Rome at War: Sassanian Wars

Note: This book is not yet available, and only open for ordering by the Gold Club. If you are not a member, you order will not be accepted at this time.

Rome and Persia first encountered one another in 92 BC, and fought their first full-scale war slightly less than four decades later. Though the regimes changed in both empires, the wars would continue for another seven centuries, until Islam overwhelmed Persia and drove the Romans back to the gates of Constantinople.

Those wars reached their peak in the 4th Century, between 337 (when the Persian King of Kings Shapur the Great invaded Roman territory, breaking a peace that had held since 299) and 384 (when Theodosius I made a new peace with Shapur III).

Sassanian Wars is a 128-page history of the Roman-Persian Wars of the 4th Century AD, between the Roman Emperors Constantius II and Julian the Apostate on the one side, and King of Kings Shapur II the Great of Sassanid Persia on the other. We talk about the campaigns, about the Sassanian and Roman societies and armies, and what brought these empires into a protracted and bitter struggle over lands neither particularly wanted.

Sassanian Wars is a companion history to our Rome at War: The Persian Front game. You can read it for deep background on the game: the campaign, the armies that fought it, the societies behind them. Or read it separately, without the game.