Edges of Empire: The Sasanian Frontiers

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2021

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

For centuries, arguably the greatest external threat the Roman Empire faced came from the East. From the Sasanian Persian Empire. With its nucleus situated in Iran, at its height the Sasanian Empire was one of antiquity’s most formidable kingdoms, controlling lands that stretched from the Hindu Kush to the River Euphrates. Like the Romans, the Sasanians had to deal with various potential threats. From the north, from the lands of the steppe east and west of the Caspian Sea, nomadic peoples such as the Huns would become renowned for descending on Roman and Sasanian territories and wreaking havoc. And so, on the edges of their empire, the Sasanians constructed frontiers of various forms. For military purposes, yes. But also for economic and political purposes as will be explained.

In this podcast, we’re going to look at some of these Sasanian frontiers. From a dominating fort a ‘top an alpine gorge in the Caucusus to a barrier that makes Hadrian’s Wall pale in comparison. To talk through this incredible topic, I was delighted to be joined by Dr Eve MacDonald from the University of Cardiff. Alongside her research on the Sasanian Empire and its frontiers, Eve has also done work surrounding the ancient history of Carthage and of North Africa. She is the author of ‘Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life’.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast
0:08.2	we are going to be focusing on some remarkable frontiers of one of the great empires of
0:13.8	antiquity. Not the Roman Empire, not one of those remarkable successor empires that
0:19.6	emerge in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death. I don't say so myself. We're going
0:24.6	to be looking at a Persian Empire, the Sasanian Empire. In particular we're going to be
0:30.0	focusing on Sasanian frontiers to the north because we have surviving some remarkable archaeology
0:37.2	from the Caucasus, one of the highest gorgeous in the Caucasus, to across the Caspian Sea,
0:43.0	to a wall which makes Hadrian's wall pale in comparison. It was called the Great Wall
0:48.8	of Gaugan. Absolutely astonishing. These were huge formidable structures and joining me
0:55.4	to talk through why they were constructed, what their purpose was and how they were
0:59.5	built, I was delighted to get on the show Dr. Eve McDonald. Eve is a professor at the
1:05.2	University of Cardiff. She's done a lot of work on Hannibal, on Carthage. She's done a lot
1:10.6	of work looking at the life of Hannibal and his origins but she's also done a lot of work
1:16.4	on Sasanian frontiers and on the Sasanian Empire in general. It was great to get on the
1:21.6	show to talk about this topic. She's a fantastic speaker and without further ado, here's Eve.
1:34.2	Eve, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You're welcome. I'm glad you could be here.
1:38.9	Now I'm very excited about this, because we're talking about edges of Empire and in particular
1:43.1	we're talking about some extraordinary material frontiers belonging to one of the greatest
1:49.5	ancient empires of Asia. Yes, the Sasanians. Well, the Sasanians, Eve, who were the Sasanians
1:58.6	to kick us all off? So to understand the Sasanians is probably best to think about them as
2:04.3	the last of the pre-Islamic empires of Iran. They come to power, they come to rule this
2:12.7	area that we consider to be the Iranian Persian Empire in the third century AD and they succeed
	...

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