the author’s scriptural allusion fits
perfectly with other important aspects of his agenda.
As a starting point of our analysis, let us briefly observe how earlier scholars
have analyzed the passage in Alexander’s prayer where the hero confirms having
received horns from God. Both Reinink and Bohas connect the first mention of
Alexander’s horns in the Neṣḥānā to the Danielic prophecies in Daniel 7 and 8.27
Bohas does not specify the exact section of the two biblical passages supposedly
recalled by the Syriac text. By contrast, Reinink links the horns of the Syriac
Alexander to either the fourth beast of Daniel 7 (vv. 7–8) or to the he-goat in
Daniel 8 (vv. 5–8, 21). As Reinink rightly observes, biblical exegetes often
identified in Alexander those two specific “characters” of the Danielic
prophecies—the fourth beast and the he-goat.28 Reinink does not specify which
specific element in the Syriac text is reminiscent of the biblical passages. I
assume, however, that the intertextual link is the horn symbolism, which may
indeed relate the horned Alexander in the Neṣḥānā to the fourth beast in Daniel
7, or to the he-goat in Daniel 8—both biblical beasts are characterized by the
horn(s) on their heads. Upon closer examination, however, the connection may
be only apparent.
The distinguishing feature of the fourth beast in Daniel 7 are the ten horns
that crown its head, and the eleventh horn that suddenly grows, causing three of
the ten other horns to fall. This imagery alludes to the fragmentation of
Alexander’s empire into the Diadochi kingdoms—represented by the ten horns
—and to the rise of Antiochus Epiphanes—the eleventh horn—as clearly
appears from the explanation of the prophecy found in the subsequent lines of
the Danielic text itself (vv. 24–25). Now, besides the fact that the Alexander of
the Neṣḥānā also has horns, nothing of the complex symbolism associated with
the fourth beast in Daniel 7 can be found in the Syriac text. As seen in Daniel 7,
the fluctuating number of the beast’s horns (10 + 1–3) is a trope for the political
scenario that followed the death of Alexander. The Peshitta reports that the
fourth beast has ten horns and refers to the eleventh horn as “one horn” (qrnʾ
ḥdʾ). No connection to this biblical passage can be detected in the Neṣḥānā,
where the plural form “horns” (qrntʾ) represents a pair (i.e., “two horns”).
Another crucial difference between the two texts is that there is no indication
in Daniel 7 that the horns of the fourth beast function as weapons against the
beast’s enemies, or that the beast will use them to destroy other kingdoms. In this
regard, a closer parallel to the Neṣḥānā may be found in Daniel 8, specifically, in
the description of the he-goat attacking the ram—presumably with the single
horn between his eyes. As noted, in Daniel 8 the he-goat and the ram represent
two rival kingdoms that biblical exegetes usually (and correctly) identify as the
Persian and Macedonian empires. From this perspective, it is attractive to find in
the Neṣḥānā an allusion to the he-goat that will defeat the Persian ram in Daniel
8. However, this reading does not stand up to the scrutiny of textual analysis. In
describing the he-goat, the Danielic prophecy clearly refers to a single horn.29
Had the Syriac author wished to associate his horned Alexander to the he-goat of
the prophecy, why did he not describe his hero as crowned with one horn,
instead of two? Consider that, as much as the single horn motif characterizes the
he-goat in Daniel 8, the two horns motif characterizes the ram at v. 3 of the same
passage.30 Surprisingly, the Alexander of the Neṣḥānā finds a closer parallel in
the ram of the Danielic prophecy than in the he-goat. Like the ram, Alexander
has two horns—with the term (qrntʾ, “two horns”) appearing in both
the Peshitta on Daniel 8:3 and in the Neṣḥānā. This is not the only element that
connects Alexander and the ram.
The mission to which Alexander commits in his prayer, that is, uprooting all
world kingdoms and subjugating their territories, brings to mind Daniel 8:4,
where the ram attacks westward, northward, and southward to submit the other
beasts. An element unnoticed by previous scholars further exposes the analogy
between Alexander’s world campaigns and the ram’s furious attacks. In Daniel,
the ram charges (‫ְמ ַנ ֵגַּח‬/mənaggêaḥ) against the other beasts. In the Peshitta,
mənaggêaḥ is rendered as (mdqr), that is, “goring.” This peculiar
rendition of the biblical text in Syriac is important. Indeed, the author of the
Neṣḥānā uses the same verb (dqr), “to gore,” that occurs in the Peshitta.31
The image in the Neṣḥānā of Alexander using his two horns to gore the other
world kingdoms thus reflects an understanding of Daniel 8:4 common in Syriac
circles, where the ram was imagined as using its two horns as weapons against
its enemies. Thus, it appears that with his first mention of the motif of
Alexander’s horns, the Syriac author was alluding to Daniel 8. Contrary to
previous scholarship, however, the allusion refers to the ram, not to the he-goat
of the prophecy.

An Innovative but Not Unthinkable Association

The association made by the author of the Neṣḥānā between Alexander and the
ram of the prophecy has no antecedents in earlier literature. As seen in the
previous chapter, Alexander was an important figure in the exegeses of the
Danielic prophecies. While exegetes did not unanimously agree about the role of
the Macedonian within the prophetic visions in Daniel 2 and 7—Alexander was
associated with either the third or the fourth empires in Daniel 2, and with either
the third or fourth beasts in Daniel 7—there was no uncertainty surrounding the
vision of the ram and the he-goat in Daniel 8. In the latter case, Alexander’s role
appears to have been well defined, and his identification with the he-goat seems
to have been unequivocal among biblical exegetes. To the best of my knowledge,
no exegete identifies the he-goat with any historical person other than Alexander.
This identification is attested since at least Hippolytus of Rome (d. ca. 235 CE)
and is repeated by later theologians, including Origen (d. ca. 253 CE), John
Chrysostom (d. 407 CE), and Jerome (d. 420 CE).32 In the Syriac tradition, this
interpretation was indisputable, since the Peshitta on Daniel 8:5 contains a gloss
that identifies Alexander as the he-goat of the vision.33 This clarification within
the scripture itself surely exercised decisive influence on those Syriac authors
who wrote about the vision in Daniel 8. We have already seen that Aphrahat had
no doubts about identifying the he-goat with Alexander; and the same may be
said about a commentary on Daniel ascribed to Ephrem.34
More doubts seem to have surrounded the identity of the ram. Aphrahat, like
most Christian exegetes, identifies the ram as Darius.35 This identification,
however, raises several problems. It is well known that three different Persian
sovereigns bore the name Darius: Darius I, also known as Darius the Great (r.
522–486 BCE); Darius II (r. 423–404/5 BCE); and the last Achaemenian king,
Darius III (r. 336–330 BCE). Although numerous exegetes identify Darius as the
ram,36 virtually none of them clarifies whom among those three sovereigns they
intend. For sure, exegetical requirements often prevailed over historical
accuracy. For instance, Hippolytus infers that “the ram is Darius, the king of the
Persians, who prevailed over all nations [ . . . ] Alexander after he had engaged
with Darius in war, overpowered him and prevailed over all his army.”37
Hippolytus appears to conflate the identities of Darius I and Darius III—the
former was known for his “global” military campaigns, the latter for having been
overthrown by Alexander.
To complicate matters, exegetes had to take into account a fourth Darius: the
mysterious Darius the Mede, whom we have already met in Chapter 5. Jerome
identifies Darius the Mede as the uncle of Cyrus and, following Josephus,38
describes him as the son of Astyages.39 Jerome also reports that the Greeks call
this Darius Cyaxeres,40 which is how Darius the Mede is identified by Theodoret
of Cyr (d. ca. 458). Both authors demonstrate awareness of the confusion
surrounding the name Darius and try to dissipate doubts. Theodoret explicitly
broaches the question: “We must distinguish between the reign of Darius son of
Ahasuerus and that of Darius the Persian.” Jerome goes even further: “We are
not to think of that other Darius in the second year of whose reign the temple
was built [ . . . ]; nor are we to think of the Darius who was vanquished by
Alexander, the king of the Macedonians.”41
Despite these efforts to clarify the matter, confusion persisted. Probably
because of the several mentions in the Book of Daniel, the figure of Darius the
Mede entered exegetical explanations of the vision in Daniel 8. Jerome identifies
the ram exclusively with Darius, the uncle of Cyrus, that is, Darius the Mede.
However, the most blatant case of confusion occurs in the Peshitta. As in the
case of the he-goat of the prophecy, the Peshitta adds a gloss to shed light on the
historical figure behind the obscure character of the ram. In the gloss (which is
repeated twice, at vv. 3 and 7) the ram is identified as Darius the Mede. The
Peshitta’s identification of Darius the Mede attests to possible confusion between
the biblical figure and the Persian king Darius defeated by Alexander. The
inclusion of the second gloss in the text of v. 7 seems to confirm this confusion.
The inserted words “the ram is Darius the Mede” immediately follow the he-
goat’s defeat of the ram. What is certain is that the very presence of a gloss
identifying the ram as Darius the Mede endorsed the conflation between the
latter and Darius III. This is evident in a passage of Malalas’s Chronicle, quoted
in the previous chapter, in which we read: “In the fourth year of the reign of
Dareios the Mede, son of Assalam, God raised up Alexander [ . . . ]. He defeated
Dareios, emperor of the Persians, the son of Assalam, and captured him, all his
empire. . . .”42 Here Malalas mistakenly identifies the Darius defeated by
Alexander as the biblical figure of Darius the Mede.
Some exegetes further complicated the question of the ram’s identity. After
identifying the ram as Darius the Mede, Jerome identifies Cyrus as the person
represented by one of the two ram’s horns, especially the highest
horn.43According to Theodoret, the two horns refer to the double nationality,
Mede and Persian, of the ram:
He perceived two horns on the ram because Cyrus was the first to reign over it and transmitted the
empire only to his sons; when his son Cambyses died, soothsayers held power for a few months, but
shortly afterwards Darius son of Hystaspes, who passed the empire on to his offspring and theirs up to
the last Darius, whose empire Alexander the Macedonian took over after slaying him.44

In sum, attempts by exegetes to identify the historical person behind the figure of
the ram in Daniel 8 have produced contradictory conclusions. Although several
commentators identified the ram with some king from the past, of either Median
or Persian origins, the exact identity of this king remained open to debate. Much
confusion seems to have surrounded figures named Darius. At the same time,
some exegetes—Jerome and Theodoret are the only ones recorded, but the list
may have been longer—also included a second figure, Cyrus, in their attempts to
explore the historical reality behind the ram. As is often the case, uncertainty
opens the door to flexibility and sometimes creates room for new, and even
surprising, innovations. For instance, when in the mid-seventh century an
anonymous Syriac author, now commonly identified as Ps.-Ephrem, wrote his
homily On the End, he affirmed that the arrival of the sons of Ishmael was
occurring “in the name of the ram.” In other words, Ps.-Ephrem read the recent
Arab territorial expansion into Byzantine provinces through the Danielic vision
and made a connection between the Ishmaelites—as he defined them—and the
ram.
Although unprecedented—or at least previously unrecorded—Ps.-Ephrem’s
interpretation of the Danielic prophecy continues the process of reinterpretation
of the Daniel texts that had begun in previous centuries. As the reader may
recall, the scheme of the four world kingdoms had come to be interpreted in two
different ways, with the Persian and the Roman empires alternating in the role of
the last world kingdom. Both interpretations circulated side by side, thus further
endorsing the uncertainty surrounding the Danielic prophecies. This uncertainty
forced the exegetes to speculate over the verses in question. To bring another
example from the seventh century, the anonymous author known to scholars as
Ps.-Sabeos advanced a new interpretation of the Danielic scheme in which the
third slot is allocated to the Huns of Gog and Magog, and the fourth slot is
reserved for the kingdom of Ishmael.45 In a nutshell, few biblical texts were as
open to exegetical interpretations as the Danielic texts were. In these
circumstances, the connection established by the author of the Neṣḥānā between
Alexander and the ram of the Danielic vision would not have surprised his
contemporaries. For sure, it was an innovation, but an innovation set in the
framework of a blurry, and hence fluid, exegetical framework.
At the same time, the association of Alexander with a literary figure who had
been identified with ancient Persian rulers would hardly have seemed odd in the
cultural context of Late Antiquity. Since Antiquity, Alexander had been
associated with a prominent figure of the Persian, Achaemenid heritage: Cyrus
the Great. As noted, Procopius presents Alexander and Cyrus as a pair of
exemplar monarchs against Justinian’s detractors. However, the association
between the two figures goes further back in time. Parallels between them were
already extant during Alexander’s lifetime and were probably encouraged by
Alexander himself.46 Alexander’s esteem for Cyrus left a trace in later
representations of the Macedonian conqueror, who earned the appellation of
φιλόκυρος, coined by Strabo in his Geography.47 At the same time, the
association with Cyrus played an important role in the dynastic claims of
Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic rulers. It is well known that Mithridates Eupator
claimed a double line of descent from Cyrus and Darius I, on his father’s side,
and from Alexander, on his mother’s side. Less known are the assertions made
by Mithridates’s contemporary, Antiochus I of Commagene (r. 70–38 BCE), who
claimed that his paternal and maternal lineages could be traced back to Darius
the Great and Alexander, respectively.48 These examples from the first century
BCE give credibility to the information reported by Tacitus (d. 120 CE), according
to which the Arsacid King Artabanus II (r. 12–38/40 CE) sought legitimization
for his territorial claims by asserting the twofold heritage of both the
Achaemenian and the Macedonian empires.49
The connection between Cyrus and Alexander appears to have been a
common feature of the Roman rhetoric since at least the late Republican period.
In a funeral lamentation on the death of Publius Crassus, who died along with
his father, the triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus, in the disastrous battle fought
against the Parthians at Carrhae in 53 BCE, Cicero (d. 43 BCE) laments Publius’s
desire to follow the example of Cyrus and Alexander.50 This duo of great
sovereigns from the past appears to have been a cliché among late antique
authors who wished to celebrate current rulers through their comparison with
earlier models. For example, in the eulogy to Constantine, Eusebius of Caesarea
(d. 339 CE) exalts the prominence of the Roman emperor by comparing him to
Cyrus and Alexander—together with a series of arguments to prove how
Constantine not only epitomized great leadership, but also prevailed over the two
illustrious kings of the past.51
However, it is again Christian exegesis that provides us with the most
significant elements. For these exegetes, the figure of Alexander explained the
obscure prophecy of the four chariots in the sixth book of Zechariah (Zec 6:1–8).
Influential Christian hermeneutists like Jerome and Cyril identified Alexander
with the third chariot of the prophecy. According to this reading, Alexander’s
rise immediately follows that of Cyrus the Great, who is represented by the
second chariot. According to Cyril’s interpretation, Alexander performs the same
task performed by Cyrus, that is, to attack and to subjugate the Babylonians in
order to punish them for the suffering they brought on the people of Judea.
Cyril’s interpretation gives us an idea of the kind of speculations that late antique
authors could develop around the figures of Cyrus and Alexander, starting from
the notion that both sovereigns fulfilled biblical prophecies.

An Association Full of Political Implications

The author of the Neṣḥānā lived in a cultural environment that included the
complex ideas that shaped Cyril’s representation of Cyrus and Alexander as a
pair of divinely guided sovereigns. In such a context, the association that he
makes between the Macedonian hero and a biblical “character” traditionally
understood to represent the power of ancient Persian sovereigns (i.e., the ram)
would have been unusual but not absurd. Still unusual, and one wonders why he
decided to depart from a more conventional exegesis of the Danielic passage and
formulated that unusual association instead. Of course, in his eyes the ram in
Daniel 8 must have appeared as an appealing figure through which to read and
then reconceptualize the pagan symbols of Zeus-Ammon’s ram horns in light of
scriptural knowledge. However, this observation alone does not explain why our
author draws other parallels with the Persian sovereigns elsewhere in his work.
In fact, over the course of the text, our author strengthens this association.
As we will see in the following chapter, in the section of Alexander’s prayer
that immediately follows the king’s statement about the horns he received from
God, the author attributes to Alexander the possession of two other precious
items—the crown and the throne of the kosmokrator—traditionally associated by
Syriac Christians with Cyrus and other Persian sovereigns of the Bible. The
connection to these Persian kings is reflected by the way our author adapts to
Alexander the motif of the charge of the ram in the Book of Daniel. In the
Neṣḥānā, Alexander marches in a westward direction (unlike the historical
Alexander, who attacked Darius’s empire from the west). The image of
Alexander marching from the east and goring the rival kingdoms with his horns
brings to mind the charge of the ram from the east in the Book of Daniel. The
hero of the Neṣḥānā accomplishes the same deeds that biblical exegetes had
traditionally attributed to Darius/Darius the Mede, or to Cyrus. Our author draws
an implicit connection between Alexander and these glorious Persian sovereigns
when he tells the reader that after defeating Tūbarlaq, the Macedonian became
the master of Babylon and Assyria. Alexander’s subjugation of Babylon recalls
Cyrus’s glorious conquest, which, in the Book of Daniel, is incidentally
attributed to Darius the Mede, that is, the ram of the Peshitta.52
In sum, it appears that the parallel that the author draws between Alexander
and the rulers of ancient Persia is not limited to the curious identification of the
former with the ram of the Danielic prophecy. At the same time, one should
observe that the attribution to Alexander of symbols and deeds otherwise
attributed to the kings of ancient Persia correlates with the already observed
attempts to dissociate Alexander’s archenemy, Tūbarlaq, from those very same
rulers. Indeed, the construction of the fictitious character of Tūbarlaq of the
house of ʾḥšwrḥ, whose patronymic, as noted, is a distortion of the name
Ahasuerus (ʾḥšyrš), has the effect of denying any connection between the
kingdom of Alexander’s rival and the ancient Persian rulers of the biblical
tradition.
 The overall picture described by the Syriac author may at first seem
surprising. In anti-Persian polemical discourse, early writers almost never
missed the opportunity to depict an ideological scenario in which they
juxtaposed the positive comparatio Alexandri, applied to Roman emperors, with
a negative comparatio Achaemenidorum.53 Each Alexander redivivus who
appeared on the Roman political scene was regularly provided with an
Achaemenid counterpart in Ctesiphon. “Achaemenid programs,” that is, the
intention to rebuild the Achaemenid Empire, were commonly attributed to
Persian sovereigns. Writing about the reigns of Ardashir I (r. 224–242 CE) and
Shapur II, Roman historians Herodian (d. 240 CE),54 Cassius Dio (d. 235 CE),55
and Ammianus Marcellinus (d. ca. 397 CE)56 reported that these sovereigns
sought to restore the territorial integrity of the empire of their alleged ancestors
(i.e., the Achaemenians). The scholarly doubts about the accuracy of these
reports are not relevant here.57 What interests us is how these claims, which
were attributed to Sasanian kings, functioned in Roman political discourse. The
representation of Persian rulers as pursuers of an Achaemenid revival were
indeed functional in the idealized reproduction of the ancestral fight between
Alexander and Darius. Roman propaganda spread the idea that the clash between
the two rivals was being repeated in a new political context—with the
implication that Persia would be defeated once again.
Such an ideological paradigm can be identified in Aphrahat’s anti-Sasanian
exegesis of the Danielic prophecies. As seen, Aphrahat presents Shapur as a
reincarnation of the ram in the prophecy. The rationale behind this association is
the creation of a meta-historical reality in which the ram represents both past and
present Persian dynasties. Aphrahat’s aim was to spread the message that just as
the ram was once defeated by the he-goat, Alexander, it will be vanquished again
by the fourth beast, Rome. The triptych association of “ram/Darius–ram/Shapur–
Darius/Shapur” contributes to Aphrahat’s elaboration of a complex scenario in
which the ram stands for a meta-historical entity engaged in a perpetual struggle
with the political powers from the west, the he-goat, Alexander, and the mighty
fourth beast, Rome. Through his peculiar reading of the prophecy, Aphrahat
expresses his hope that in the near future Shapur will be defeated by a Roman
emperor, just as Darius was defeated by Alexander in the past.
Why does the author of Neṣḥānā dissociate Tūbarlaq from the ram of the
Danielic prophecy, thus missing the opportunity to produce a powerful
hermeneutic like the one elaborated by Aphrahat? And why does he attribute the
emblem of the ram horns—together with other symbols of royalty commonly
associated with Persians kings (see next chapter)—to Alexander instead? The
explanation, I believe, is found once more in the contemporaneous political
context.
It is reported that in December 543 (or January 544) the catholicos Mār Abā
summoned a synod in Ctesiphon. In his opening blessing dedicated to Khosrow,
Abā hailed Khosrow as a second Cyrus and portrayed him as a blessed sovereign
inspired by the Messiah—something that brings to mind the representation of
Cyrus as anointed king in the Bible (Isa 45:1).58 Abā probably was not simply
trying to obtain royal benevolence. The reign of Khosrow Anōshirvān witnessed
the increasing influence of Christians at the Sasanian court and a growing
intimacy between the catholicoi and the shah. Abā was particularly close to
Khosrow, with whom he reportedly collaborated, to the point of providing his
assistance to suppress the revolt of Christians in Gundeshapur, led by Khosrow’s
Christian son Anōshazād.59 One wonders whether the words with which Abā
opened the synod are related to Sasanian court propaganda.
The question is difficult to answer. We know very little about the Sasanians’
level of awareness of ancient Persian history, and Cyrus is nowhere mentioned in
Middle Persian sources.60 Surely, however, Khosrow did not lack opportunities
to acquire information from his Jewish and Christian subjects about the memory
of a king like Cyrus who plays such a prominent role in the biblical tradition.
And one imagines that even if he had only a vague understanding of the
implications of the comparison made by Abā, Khosrow would have welcomed
the catholicos’ attempt to revive the memory of Cyrus to address the specific
environment of Persian Christians. This kind of exercise may have been futile
among Zoroastrian subjects, who most likely ignored the figure of Cyrus, but
would have been extremely useful to secure the loyalty of Christian subjects.
Exalting Khosrow as a second Cyrus might also dispel the currency among
Eastern Christians of negative comparisons with the Achaemenians, of the kind
elaborated two centuries earlier by Aphrahat. It is possible that in Abā’s days,
Christian dissidents in the Sasanian Empire—like those who participated in the
Gundeshapur revolt—understood the downfall of the ram described in Daniel 8
as an encouraging precedent for a collapse of a Persian dynasty. By making a
comparison between the current ruler and a more positive figure from the
Achaemenid past, also present in the scripture, Abā may have wanted to imply
that Khosrow would repeat the glorious deeds of Cyrus—the righteous Persian
king of the Bible—not the catastrophic fall of Darius III—the ram.
Be that as it may, the powerful image of Khosrow as a second Cyrus
elaborated by Abā crossed the borders of the Sasanian kingdom. Rumors about
Abā’s pro-Sasanian propaganda likely reached the ears of the Byzantine
emperor, who launched a campaign of counterpropaganda. Indeed, during
Justinian’s reign we witness unprecedented attempts by imperial publicists to
associate the figure of the Roman emperor with that of the glorious Achaemenid
king—something that appears as a personal competition with the Sasanian
sovereign. As seen, in his Histories Procopius makes a direct comparison
between Justinian and Cyrus (and Alexander). The Byzantine historian repeats
the comparison in The Buildings, where, however, he diminishes the
achievements of Cyrus to exalt those of Justinian: “If one should examine his
reign [i.e., that of Justinian] with care, he will regard the rule of Cyrus as a sort
of child’s play.”61
Procopius was not the only one in Byzantine society to make parallels
between Justinian and the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty. Another witness
to this propaganda is found in the afore-mentioned Anthology of Planudes and,
in particular, in one of the two epigrams originally engraved on the equestrian
statue of Justinian erected in the hippodrome of Constantinople—probably to
celebrate the victorious battle of Dara of 530. The second epigram, which refers
to the “bronze from the Assyrian spoils” and the “Babylon destroyed,” merits
our attention. The image signals a great victory over the Sasanians. Of course,
Justinian’s armies never penetrated Sasanian territory far enough to reach
Babylon. The phrase “Babylon destroyed” in the epigram evokes in the mind of
the reader another glorious historical event, i.e., Cyrus’s eradication of the
Babylonian Empire.62 Justinian thereby emerges as a Cyrus redivivus, legitimate
successor of the forefather of the Achaemenid dynasty that was inherited by the
Sasanians, according to Roman political discourse.63 Referring to the epigram in
the Anthology of Planudes, Canepa observes: “there is a subtle irony in the
portrayal of Justinian as a ‘New-Cyrus’ in his destruction of Babylon, given the
Nestorian hierarchy’s acclamation of Kosrow I with this title.”64 But it was more
than ironic; it was political. This kind of propaganda was most likely aimed at
Christians living under Sasanian rule and had as its ultimate goal to claim the
fidelity of the Church of the East to the Christian emperor.65 By representing the
Roman emperor as Cyrus redivivus, propagandists implied that Justinian would
free Eastern Christians from the Sasanian yoke, just as the Achaemenid king had
rescued the Jews from Babylonian captivity.
After Justinian’s death, Roman intellectuals continued to rebut encomiastic
parallels between Khosrow and the dynasts of ancient Persia. Agathias, for
instance, compares Khosrow to Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, claiming,
surprisingly, that the former’s military achievements were greater than the latter.6
6 The praise, however, immediately reveals its real intent. Despite his glory,
Agathias observes, Khosrow suffered an ignominious end through a mortal
disease that followed his unsuccessful war against Maurice in the last years of
his reign.67 Here, Agathias suggests that a man’s success should be evaluated
only after his death, a possible allusion to Croesus, the king of Lydia, who was
thought to be the happiest and most successful of men until he was defeated by
none other than Cyrus.68 In Agathias’s eyes, then, more than Cyrus-like,
Khosrow was a Croesus-like character. Moreover, the attentive observer will
note that Agathias places special emphasis on the parallels with Xerxes, who—
unlike Cyrus and Darius, both identified only by their patronymic—is described
as the one “who opened up the seas to cavalry and the mountains to shipping.”69
In this case, the comparison with Khosrow has the malicious and not so hidden
agenda of evoking in the mind of the reader the memory of Xerxes’s defeat in
the war against the Greek poleis.
Together with the attribution to Alexander of deeds and symbols commonly
associated with the Persian kings of the Bible, these propagandistic skirmishes
provide us with a better understanding of the curious identification of Alexander
with the ram of the Danielic prophecy made by the author of the Neṣḥānā. The
appropriation of the legacy of eminent Persian biblical figures is not unlike what
Roman propagandists were doing when drawing comparisons between Justinian
and Cyrus.70 Like Justinian’s propagandists, the author produces the image of a
king who can compete with Khosrow in appealing to Eastern Christians. He
opposes the image of Alexander as an anointed king to that of Khosrow, as
portrayed by the authorities of the Church of the East. Alexander emerges as the
only legitimate, divinely inspired king to whom Christians in Persian territory
should pay their allegiance. By contrast, the author portrays Khosrow, through
the parodistic figure of Tūbarlaq, as an ignominious king who has no share in the
glory of the Persian kings celebrated by the biblical tradition. This glory—our
author suggests—belongs to Alexander, the subjugator of Babylon, the bearer of
the ram horns of the Danielic prophecy,71 and, as we will soon discover, the one
king who sits on the throne of the kosmokrator that once belonged to Cyrus, and
the one king who wears a crown that once belonged to Nimrod, putative ancestor
of the Sasanian dynasty.
 10
The Crown, the Throne, and the Last Roman Empero
r

In the final part of his prayer, Alexander addresses the following words to God:
Your remembrance will stay forever and ever. I will write your name, oh God, on the papers of my
kingdom so that there may be always a memorial for you. And if the Messiah, who is the son of God,
comes during my days, I will bow in front of him, me and my troops. And if he does not come during
my days, once I will have gone and defeated kings and seized their lands, I will bring and set in
Jerusalem this throne that is a chair of silver on which I sit. And when the Messiah comes from heaven
he will sit on my throne, because his kingdom will stand forever. And seven hundred pounds of gold
will be the gift put before the Messiah at his arrival. And whether I die in one of the regions of the
world or here in Alexandria, the crown of my kingdom will be taken and lifted upon the throne, which
I offer to the Messiah.1

The final part of Alexander’s prayer in the Neṣḥānā clearly shares thematic
features with the story of the Last Roman Emperor, whose earliest recorded
versions are to be found in the Tiburtine Sibyl and in the Apocalypse of Ps.-
Methodius.2 In the Sibyl we read that when the Antichrist arises and the people
of Gog and Magog who had been restrained by Alexander are released, a Roman
king will gather an army and wage a successful war on the impious nation. Then
“he will come to Jerusalem and deposit there the diadem from his head and all
royal garments; He will surrender the kingdom of the Christians to God the
Father and to his Son Jesus Christ.”3 The scene is more elaborate in the Ps.-
Methodius. Here, at the moment of the release of the people confined in the
North and at the appearance of the Antichrist, the Roman emperor will perform a
complex ritual and hand over his kingdom to the Messiah:
The king of the Greeks shall go up and stand on Golgotha and the holy cross shall be placed on that
spot where it had been fixed when it bore Christ. The king of the Greeks shall place his crown on the
top of the holy cross, stretch out his two hands towards heaven, and hand over the kingdom to God the
Father. And the holy cross upon which Christ was crucified will be raised up to heaven, together with
the royal crown [ . . . ]. And the moment the holy cross is raised up to heaven, and the king of the
Greeks yields up his soul to his Creator, then all rule, sovereignty and power will be rendered void.4
Note the clear similarities between the story of the Last Emperor and
Alexander’s grandiose proclamations in the Neṣḥānā. In both traditions we read
that the king will depose the symbol of his royal power—a crown or a diadem.
And in both traditions a Roman king hands over his kingdom to God and his
Messiah. In the Neṣḥānā, we discern only the outline of the Last Emperor theme,
but it is clear that at some point a Roman king will welcome Jesus and let him sit
on Alexander’s royal throne. Note also that all three texts, the Tiburtine Sibyl,
Ps.-Methodius, and the Neṣḥānā, feature traditions about both the confined
nations and the Last Emperor. Already in their earliest recorded versions, the two
traditions were related to one another.
Establishing the relationship between Alexander’s prayer in the Neṣḥānā and
the story of the Last Emperor in the Sibyl and the Ps.-Methodius is not an easy
task. The task is complicated by the animated scholarly debate over which of the
two sources antedates and thus influenced the other. There are three principal
positions. According to the first position, the primitive episode of the Last
Emperor is the one found in the Tiburtine Sibyl, which was composed in the late
fourth century and, in the second half of the seventh century, was picked up by
Ps.-Methodius.5 The second position maintains that the Tiburtine Sibyl inspired
the Ps.-Methodius but contends that the story of the Last Emperor was composed
shortly after Heraclius’s victories over the Sasanians, during the reign of his
grandson Constans II (r. 641–668).6 The third position reverses the relationship
between the Sibyl and Ps.-Methodius, suggesting that the former depends on the
latter.7
This debate bears on our understanding of the position of the Neṣḥānā vis-à-
vis the development of the Last Emperor motif. While scholars seem to agree
that the Neṣḥānā influenced—directly or indirectly—Ps-Methodius,8 there is less
agreement about the dating of the Sibyl and its relationship to the Neṣḥānā.
Whereas Podestà regards the Last Emperor episode in the Sibyl as directly
inspired by the Neṣḥānā,9 Shoemaker argues that Alexander’s prayer in the
Neṣḥānā echoes the Last Emperor story in the Sibyl.10 The whole matter is
further complicated by disagreements about the relationship between the Last
Emperor story and Heraclius’s restitution of the True Cross. Did the story inspire
the emperor’s actions or the other way around? The episode about Alexander’s
throne in the Neṣḥānā has little in common with Heraclius’s restoration of the
holy relic.11 However, one may turn the question on its head and ask whether the
Neṣḥānā is an early witness to a story that inspired Heraclius’s ceremonial return
of the Cross. All these questions merit a detailed study, perhaps even an entire
monograph. In the present context, I will stay as far as possible from the debate
over the development of the Last Emperor legend. By focusing on the motif of
Alexander’s crown in the Neṣḥānā, I will try to explain its ideological
significance in the context of sixth-century Roman-Persian antagonism.

The Crown
Crowns hanging in holy places was an important ritual practice in late antique
culture. Shoemaker draws attention to two meaningful sixth-century examples of
this custom. The first concerns the Axumite king Kaleb who, in the first half of
the sixth century, reportedly sent his royal crown to be hung in the Holy
Sepulcher in Jerusalem as part of the ceremony of his abdication from the throne
of Ethiopia. The second example is that of an anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza
who, in the late sixth century, visited Jerusalem, where he saw several royal
crowns hung in the Holy Sepulcher (one wonders if Kaleb’s crown was one of
them).12 The practice of hanging royal crowns in sacred areas, especially in
Jerusalem, surely represents one of the elements that lay behind the scene
described in Alexander’s prayer. At the same time, the wider literary context
provides us with additional elements.
The motif of the crown over the throne brings to mind the crown hung upon
the cross in the Ps.-Methodius.13 In both texts, the surrender of the crown and its
symbolic hanging is the act that sanctions the delivery of power to God and his
Messiah. Scholars have related the scene of the deposition of the crown in the
Ps.-Methodius to a passage in the Julian Romance.14 At the moment of his
coronation, Jovian initially refuses the crown previously worn by the pagan
Julian. He then performs a ritual purification. He instructs his soldiers to put the
crown on the top of the cross that accompanied the Roman army.15 He prostrates
in front of the cross (his soldiers prostrate as well) and, after praying to God, the
crown miraculously descends on his head with no human hand touching it.16 The
similarity between this passage of the Julian Romance and the Ps.-Methodius
may be extended by analogy to the surrender of the crown in the Neṣḥānā.
Notwithstanding the difference between the object upon which the crown is
suspended, the analogy between the acts performed by Alexander and Jovian is
meaningful and is heightened by the commonality of the prayers recited by the
two sovereigns at the moment of their surrender/refusal of the crown. And yet,
when compared, the scene of Alexander’s prayer in the Neṣḥānā and of Jovian’s
coronation in the Julian Romance display a lexical difference regarding the
common element of the lifted crown. Whereas in the Romance the crown is
referred to as klīlā, in the Neṣḥānā it is designated as tāgā. The fact that the word
tāgā also occurs in the scene of the deposition of the crown in the Ps.-Methodius
may undermine Reinink’s claim that the Julian Romance and the Ps.-Methodius
use exactly the same language.17
The lexical differences are not negligible and may have a deeper ideological
significance. Tāgā is an interesting term. It is borrowed from the Middle Persian
tāg18 and occurs several times in the Julian Romance, but with a meaning quite
different from klīlā. The Syriac author appears to attribute a different scale of
value to the two words. Klīlā signifies a crown as an object. This object must be
purified not only because it was worn by the idolatrous Julian, but also because
of its fabrication. The Julian Romance relates the polemical story of a group of
Jews who attracted the benevolence of the impious emperor by offering him a
klīlā bearing the image of seven idols.19 At the moment of the coronation, Jovian
exclaims, referring to this abominable effigy: “Far be it from me, that the crown
of the pagan who worshipped idols in it should be placed upon my head before it
is placed on top of the cross.”20
Unlike klīlā, in the Romance tāgā often signifies royal authority. Examples of
this usage in the Syriac work are the following: Julian shouts: “our royal crown
has been insulted, and the gods were blasphemed”;21 the people of Edessa write
to Julian: “The king of our city [i.e., Jesus], the one to whose crown all crowns
of creation are subjugated, dwells within its walls”;22 and, more importantly,
Jovian prays to God during his coronation ceremony: “Your Divinity called me
to the imperial crown while I was unworthy.”23 In this last example there is a
clear distinction between the crown as an object that Jovian is about to receive
after its purification (klīlā), and the crown as a symbol of imperial authority
(tāgā). This distinction is also articulated by the Sasanian king Shapur, who first
refers to Jovian as the one who inherited Julian’s tāgā and the throne,24 and later
during their encounter, tells Jovian to wear the klīlā that he had removed from
his head as a sign of humility.25
The Julian Romance uses tāgā systematically as a reference to the Sasanian
crown. “May your crown be set upon your head!”26 the nobles and chiefs of
Persia say to Shapur. “If you do not have the strength to fight a war with us,
throw down your weapon and bow to our crown,”27 Shapur challenges Julian
through his ambassador. But the most interesting occurrences of tāgā as a
designation of the Sasanian crown appear as part of a tradition that makes the
Sasanians the descendants of Nimrod. In the Julian Romance, Sasanian territory
is repeatedly described as the Land of Nimrod,28 and the Sasanian dynasty as the
House of Nimrod.29 After initial successes in his war against Shapur, a
vainglorious Julian tells his soldiers, “Who will not call you heroes? The exalted
race of the House of Nimrod was vanquished before you.”30 These initial
successes seem to confirm the assurance given by the demons to Julian at the
beginning of the march into Sasanian territory, according to which he “would
have dominion over all of the empires of the world from heaven downwards, and
he alone would be the ruler of the world, that is to say, when he had destroyed
and won a victory in Persia and put the crown of the House of Nimrod [tgʾ d-byt
nmrwd].”31
Elsewhere in the work, Shapur refers to the tāgā of Nimrod. As the heir of the
mythical king, the Persian sovereign proudly refers to a tradition according to
which Nimrod received his crown from heaven. In the passage of the Romance
in which he predicts the coronation of Jovian by means of astrology,32 Shapur
explains to the future Roman emperor that the teaching of the art of divination
“is from on high, and it was given with its sacrifices and mercy to the House of
Nimrod. When he received the crown with this revelation from heaven by this
heavenly wisdom which the God of heaven has deemed fitting for Our Majesty.”
33 Shapur also refers to the heavenly origins of the Sasanian crown in a letter

sent to the Romans between Julian’s defeat and Jovian’s coronation: “You should
know that in the hour of your destruction, you have cast scorn upon a great race,
even upon a divine kingdom which received a crown from heaven.”34
References in the Julian Romance to Nimrod’s tāgā are part of a larger
tradition common to several contemporary (i.e., sixth-century) Syriac sources. In
his Homily on the Star That Appeared to the Magi, Jacob of Serugh (d. 521 CE)
refers to the crown of Nimrod (tgh d-nmrwd) in reference to the Persian Magi.35
More complex is the scenario described in the Cave of Treasures, a work
composed by an anonymous Eastern Christian author living in the Sasanian
Empire.36 Here the ideological link between Nimrod—described as the first king
on earth37—and the Sasanian dynasty is highlighted by the presence in the story
of Nimrod’s weaver, who bears no other name than Sasan.38 The episode is
related as follows: “[Nimrod] saw the miracle of a crown [klyl] in heaven. So he
called Sasan the weaver who weaved one like the one [he had seen] and he39 put
it on his head. Because of that they say that the crown [tg’] descended upon him
from heaven.”40
According to Bonura, these Syriac traditions seem to echo actual Sasanian
claims to have received their crowns from the Zoroastrian God Ahura Mazda,
and likely represent a Christian understanding of these claims.41 Bonura argues
that the deposition of the crown in the Ps.-Methodius brings to mind these stories
about Nimrod’s crown, with the aim of proving that the kingship of the first
cosmocratic ruler, Nimrod, passed through several different empires—the four
Danielic kingdoms—until falling into the hands of the Romans, who would
eventually return it to Christ. The crown that descended from heaven on the head
of the first king would return to heaven, together with the cross on which the
Last Emperor will place it.42 This view is strengthen by Ps.-Methodius’s use of
the term tāgā instead of klīlā. As I will now illustrate, this complex symbolism
and ideology are also at play in the Neṣḥānā. In fact, the Apocalypse of Ps.-
Methodius articulates the transmission of cosmocratic rulership from one
kingdom to another in the same manner as the author of the Neṣḥānā did, long
before the fall of the Sasanian Empire. This becomes evident when attention is
focused on the second main element of Alexander’s surrender of the crown in
the Neṣḥānā, that is, the throne. It is upon this throne—the reader will recall—
that Alexander promises to have his tāgā lifted after his death.

The Throne
In the Neṣḥānā, Alexander’s throne is referred to as kursyā and qatedrā. In the
prayer, Alexander explains that his royal kursyā is a qatedrā of silver. The two
terms appear to be synonyms, and at the end of the Neṣḥānā the author refers to
Alexander’s throne as a royal kursyā of silver. It is only with the term qatedrā,
however, that the throne is referred to in relation to the motif of a crown
suspended upon it. Qatedrā is a loanword from the Greek καθέδρα and is
extremely rare in sources. To the best of my knowledge, it appears in only one
source besides the Neṣḥānā, in a Life of Saint Irene included in the hagiographic
collection edited by Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson.43 The way in which
qatedrā is used in this text, however, does not provide a close parallel to its use
in the Neṣḥānā. To find a closer term of comparison, we must look to Jewish
rabbinical literature.
The word ‫( קתדרא‬qtdrʾ) is documented in Palestinian Aramaic, and it occurs
in the late antique collection of midrashim entitled Pesikta de-Rav Kahana,
where we find ‫( קתדרא דמשה‬qtdrʾ d-mšh), “the seat of Moses.”44 The phrase
“the seat of Moses” also occurs in Matthew 23:2, which states that scribes and
Pharisees sit on the seat of Moses (ἐπὶ τῆς Μωϋσέως καθέδρας).45 In Late
Antiquity, the seat of Moses probably signified a seat upon which the head of a
Jewish congregation would sit.46 What is more relevant for us is the context in
which the phrase qtdrʾ d-mšh is used in the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana. In one
statement attributed to the fourth-century Palestinian rabbi Aha, the seat of
Moses is referred to while explaining the throne of Solomon mentioned in 1
Kings 10:19: “ ‘And the top of the throne was round behind’ means, according to
R. Aha, that the throne resembled the seat of Moses.”47 These words suggest that
the seat of Moses must have been an element of sacred architecture sufficiently
familiar to serve as a term of comparison and to provide the reader with a
familiar image that could help to shape in her/his mind the iconography of the
throne of Solomon mentioned in the Bible. What is more interesting for our
analysis, however, are the subsequent words in the statement attributed to rabbi
Aha.
“How was the throne decorated?”—the text continues—“A golden scepter
was suspended behind it, and on top of the scepter was a dove. In the dove’s
mouth there was a crown of gold, and when the king sat under it on the seat of
the throne, the crown all but touched his head.”48
The description of the throne of Solomon in the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana is
remarkably similar to that of Alexander’s throne in the Neṣḥānā. Both texts use
the same word, qatedrā, to signify a seat made of a precious metal—gold in the
case of Solomon, silver in that of Alexander. In both texts, a crown is suspended
upon the throne. The language and “iconography” leave no doubt that the author
drew upon the same imagery that lies behind the midrashim on Solomon’s
throne.49 But to what end does the author of the Neṣḥānā point to a connection
between the thrones of Alexander and Solomon? What other meaningful
elements in the traditions associated with the throne of Solomon help us to
elucidate the rationale behind the description of Alexander’s throne in the
Neṣḥānā?
Two of the frescos found in the synagogue of Dura-Europos, the frontier city
on the bank of the Euphrates, on the Roman-Parthian border, represent a
sovereign enthroned. The two thrones are identical, while the two kings differ.
One is Solomon, the other Ahasuerus. Why this curious couple? In Esther
Rabbah, a midrash on the Book of Esther,50 Ahasuerus is not allowed to sit on
Solomon’s throne because only a universal ruler, a kosmokrator, has that
privilege. Ahasuerus had to content himself with sitting on a copy of that throne.
51 The midrash also mentions two kosmokrators who were allowed to sit on that

throne, Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus.52 But what were these two sovereigns doing
on Solomon’s throne? How did they gain access to this precious object? The
midrash also answers this question. When Solomon died, his throne was
captured by the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak, who later lost it to the Ethiopian king
Zeraḥ. The throne was subsequently returned to its homeland by the king of
Judah, Asa, and it was taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar after the sack of
Jerusalem. The throne was later taken to Media, to Greece, and finally to Rome
(Edom), where Rabbi Elezar b. Yose reportedly saw fragments of it.53
The midrash implies that the throne ultimately fell into the hands of a Roman
emperor. A related tradition preserved in the Targum Sheni reports that
Alexander took possession of Solomon’s throne and brought it to Egypt. The
chronology in this tradition is clearly confused, as Alexander is identified as the
owner of the throne immediately after Nebuchadnezzar and before the Pharaoh
Shishak, who is followed by Epiphanes, son of King Antiochus, and by Cyrus
the Great. The Targum replicates the motif expressed in Esther Rabbah about the
unworthiness of some rulers to sit on the precious throne. When Shishak tried to
sit upon it, one of the golden lions on the throne bit his left foot and reduced him
to a cripple. Epiphanes could not sit on the throne either, since none of the
goldsmiths he had hired could repair one of the legs of the throne that was
broken. The honor of sitting on the throne, by contrast, was reserved for Cyrus
as a reward of his efforts to rebuild the Temple. Curiously, the text does not say
anything about Alexander’s ability or inability to sit on the throne. One wonders
if, in related traditions that were not transmitted to us, the Macedonian was also
allowed to sit on the throne due to his status as kosmokrator.54
The peregrinations of Solomon’s throne in these traditions clearly appear to
represent the transmission of universal kingship from one kingdom to another.
The stories in Esther Rabbah and Targum Sheni lack any eschatological
connotation. However, it is not unreasonable to assume that a similar
understanding may have surrounded the motif of the wandering throne, as other
midrashim set the concept of the translatio imperii into an eschatological
framework. The so-called Midrash of the Ten Kings lists a series of kings who
allegedly ruled over the entire world. In what appears to be the most ancient
version, reported in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, the list is as follows: God, Nimrod,
Joseph, Solomon, Ahab, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, the king Messiah,
God.55 The list is based on a cyclical understanding of sacred history in which
different sovereigns assumed the title of kosmokrator, with God as the first and
the last ruler, to whom universal kingship ostensibly will be returned by the ninth
ruler, the Messiah. The Midrash does not mention a wandering throne inherited
by the kosmokrator, but it is possible that in the larger semiotic universe to
which these traditions belong, the idea that the throne would serve as a seat for
the final universal ruler may have been current. A fresco at Dura-Europos that
portrays an empty throne surrounded by eschatological symbols corroborates
this idea—although, to the best of my knowledge, the possibility that this throne
corresponds to that of Solomon in the other frescoes has not been explored by art
historians.56 Be that as it may, the idea that the throne of the kosmokrator would
be the seat upon which the Messiah will sit upon his return is clearly expressed
in the Neṣḥānā. Before addressing this point, one more element is worthy of
attention.
Ory Amitay dates the composition of the ten kings list in the Midrash of the
Ten Kings to the period between the reign of Alexander (336–323 BCE) and the
destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.57 The frescoes at Dura-Europos
indicate that the tradition of Ahasuerus sitting on Solomon’s throne was in
circulation by the mid-third century—the city was abandoned after it was sacked
by the Sasanians in 256—while the story of the wandering throne in Esther
Rabbah may date to the sixth century.58 As for Targum Sheni, the prevailing
consensus dates the text to the late Byzantine or early Islamic period.59 In any
case, traditions about Solomon’s throne must have been current at the time when
the author of the Neṣḥānā was writing. But were these traditions known outside
the circles of Jewish intellectuals? As a matter of fact, yes.
The story of the wandering throne is mentioned in Syriac sources. According
to Apocalypse of Daniel, the prophet Daniel informed King Cyrus about the
booty that Nebuchadnezzar brought to Babylon from Jerusalem. Among the
precious items, particular attention is paid to the golden throne (trwnws) on
which Solomon used to sit. After Cyrus sacked Babylon, the throne was brought
to Persia and Elam. The man who murdered Cyrus, Germath the Magus, sat on
the throne, and after his short-lived reign, the new king, Darius, astonished by
the beauty of the throne, forced Daniel to show him where the rest of treasure
brought by Cyrus from Babylon was hidden.60 This is the last time that we hear
about the throne in the Apocalypse, and nothing is said about its future destiny,
probably due to the narrative framework of the story, which concludes with the
reign of Darius. It is significant, however, that in the Apocalypse of Daniel the
motif of the wandering throne is directly associated with the prophetical figure,
Daniel, who discloses the mysteries of the succession of the four world
kingdoms. The passage of the Solomon’s throne from Nebuchadnezzar’s to
Cyrus’s hands reflects the passage of universal kingship from the Babylonians to
the Persians, which appears in all interpretations of the Danielic schema. Even if
the Apocalypse of Daniel does not identify the next ruler who will take
possession of the wandering throne, the reader can easily complete the sequence.
The next kosmokrator, according to the Danielic prophecies, will be Alexander.
The Apocalypse of Daniel indicates that circulation of the story of the
wandering throne was not confined to Jewish circles. Yet, the dating of the text is
problematic. One cannot trust overly simplistic manners in which its last editor
established a terminus post quem of ca. 630s,61 and its composition might be
slightly earlier. It is likely, however, that the Apocalypse postdates the Neṣḥānā,
as the episode of the gate erected against Gog and Magog—mentioned in the
text—in all probability originated with the Neṣḥānā itself. Be that as it may, the
Apocalypse demonstrates that during Late Antiquity the story of Solomon’s
throne was current among Syriac-speakers and, more importantly, that it was set
in the context of apocalyptic traditions surrounding the prophet Daniel. The
author of the Neṣḥānā arguably was familiar with this literary motif. Although
the text does not refer to Solomon, the language and imagery used by the author
to describe Alexander’s throne strongly suggest that he was alluding to the
throne of the mythical biblical king. The complex of late antique traditions that
imply that the throne at some point fell into Alexander’s hands supports this
reading. Moreover, the statement in the Neṣḥānā that after Alexander died the
throne was sent from Alexandria to Jerusalem is consistent with Jewish
traditions, like the one preserved in the Targum Sheni, indicating that Solomon’s
throne was brought to Egypt by Alexander. But if our author is in fact referring
to the wandering throne—our pending question—why did he do so?
The author of the Neṣḥānā places the scene of Alexander’s throne in a
semiotic universe that evokes the idea that universal kingship belongs to the
Roman Empire. To this same semiotic universe belongs the motif of Alexander’s
royal crown, which carries the same ideological connotation. Like the throne
upon which it is lifted, the crown signifies that over the course of human history,
cosmocratic rulership passed through different kingdoms until reaching its final
recipient: the Roman Empire. Alexander’s ownership of both the throne and the
crown is the proof of this axiomatic reading of sacred history. At the same time,
the ideas evoked by this symbolic universe acquire a specific connotation in the
context of sixth-century political debate and in light of the author’s anti-Sasanian
agenda. The idea of the translatio imperii underlying the motif of the wandering
throne and crown emphasizes the transition of universal kingship from the
Persians to the Romans. The author uses two literary elements that his Christian
readers would have understood as symbols of the cosmocratic sovereignty that
had belonged to the Persian kingdom. Alexander’s current possession of these
two precious effigies of power demonstrates that the reign of the Persians has
come to an end.62
By referring to the crown and the throne, the author of the Neṣḥānā hints at
the fact that the right to rule over the world had been transferred from the
Persians to the Romans. These political claims are made in the context of the
broader role that our author believes the Greco-Roman kingdom was destined to
play in sacred history. As in the eschatological scenario described by Aphrahat in
the fourth century, the author emphasizes that Alexander’s conquests of the other
worldly kingdoms are not acts of human ambition, but rather acts that glorify the
name of God, to whom the blessed empire will remit its power at the end of
times. The throne left vacant by the pious king seals his promise—binding any
future Roman king—to renounce his throne of universal kingship. This universal
kingship will not pass to any other kingdom before the completion of sacred
history. No other ruler after Alexander will sit upon the throne with the royal
crown suspended over his head. Only with the coming of the Messiah will that
vacant throne be occupied again. The Roman Empire is the last cosmocratic
kingdom of world history.
In the Neṣḥānā, we find an explicit formulation of an idea that can only be
glimpsed in earlier traditions and in the frescoes at Dura-Europos, that is, that
the throne of universal rulership, transmitted from one kosmokrator to another, is
also the throne upon which the Messiah will sit upon his arrival. This idea may
have awakened in the readers’ minds the iconography of the hetoimasia
(ἑτοιμασία), the empty throne prepared to welcome Jesus’s return. These figural
representations are documented from the fourth century onward; beginning in
the eleventh century, the motif was increasingly inserted in representations of the
Final Judgment.63 There is an ongoing debate among scholars about whether
early representations of empty thrones carry an eschatological connotation.64
Those scholars who reject the eschatological valence of the empty thrones
emphasize that no sources provide textual support for the eschatological
interpretation.65 This debate goes beyond the scope of the present study and my
scholarly competences. However, I suggest that the vacant throne in the Neṣḥānā
is an important textual witness to the hetoimasia, and it supports the hypothesis
that the empty throne had acquired eschatological valence from at least as early
as the sixth century.
In much the same way, the Neṣḥānā is an early witness to another motif that
became popular in later Byzantine religious-imperial discourse, that is, the Last
Emperor’s deposition of the regalia. Untangling the origins and the development
of this complex tradition is beyond the parameters of this study. However, some
comments are in order. While acknowledging the influence of the Neṣḥānā on
the Ps.-Methodius, scholars have underestimated the impact of Alexander’s
deposition of the crown on the related episode in the Ps.-Methodius. Indeed, the
scene described in the Neṣḥānā is a better parallel to the scene described by Ps.-
Methodius than Jovian’s hanging of the crown in the Julian Romance. Of course,
the Jovian episode must be taken into account, insofar as Ps.-Methodius (and,
possibly, even the author of the Neṣḥānā) was familiar with this text. The
hanging of the royal crown on the cross (instead of the throne) in the Romance
closely resembles the situation described in the Ps.-Methodius and suggests that
the Jovian episode played a role in the elaboration of the complex scenario
depicted by Ps.-Methodius. At the same time, however, Jovian’s hanging of the
crown over the cross is an act of purification that has little to do with the
surrender of the effigies of cosmocratic rulership. By contrast, Alexander’s
delivery of his royal crown serves exactly the same function as in the Ps.-
Methodius, that is, to symbolize the transmission of power from the Roman ruler
to the Messiah. Like the Neṣḥānā, the Ps.-Methodius uses the term tāgā to
designate the crown that is surrendered. This detail emphasizes the ideology,
common to the two texts, about the transmission of cosmocratic kingship from
the last kingdom to the Messiah.
But why in the Ps.-Methodius is the throne replaced by the cross as the object
over which the crown is lifted? First, within the symbolical conceptualization of
the transmission of universal kingship, the motif of the crown over the throne
appears to antedate that of the crown over the cross. As noted, the throne is a
main element in the elaboration of the idea that the last king of the last earthly
kingdom will surrender his power to the Messiah. Apparently, the motif of the
cross entered this conceptual universe at a later point in time. But why? And
when? A plausible explanation is that the replacement of the throne by the cross
in the scene described by Ps.-Methodius was inspired by Heraclius’s restoration
of the True Cross. Writing at a time when the new Arab Empire was establishing
its presence in Jerusalem through monumental constructions on the site of the
holy places, Ps.-Methodius invoked the memory of Heraclius’s glorious deeds.
The presence in the Julian Romance of a scene, which is similar to the one
described in the Neṣḥānā, but which features a cross instead of a throne, may
have inspired Ps.-Methodius’s readaptation of the episode of the crown raised
over the throne.
A final consideration concerns the general relationship between Alexander’s
crown and throne in the Neṣḥānā and the Last Emperor tradition. As noted, the
Last Emperor motif is only sketched in the Neṣḥānā. In the text, Alexander does
not assume the role of the Last Emperor—although he appears willing to play
the role: “And if the Messiah, who is the son of God, comes during my days, I
will bow in front of him,” the king states in his prayer. With his vow, Alexander
binds subsequent Roman emperors to having their crown hung over the throne
that he left vacant in Jerusalem and to keep his promise to let the Messiah sit
upon that throne and beneath those crowns at the moment of his arrival. The text
implies that the moment will come when a Roman king, the last Roman king,
will hand over his power to the Messiah. Thus, even if the Last Emperor motif is
not fully developed in the Neṣḥānā, it is already present in the text. It is hard to
determine if the author was referring to traditions that already featured the story
of the Last Emperor, or was creating a new idea of his own. In my opinion,
either hypothesis is valid, as I do not find convincing the argument that the Last
Emperor legend was current since the fourth century. In the absence of a solid
consensus on this question, the Neṣḥānā presents the earliest recorded version of
this legend, albeit only in an embryonic stage.
 Conclusion

In this book I have argued that the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs was composed
sometime during the second and the third quarter of the sixth century. The
political scenario behind the Syriac work is the long series of conflicts between
the two superpowers of the time, the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire.
The wars affected, inter alia, northern Mesopotamia and Roman Armenia, the
likely homeland of the Syriac author, as is reflected in the geopolitical interests
he manifested in his work. As seen, conspicuous sections of the narrative in the
Neṣḥānā, and arguably its most salient episodes, take place in the area between
the Upper Tigris region and the western Caucasus. In fact, the author uses the
Alexander story to address some thorny political issues that concerned those
contested territories. Prominent on the author’s agenda were the dispute over the
kingdom of Lazica, and Sasanian demands that the Romans contribute to the
maintenance of Persian fortifications in the Caucasus against the incursions of
nomads from Central Asia. The author uses the theme of Alexander’s gate, and
the motif of the blacksmiths hired in Egypt, to address these issues. He has the
Egyptian blacksmiths settle in the territory allocated to them by Alexander, and
pay customs duty to the latter, in order to support Byzantium’s claim to Lazica as
its sphere of influence. Similarly, by having Alexander erect a gate against the
Huns, the author rebuts Sasanian claims to be the defenders of sedentary
populations against the bellicose nomads on the other side of the semi-mythical
Caspian Gates. The agreement between Alexander and Tūbarlaq over the
defense of Alexander’s gate is a fictional solution to the problem of how the two
empires should cooperate to defend their territories against “Hunnic” raids. At
the same time, the author also addresses the not entirely satisfactory
achievements of the Romans at the peace negotiations. The peace treaty signed
by Alexander and Tūbarlaq, and especially the fifteen-year tribute that Persia
will pay to the Romans, reverses the humiliating clauses that Justinian accepted
in several attempts to terminate hostilities and assure the maintenance of a non-
belligerent status on the eastern borders of the Empire.
The Neṣḥānā’s tone is strongly anti-Sasanian, and the choice of Alexander as
the protagonist of the work is part of the author’s anti-Persian agenda. Building
on the Roman paradigm of the imitatio Alexandri, the author designs a meta-
historical reality in which Alexander’s subjugation of Persia in the past is
destined to be repeated in the future. The author supports this paradigmatic
reading of history with references to biblical prophecies that he interprets in a
way that corroborates his ideology. This ideology is most clearly expressed in
the prophecy uttered by Alexander (and subsequently confirmed by Tūbarlaq’s
divination) about Rome’s destiny to destroy Persia toward the end of human
history and to establish a cosmocratic kingdom to welcome the arrival of the
Messiah. This militant and militaristic understanding of the role of Rome in
sacred history is unusual but not completely unprecedented. There is a clear
precedent for the author’s views in the work of Aphrahat, who, two centuries
earlier, elaborated a similar hermeneutic in response to Sasanian persecutions of
Christians.
The Roman triumph envisaged by the author of the Neṣḥānā was not destined
to be achieved during the author’s lifetime. Alexander’s prophecy clearly
indicates that the final events will begin only after God’s removal of the gate that
the hero built to contain the Huns. The text contains no indication that the author
believed that this watershed event had already occurred or would occur anytime
soon. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that the author understood the
beginning of the eschatological drama as something far away. His reference to a
recent Hunnic raid, which occurred only a few decades earlier, strongly suggests
that he did not regard the Hunnic final invasion as an imminent event. As a
consequence, the beginning of the process that would lead to Rome’s victory
over Persia is postponed to an undetermined future. This reading reflects the
author’s disillusion with the present. The precarious situation on the Roman-
Persian border and the aggressive policy pursued by Khosrow Anōshirvān
pushed the author of the Neṣḥānā to seek comfort in scripture, where he found
evidence that, in spite of the current difficulties, the Christian Roman Empire
could not be defeated by the Persians.
Contrary to what many scholars have argued, I do not believe that the
Neṣḥānā was originally composed to celebrate the deeds of a Roman emperor.
The author clearly does not consider the contemporaneous Byzantine-Sasanian
conflicts to be part of the final conflict that would lead to Persia’s final defeat
and to the establishment of a Roman cosmocracy. More than an allegory of
contemporary campaigns, Alexander’s victory over Tūbarlaq represents a model
victory that provides a precedent for the ultimate victory yet to come in the
future. By juxtaposing glorious events that happened in an idealized past and the
circumstances of the author’s lifetime, the author highlights the inability of the
current ruler to achieve against the Persians the same results as those of his
glorious ancestor. The author’s criticism of Justinian’s handling of the Persian
problem finds close parallels in the work of a contemporary Syriac writer, the
anonymous author of the Julian Romance. Among the many narrative elements
shared by the two works is the ahistorical narrative of a time period in which
Persia is subjugated to a tributary status. This narrative reverses contemporary
historical circumstances and clearly echoes the voices of many in Byzantine
society who criticized Justinian’s decision to buy peace with gold.
It was only several decades after its composition that the Neṣḥānā came to be
read as a work of pro-imperial propaganda. Someone must have seen the events
of the late 620s as a confirmation of Alexander’s prophecy. This person left a
trace of his interpretation by interpolating a passage in the text that sought to
connect the last of the Hunnic invasions foretold by Alexander to the raids of
Heraclius’s Turkic allies in the Transcaucasian region. We cannot exclude the
possibility that Heraclius’s spectacular successes over the Sasanians at the
conclusion of a three-decades-long conflict was in fact regarded as a repetition
of Alexander’s glorious deeds in the Syriac work and as the beginning of the
Roman cosmocracy predicted by Alexander in the Neṣḥānā. Contemporary
attempts by court propagandists to depict Heraclius as a new Alexander may
have facilitated the connection. What is certain is that the specific historical
circumstances of the seventh century guaranteed an interested audience for the
Syriac work.
This audience included not only the interpolator, but also the several writers
who used the Neṣḥānā as a source of inspiration. The first of these writers is the
composer of the homily traditionally attributed to Jacob of Serugh, and
sometimes referred to as the Syriac Alexander Song. Although recent scholarship
dates the homily to the period immediately following Heraclius’s termination of
hostilities with the Sasanians, there is good reason to think that this metric
adaptation of the Alexander story was composed several decades earlier. Like
the Neṣḥānā, Ps-Jacob’s homily was probably updated during the reign of
Heraclius, as is suggested by the list of provinces that appear (with slight
variations) in two of its three extant versions (rec. I, 415–420, and rec. III, 484–
488).1 Be that as it may, Ps-Jacob’s homily confirms that the narrative initiated
in the Neṣḥānā attracted interest in the 630s.
Other witnesses to the influence of the Syriac work are the two anonymous
Syriac authors conventionally known as Ps.-Ephrem and Ps.-Methodius. These
two authors adapted the story of Alexander’s gate against Gog and Magog to
address Arab territorial expansion in Byzantine Syria and Mesopotamia.
Although the specific textual relationship between Ps.-Ephrerm’s homily and
Ps.-Methodius’s Apocalypse, on the one hand, and the Neṣḥānā, on the other
hand, has not been thoroughly investigated, it is clear that the former are
connected (either directly or indirectly) to the latter.2 A closer comparative
analysis between all these texts (including Ps.-Jacob’s homily) is a scholarly
desideratum. Nonetheless, it is clear that the Neṣḥānā enjoyed remarkable
popularity throughout the seventh century. Its success is probably due to two
main elements: (1) the story of Alexander’s gate served as an appealing tool to
periodize sacred history; and (2) the idea that no matter how difficult the current
circumstances were, the Roman Empire would endure until the end of days. This
second element proved to be useful for those authors who had to make sense of
the sudden and apparently unstoppable expansion of a new wave of nomadic
invaders, this time emerging not from the north but from the south.
The favorable and wide reception of the Neṣḥānā in the century following its
composition helps us to understand how the Alexander legend in the Syriac work
entered a corpus of Arabic documents assembled in the same historical period.
The connection between the Neṣḥānā and the Qurʾānic pericope of Ḏū-l-
Qarnayn was signaled already by Nöldeke in his classical study of 1890.3
Notwithstanding its ostensible importance for scholarly understanding of the
genesis of the Qurʾānic corpus, this information has frequently been neglected
by scholars. Only recently has the relationship between the Syriac and Qurʾānic
texts become the object of renewed investigations.4 These new analyses, which
corroborate Nöldeke’s hypothesis that the Qurʾānic pericope is dependent on the
Neṣḥānā, have generated (unconvincing) counterarguments.5
Marco Di Branco finds the source of the Alexander story in the Neṣḥānā in
(allegedly) pre-Islamic traditions about Himyarite kings, that (allegedly)
circulated among Arab Christians at the Naṣrid court of al-Ḥīra.6 However, the
sources on which Di Branco bases his reconstruction have been demonstrated to
postdate the composition of the Qurʾān.7 For her part, Marianna Klar has tried to
confute the textual relationship between the Syriac and the Arabic texts on the
grounds that the details in the two texts do not always coincide.8 Her argument is
not convincing. Admittedly, the details in the Qurʾānic story of Ḏū-l-Qarnayn do
not always match the narrative lines of the Neṣḥānā, but these differences are
negligible compared to the substantial coherence between the two texts. In
general, Klar seems to dismiss the scenario that an author sat at a table with a
written copy of the Neṣḥānā to his left and a Syriac-Arabic dictionary to his
right.9 This—we can be confident—did not happen. Yet no scholar has ever
claimed that the Syriac text was translated into Arabic, but only adapted.
The Ḏū-l-Qarnayn pericope displays a number of narrative elements that are
unique to the Neṣḥānā. The structure of the Qurʾānic narrative, for example,
reflects the Syriac author’s blending of previously disparate traditions—that of
Alexander’s iron gates and that of the hero’s travels to the ends of the earth.
Further editorial choices made by the Syriac author, such as his exclusion of
Alexander’s unsuccessful attempt to reach Paradise, are also reflected in the
Qurʾānic pericope.10 At the same time, the Qurʾān mirrors the way in which the
author of the Neṣḥānā understood and adapted the ancient tradition of the gates
allegedly erected by Alexander in the Caucasus. Specifically, it reproduces the
reading of this motif through the lens of scriptural passages about Gog and
Magog and the consequential attribution of an eschatological valence to the gate
erected by the hero. That the Qurʾānic narrative specifically elaborates on the
Alexander story in the Syriac work is confirmed by an important detail that has
escaped the attention of previous scholars, namely, the material composition of
the gate erected by the two protagonists, Alexander and Ḏū-l-Qarnayn, in the
Syriac and Arabic texts, respectively. Like Alexander in the Syriac work, Ḏū-l-
Qarnayn constructs his barrier from iron and bronze11 components. This
coincidence is significant, since all references to the motif of Alexander’s (non-
apocalyptic) gates in sources earlier than the Neṣḥānā mention only iron as the
metal from which the barrier was made. This literary development is not
coincidental and relates to the broader apocalyptic and political ideology
expressed by the Syriac author in his work. The introduction of bronze as an
additional material in the narrative reflects the author’s intention to evoke
Danielic imagery on the succession of the world kingdoms, with the ultimate
goal of strengthening his reading about the special role that the Greco-Roman
Empire would play in sacred history. These ideological nuances are not reflected
in the Qurʾānic account, which nonetheless preserves the literary transformation
of Alexander’s iron gates into an apocalyptic barrier composed from the melting
of iron and bronze.
The position advocated by some scholars, namely, that elements of the Ḏū-l-
Qarnayn story relate to broader Alexander traditions rather than to a single
source,12 is untenable. The Qurʾānic pericope and the Syriac work share much
more than a common theme and some literary components. Those listed above
are only a selection of elements that demonstrate the relationship between the
Ḏū-l-Qarnayn story and the Neṣḥānā. In the future, I hope to dedicate a specific
study to clarify this important issue. For now, it is sufficient to say that the link
between the two texts can hardly be denied, although the modality of
transmission—direct or indirect—of the Syriac work to the environment from
which the Qurʾānic corpus emerged and their broader connection to the
Alexander apocalyptic literature generated by the Neṣḥānā merit further
investigation.
 Through its adaptation in the Qurʾān, the story of Alexander’s gate against
Gog and Magog, elaborated by the author of the Neṣḥānā, became prominent in
Muslim societies until today—as is proved, among other things, by the splendid
14th century Persian miniature that appears on the cover of the present volume.
At the same time, Ps.-Methodius’s reworking of that same motif, and its
inclusion in later recensions of the Alexander Romance, contributed to its wide
popularity among Western and Eastern Christians. In the centuries following its
first appearance, the legend of Alexander’s apocalyptic gate became one of the
most common elements in world apocalyptic literature. Although often neglected
in scholarship, the Neṣḥānā contributed to the start of a literary and cultural
process that left permanent traces on the evolution of religious ideas. In the
present study I have attempted to clarify a few elements relating to the genesis of
this extraordinary Syriac text.
 APPENDIX 1
English Translation of the Neṣḥānā d-Aleksandrōs (Accor
ding to Budges’s Critical Edition)

The victory of Alexander, son of Philip the Macedonian. How he went out to the
ends of the world and made a gate of iron, which he closed in front of the wind
of the north so that the Huns could not come out and plunder the countries. From
the writings in the archives of the kings of Alexandria.
In the second or the seventh year of his reign, Alexander put the crown on his
head and clothed with the garment of his kingdom. He dispatched to summon the
knotters of the crowns of his kingdom,1 the commanders, the patricians, the
guards,2 and the entirety of his army. He asked them and said: “Listen, you all,
members of my palace.” They told him: “Speak, wise king of the Greeks, and
whatever you command us will be accomplished.” Alexander told them: “This
thought came to my mind, and I am seized by amazement: what is the extent of
the earth and what the height of heaven? How many are the countries of the
other kings? And on what are heavens based? Are perhaps clouds and winds that
lift them up? Or are rather columns of fire rising from the earth that support the
skies so that they do not move?3 Or are they hung to God’s nod and do not fall?
And this is what I desire to go and see: upon what the heavens lie and what
surrounds the whole creation.” The nobles answered telling the king: “Command
us to speak.” Alexander gave command and they spoke and told him: “My lord,
concerning the thing that your majesty or your greatness wants to go and see,
upon what the heavens lie and what surrounds the earth, the frightening seas that
surround the world will not allow the way. Because there are eleven shining seas
on which the ships of the men travel. After beyond there is dry land for about ten
miles, beyond which is the fetid sea, the Ocean, that surrounds the whole
creation. Men cannot approach this fetid sea, neither ships can travel on it, nor
can birds fly over it. If a bird fly over it, it is hunted, it falls down, and is
suffocated in it. Its waters are like pus and if men swim in it they die. The leaves
of the trees bordering it are burnt by the smell of those waters, like as fire had
consumed them.” The nobles said these things to King Alexander, who told
them: “Have you gone by your feet and seen that the sea is so?” They replied:
“Yes, wise king. Because the same thought that came to your majesty’s mind
also came to ours. We went to see what the heavens lie upon. But the fetid sea
did not allow us crossing.” Alexander told them: “I do not think you are lying.
But even if you went and the fetid sea did not allow you the crossing, I will also
go and see by myself all the ends of heavens. And if there is a king whose lands
are more than mine, I will seize his lands and kill him, even if he was from the
regions from where the pillagers come out.” All the members of his palace
accepted what Alexander had told them. At once the horns resonated in
Alexandria and the army that was going to leave with him was numbered. It
included three hundred and twenty thousand men.
King Alexander bowed, and worshipping said: “oh God, master of kings and
judges, you who raise up kings and dismiss their power, I perceive with my mind
that you made me great among all kings, and that you caused horns to grow on
my head, so that I may gore with them the kingdoms of the world. Give me the
power from the heavens of your sanctity so that I may receive strength greater
than the kingdoms of the world, and I will humiliate them and glorify your name
forever, oh Lord! Your remembrance will stay forever and ever. I will write your
name, oh God, on the papers of my kingdom so that there may be always a
memorial for you. And if the Messiah, who is the son of God, comes during my
days, I will bow in front of him, me and my troops. And if he does not come
during my days, once I will have gone and defeated kings and seized their lands,
I will bring and set in Jerusalem this throne that is a chair of silver on which I sit.
And when the Messiah comes from heaven he will sit on my throne, because his
kingdom will stand forever. And seven hundred pounds of gold will be the gift
put before the Messiah at his arrival. And whether I die in one of the regions of
the world or here in Alexandria, the crown of my kingdom will be taken and
lifted upon the throne, which I offer to the Messiah.”
And they went out and moved to Mount Sinai where they encamped and
rested. And they put the ships to the sea and crossed over to Egypt, that is,
Aegyptus.4 Watchmen went up to observe whether the seas and their waves
could be seen or not. And the commanders of the army said: “King Alexander,
since the troop cannot proceed without blacksmiths, command that they come
with us from Egypt, because on the surface of the earth there are not such
blacksmiths as those from Egypt.” Alexander called Sarnaqōs, king of Egypt,
and told him: “Give me seven thousand blacksmiths, workers in bronze and iron,
who may come with me. And when I come back from the regions where I am
going, if they desire to be returned hither, I will send them back. And if they
desire to remain in one of the regions under the rule of my kingdom, I will allow
them. They will not pay tribute to the king, but they will give us a customs
duty.” Sarnaqōs, king of Egypt, selected seven thousand men, workers of bronze
and iron, and gave them to Alexander. Then the two kings ate bread together.
Then they put the ships down to sea and traveled over it for four months and
twelve days, until they arrived at the dry land that is beyond the eleven bright
seas. Alexander and his troops encamped. And he sent and summoned the
commander who was in the camp and told him: “Are there any men here who
are sentenced to death?” The commander told him: “There are thirty-seven men
among our prisoners who are sentenced to death.” And the king told the
commander: “Bring here those evildoers.” When they brought them, the king
commanded them and said: “Go to the shore of the fetid sea and pitch poles to
tie the ships. And arrange everything which is required for an army that is
crossing over the sea.” The men went and arrived at the bank of the sea.
Alexander had thought: “If it is true, as they say, that everyone who gets close to
the fetid sea dies, then it is better it be those who are sentenced to death to die.”
The prisoners went and when they reached the seashore they died at once.
Alexander and his troop were watching them dying since he and his nobles had
mounted on their horses to see what would happen to them. And they saw that
they died at once when they reached the sea. King Alexander was frightened and
withdrew, for he knew that they could not cross to the ends of heavens.
The whole camp mounted. Alexander and his troop set out between the fetid
sea and the shining sea until reaching the place where the Sun enters the window
of heaven—because the Sun is the servant of the Lord and never interrupts its
journey, at neither night nor day. The place from where it rises is above the sea.
When it is about to rise the people who dwell there flee and hide in the sea in
order of not being burnt by its rays. It then crosses over the middle of heavens
until reaching the place where it enters the window of heaven. Where it passes
by are terrifying mountain peaks. Those who dwell there have caves dug in the
rock. As soon as they see the Sun rising, men and birds flee from before it and
hide in the caves, because the stones burnt by its flames roll down and incinerate
at once whatever they touch, be it humans or beasts. As soon as the Sun enters
the window of heaven it prostrates before God and venerates his creator. He then
travels and descends the entire night in the skies until it finds itself at the place
where it rises.5
Alexander watched toward the sunset and saw a mountain that descends,
whose name is great Mūsās. They went down across that mountain and reached
the mount Qlaudia, where they ate bread. They descended to the source of the
Euphrates and they found that it pours out of a cave. Then they arrived at
Halōras where the Tigris gushes like a stream that makes a millstone grind. After
eating bread at Halōras they left from there and went to the river Kallath. Then
they went up to a mountain which is called Rmt, where there is a watchtower.
Alexander and his army stood on the top of the mountain watching the four
winds of heaven6. And Alexander said: “Let us take the way of the North.” They
reached the limits of the North and they entered Armenia, Adharbaijan, and
inner Armenia. They passed by the lands of Ṭwrngyws, Bēt Prdyʾ, Bēt Tqyl, Bēt
Drwbyl, Bēt Qtrmn, Bēt Gbwl, and Bēt Zmrṭ. Alexander passed by all these
lands, and after passing by the mount Mūsās he entered a valley which is called
Bhy Lbtʾ. He went and encamped at the entrance of the great mountain. There is
in that place a way by which the merchants access the inner regions. Alexander
encamped there and dispatched heralds of peace, who rode around and
proclaimed in the whole land: “The king of the Greeks has come to this land
without killing, burning, or destroying. May each one remain in peace! ‘Let
three hundred men elder in age be selected and let them come to my presence’—
said King Alexander—‘so that I may learn from them what I seek. And may
each one remain in peace!’ ” When the people of that land heard what the
heralds of peace proclaimed they were not afraid. They choose three hundred old
men who went to the presence of Alexander as soon as he had encamped in the
country and commanded the people not to flee before him. And when the old
men of that land came before him, he asked: “Who are you? To whom do you
pay tribute? And who is the king who rules over this country?” The old men
answered and told the king: “This land belongs to Tūbarlaq, the king of the
Persians, who is of the family of the house of ʾḥšwrḥ.7 It is to him that we give
gold.” Alexander told them: “And for how long does this mountain descend that
way?” They replied: “This mountain goes forth without breach. It passes by the
sea of Bēṯ Qṭryʾ and it proceeds until coming to an end towards Persia exterior
and towards India. And from this way and upward the mountain reaches to a big
river which is on this side of the sea. And there are in that area narrow paths
through which a man cannot go unless he is mounted on a horse. And no one can
go through those paths without (carrying) ringing bells, because animals coming
up from the sea and the rivers and descending from the mountains crouch down
the paths, so that if someone goes through them without carrying ringing bells he
dies at once.” Alexander said: “This mountain is higher and more frightening
than all the mountains which I have ever seen.” The old men of the region told
the king: “Your majesty, my lord the king, neither us nor our fathers have ever
been capable of making a single step through it. And men cannot go up from
either this or that side, as this is the boundary that God has placed between us
and the people who are on its other side [lit. inward from it].” Alexander said:
“Who are the people who are on the other side of this mountain that we are
observing? [ . . . ].”8 The people of the land told him: “It is the Huns.” Alexander
told them: “And who are their kings?” The old men replied: “God and Magog.
And Nwl, the kings of the sons of Japhet. And the king Gyg. And Tʾmrwn and
Tyʾmrwn. And Bēṯ Gmly, Ypwʿbr, Šwmrdq, Glwsyqʾ, ʿqšpr, Slgdw, Nyslyq,
ʾmrpyl, Qʿwzʾ. These are the kings of the Huns.” Alexander said: “And what is
their like? What their clothes and languages?” The old men responded and told
the king: “Among them there are some who have blue eyes, and their women
have only one breast each. And the women are more bellicose than men because
they fight men with their knives. At their flanks, arms, and necks they hang
knives so that if one of them goes into combat wherever [s]he extends her hand
[s]he can pull out a knife.9 They wear worked skins, eat the raw flash of
whatever dies, and drink the blood of men and animals.” They do not besiege
cities and fortresses, nor they attack them; instead, they run10 to the roads and to
the gates of fortresses and cities, surrounding the men who run11 and face them
on the roads.12 Quicker than the blowing wind, before than the rumor of them
going out to battle is heard, they spread over the world; because they are
sorcerers and they run between heaven and earth. Their chariots, their swords,
and their spears shine like terrible lightnings. They pull prwyʾ13 in their hands
and each of them has two or three horses. [Each one of them leads with him]14
fifty or sixty men who go before or after him, and the noise of the lamentation of
each of them is more terrible than the noise of a lion. Because it is God to deliver
the nations, the one in the hands of the other. The fear of the Huns is terrifying
for all creatures who see them. And when they go to battle, they bring a woman
who is pregnant and, binding her in front of a fire that they heap up, they cook
her child within her until her womb splits and the child comes out when it is
cooked. And they place it in a bowl and throw water on its body, which dissolves
into it. Then they take their swords, their bows, their arrows, and their spears,
and dip them into this water. And to whomever this water touches it appears as if
there were around him a hundred thousand horsemen; and a troop of a hundred
thousand demons appears to stand by the side of each hundred men. Because
their sorceries are greater than those of all kingdoms. And also of this, oh Lord,
we want to persuade your greatness,” the old men said to Alexander. “The Huns
do not go out to plunder except where the punishment of the Lord raises, so that
the Lord kills fathers and sons and strikes the earth with his wrath, as in their
battles they are more dangerous than all kings.” Alexander told the natives of
that place: “Did they go out to plunder during your days?” The old men told
Alexander: “My lord the king, may God strengthen your kingdom and your
crown! These fortifications which were destroyed in our land and in the land of
the Romans were destroyed by them; by them these towers were uprooted. When
they go out to plunder, they destroy the lands of the Romans and the lands of the
Persians, then they enter their region.” Alexander told them: “Who are the
nations who are next to them?” The old men told him: “The nation of Pygmies15
and the Dog-Men. And next to the Dog-Men is the nation of Mnynʾ. And next to
the nation of Mnynʾ there are no humans, but only frightening mountains, hills,
valleys, plains, and frightening caves in which are serpents, ʾšwp,16 and vipers,
so that men do not go there without being eaten at once by the serpents. Because
those regions are deserted and there is nothing there but wilderness. And among
all these mountains God’s Paradise appears at distance. Indeed, Paradise is close
to neither heaven nor earth. Like a noble and strong city, it appears between
heaven and earth. The clouds and the fog that surround it can be seen from
distance, and the horn of the wind of the north leans on it.” And Alexander told
them: “How do the four rivers come forward?” The old men said: “My lord, we
will instruct your majesty. God made four rivers to go out from the paradise of
Eden and since he knew that men would dare and seize the rivers to go by them
and enter Paradise, he drew the rivers within the earth. He made them pass
through valleys, mountains, and plains. He made them pass through many
mountains and he made them come out from the mountains. And there is one
that he made flow from a cave. He surrounded Paradise with seas and rivers, and
with the Ocean, the fetid sea. Men are unable to approach Paradise and cannot
see where the rivers go out. All they can see is that they go out from either the
mountains or the valleys.”
When Alexander heard what the old men said he wondered very much at the
great sea that surrounds the entire creation. He asked his troops: “Do you wish
that we make something wonderful in this land?” They answered: “As your
majesty commends.” The king said: “Let us build a gate of bronze and block up
this breach.” His troops said: “We will do as your majesty commands.” And
Alexander commanded to bring three thousand blacksmiths, able to work iron,
and three thousand men, able to work bronze. They molded bronze and iron like
a man who works the clay. Then they brought it and he made a gate of twelve
cubits of length and eight cubits of width. He made a lower threshold of twelve
cubits of length from one mountain to another. He pitched it in the rocks and
sealed with bronze and iron. The height of this lower threshold was three cubits.
And he made an upper threshold of twelve cubits of length from one mountain to
another. He pitched it in the rocks and fixed in it two bolts of iron of twelve
cubits each and going two cubits up into the rocks. He made two bolts17 from
one crag to the other on the back of the gate, sealing the heads of the bars into
the rocks. He fixed the gate and the bars and placed extremities of iron,
trampling them one by one. In that way, if the Huns were to come and dig
through the rock beneath the iron threshold, although a footman could still cross
through, a horseman on his horse could not, as long as the gate, anchored to the
soil with bars,18 stood. He then brought pivots for the gate and embedded them
into the lower threshold.19 He put on them iron bars and made them move
around on the side like the gates of Susa brmdyʾ.20 The men brought and
kneaded iron and bronze like a man who works the clay, and they smeared them
over the gate and its posts one by one. And he made a bolt of iron in the rocks
and pitched a key of iron long twelve cubits, which he surrounded with bolts of
bronze. Thus, the gate was lifted up and stood.
King Alexander brought [a scribe] who wrote on the gate: “The Huns will
come out and will subjugate the lands of the Romans and of the Persians. They
will shoot arrows b’rmgsṭ’,21 then they will turn around and return to their
country. I have also written that at the completion of 826 years the Huns will
come out through the narrow path that ends in front of Halōras, from where the
Tigris gushes like a stream that makes a millstone grind. They will take prisoners
from among the population, they will cut off the roads and make the earth
tremble with their raids. I have also written, announced and prophesied that hwyʾ
22 at the completion of 940 years another king, when the world will end by the
commandment of God, Governor of Creation. Creatures will enrage God. Sin
will grow and wrath will reign. Human sins will increase and will cover the
skies. In his anger the Lord will stir up23 the kingdoms24 that are behind this
gate. For when the Lord seeks to kill men, he sends men against men so that they
slay one other. And the Lord will gather the kings and their companies that are
behind this mountain. At his signal they will all gather. They will come with
their spears and their swords. They will stand behind the gate and, looking at the
skies, they will call the name of the Lord: “Oh Lord! Open this gate for us!” And
the Lord will send his sign from heaven and a voice will shout against this gate,
which will be destroyed and will fall at the sign of the Lord. It will not be by the
key which I created for it that this gate will be opened. And through this gate
which I have made an army will go out. From the lower iron threshold an entire
span will be consumed by the hoofs of the horsemen and of the horses [sic.] with
which they go out to destroy the land by the commandment of the Lord. And
from the higher threshold a span will be consumed by the edges of the spears of
those who run and go out through the gate. And when the Huns will come out as
God has commanded, from the ends of heavens the kingdom of the Huns, the
kingdom of the Persians, and the kingdom of the Arabs will come. The twenty-
four kingdoms which are inscribed in this writing. They will fall one upon the
other. The earth will curdle in the blood and the excrements of men. Then the
kingdom of the Greeks will move and come. It will hold a hammer of iron in its
right hand and a hammer of bronze in its left hand. The kingdom of the Greeks
will strike the hammers against each other and like iron dissolving in the fire and
like bronze that boils in the flame, so will dissolve the strength of the kingdoms
facing the kingdom of the Greeks, which is that of the Romans. And the
kingdoms of the Huns and of the Persians will be destroyed each by its own
comrade. Only a few will escape among those who fled to their country, while
the kingdom of the Romans will destroy the rest. And my kingdom, which is
called of the house of Alexander, the son of Philip the Macedonian, will go out
and destroy the earth and the ends of heaven. And none among the people and
the nations that dwell in the creation will be able to stand before the kingdom of
the Romans. Behold! I, Alexander, have written and announced through my own
handwriting. Truly I have not lied in what I have written. Perhaps men and
people will not believe that the things which I have written will happen. And if
you do not accept my word, then accept the word of the prophet Jeremiah, who
in his prophecy already symbolized this kingdom and spoke as such in his book:
‘From the North evil will be opened over all inhabitants of the Earth.’25 Behold!
I have a miracle which is the work of God. On the peak within the gate on the
one edge [ . . . ]26 and when it goes up from the peak it is narrow. On the other
edge hangs a sponge soaked with blood which descends over the peak. The Huns
come to wash their heads in that blood and to drink from it; then they return
home. This is a testimony of God set there so that men will see and fear: Like
that blood descends from that sponge, so the blood of men will pour over
mountains and hills.” Alexander and his army were astonished at the gate they
created.
The people of that land went down and told Tūbarlaq, king of the Persians:
“The king of the Greeks, Alexander, the son of Philip the Macedonian, has come
here and has made a gate of iron against the Huns. But rise, lead your army;
come and slay him, and seize whatever belongs to him!” Tūbarlaq rose and
dispatched to Mšzbry, king of Inner India, and to Bar Ṣydq, the king of Qādēš,
and to Hwdzd, king of Greece. And dispatched to Armenia and to all countries
which obeyed to him. He hired and brought eighty-two kings and their armies;
one hundred and thirty myriads.27 They consulted before Tūbarlaq and before all
the kings. And the kings and their troops were compelled to come. It was
summer and the entire camp of Alexander was lying and rested. As soon as the
king had lied down the Lord came to him and found him asleep. He called him
and told him: “Behold! I made you great among all kings, and I caused horns of
iron to grow on your head, so that you may gore with them the kingdoms of the
world. You relied on me when you left to war to see the countries. But behold!
Many kings and their armies are moving against you to kill you. Invoke me to
come to your aid, because I am the Lord and I aid those who invoke me.” The
Lord went away from Alexander and the king awoke his army and told them:
“Behold! The plunderers are moving against us. Let the watchmen go to the top
of the mountain to observe and watch them, for the Lord has appeared to me in
this hour.” And the watchmen went up and saw the army and their kings, an
endless multitude of men. They ran and told the king: “Oh king, we are going to
die! But God who knows their number will slaughter them.” King Alexander
immediately ordered the strength of the army to be counted, how many had died
and how many were alive. The army was counted, and it was found that it
contained three hundred and sixteen thousand men, while four thousand were
dead—for when they left from Alexandria they were three hundred twenty
thousand men. And Alexander ordered his army and all men over whom he
ruled: “Let every man who is here lay a censer of perfume28 on potsherd or on
stone for the Lord, who will come to aid us. He will come and find the camp
perfumed with the fragrance of the smoke of the parfum.” Alexander took off his
crown and his purple garments and deposed them in front of the Lord saying:
“You, Lord, have power over my life and my kingdom, to you royalty belongs.
Deliver your servant and his army from his enemies.” And as Alexander was
praying, the kings and their armies surrounded him. And Alexander intoning
said: “Victory belongs to the Lord!” And the army loudly said: “God, come to
our aid!” And Alexander said: “Lord who appeared to me in this land, aid us!”
Then the Lord appeared coming on chariot of the seraphs. Watchers and angels
praising were coming before him, and he led his army over Alexander’s camp.
The Lord appeared from the West standing and Alexander’s entire camp watched
towards the Lord who was their helper. People became strong as the Lord had
come to their salvation. A frightening battle arose, and people were shouting:
“This is the Lord’s battle! He descended to stand in it.” And the Lord appeared
again to Alexander and told him: “Do not fear the kings, not their troops, since I
am with you.” And the voice of the Lord moved along thundering among them
so that the kings and their troops trembled in front of God’s camp.
Alexander and his army killed sixty kings and their troops, and those who
fled, fled, and those who were dispersed, got dispersed. And Alexander took
Tūbarlaq, the king of Persia, but he did not kill him. Alexander and his army
stood and Tūbarlaq, the king of Persia, was bound and [so were] the nobles of all
Persia. Tūbarlaq brought forth gold, silver, beryl, pearls, precious stones of
sapphire, and he gave them to King Alexander, who subjugated the entire Persia
and the lands over the Sea of Darkness. And he was preparing to kill Tūbarlaq
when the latter told him: “What will be the benefit if you kill me? Take for
yourself the gold which is mine and I am giving you as a pledge Persia, which
will give you gold for fifteen years. Thus, after fifteen years, Assur and Babylon
will be yours.”29 Tūbarlaq and Alexander sat, consulted, and said about the gate
of iron and bronze which is in the North that six thousand men from among the
Romans, and six thousand men from among the Persians, should go and guard it,
and that every man should be provided with food and drinks by the king who
sent him.
Tūbarlaq, king of Persia, brought magicians and incantations reciters, the
signs of the zodiac, fire and water, and all of his gods; and through them he
practiced divination. They made him aware that towards the end of the world the
kingdom of the Romans would go forth and subjugate all the kingdoms of the
earth; that the king of Persia will be killed, wherever he is found; and that Assur
and Babylon will be destroyed by the commandment of God.30 In this manner
Tūbarlaq practiced divination and he gave his handwriting to King Alexander.
And through this writing it was recalled to Alexander what was to happen to
Persia, as the king and his nobles had prophesized that Persia would be
destroyed by the hand of the Romans, and all kingdoms would be destroyed,
besides that of the Romans, which would stand and rule until the End of Times,
and would hand over the rulership of the earth to the Messiah who is to arrive.
Alexander and his troops stood and left Persia. They set out toward the desert
and went and dwelled at the mountain of the Romans. Alexander summoned
those blacksmiths whom he had brought from Egypt, and he gave them Bēt Dmʾ
and Bēt Dwšr to cultivate and to dwell in without paying tribute to the king. And
Alexander went up to worship in Jerusalem. Then he put the ships in the sea and
went to Alexandria. And when he died, he surrendered the silver throne of his
kingdom in Jerusalem.
The tale of the victories and the battles of Alexander, king of the Greeks, son
of Philip, is concluded.
 APPENDIX 2
List of Toponyms and Proposed Identifications

Toponym Proposed Identification

Bēt Dmʾ ?
Bēt Drwbyl ?
Bēt Dwšr Dioscurias (?)
Bēt Gbwl ?
Bēt Prdy’ Mt. Paryadres1
Bēt Qṭrmn Kitamon/Kitharizon2
Bēt Tqyl Teucila3
Bēt Zmrṭ Zimara4
Bhy Lbt’ Belabitenē/Balahovit5
Halōras Olor/Olorian/Olorean
Rmt Akbas6
Ṭwrngyws ?
 Notes

Introduction
1. Budge 1889.
2. An earlier translation of the text, based on one single manuscript of the Neṣḥānā, was published in
1854 by Justin Perkins (Perkins and Woolsey 1854: 416–28).
3. Bohas 2009. Muriel Debié is currently working on a new French translation.
4. Van Bladel 2007a; Greisiger 2014, 2016.
5. Tesei 2010, 2013–2014, 2018.
6. See recently van Baldel 2007a and Tesei 2013–2014.

Chapter 1
1. See Budge 1889: xv–xxxiv; Monferrer-Sala 2011: 45–7.
2. See Depuydt 2006: 181.
3. Perkins made a translation of the text of the Neṣḥānā contained in this manuscript, published in
1854, which is currently the only one available in English, besides Budge’s and the one that I provide
in the Appendix to this study. Perkins’s manuscript appears to be one of the five manuscripts used by
Budge for his edition and translation (see Budge 1889: xvii), not a sixth, additional manuscript, as
suggested by Monferrer-Sala (2011: 47).
4. Budge 1889: xx–xxv.
5. The letter sent by Perkins to Fleischer reported in the 1851 issue of Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG 5: 393) does not help to clarify the question.
6. Budge 1889: xvii.
7. Ibid.: xxxii.
8. Nöldeke 1890: 11–17.
9. Ciancaglini 2001: 139.
10. See Budge 1889: 119, n.2; Nöldeke 1890: 13, n.4; Ciancaglini 2001: 139.
11. Brock 1997: 114.
12. On the Armenian Alexander Romance, see Traina 1997 and 2016.
13. The different versions of this story are reported in recension β of the Alexander Romance (text L: II,
39–41), in the Babylonian Talmud (Tamīd, 32b), in Ps.-Jacob’s homily, and in a Qurʾānic passage on
Moses in Q 18:60–82.
14. Tesei 2013–2014: 277–9.
15. See in particular the recent analysis in Henkelman 2010. See also van Bladel 2007a: 197, n.6 and Tes
ei 2010.
16. Bell. Iud., VII.7.
17. Hist. I.10.
18. Get. VII.50.
19. Nat. Hist., VI.12.
20. Hist., I.10.
21. Get. VII.50.
22. See the chart in Anderson 1928: 136–7. It was only in the seventh century, probably as a
consequence of the events of 626–629 illustrated by van Bladel (2007a: 186–8), that the motif of
Alexander’s iron gate came to be connected to the Darband Pass, which is otherwise not associated
with the Caspian Gates in previous sources (Anderson 1928: 154).
23. Get. VII.53–56.
24. Get. VII.55. Trans. Mierow 1915: 65.
25. Get. VII.50.
26. Get. V.44.
27. Hist. I.10.
28. Nat. Hist., VI.12. On this element of Pliny’s description see Sauer et al. 2020: 861: “The Tergi/Terek
River is of a width that it indeed could have been bridged by timber gates, perhaps opened when
water levels were high and closed when they were lower, to make any break-through attempts even
more difficult.”
29. Budge 1889: 271.
30. Reinink 1983 (text): 62–3.
31. Sauer et al. 2020: 860–1.
32. See the picture of the sulfur springs in ibid.: 861.
33. On these developments, see van Donzel and Schmidt 2010: chap. 1.
34. E.g., Anderson 1932: 19; Pfister 1956: 30; Mӧhring 2000: 44.
35. Shoemaker 2016; 2018: 42 ff.
36. See the discussion in the Chapter 10 of this book.
37. The Mūsās has been the subject of a long scholarly debate, especially its possible connections to the
Mount Māšū mentioned in the Gilgamesh Epic. See Meissner 1894: 13; Hunnius 1904: 11, n.2; Czeg
lédy 1957: 242, n.39, 245; Pfister 1976: 148; Jouanno 2002: 293, n.173; van Baldel 2007a: 198–9,
n.12; Bohas 2009: 31, n.58, 49, n.114; Henkelman 2010: 335–6.
38. Masis can designate two other mountain complexes in Armenia: the Nex Masis, north of Lake Van,
and a branch of Taurus north of Nisibis. See Russel 1985: 456–7.
39. Geog. XI.5.6, 12.4, 14.2.
40. Geog. V.18.2.
41. Brooks 1923: 296.
42. See Adontz 1970: 13; Stone 2012: 247, 250, 253.
43. Chron. LXVI.
44. Eccl. Hist. VI.36.
45. Eccl. Hist. VI.15.
46. Hist. I.12.1–7.
47. See Adontz 1970: 133–4; Hewsen 1992: 18.
48. Talbert 2000: 1226.
49. Pliny, Nat. Hist. V.83.1; Ptolemy, Geog. V.6.19; Itinerarium Antonini, 208.5; Tabula Peutingeriana,
11.7. See Adontz 1970: 45, 61–2, 65–6; Talbert 2000: 985, 991.
50. Geog. V.13.6; Aed. III.3.7. See Adontz 1970: 13–20, 112–4, 134.
51. See Adontz 1970: 134; Greenwood 2017a: 154; Greenwood 2017b: 201–2.
52. As far as I know, the first transposition into Syriac of the Hellenized version of the name, i.e.,
Βελαβιτηνή → , occurs in a record of episcopal sees that surely postdates the sixth century (see
Voobus 1975: 189, 193). John of Ephesus refers to Belabitene as “the satrapy in the districts of Siria
and Armenia” (see Brooks 1923: 284). This description, as well as John’s omission of the name of
the principality, suggests that the toponymic designation of the area had not yet been fixed.
53. See Hewsen 1992: 59.
54. Aed. III.1.26.
55. See Adontz 1970: 87–8, 93.
56. The text states that it borders the sea of Bēt Qatraye—in all likelihood the Persian Gulf—and reaches
“external Persia” and the limits of India, while in the other direction it extends toward unspecified
“inner regions” until “a great river from this side of the sea.” Most puzzling is the connection
between the formidable mountain complex described by the elders and the Great Mūsās that
dominates the plain of Bhy Lbtʾ. The elders do not provide any details about the name of the
majestic mountain they describe. One wonders if this mountain is the Mūsās, which, in the text, is
also described as “the great mountain.”
57. Eccl. Hist., II. 43. On Evagrius’s use of Malalas’s work, see Whitby 2000: xxvii–iii.
58. Czeglédy 1957: 245; Reinink 1985: 267–8, 280; Reinink 2003: 161; van Bladel 2007a: 179, 199,
n.13.
59. See Czeglédy 1957: 245.
60. See Reinink, who proposes that one of these two cities was the author’s homeland. Reinink 1985:
267–8, 280; Reinink 2003: 161.
61. The anti-Sasanian insurrections led by the Mamikonian family from 450 to 484 are narrated at great
length in Łazar P’arpec’i’s History and in Ełishe’s History of Vardan. Both works are known for their
peculiar blend of religion and warfare in descriptions of the Armenian uprisings. There is much in
common—from the religious fervor of the soldiers to the piety of the commanders—between the
battle scene described in the Neṣḥānā and those found in the works of the Armenian historians. One
element that stands out is the recurrent theme of the multitude of the enemy’s troops and of God’s
intervention.

Chapter 2
1. Nöldeke 1890: 30–1.
2. Nöldeke 1890: 31.
3. On these events, see Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 78; Sauer et al. 2020: 880.
4. See Malalas, Chronicle 406; Procopius, De Aedificis, III, 4.19–20.
5. Nöldeke 1890: 31.
6. Bousset 1889; Hunnius 1904; in Czeglédy 1955, 1957; Reinink 1983, 1985, 2003.
7. See my comments in the Conclusion of this study.
8. I plan to address the question of the dating of the Alexander Song in a future study.
9. Bousset 1889; Kampers 1901; Czeglédy 1957; Henkelman 2010; Shoemaker 2018.
10. On the identity of Heraclius’s allies and their relationship with the Khazars who are mentioned in
sources, see Zuckerman 2007: 403 ff.; see also Golden 1980: 50 ff.; Golden 1992: 135 ff., 236 ff.
11. Howard-Johnston 1999: 17, 22–3, 40–2; Kaegi 2003: 142–5; Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 202ff; and,
above all, the recent periodization of the events provided in Howard-Johnston 2021: 288–90, 295–
303, 340–1, 353–4.
12. Nöldeke 1890: 31.
13. Bousset 1899: 114–5; Hunnius 1904: 20ff.
14. Czeglédy 1957: 246. The situation described by Czeglédy can be observed in the second edition of
Geschichte des Qorāns (an updated version of Nöldeke’s monumental work, by his younger
collaborator Schwally) which dismisses Hunnius’s analysis on the dating of the Neṣḥānā without any
argument or evidence. See Nöldeke et al. 2013, 142, n.137.
15. Bousset 1899: 117–8.
16. See Reinink 2002: 152–4. Against Bousset’s idea that only one section in the Syriac homily (namely,
that concerning the Arab invasion) dates to the seventh century, and that the rest of the work was
composed in the fourth century, see Reinink 1993a. The dating of the Latin sermon is disputed.
Reinink argues that the work was influenced by the Ps.-Methodius and sets a date of composition at
 the end of the seventh century (see Reinink 1993a). This dating is contended by Shoemaker, who
argues that the sermon was composed soon after the end of the seventh-century conflict between
Byzantines and Sasanians (see Shoemaker 2015: 547, n.90; Shoemaker 2018: 193, n.55).
17. Hunnius 1904; Reinink 2002: 152–5, 165–71.
18. Bousset 1899: 155ff.
19. See Witakowski 1996: xix–xx.
20. Witakowski 1987: 128–9.
21. Text in Harrak 2017: 85.
22. See Chapter 3.
23. Andreson 1932: 27–8.
24. Czeglédy 1957: 247, n.56.
25. See Brooks 1923: 78.
26. Czeglédy 1957: 240–1; Shoemaker 2018: 83.
27. Czeglédy 1957: 240–1.
28. Brooks 1923: 78.
29. For a general overview, see van Donzel and Schmidt 2009: chaps. 1–2.
30. Trans. Scarvelis Constantinou in Andreas of Caesarea 2011: 212.
31. The broad outlines of his theory were traced in his article of 1985 (Reinink 1985), and are repeated
in his article of 2003 (Reinink 2003, esp. 155–65). Other elements of his analysis of the Neṣḥānā are
explored in an article of 1999 (Reinink 1999, esp. 151–5), and his article of 2002 (Reinink 2002, esp.
84–91).
32. Reinink 2003, 164.
33. Reinink 2002: 82–6.
34. Including my previous studies: Tesei 2010, 2013–2014, and 2018.
35. Van Bladel 2007a: 183–5.
36. Ps.-Fredegar’s report contains an obvious anachronism that leads the author to describe the
involvement of Byzantine Turkic allies in a conflict against the “Saracens” instead of against the
Sasanians (on which, see Greisiger 2014: 236; Greisiger 2016: 76–7).
37. Van Bladel 2007a: 186.
38. Van Bladel 2007a: 188.
39. Like van Bladel, Greisiger brings into his analysis elements derived by the chronicles of Ps.-Fredegar
and Movsēs Dasxurancʿi. Greisiger 2014: 231–42; Greisiger 2016: 73–6.
40. See, in particular, Greisiger 2017: 102ff.
41. Greisiger 2014: 234ff.; Greisiger 2016: 77–8.
42. Henkelmann 2010: 345.
43. Shoemaker 2018: 80ff.
44. Ibid.: 82.

Chapter 3
1. On the word b’rmgsṭ’, see note 21 in Appendix 1.
2. On hwyʾ ( ) and this sentence, see below.
3. Text in Budge 1889: 268–70.
4. Bousset 1889; Kampers 1901; Czeglédy 1955, 1957. These scholars’ opinions about the genesis,
evolution, and readaptation of the text, however, differ considerably. For instance, Kmoskó suggests
that the final form of the Neṣḥānā was produced soon after the fall of Byzantium in 1455 (Kmoskó’s
study is described in Czeglédy 1955: 19–90).
5. Reinink 1985: 270, n.27.
6. Reinink 1983: 10–1; Reinink 1985: 269–70, n.27.
 7. Reinink 1983: 10–11.
8. Ibid. and Reinink 1985: 270, n.27.
9. On which, see Shoemaker 2018: 81ff.
10. Reinink 1983: 10–1; Reinink 1985: 268–70, n.27.
11. Budge 1889: 268–9.
12. Ibid.: 269, n.1.
13. Ibid.: 154.
14. Bohas 2009: 38.
15. Greisiger 2014: 234.
16. See Greisiger 2014: 236–7; Greisiger 2016: 76–7.
17. Greisiger 2014: 235–7; Greisiger 2016: 77.
18. Text in Budge 1889: 269.
19. Greisiger 2016: 77.
20. Text in Budge 1889: 270.
21. Greisiger 2016: 77.
22. More examples are found in Acts 2:43, 12:9, 27:10; 1 Cor 15:21; Gal 3:21; 2 Thess 2:10; Heb 6:8; 1
Pet 1:20, 2:20.
23. Van Baldel 2007a, 183.
24. Ibid.
25. See Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 17–19; Sauer et al. 2020: 874ff.
26. Howard-Johnston 2021: 288–90.
27. Ibid.: 295–303.
28. Ibid.: 340–1, 353–4.
29. Budge 1889: 265.
30. This is also the earliest mention of a North Caucasian Hunnic leader in Byzantine sources.
31. On this episode reported, among others, by Malalas and Theophanes, see Greatrex and Lieu 2002:
80–1.
32. See Moravcsick 1958: II, 131; Golden 1980: 260. In these studies, the variation “Ziligdes” is
attributed to the late seventh-century Chronicle of John of Nikiû. However, the Ethiopic text in
which the Chronicle survives reports yet another variant: Zeqā. It seems that the form “Ziligdes” in
the text results from a correction imported by the first editor of the Chronicle, Zotenberg, who
imposed on the Ethiopic text one of the known Greek spellings of the name. This correction was then
perpetuated by R. H. Charles, author of the first and only English translation available (see Rodinson
1968–1969: 117).
33. The story is reported, among others, by Malalas (XVIII.13) and Theophanes (AM 6019).
34. Golden 1980: 260.
35. Ibid.
36. Chron. XVI.17. Trans. Jeffreys et al. 1986: 227. Malalas’s report circulated among contemporary
intellectuals. Evagrius Scholasticus derived his notice on the Sabir incursions from Malalas’s
Chronicle (Ecclesiastical History III.43; see Whitby 2000: 194, n.171).
37. Procopius, Hist. I.10.
38. Jordanes, Get. VII.50.
39. On which, see the discussion in the previous chapter.
40. Van Bladel 2007a: 186–8.

Chapter 4
1. Vide infra.
2. Sauer, Chologauri, and Naskidashvili 2016: 21–22. For a much more detailed (and impressive) study
 of these archaeological findings, see Sauer et al. 2020, esp. chaps. 1–4, 7, and (above all) 25. Sauer et
al. 2020 fills an enormous gap in research about the history of the Caspian Gates. Regrettably, due to
the COVID-19 epidemic, I was only able to consult (an electronic version of) this study at a late
stage in the preparation of the present volume. Had I been able to consult it at an earlier stage, the
drafting of this chapter would have been much easier!
3. De Mag. 3.52–3. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 20.
4. Ibid.
5. Frg. 41.1.3–27; 47.
6. Text in Budge 1889: 140.
7. See Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 252, n.3.
8. Hist. II.83. See Thomson 1982: 299; and Thomson 1991: 129.
9. Frg. 47. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 58.
10. Ibid. On the Persian demand for money to secure the mountain passage, see Blockley 1985a: 55. See
also the discussion below.
11. Sauer, Chologauri, and Naskidashvili 2016: 20. On the archaeological site at Dariali, see Sauer et al.
2020: chap. 25 (esp. part 3).
12. Hist. I.10
13. See Harmatta 1996: 82–4.
14. Ibid.: 83.
15. Murtazali 2016.
16. Harmatta 1996: 83.
17. See Kettenhofen 1994: 4 and bibliography. See further bibliographical references in van Bladel 2007
a: 201, n.42.
18. See Ełishe, History of Vardan, p. 78; Łazar P’arpec’i, History, I.35.
19. The composition date of Ełishe’s History of Vardan is contested. Thomson has argued in favor of a
late sixth-century dating. Thomson 1982: esp. 19–29.
20. History of Vardan, p. 129. Trans. Thomson 1982: 181.
21. Kettenhofen 1994: 4.
22. On which, see van Bladel 2007a: 186, with reference to Hewsen 2001: 89.
23. Further fortifications were erected on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, with the impressive
example of the great wall of Gorgan, which covers a distance of almost 200 km. On the Wall of
Gorgan and other fortifications in northern Iran, see Nokandeh et al. 2006.
24. See Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 58.
25. Ełishe, History of Vardan, p. 78; Łazar P’arpec’i, History, I.35.
26. Ełishe, History of Vardan, p. 198. Cf. Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, History, I.10. On this expedition, see Bra
und 1994: 274; Bíró 1997: 53–6; Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 262, n.11.
27. See Blockley 1985a; Blockley 1992: 50–1; Braund 1994: 269–70. See also the discussion below.
28. De Mag. 3.52–53. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 20. On John Lydus’s report, see Blockley 1985a:
64–66.
29. Frg. 41.1.3–27. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 57.
30. Frg. 47. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 58.
31. Chron. VIII–X. Procopius reports that a Byzantine ambassador named Eusebius accompanied Pērōz
during his first campaign against the Hepthalites (Hist. I.3).
32. Chron. VII and XVIII.
33. See Blockley 1985a: 67.
34. Ps.-Joshua the Stylite, Chron. XXIII. Cf. Chron. XX, which reports Kavadh’s earlier demands for
funds. Procopius, Hist. I.7.
35. Procopius, Hist. I.7. Trans. Dewing 1914: 49–51.
36. Ibid.
37. De Mag. III.53. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 74.
38. Blockley 1985a: 69.
39. Ibid.
40. Eccl. Hist., VIII.5 (77.9–24). Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 84.
41. Hist. I.16.
42. See Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 74ff.
43. Hist. I.16.
44. See Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 96.
45. Hist. II.10. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 106.
46. Frg. 6.1.314–97. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 132.
47. Frg. 6.1.145–50.
48. Blockley 1985a: 72.
49. This dynamic in Roman-Persian negotiations is illustrated in passages by Menander Protector, which
describe the talks that preceded the peace of 562: “The Persians wanted a treaty without a time limit
and a fixed amount of gold every year from the Romans in return for their not taking up arms [ . . . ].
The Romans for their part wanted the treaty to be a short one and proposed to pay nothing for peace”
(Frg. 6.1.130–40. Trans. Blockley 1985b: 61).
50. See Payne 2013: 10 and bibliography reported in n.31.
51. Payne 2013: 12–13.
52. Chron. VIII. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 59.
53. Ibid.
54. Chron, XVIII.44.
55. Chron. XVIII.76. Trans. Jeffreys et al. 1986: 282.
56. Blockley 1985a: 71.
57. Hist. II.10. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 106.
58. Ibid.
59. De Mag. III.52. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 20.
60. “A host of wars proceeded to disturb the empire of the Romans inasmuch as the Persians kept
demanding their ever talked-of outlay over the Caspian Gates.” De Mag. III.51 (trans. Bandy 1983:
213).
61. Blockley 1985a: 63–6.
62. See ibid.: 66.
63. Luther 1997: 106 n.30.
64. On this treaty see Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 1ff.
65. See Blockley 1985a: 65.
66. As suggested above, both Ps.-Joshua and Malalas refer to this element of imperial foreign policy
(independently of whether it was ever in use or not) to mitigate the embarrassing situation created by
the payments given to the Persians. Lydus, however, makes a different use of the idea of a Byzantine-
Sasanian “joint venture” in the Caucasus. His goal is not to shed positive light on the Roman role in
the defense of the Caspian Gates, but to reject in toto the rivals’ pretensions.
67. Hist. I.16. Trans. Dewing 1914: 141.
68. Czeglédy 1957: 248.
69. Ibid.
70. See the discussion below.
71. Hist. II.104.
72. On Sesonchonis/Sesostris in the Romance, see Nawotka 2017: 67–9, 110–1.
73. Ibid.: 69.
74. Bibl. I.55.4. On the Colchians’ alleged Egyptian origins, see also Strabo, Geo. XI.2.17.
75. Jordanes refers to Sesostris as Vesosis. Get. V. 44.
76. Hist. II.18.4. Trans. Frendo 2011: 52. Cf. Procopius’s statement: “the Colchians have [ . . . ] changed
their name at the present time to Lazi, just as nations of men and many other things do.” Trans.
 Dewing 1962: 61.
77. Talking about the inhabitants of Lazica, Agathias refers to Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus as
authorities from the past who already knew the story of Lazi’s Egyptian origins.
78. Budge 1889: 225–6, 252.
79. Ibid.: 70.
80. Ibid.: 70.
81. Ibid.: 71.
82. Ibid.: 76.
83. Ibid.: 173.
84. Text in Budge 1889: 258.
85. Hist. II.18.6. Trans. Frendo 1975: 52.
86. On the Lazic War, see also Braund 1994: 287 ff.
87. See Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 82.
88. Ibid.: 96–7.
89. Ibid.: 115.
90. Ibid.: 116–9.
91. Ibid.: 120–2.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. Menander Protector (mid-sixth century) also refers to the story of Sesostris in reference to Roman-
Sasanian hostilities (Frg. 6.1205–35). Menander makes Sesostris’s campaign an example of the
“shifting and unstable nature of fortune” (trans. Blockley). According to Menander, the Sesostris
story was told by the Roman ambassador Peter during the preliminary talks that led to the peace of
562 (on this peace treaty, see the discussion in the following chapter of this study). Even if Menander
does not mention the legend of the Egyptian settlers of the Colchis, his work testifies to the
widespread knowledge of the Sesostris story among late antique authors. Like Agathias, Menander
colors the story with anti-Sasanian tones.
95. Hist. II.15.1–2. Trans. Dewing.
96. Hist. II.15–22–24. As Braund observes: “In addition to import duties, that payment also included the
provision of supplies at low prices and, it is claimed, the forced purchase of unwanted imports.
Hitherto the relationship between Byzantium and Lazica had been underpinned by vigorous trade.
Now trade had ceased to be an advantage to the Lazi and had instead become a burden” (1994: 295).
97. Hist. II.29.10–12. On these events, see Braund 1994: 297–8.
98. See Braund 1994: 290–1.
99. Hist. I.15.7.
100. Hist. II.28. Trans. Dewing.
101. Georgian chronicles attribute the fortification of the Dariali Gorge (named Darubal) to the mythical
king Mirvan. See Thompson 1996: 41.

Chapter 5
1. Czeglédy 1955: 31–36; Czeglédy 1957: 246–8.
2. Czeglédy 1957: 247.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. See the discussion in the next chapter.
6. See Tesei 2013–2014.
7. Reinink 1985: 276–7; Reinink 1999: 153; Reinink 2003: 162.
8. Reinink 1985: 276–7.
 9. Some scholars argue that Heraclius’s conduct of the conflict against the Sasanians can be seen as a
model of a proto-crusade. Others maintain that the concept of holy war was alien to the Byzantines,
as suggested by their failure to develop their own model of crusade in response to the challenge of
Islamic expansionism. On this academic debate, see Stouraitis 2012: 235ff.; Kolia-Dermitzaki 2011:
121–32; Stoyanov 2012: 33–6 and 42–4; Laiou 2006: 33–4; Dennis 2001: 34–5.
10. Kaegi 2012: 21.
11. Eusebius (d. 339 CE) and Lactantius (d. 320 CE) present Constantine’s clash with Licinius as a
religious conflict, with the former representing the Christian God against the latter’s pagan beliefs.
See Whitby 1998.
12. A good example is found in the story about the siege of Nisibis by the army of Shapur II (r. 309–379
CE), reported in three distinguished sources: the Historia Ecclesiastica (II.26) of Theodoret of Cyrus
(d. ca. 458 CE); Historia Ecclesiastica, the Syriac text known as the Historia Sancti Ephraemi (6–7);
and the Syriac Chronicon (VII.3) of Michael the Syrian (d. 1199 CE). All these reports agree about
two miraculous events that took place during the Sasanian offensive against Nisibis.
13. Whitby 1998: 194.
14. Frendo 1997.
15. Ibid.: 107.
16. Wars II.12.20–30.
17. Frendo 1997: 112.
18. Eccl. IV.24.
19. Text in Budge 1889: 273.
20. Reinink 1985: 275–6; Reinink 1999: 151–2; Reinink 2002: 81; Reinink 2003, 155–6.
21. Reinink 1985: 275–6; 2003: 155–6.
22. Greisiger 2014: 239; Greisiger 2016: 72.
23. Budge 1889: 274 (text).
24. Strategikon II.18.
25. Strategikon XII.10. Cf. Strategikon XII.24.
26. Epitoma rei militaris (III.5).
27. Strategikon II.18. Trans. Dennis.
28. The author is probably referring to this same formula when he discusses the inappropriateness of
shouting Nobiscum at the beginning of the charge (II.18).
29. Budge 1889: 274 (text).
30. Ibid.: 158.
31. Ibid.: 272, n.3.
32. Nöldeke 1890: 29.
33. Hunnius 1904: 15.
34. Czeglédy 1957: 248.
35. Reinink 2003: 157–8. The same claim was expressed in Reinink 1985: 270–1, n.28.
36. Reinink 2003: 157.
37. Reinink 2003: 158.
38. On the peace negotiations of 628–629, see Howard-Johnston 1999: 26–9. Greatrex and Lieu 2002:
223–7; Kaegi 2003: 178–91; and, above all, the recent reconstruction of the events in Howard-Johnst
on 2021: 322ff.
39. On this second round of negotiations, see Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 226–8 and Howard-Johnston 202
1: 336ff.
40. Howard-Johnston 2021: 327–8, 342–3, 354.
41. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 226. I find speculative the suggestion by Howard-Johnston,
according to whom Heraclius “seems to have obtained a promise of some war reparations (in the
form of generous presents).” Howard-Johnston 1999: 28. In fact, the presents that Shahrbarāz
reportedly gave the Byzantine ambassadors were likely part of diplomatic court ceremonies, not
 compensation for war damages.
42. Reinink 1985: 271, n.29.
43. See Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 113 and 123ff.
44. Ecc. Hist. VI.23. Trans. Payne Smith 1860: 426–7.
45. Ecc. Hist. VI.23.
46. Ibid.
47. Hist. VIII.15.1–7. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 128–9.
48. Hist. VIII.15.16–18. Trans. Greatrex and Lieu 2002: 129.
49. Julian Romance, p. 179. Trans. Sokoloff 2016: 364.
50. Nöldeke 1874: 281–4; Wood 2010: 141–2, 158–61.
51. Wood 2010: 142.
52. Ibid.: 141.
53. Ibid.
54. Wood 2010: 159–60. See also Schwartz 2011.
55. Hist. V.15.3–7. Trans. Whitby and Whitby.
56. Reinink 1984: 277–8; Reinink 2002: 85–9; Reinink 2003: 161; Greisiger 2014: 240–3.
57. Alexander 1969: 4–5; Mango 1980: 205.
58. Whitby and Whitby 1986: 150, n.81.
59. Whitby 1988: 240, n.35.
60. Whitby and Whitby 1986: 150, n.80.
61. Reinink 2002: 88.
62. “The hebdomad system requires some flexibility on our part in fixing dates, and one cannot exclude
the possibility that they indicate the period of Persian successes and military supremacy only
roughly.” Reinink 2002: 87.
63. Reinink 2003: 159–60.
64. Reinink 2002: 89. See also Reinink 2003: 159–60.
65. Reinink 2003: 159, with reference to Reinink 1984: 279, n.47.
66. Schreiner 1985: 2–3 n.591; Olajos 1988: 11; Kaegi 2003: 84; Efthymiadis 2010: 180. See also Bonur
a 2019: 145–6.
67. Reinink 1985: 278–9; Reinink 2002: 85–91; Reinink 2003: 159–63.
68. Greisiger 2014: 242.
69. Shoemaker 2018: 85.
70. See Tesei 2018.
71. Chron. LXVIII.
72. Hist. V.15.3. Trans. Whitby and Whitby.
73. CoT, XXVIII.13–17.
74. Julian Romance, p. 103. Trans. Sokoloff.
75. Ibid., p. 104.
76. Harmatta 1996: 80.
77. Harmatta talks about “the preserved form of the Syrian Alexander Romance.” Harmatta 1996: 80.
78. Budge 1889: 150, n. 1.
79. Bohas 2009: 32, n.62.
80. The figure of Darius the Mede is a scholarly riddle. In the Book of Daniel, he is identified as a king
of Babylon, between the Chaldean Belshazzar and the Persian Cyrus the Great, and as the son of the
equally obscure Ahasuerus (Dan 5:31; 6:1; 9:1). However, no Darius the Mede is recorded in
historical sources, nor is there historical evidence for the biblical report that a Median seized the
Babylonian throne. The few details that the Book of Daniel provides about his reign and genealogy
do not match the profile of Darius I, the only Persian sovereign bearing that name who also reigned
in a period close to the chronological framework described in the Danielic books. Unlike Darius the
Mede, Darius I reigned after Cyrus, and was the father, not the son, of Xerxes—a detail that is not
 consistent with his designation as the son of Ahasuerus. Finally, he was not Median, but Persian by
birth. Insomuch as the Book of Daniel is not considered to be historically accurate, the character of
Darius the Mede should be considered fictional.
81. On which see the discussion in Chapter 9.
82. E.g., Aphrahat (Dem V.12).
83. I owe this observation to Khodadad Rezakhani. Private conversation, February 13, 2021. On Middle
Persian names, see Gignoux 1986. A few examples (among many) of -q as a transposition into Syriac
of the final -g are: bhrqʾ from bahrag; bzyqʾ from bāzīg; blylqʾ from balīlag; dnqʾ from dāng; wsqʾ
from wāzag (see Ciancaglini 2008).
84. The particular word tubbārā ( ) means breaking/fracture,
whereas tbārā ( )
is used in the Peshitta to indicate a breaking (e.g., Isa 30:13–14), a calamity (e.g., Nahum 3:19, Prov
17:7), or even a prey (e.g., Job 4:11, Am
3:4).
85. See Gignoux 1986.
86. See Chapter 9.
87. See Chapters 8 and 9.

Chapter 6
1. Reinink 1985: 277; Reinink 1992: 167, n.73; Reinink 1999: 153; Reinink 2002: 86; Reinink 2003:
162.
2. Reinink 1985: 276–7; Reinink 1999: 153; Reinink 2003: 162.
3. The title for one of Reinink’s studies is: “Heraclius, the New Alexander” (Reinink 2002).
4. Greisiger 2014: 183.
5. Herac. I.110–121.
6. Herac. I.84–88.
7. Herac. II.133–137.
8. Herac. I.69–71.
9. Herac. I.133–135.
10. See Procopiou 2015: 201; Stewart 2018. On the representation of Alexander crowned with the horns
of Ammon, see Chapter 9.
11. See Procopiou 2015: 210, n. 37.
12. Stewart 2018: 167 and fig. 21 at p. 194.
13. Ibid. and fig. 22 at p. 195.
14. One thinks of the so-called David Plates.
15. Procopiou 2015: 201; Stewart 2018: 156–7. Stewart mistakenly identifies the Neṣḥānā with the
Syriac translation of the Alexander Romance.
16. On the analytic categories of comparatio Alexandri, imitatio Alexandri, and aemulatio Alexandri, see
Green 1978, 1998, and, more recently, Welch and Mitchel 2015.
17. Trajan’s fascination with Alexander was closely connected to a renewed interest in the ancient king
among contemporary Roman intellectuals. Both Arrian’s Anabasys Alexandri and Plutarch’s Life of
Alexander date from this historical period (see Monaco Caterine 2017).
18. On Caracalla’s imitatio Alexandri, see Bruhl 1930, 214ff.; Baharal 1994; Kühnen 2008, 176ff.; van B
ladel 2009: 59; Shayegan 2011: 342ff.
19. See Shayegan 2011: 343ff.
20. See the cases of Diocletian (r. 284–305) and Constantine (r. 306–337) in Smith 2011: 50, and that of
Constantius II (r. 337–361) in Lane Fox 1997: 239–47.
21. See Shayegan 2011: 361 ff. On Julian’s imitatio Alexandri, see Smith 2011; Lane-Fox 1997.
22. In this case, the flattering prediction by Claudian (d. 404) that the teenage emperor Honorius (r. 393–
423) would become “as great [as Alexander], lording it over the Indians, worshipped by the Mede”
(IV Cons. Hon., 257–8) should not be read as an exhortation to emulate Alexander’s Persian
campaigns, but as an encomiastic comparison adopted by the panegyrist to celebrate his protector.
Cited in Smith 2011: 50.
23. Wars II.2.3–9. Trans. Dewing 1914: 267.
24. Wars II.3.41–49. Trans. Dewing 1914: 283.
25. Wars II.2.9–15. Trans. Dewing 1914: 269–71. The mention of Cyrus the Great as another model of
ideal sovereign reflects a more complex idealization and propagandistic dynamic, to which we will
return later.
26. See Smith 2011: 73–85. See also Lane Fox 1997: 249ff.
27. Hist. IV.13.4–26. Trans. Whitby and Whitby 1986.
28. Howard-Johnston 2010: 146.
29. See Cameron 1977: 43.
30. Anthol. Graeca XVI.62. Trans. Mango 1986: 117–8.
31. Anthol. Graeca XVI.63. Trans. Mango 1986: 118.
32. See Cameron 1977: 44–46; Mango 1986: 118, n.318. The two epigraphs mention two different
names, Eustathius and Julian, as the dedicator(s) of the statue. Mango and Cameron have
successfully identified the Julian of the second epigram with the praetorian prefect of the East
between March 530 and February 531. The Eustathius mentioned in the first epigram, however,
remains unidentified, although the title of “father of Rome” (γενέτηϛ Ῥώμηϛ) suggests that he was
the city prefect of Constantinople. Mango wonders whether the two names reported in the Anthology
of Planudes belonged to the same person, who held both offices, or to two different officials who
dedicated the same statue to the emperor. The first hypothesis is rejected by Cameron, who argues
that it is more likely that “Eustathius was city prefect while Julian was praetorian prefect, namely
530/1” (Cameron 1977: 45). At the same time, Cameron emphasizes that it was unusual for a statue
to bear a double dedicatory epigram. On these grounds, he asks whether the two epigraphs originally
may have belonged to two different statues. Ultimately, however, Cameron considers that “on
balance it is probably easier to accept two prefects erecting one statue in collaboration than two
apparently identical monuments commemorating apparently identical achievements” (ibid.: 46).
Feissel is skeptical about the ascription of the two epigrams to the same statue and, commenting on
the second epigram, affirms that “rien n’autorise à confondre cette statue avec celle de
l’Hippodrome” (2000: 90). By contrast, the two epigrams are treated as part of a single inscription in
a recent study by Canepa (2009: 169).
33. Cameron makes this point in Cameron 1977: 43.
34. Canepa 2009: 169.
35. Cf. the information reported by Malalas (Chron., 408, 22–3), according to whom Justinian modified
a statue originally that depicted Arcadius (r. 383–408 CE).
36. Build. I.2.10–12. Trans. Dewing 1940.
37. See Weitzmann 1977: 35; Canepa 2009: 115. I do not agree with Stewart’s suggestion that the figure
represented in the ivory is the idealized person of the apocalyptic kosmokrator described, inter alia,
in the Pseudo-Methodius. Stewart 2018: 171.
38. Canepa 2009: 115.
39. On which, see Smith 2011: 73–85. See also Lane Fox 1997: 249ff.
40. I.28–29. See Budge 1889: 35–6.
41. See van Ginkel’s remarks about John of Ephesus’s position toward Justinian (van Ginkel 1995: 109).
42. See the detailed study by Jack Tannous (2018).
43. Wood 2010: 159–60.
 Chapter 7
1. Interestingly, the Middle-Persian apocalyptic text entitled Zand ī Wahman Yasn depicts Alexander
not only through the common epithet of hrōmāyān, “the Roman,” but also through that of kilīsāyīg,
“the ecclesiastic” (III.26. See Cereti 1995: 165 and Gignoux 2007: 95). This peculiar definition of
Alexander has puzzled scholars, and some have questioned the identification of Alexander with the
epithet kilīsāyīg (Cereti 1995: 185; Gignoux 2007: 95; Daryaee 2015: 9). I would suggest that the
description of the Macedonian king as “the ecclesiastic” relates to the process of Christianization of
the character of Alexander that is first certified in the Neṣḥānā. This characterization of Alexander
became widespread in later Syriac literature. The new evolution of the figure of Alexander into a
pious Christian sovereign arguably contributed to the elaboration among Zoroastrians of the image of
an evil Roman, and now also Christian, king.
2. See Smith 2011: 73–85. See also Lane Fox 1997: 249ff.
3. Djurslev 2020: chap. 2.
4. The most recent study of Alexander in the Danielic schema is Djurslev 2020: 99–128.
5. Ibid.: 122.
6. As Djurslev observes: “The sudden absence of the Fortune topos in the early Christian tradition is
striking. The topos is never associated with Alexander across a wide range of historiographical texts,
even those that seek to criticize him” (ibid.: 120).
7. Dem. V.18–19. Trans. Lehto: 161. On this passage of Aphrahat’s Demonstrations, see Ubierna 2012:
150ff.
8. This explanation reflects a standard interpretation among Syriac Christians, as suggested by the fact
that the Peshitta on Daniel 8 contains glosses in which the ram is identified with “Darius the Mede”
and the he-goat with “Alexander the son of Philip.” See Taylor 1994: 219.
9. Dem V.6. Trans in Lehto 2010: 152.
10. Morrison 2004: 68–9. On Aphrahat’s interpretation of the Danielic prophecy, see also Ubierna 2012:
149–54.
11. When Aphrahat was writing his Demonstration V, he did not know that Constantine had recently
passed away (see Morrison 2004: 57).
12. Chron. VIII.1. Trans. Jeffreys et al. 1986: 102.
13. Chron. VII.19. Trans. Jeffreys et al. 1986: 101.
14. One wonders if Malalas is referencing fictional information about alleged relationships between
Alexander and Rome, like those found in the Alexander Romance, where Alexander forces the
Romans into submission (rec. α I.26.5; rec. β I.29.2–3).
15. Text in Budge 1889: 270.
16. Ibid.
17. Dem V.10.
18. Dem V.6.
19. Vide infra.
20. On this tradition, see Goldstein 1993.
21. See Djurslev 2020: 129–36.
22. Ant. XI.317–345.
23. Text in Budge 1889: 155.
24. The terms / parzlā (“iron”) and / nḥāšā (“bronze”), which in the Neṣḥānā
designate the materials from which the two hammers are made, are the same terms that the Peshitta
uses to translate the words ‫ פּ ְר ְזָלא‬/ parzəlā (iron) and ‫ ְנָחָ֜שׁא‬/ nəḥāšā (“bronze”) in Daniel 2 and 7.
25. For sure, this innovation had a lasting legacy, since later versions of the story—including the
Qurʾānic pericope of Ḏū-l-Qarnayn—describe the gate against Gog and Magog as made of iron
(ḥadīd) and brass (qiṭr).
26. Tertullian, Apologeticus, xxxii. On other authors who embraced this idea, see Shoemaker 2018: 40–
1.
27. See Bonura forthcoming.
28. From this perspective, it is not surprising that the author omits the motif of the coming of the
Antichrist, which might have raised fears among Christians about the collapse of Rome (cf. Cyril of
Jerusalem, Catecheses 15.11–13) or—even worse—the idea elaborated by some exegetes that Satan
would take control of the empire, which would then be destroyed by God (cf. Theodoret,
Commentary on Daniel, PG 1431–1432).
29. I emphasize the word “eschatological” in order to distinguish the episode in the Syriac work from
those early references to the motif of Alexander’s iron gate that do relate to the theme of the
Eschaton.
30. Pfister 1956: 30 and Pfister 1976: 325.
31. Bell. Jud. VII.7.4.
32. Ant. Jud. I.122.
33. Anderson 1932: 19–20.
34. See, among others, Greisiger 2016: 64 and Djurslev 2018.
35. Anderson 1932: 16–20.
36. See the criticism already made by Barry 1933: 265.
37. Djurslev 2018: 203.
38. Potestà 2011.
39. Bonura 2016.
40. Sackur 1898: 186.
41. See Mayerson 1993.
42. The symbiosis of the two motifs of Alexander’s horns and of the iron gate into the elaboration of the
legend of the eschatological gate is reflected in the Qurʾānic pericope of Ḏū-l-Qarnayn.

Chapter 8
1. Van Bladel 2007a: 187–8.
2. Reinink 2002.
3. Reinink 2003: 163ff.
4. The Seventh Vision of Daniel was originally composed in Greek, but it survives only in Armenian.
On the dating and contents of the text, see DiTommaso 2005: 100ff., DiTommaso 2014, and La Porta
2013.
5. Hist. V.5.
6. Shoemaker 2018.
7. Shoemaker 2018: 70ff., with reference to Scott 1985: 108 and Scott 2012: 6–9.
8. Apologeticus, xxxii.
9. See Shoemaker 2018: 38–9.
10. On Eusebius, see Chesnut 1986: 170, 173–4; Thielman 1987; Shoemaker forthcoming. On
Lactantius, see Digeser 2014; Shoemaker forthcoming. On Ephrem, see Papoutsakis 2017; Shoemak
er forthcoming. In his PhD dissertation and in a recent article, Bonura questions the eschatological
enthusiasm attributed to the reign of Constantine (Bonura 2019, 2021). See, however, Shoemaker’s
counterarguments in Shoemaker forthcoming.
11. Lehto 2010: 22ff.
12. See ibid.
13. See the remarks by Lehto in ibid.: 22–23, n.42.
14. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses XII.18, XV.11–13; John Chrysostom, Commentary on Daniel 2;
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Commentary on Daniel 2 & 7.
15. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel 7.
16. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel 2 (trans. Archer).
17. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Commentary on Daniel 2 (trans. Hill).
18. Ibid.
19. See Morrison 2007: 72–73.
20. See Canepa 2009.
21. See Shoemaker 2018: 64ff.
22. On the (perhaps too rosy description of the) integration of Eastern Christians in the Sasanian Empire,
see Payne 2015.
23. See Buck 1996.
24. See Brock 1982: 11.
25. See Chapter 9.
26. Christian Topography II.74–75.
27. Christian Topography II.75. Trans. McCrindle. Greek text and French translation in Wolska-Conus
1970, I: 390.
28. Ibid.
29. Magdalino 1993: 10.
30. Christian Topography II.76–77.3.
31. See Gariboldi 2016 and Shayegan 2017: 439–40.
32. Cosmas’s distinction between Sasanians and Achaemenids implicitly denies polemical forecast of the
future, like the one elaborated by Aphrahat, about the former’s destiny to repeat the catastrophic fate
of the latter.
33. Christian Topography II.76–77.3.
34. Canepa 2009: 118.
35. Ibid.: 120.
36. See, among others, Witakowski 2008; Debié 2008; Minov 2021.
37. Minov 2014: 191.
38. See, for instance, Brock 1982: 15, with reference to the classical study of Monneret de Villard
(1952).
39. See Minov 2014: 174ff. One case of this cultural phenomenon discussed by Minov will be analyzed
at the end of this chapter. It concerns Abā’s encomiastic opening words of the synod of 544, and his
hailing Khosrow as the second Cyrus.
40. Minov 2014: 193. See Jullien 2009.
41. See Minov 2014: 169ff.
42. Christian Topography II.2.
43. Wolska-Conus 1968: 63–85; Berti 2017.
44. Bonura 2019 and Bonura forthcoming.
45. Ut supra.
46. Berti 2017.

Chapter 9
1. Text in Budge 1889: 257.
2. The question of Alexander’s horns has generated a long and often inconclusive academic debate
around a mysterious figure who appears in the Qurʾān under the epithet of Ḏū-l-Qarnayn, literally
“the Two Horned One.” In what follows, I deliberately refrain from engaging with scholarship
dedicated to the figure of Ḏū-l-Qarnayn or any questions relating to Qurʾānic origins.
3. See Collins 2014.
4. Fulińska 2012: 385–6.
 5. FGrHist 126.5.
6. Anderson 1927: 103; Fulińska 2012: 386.
7. These “Arabian Alexanders” began to appear in the eastern Arabian Peninsula in the third century
BCE, and were probably produced in two different periods: between the late third and early second
centuries BCE, and between the first century BCE and the third century CE. On this numismatic
evidence, see Van Alfen 2010: 563–4 and bibliography. For further details, see Mørkholm 1973; Pott
s 1991: 13–62; Potts 2010: 70ff.
8. See Anastasiades 2009: 262–4.
9. See Fulińska 2012, 396.
10. See Stewart 2018: 147 and image at p. 188.
11. See Dalton 1901: 16; Stewart 2018: 147–8. Whereas Dalton dates the cameo to the fourth-sixth
centuries CE, Stewart dates it to the fourth-seventh centuries CE. Neither offers any explanation for
the suggested dating.
12. Fulińska 2012: 393–4.
13. See Procopiou 2015: 201.
14. See the discussion in Stewart 2018: 143–52.
15. See Anderson 1927: 103–4; Stewart 1993: 41, 411; Nawotka 2017: 261–2. On Clemens’s
condemnation of Alexander’s attempted deification, see Djurslev 2020: 71–2.
16. Stewart 2018: 152. On early Christian discussions regarding Alexander’s alleged divine origins, see
Djurslev 2020: 70ff.
17. On this episode, see Jouanno 2002: 57–68.
18. Alexander Romance, III.34. The adjective κερασφόρον is the same used by Clemens of Alexandria in
the above quoted passage.
19. See Wolohojian 1969: 158.
20. Text in Budge 1889: 272.
21. See Djurslev 2020: 70ff.
22. Significantly, the Peshitta refers to the horns in the plural.
23. Text in Burge 1889: 272.
24. Ibid.
25. On Byzantium as the elected nation, see the recent monograph of Shay Eshel (Eshel 2018). See also
Magdalino and Nelson 2010: 25–30; Sivertsev 2011: 1ff.
26. All extant manuscripts seem to be consistent on this passage, at least according to Budge’s critical
edition (Budge 1889: 257).
27. Reinink 1985: 273, n.37; Bohas 2009: 28, n.53.
28. Reinink 1985: 273, n.37. However, exegeses on Daniel 7 more often associate Alexander with with
the third beast of the prophecy.
29. The sentence “the he-goat had a horn between its eyes” is rendered in the Peshitta as: w-ṣpryʾ qrnʾ
mtḥzyʾ byt ʿ ynwhy.
30. “[The ram] had two horns. Both horns were long, but one was longer than the other, and the longer
one came up second.”
31. Text in Budge 1889: 272.
32. See Djurslev 2020: 99ff.
33. The gloss reads: “the he-goat is Alexander, son of Philip.”
34. Text in Assemani 1743: 217.
35. Dem V.5, 10, 18.
36. See Djurslev 2020: 99ff.
37. Commentary on Daniel IV.26. Trans. Djurslev 2020: 99–100.
38. Antiquities X.11.4.
39. On Daniel 8:3.
40. Ibid.
41. On Daniel 9:1. Trans. Stevenson et al. 2008: 259.
42. Chron. VIII.1 (Trans. Jeffreys et al.).
43. According to Jerome, Cyrus and his (alleged) uncle Darius the Mede reigned together. On Daniel
8:3.
44. On Daniel 8:3. Trans. Stevenson et al. 2008: 248.
45. History XLIV.142.
46. See Lane Fox 2007: esp. 279–80 and 284–5.
47. XI.11.4.
48. See Shayegan 2017: 426–33; Facella 2005.
49. See Shayegan 2017: 433–6.
50. Brutus 282. See Nabel 2018: 217.
51. Vita Constantini I.7–9. See Peltonen 2018: 486ff.; Djurslev 2020: 199ff.
52. As for Alexander’s control over Assyria, this should be related to traditions examined in the next
chapter that characterize the Sasanians as the heirs of Nimrod.
53. The exception is the propaganda operated by Julian during his campaign against Shapur II. Unlike
previous Roman emperors and his contemporary Aphrahat, Julian promoted a denialist strategy
centered around the rebuttal of alleged Sasanian claims of an Achaemenid lineage. See Gariboldi 201
6 and Shayegan 2017: 440.
54. Hist. VI.2.1–2.
55. Hist. LXXX.3.4.
56. Res Gestae XVII.5.5–6.
57. On the (un-)historicity of the information provided by Roman authors, see Huyse 2002; Frendo
2002; Shayegan 2011: chap. 2.
58. The proclamation: “by the care of the second Cyrus (
)” occurs in the report of the synod found in the anthology of the
texts of Eastern Christian synods published in Chabot 1902 (p. 69).
59. See Payne 2015: chap. 3. On Abā’s possible role in suppressing the revolt of Gundeshapur, see Jullie
n 2011: 112–3.
60. For an extensive bibliography of the scholarly positions on this debate, see Shayegan 2011: 1–2,
nn.2–7. See also a recent important contribution in Canepa 2018: chap. 12. The possibility of
Achaemenian recollections has been debated—without reaching a full consensus—only with
reference to early Sasanian period, while not much scholarship has specifically focused on the reign
of Khosrow.
61. Buildings I.14. Trans. Dewing.
62. See Canepa 2009: 311, n.53.
63. See also Whitby 2008: 131.
64. Canepa 2009: 311, n.53.
65. On Justinian’s attitudes toward the Eastern Church, see Guillaumont 1969.
66. Hist. IV.29.5–7.
67. Ibid. IV.29.8–10.
68. Herodotus, Hist. I.26–94.
69. Trans. Frendo 2011: 133.
70. Noticeably, the reference in the Neṣḥānā to Alexander’s subjugation of Assyria and Babylon finds a
precise parallel in the epigram reported in the Anthology of Planudes.
71. I owe to Domenico Agostini the observation that, with the motif of Alexander’s ram horns, our
author may want to appropriate another element of Sasanian political culture, that is, the ram as a
symbol of royalty. Depictions of sovereigns wearing helmets decorated with ram horns appear on
Sasanian coins and artworks (Dmitriev 2017: 115). Shapur II is said to have worn a golden headgear
shaped in the image of a ram’s head (Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae XIX.1.3.). These
representations are likely related to the symbolic value of the ram in Zoroastrian religious tradition.
 In Zoroastrianism, the ram appears as a manifestation of the xwarrah, the divine force of royal glory.
Perhaps the best-known example of the xwarrah epiphany is described in the Kār-Nāmag ī Ardašīr ī
Pāpakān, where a ram accompanies Ardashir I, seated on his horse behind him (see Shenkar 2014:
131, 138–40; Dmitriev 2017: 118).

Chapter 10
1. Text in Budge 1889: 257–8.
2. Reinink 1993b: 21 n.4, 67 n.2.; Potestà 2011: 282ff.; Shoemaker 2018: 58; Bonura 2016: 56ff.
3. Text in Sackur 1898: 186.
4. Ps-Methodius, XIV.2–5. Trans. Palmer 1993: 240. Text in Reinink 1993b: 44.
5. Shoemaker 2018: chap. 2.
6. Potestà 2011.
7. Bonura 2016.
8. Reinink 1993b: 21 n.4, 67 n.2; Potestà 2011: 282ff.; Shoemaker 2018: 58; Bonura 2016: 56ff.
9. Potestà 2011: 280ff.
10. Shoemaker 2018: 84.
11. Scholars have identified Heraclius’s ceremonial reinstallation of the True Cross in Jerusalem as the
historical background to the scene of Alexander’s visit to the holy city and his promise to have his
throne transferred to Jerusalem after his death (Reinink 1985: 279–80; Reinink 2003: 164–5; Stoyan
ov 2011: 63; Greisiger 2016: 216). However, there are several discrepancies between the dynamics
depicted by the Syriac author and the historical reality of the 630s. For instance, in the peace
negotiations between Alexander and Ṭūbarlaq, we find no mention of any precious object returned to
the Romans that could represent the holy relics recovered by Heraclius. Moreover, in the Syriac
work, we read that Alexander’s throne is relocated to Jerusalem after Alexander’s death, something
that significantly differs from Heraclius’s return of the Cross at the end of the conflict. As for the
motif of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem, the author of the Neṣḥānā certainly did not need the example
of Heraclius to assert the centrality of Jerusalem for the Christian kingdom that, in his view,
Alexander founded. Alexander’s journey to the holy city is intimately connected to the image of the
pious, divinely inspired emperor that our author depicts. To produce this image, the author adopted a
number of tropes and topoi of the Jewish and Christian tradition, including the one that had the
Macedonian king visiting Jerusalem during his invasion of the Achaemenid Empire.
12. Shoemaker 2018: 61.
13. At the same time, the deposition of the crown and the regalia in the Tiburtine Sibyl brings to mind
another passage in the Neṣḥānā, namely, the section immediately before the battle against Tūbarlaq
in which Alexander takes off his crown and his purple robes and lays them in front of God in a
display of humility.
14. See the bibliography in Shoemaker 2018: 196, n.94.
15. The Syriac author here struggles somewhat to explain (not very convincingly) why the pagan
emperor Julian did not abolish the practice established by Constantine of having a cross at the head
of the army (Julian Romance, p. 199).
16. Ibid., pp. 200–1.
17. Reinink 1992: 174.
18. Ciancaglini 2008: 266.
19. Julian Romance, pp. 108ff.
20. Ibid., p. 200 (trans. Sokoloff).
21. Ibid., p. 85 (trans. Sokoloff).
22. Ibid., p. 127 (trans. Sokoloff).
23. Ibid., p. 201 (trans. Sokoloff).
24. Ibid., p. 210.
25. Ibid., p. 213.
26. Ibid., p. 209 (trans. Sokoloff).
27. Ibid., p. 183 (trans. Sokoloff).
28. Ibid., pp. 102, 107, 159, 163, 165.
29. Ibid., pp. 74, 103, 172.
30. Ibid., p. 172 (trans. Sokoloff).
31. Ibid., p. 74 (trans. Sokoloff).
32. Vide infra.
33. Julian Romance, p. 103 (trans. Sokoloff).
34. Ibid., p. 193 (trans. Sokoloff).
35. Text in Bedjan 1905–1910: I.93, 120.
36. See Minov 2021.
37. CoT, XXIV.4.
38. Ibid., XXIV.25–26.
39. Here it is not clear whether the subject is Nimrod or Sasan.
40. CoT XXIV.25–26, rec. 1. Text in Ri 1987: I.194.
41. Bonura forthcoming.
42. Ibid.
43. Lewis and Gibson 1900: 704.
44. PRK I.7. The dating of the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana is contested.
45. The Peshitta translates καθέδρα as kursyā.
46. Newport 1990.
47. PRK I.7. Trans. Braude 2002: 22.
48. Ibid. Trans. Braude 2002: 22–3.
49. According to a tenth-century report, the Ottonian ambassador at the Byzantine court, Liutprand of
Cremona, saw a representation of the throne of Solomon in the imperial palace of Constantinople
(Liutprand of Cremona, Retribution, VI.5). As Ra’anan Boustan argues (Boustan 2013: 173), the
throne described by Liutprand does not predate the reign of Leo VI (r. 887–912). In this case, the
scene in the Neṣḥānā appears to be an early testimony to the tendency to deploy the motif of
Solomon’s throne in imperial discourse, one that became prominent in later centuries.
50. For a (not completely satisfying) analysis of the relationship between the motif in the Neṣḥānā and
these Jewish traditions, see Greisiger 2014: 212–6.
51. On the relationship between this midrash and the frescoes at Dura-Europos, see Siverstev 2011: 22.
52. EsthR I.12. On this midrash, see Boustan 2008: 363–4; Siverstev 2011: 22; Boustan 2013: 179.
53. EsthR I.12.
54. Targum Sheni I.2.
55. In later versions, the Midrash appears to have been updated in order to include more recent historical
figures, such as Caesar Augustus, Vespasian, Ardashir, and the Umayyad caliph Hišām b. ʿAbd al-
Malik. Of the eight kings, some almost always appear in all variations of the list. They are: Nimrod,
Joseph, Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, and the king Messiah. See Amitay 2010: 116.
56. On the empty throne at Dura-Europos, see Mera 2014: 141.
57. Amitay 2010: 115. The repeated updating of the kings’ list indicates the continuous circulation of the
Midrash in Late Antiquity. The last historically recognizable figure interpolated in the list is the
Umayyad caliph Hišām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 724–743 CE).
58. See Strack and Sternberger 1996: 318–9.
59. Amitay 2010: 115.
60. Apocalypse of Daniel 2, 9–10.
61. Henze 2001: 14.
62. One even wonders if, by means of the peculiar description of the crown suspended over the throne,
 the author of the Neṣḥānā was seeking to compete with Sasanian court ceremonies. According to
later Arab historians, the practice of suspending the crown from the ceiling over the throne was
inaugurated during the reign of Khosrow Anōshirvān (see Ettinghausen 1972: 28–9).
63. Weyl Carr 1991.
64. For a recent discussion, with reference to previous scholarship, see Bergmeier 2020: 88–90.
65. Ibid.: 97, 100.

Conclusion
1. The provinces are enumerated by the angel who instructs Alexander about the terms of the peace that
he must dictate to Tūbarlaq. The angel tells the king to establish the frontier between the two empires
on the Tigris and to take possession of several territories. As observed by Reinink, these territories
correspond to the Byzantine prefectures occupied by the Persians during the seventh-century conflict
and restored to Byzantium after the peace treaty signed by Heraclius and Kavadh II in 628 (Reinink
2003: 153). Thus, Reinink argues that the homily was composed in the immediate aftermath of those
peace agreements. However, the absence of the list of provinces in one of the three recensions of the
homily suggests that the list was not part of the original text. If so, it is easy to imagine that a similar
addition was made in order to connect the story of Alexander’s victory over the Persians to
Heraclius’s campaigns.
2. On the sections of the Neṣḥānā that may have been borrowed by Ps.-Ephrem, see Reinink 2003: 170,
n.117.
3. Nöldeke 1890:
4. Van Bladel 2007a; Tesei 2013–2014.
5. Di Branco 2011; Klar 2020.
6. Di Branco 2011: 71.
7. The traditions about Ṣaʿb Ḏū Marāṯid are likely the product of post-Islamic elaborations by the
Yemenite intellectual elite (Friedländer 1913: 285ff.). According to Horowitz, Alexander’s Qurʾānic
epithet of Ḏū-l-Qarnayn was transferred to a Yemenite king in the post-Qurʾānic period (Horowitz
1926: 111). Nagel identifies the origins of the legends about Ḏū-l-Qarnayn/Tubbaʿ in the circle of the
Himyarites who settled in Egypt after the rise of Islam. He argues that the South Arabian saga of
Ṣaʿb Ḏū-l-Qarnayn is based on legends about Alexander/Ḏū-l-Qarnayn produced by post-Islamic
Yemenite intellectuals with propagandistic purposes (Nagel 1978). Inexplicably, Di Branco mentions
the outcomes of Nagels’s study in support of his analysis (Di Branco 2011: 301–2), although his
theory is contradicted by those very same outcomes. Similarly odd is Di Branco’s reference to the
saga of “il grande monarca sudarabico costruttore della muraglia contro Gog and Magog” as the
source of inspiration for the Syriac seventh-century texts about Alexander. This description suggests
that the Syriac authors derived the motif of Alexander’s eschatological gate from the Yemenite epic
of Ṣaʿb Ḏū-l-Qarnayn, and not—as one would expect—from earlier traditions about the Macedonian
sovereign. Postulating a South Arabian origin for this literary motif, however, would be hardly
possible, since Greek and Latin sources credit Alexander with the construction of fortifications in
Central Asia since at least the times of Josephus—as the present study has documented. In fact, Di
Branco does not explain how the story of the wall erected against Gog and Magog, usually attributed
to the figure of Alexander, came to be associated with a Himyarite literary figure. These are only two
of the several problematic aspects of Di Branco’s analysis.
8. According to Klar, “the Qurʾānic exemplum is highly allusive, and makes no reference to vast tracts
of the narrative line attested in the Nesḥānā. Where the two sources would appear to utilize the same
motif, there are substantial differences in the way these motifs are framed. These differences are
sometimes so significant as to suggest that the motifs might not, in fact, be comparable at all.” Klar 2
020: 134. Cf. Zadeh 2015: 333.
 9. For instance, Klar dismisses the relationship between the fetid waters in the Neṣḥānā and the boiling
water in the Qurʾān on the basis of the argument that the Arabic term ḥāmiya does not exactly
translate the Syriac sryʾ (Klar 2020: 135).
10. Tesei 2013–2014.
11. Note that Syriac language does not distinguish between bronze and brass. Consequently, the Arab
term qiṭr (“brass”) in Q 18:96 appears as an exact translation of the Syriac word nḥšʾ
(“bronze/brass”).
12. Zadeh 2015: 333.

Appendix 1
1. For a possible explanation for the curious image of the knotters of crowns, see Bohas 2009: 25–6,
n.47.
2. Here I follow Bohas’s understanding of the words pryqyws and prglʾ as corruptions of the Greek
terms patríkios and fulakai (Bohas 2009: 26, n.48). The word (pryqyws), in particular,
appears to be a misspelling (pṭryqyws), that is, πατρίκιος (patríkios).
3. Literally “they reach nothing.” I prefer to literally translate mṭyn l-mdm rather than glossing mṭyn
into myṭyn as suggested by Budge (1889: 256, n.2).
4. Curiously, the author uses the two toponyms, Mṣryn and ʾgbṭwṣ, to designate Egypt.
5. Van Bladel suggests a different interpretation of this passage, according to which it is Alexander, and
not the Sun, to prostrate in front of God and to travel along the cosmic path (van Bladel 2007a: 198,
n.12).
6. The expression “the four winds of heaven” is reminiscent of Daniel 7:2: “I, Daniel, saw in my vision
by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea.” The Peshitta displays the same formula
ʾrbʿ rwḥy šmyʾ that occurs in the Neṣḥānā.
7. On the nameʾḥšwrḥ see at the end of Chapter 5.
8. Budge does not translate the words (Budge 1889: 150,
text p. 263). Bohas opts for what he defines as a “traduction conjecturale”: “telle que nous la voyons
devant nous” (2009: 33). I prefer to leave the sentence untranslated, as the meaning is unclear.
9. As Budge of observes, one would expect to find the feminine, rather than the masculine, forms of the
verbs here (1889: 263, n.11).
10. Budge notices that the verb rhṭyn is strange in this context and proposes to emend it with d-npqyn
(“that come out”) (1889: 264, n.1).
11. Ut supra.
12. Here I accept Budge’s suggestion to read brytʾ as b-brytʾ (Budge 1889: 264, n.3). See also Bohas 200
9: 34, n.71.
13. Budge translates the prwyʾ word as “maces,” and compares it to the term prwnʾ which appears in the
Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite (1889: 264, n.4). Prwnʾ is the word that appears at v. 277 of Pseudo-
Ephrem’s homily, which reproduces the passage in the Neṣḥānā almost ad litteram (see Beck 1972:
66). Noticeably one of the manuscripts used by Beck reports the same reading prwyʾ that is found in
the Neṣḥānā). Prwnʾ also poses interpretation problems, however. Several emendations have been
proposed: qrwnʾ (“clubs”), pdwʾ ʿ (“axes”), krwkʾ (“lassoes”). For these various emendations see
Trombley and Watt 2000: 81, n.387. Trombley and Watt translate the word as “thongs” (ibid.). Bohas
seems to follow a similar reading and translates prwyʾ in the Neṣḥānā as “rênes” (“reins”) (2009:
34). It is possible that the form prwyʾ in the Neṣḥānā is a distortion of one of these words provoked
by assimilation with the personal name prwyʾ that appears in the Peshitta on Nemeiah 7:57.
14. As Budge observes, some words must be missing here in the text (1889: 264, n.2). However, as
Bohas notices, it is possible to recover the missing words from the homily of Ps.-Ephrem, who
almost literally reproduces the same passage found in the Neṣḥānā (2009: 34, n.73). The words I
 indicate in brackets come from John C. Reeves’s translation of Ps.-Ephrem’s homily (I thank Reeves
for sharing with me this unpublished translation of the text).
15. The Bēṯ ʾmrdt mentioned in the Neṣḥānā corresponds to the ʾmzrtʾ (the Pygmies) which are
mentioned together with the Dog-Men in the Geographical appendix in Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor’s
Ecclesiastical History (XII.10) (on which see Greatrex et al. 2011: 451).
16. Probably the name of a snake (the term ʾšwpʾ, meaning snake charmer).
17. As Bohas suggests, the word swkrʾ (“bolt”) should be probably replaced here with mwklʾ (“bar”)
(2009: 37, n.80).
18. Lit. “which was trampled with bars.”
19. The text here is not completely clear. In my interpretation, I follow Bohas’s suggestions (Bohas
2009: 37, nn.82–83).
20. Budge suggests reading brmdyʾ as byrtʾ (1889: 268, n.3). In this case the reference in the Neṣḥānā
would be to Esther 1:2, where the same expression šwšn byrtʾ (“the citadel of Susa”) appears. Bohas
translates brmdyʾ as “en Médie,” that is, “in Media” (2009: 37). I prefer to leave the word
untranslated.
21. The term b’rmgsṭ’ is problematic. Budge does not translate the word (1889: 154). Bohas (following a
suggestion by Reinink) understands it as a corruption of the late Latin arcuballista and translates it as
“arbalètes” (2009: 37, n.85). The same possible reading is reported by Czeglédy (1957: 244). I prefer
to leave the term untranslated.
22. The problems with interpreting hwyʾ ( ) and this sentence
in general is analyzed in Chapter 3.
23. The verb ndyl is reminiscent of Jeremiah 50:9: “For I am going to stir up (mdyl) and bring against
Babylon a company of great nations from the land of the north.”
24. The text reads “and the kingdoms” (Budge 1889: 269).
25. This is an exact quotation from the Peshitta translation of Jeremiah 1:14.
26. Budge notes that some words seem to be missing here (1889: 271, n.4; 155, n.2). See my analysis of
this passage in Chapter 1.
27. That is, one million, one hundred thirty thousand.
28. In Budge’s edition bsmʾ is misspelled as bsbʾ (1889: 273).
29. As explained in Chapter 5, I privilege the reading d-npšk over d-npšh.
30. I follow Bohas’s suggestion and read ʾyn as ʾyk (2009: 42, n.99).

Appendix 2
1. Talbert 2000: Map 87 (Pontus-Phasis), C4.
2. Ibid.: Map 89 (Armenia), C2.
3. Ibid.: Map 64 (Caesarea-Melitene) G2.
4. Ibid.: Map 64 (Caesarea-Melitene) G2.
5. Ibid.: Map 89 (Armenia), C2.
6. Ibid.: Map 89 (Armenia), D2.
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 Index

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear
on only one of those pages

Agat‘angełos, 48
Agathias, 61–63, 64, 122, 154
Ahasuerus, 89–90, 147–48, 151, 162, 163
Alexander Romance, 1, 9–10, 46, 60–62, 74, 94, 100, 107, 140, 142–43, 172
Alexander Song. See Ps.–Jacob of Serugh
Ambazuces, 46–47, 54
Ammianus Marcellinus, 130, 151–52
Ammon, 5–6, 138–41, 142–43, 150–51
Anastasius I (r. 491–518), 46–47, 49, 50–51, 53, 54, 55
Andrew of Caesarea, 16, 26–27
Anōshazād, 134–35, 152–53
Anthology of Planudes, 96–97, 153–54, 196n.32
Antiochus I of Commagene (r. 70–38 bce), 149–50
Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175–164 bce), 106–7, 145
Aphrahat, 5, 87–88, 107–8, 109, 110–13, 114–15, 116, 123, 124–25, 126–28, 129, 132–33, 134–36, 146–
47, 152, 153, 165, 168–69
Apocalypse of Daniel, 163–64
Apocalypse of Ps.–Methodius. See Ps.–Methodius
Ardashir I (r. 224–242), 48, 88, 90, 151–52
Ardashir III (r. September 628–April 630), 77–78

Bahrām Chōbin, 84, 95

Belabitene, 19–20, 41–42
Bohas, G 1, 34–35, 89, 145
Boran (r. June 631–June 632), 77–79
Budge, E A Wallis 1, 9, 24, 34–35, 74–75, 76, 89

Caracalla (r. 211–217), 93

Caspian Gates, 3–4, 13–14, 20, 43, 45, 46–47, 48–52, 54–59, 61–62, 65–67, 68, 79–80, 82, 119, 168
Cassius Dio, 151–52
Cave of Treasures, 88, 131–32, 160
Chronicle of Zuqnin. See Ps.–Dionysius
Cicero, 150
Clemens of Alexandria, 139–40, 141
Constans II (r. 641–668), 157
Constantine I (r. 306–337), 70, 106, 107–8, 109, 122–23, 124, 126–27, 150
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 128–31, 132–36
Cyril of Jerusalem, 125–26, 150–51
Cyrillona, 118
Cyrus the Great (r. 559–530 bce), 94–95, 96, 147–51, 152–55, 162–64
Czeglédy, K 22, 23–24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 59, 68–69, 75–76

Darband, 28, 35–36, 41–42, 44, 47–48, 67

Dariali pass, 13, 14–15, 40, 45–48, 49–50, 54, 55–56
Darius I the Great (r. 522–486 bce), 147
Darius II (r. 423–404/5 bce), 147
Darius III (r. 336–330 bce), 74, 89–90, 108, 109, 147–48, 153
Darius the Mede, 89–90, 110, 111, 147–48, 151, 194n.80
Diodorus Siculus, 60–61
Ḏū–l–Qarnayn, 1–3, 171–72, 199n.42, 206n.7
Dura–Europos, 162, 163, 165–66

Ełishe, 47–48
Ephippus of Olynthus, 138
Ephrem the Syrian, 23, 124, 146–47
Esther Rabbah, 162–63
Eusebius of Caesarea, 106, 124, 126, 150
Evagrius Scholasticus, 17–19, 20, 71

Galerius (r. 305–311), 106

George of Pisidia, 79, 91
Glom/Glones, 42
Gog and Magog, 1–2, 11, 13, 15–17, 21, 24–25, 26–27, 31–33, 37, 40–41, 42–44, 67, 114–15, 117–19, 149,
156, 164, 170–72
Greisiger, L 1, 28, 35–38, 87, 91
Gubazes II (r. ca. 541–555), 62–63, 64

Harmatta, J 47, 88–89

Heraclius (r. 610–641), 1, 2, 3, 4, 22–23, 27–29, 31–32, 33–34, 35–38, 41–42, 43–44, 59, 68–70, 71–72, 75,
77–80, 82–83, 84–88, 91–93, 95, 121–23, 157–58, 166, 170
Herodian, 151–52
Herodotus, 60–61
Hetoimasia, 165–66
Hormizd IV (r. 579–590), 131–32

Jacob of Serugh, 1, 15, 21, 22, 160, 170

Jerome, 16, 118, 125–26, 146–49, 150
John Chrysostom, 125–26, 146–47
John of Ephesus, 17–19, 25–27, 43, 80–81
John Lydus, 45–46, 49, 50, 55–57, 58–59
John Malalas, 20, 43, 53–54, 56–57, 58–59, 110–12, 113, 114–15, 148
Jordanes, 13–14, 16, 43, 61–62, 66–67
Josephus, 13, 16, 113–14, 118, 147–48
Jovian (r. 363–364), 4–5, 55, 81–82, 83, 88, 100–1, 105, 114–15, 127, 158–59, 160, 166
Julian (r. 361–363), 55, 81–82, 88, 93, 95, 100–1, 106, 127, 130, 158–60
Julian Romance, 4–5, 81–82, 83, 88, 100–1, 105, 114–15, 158–60, 166, 169–70
Justinian I (r. 527–565), 2, 3–5, 19, 42, 43, 44, 51–52, 53, 56–57, 58–59, 62–63, 64–65, 68–69, 70, 80–81, 8
 2–83, 93–97, 98–101, 122, 128, 129–31, 132–33, 149–50, 153–55, 168, 169–70

Kavadh I (r. 488–496, 498–531), 42, 46–48, 49–51, 52, 55–57, 127
Kavadh II (r. February–September 628), 77–79
Katalymata ton Plakoton, 91–93, 139–40
Khosrow I Anōshirvān (r. 531–579), 3–4, 9–10, 47–48, 51–52, 53, 54, 56, 62–63, 64, 66, 68–69, 80, 89, 90,
94, 98, 99, 127, 134–35, 152–53, 154–55, 169
Khosrow II Parvēz (r. 590–628), 9–10, 59, 68, 77–78, 84–88–, 95
Kök Turks, 22–23, 28, 31–32, 35–36, 37–38, 41–42, 43–44

Lactantius, 106, 124, 126–27

Last Roman Emperor, 6, 16–17, 156, 157–58, 166, 167
Łazar P‘arpec‘i, 46, 48
Lazica, 3–4, 13, 20, 61, 62–63, 64–67, 119–20, 168
Libanius, 93

Mar Abā, 127, 133–35, 152–53

Menander Protector, 51–52
Midrash of the Ten Kings, 163
Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus (r. 120–63 bce), 138–39, 149–50
Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, 28, 35–36

Narses, 71
Nebuchadnezzar, 125–26, 162–64
Nechtanebus, 140, 142–43
Nikephoros of Constantinople, 79
Nimrod, 88, 154–55, 159–61, 163
Nöldeke, T 9–10, 21–24, 75, 76, 81–82, 171

Origen, 146–47

Pērōz I (r. 459–484), 47, 48, 49–50, 71

Pesikta de–Rav Kahana, 161, 162
Pliny the Elder, 13, 14–15
Priscus, 46, 49
Procopius, 13, 14–15, 16, 19–20, 43, 46–47, 50–52, 54, 56–57, 64, 65–67, 70–71, 80–81, 83, 93–96, 97, 98,
100, 149–50, 153–54
Ptolemy (geographer), 17, 19
Ptolemy (Alexander’s general and king of Egypt), 138–39, 140
Ps.–Ephrem, 23, 148–49, 170–71
Ps.–Dionysius, 24–25
Ps.–Fredegar, 28, 35–36
Ps.–Hegesippus, 118
Ps.–Jacob of Serugh, 15, 17, 21, 22, 23–24, 25, 28–29, 88–89, 170–71
Ps.–Joshua the Stylite, 17–19, 49–50, 53–54, 56–57, 58–59, 80–81, 87–88
Ps.–Methodius, 1–2, 6, 16–17, 119, 123, 156, 157–59, 160–61, 166, 170–71, 172
Ps.–Sabeos, 149

Reinink, G J 1, 22, 23–24, 27–29, 31–34, 69, 70, 72–73, 76, 77, 78–80, 83, 84–86, 87, 91, 92–93, 121–22, 1
45, 158–59
Sabir Huns, 21, 25–26, 31, 41–44
Sarnaqōs, 59–60, 61–62, 64
Sesostris/Sesonchosis, 60–62, 119–20
Seventh Vision of Daniel, 122, 127
Severus Alexander (r. 222–235), 93
Shahrbarāz, 77–79
Shapur II (r. 309–379), 88, 93, 107, 109, 124–25, 127, 133, 151–52, 159–60
Shērōē. See Khavad II
Shoemaker, S., 16–17, 23–24, 28–29, 31, 87, 122, 157–58
Solomon, 161, 162–64
Strabo, 17, 149–50
Strategikon of Maurice, 72–74

Targum Sheni, 162–63, 164

Tertullian, 117, 123–24
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 125–27, 147–49
Theodosius I (r. 379–395), 56, 106
Theophylact Simocatta, 17–19, 84, 87–88, 95
Tiburtine Sibyl, 6, 16–17, 119, 156, 157–58
Trajan (r. 98–117), 80, 93
Tūbarlaq, 4, 11–12, 19–20, 24–25, 57–60, 64, 68–69, 71, 74, 75, 76–77, 78–80, 81–82, 83–84, 87–89, 90, 9
9, 105, 128, 135–36, 137–38, 143–44, 151, 152, 154–55, 168–69

van Bladel, K., 1, 28, 39, 40–41, 44

Vegetius, 73–74

Xerxes, 9–10, 154

Yazdegard II (r. 438–457), 47–48

Yazdgird I (r. 399–420), 131–32

Zachariah of Mytilene, 50–51

Zedekiah, 141–43
Zeno (r. 474–475 and 476–491), 19–20, 49–50, 53, 122
Zilgibis/Ziligdes, 42