Podcasts about sassanid

Armenia steeped in their Christian faith, makes the first major military stand to defend the religion against Sassanid dominion. The post Armenia At Arms for Christianity | 451AD-460AD appeared first on TGNR.

We jump back and forwards in time with the last woman to rule all of Iran as everyone desperately tries to find a way out of the crisis. Boran is quite different to her sister but she will do what she can to save the Sassanid dynasty.   You can find all the images on our website! https://soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia.wordpress.com/2025/04/13/91-boran/ Here's the link to our Patreon! www.patreon.com/soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia

Bahram Chobin is the first non-Sassanid to rule in three centuries, will he make it stick? Tune in to hear about messianic prophecies, trick shots, and the first glimpse of the oncoming storm.   Get your Intelligent Speech tickets here! https://intelligentspeechonline.com/event/intelligent-speech-conference-2025/ You can find all the images on our website! https://soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia.wordpress.com/2025/02/02/84-bahram-vi-chobin/ Here's the link to our Patreon! www.patreon.com/soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia

Murray answers four questions in just one episode sent in by David: 1. Were the legions largely (or even completely) replaced by the foederati by the seventh century CE? 2. What do we know about the ethnic makeup of the armies that fought for pagan Rome in the wars of the first centuries BCE and CE (largely legionaries from southern Europe?) compared to the armies that fought for Byzantine Rome in the seventh-century wars (largely “barbarians”?), including Heraclius's reconquest of Jerusalem in 628 CE from the Persian Sassanid empire? 3. Do you have a view (either way) on the argument—made most compellingly by Tom Holland in his 2014 book, In the Shadow of the Sword—that the Byzantine Roman army of the early seventh century was made up largely of fighters from the southern Levant and northern Arabia (where the Ghassanids came from)? 4. Could Arab forces that formerly made up the Foederati have “declared independence” from Rome in the third decade of the seventh century and ultimately have conquered the Levant from the Romans in the 630s (before engaging in civil war among themselves and the descendants of the Lakhmids, who had fought on behalf of the Sassanid empire three decades later)? In other words, might Muhammad and his original followers all have been former Foederati, who turned against their former Eastern Roman clients, much like the Gothic barbarians did against their former Western Roman clients a couple centuries earlier?

Based on the work of Robyn Bee, In 7 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.The streets had been quiet as we’d passed, oddly subdued. The few people we saw had quickly ducked out of our way, though we were in our tunicae and sandals.Kostas’ place, I was happy to see, was lively. Drunken soldiers weren’t spilling out of the place, but there was enough of a crowd that we had to push our way past a few people. I led Helena to the back, where crusty old Kostas scowled from behind his bar.“Kostas,” I said, leaning against the bar. “I promised this Rhodian lady some pitaroudia. Are you going to disappoint her?”“Rhodian?” He said, suddenly a lot less grouchy looking.“From Lindos,” Helena said.We chatted for a bit, swapping the latest bit of island news that we had while Kostas poured us a couple of flagons of dark wine. The food would be ready in a few minutes, he told us.“She’s paying,” I said, when I spotted Kostas’ young son.The kid was coming back with an empty drink tray. I hooked him by the arm, leading him away. I put a silver coin in his hand, promising him another if he’d fetch something for me.Helena looked at me curiously, but I kept my mouth shut against her silent question.“Centenarius!” I heard a voice call. “Leontius!”I turned, already feeling a grin stretching my features. At a nearby table, five men were waving towards me. They wore happy smiles, their cheeks rosy with wine.“Sergius! You old bastard! What the hell are you doing here?”Sergius, a crusty old stratiotai with more scars on him than most had years, made a show of cupping one ear.“Can’t hear you so good, sir! Come here and whisper it to me.”The men at his table laughed. I did too, shaking my head.“Friends of yours?” Helena asked.“Men from my old cohort,” I said. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”Helena’s body tightened. I saw that same expression flash across her features. Resignation? Consternation? I wasn’t sure. Even here, away from the dark street, I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d seen. It was gone too fast.“Sure,” she said, stepping forward and forcing me to move after her.The men rose to meet me, and I greeted each with a rough embrace and a few rougher words. Sergius, Gratian, Suda, Maurice and Niketas; as good a squad of stratiotai that had ever served in Justinian’s legions.“Boys, this is Helena,” I said as we sat in the chairs pulled over for us. “My shield mate. She guards the Empress with me.”Sergius blinked. Maurice choked on his wine while Suda and Niketas glanced at each other in disbelief. Helena, however, seemed to loosen. Her gaze flicked to me, and I saw the faint crinkle of something disappear from the corners of her eyes.Gratian, horse’s ass that he was, guffawed.“Come on, Centenarius,” he said. He was seated on Helena’s other side, and took the opportunity to drape one arm around her shoulders. “You can’t expect us to believe that sweet little thing fights beside you?”Whatever else I could say about Gratian, and there was a lot, I couldn’t fault his eye.Helena was in her tunica, cut in the same simple, utilitarian shape as my own. It was loose, ending just above her knees and doing nothing to accentuate the feminine curves of her body. However, unlike the wrinkled, slightly stained pale gray of my tunica, hers had been dyed a deep green.It was near to the cypress of her eyes. It made them appear brighter, and more vivid than I’d ever seen them. The green brought out the copper of her hair, deepening it and adding layers to those tumbling waves.She was beautiful; the field of grass after rain.“You think I’m sweet?” Helena said, lips curling into a small smile.“Sweet enough to eat,” he said. His eyes roved up and down her body. “How much?”Helena stayed relaxed. That small smile never left her lips.“I’m good, too.” Gratian insisted. “You’ll see. My phallus’s so good that you should be the one paying me!”He snickered through his leering grin. I shook my head when Sergius opened his mouth to interfere. Although I needn’t have. Because, an instant later, Helena’s fist crunched into Gratian’s throat.He gagged, falling backwards, his chair crashing to the ground. The tavern fell silent, all eyes on Helena as she slowly stood. Helena’s eyes swept the room. There was a heartbeat of silence, and then two. Her lip suddenly quirked.“Nobody touches before they pay.”The room exploded with laughter, covering the sound of Gratian’s moaning. Helena sat back down, while I moved to help the man pick himself off the floor.“I’ll kill her,” he choked. “I’ll fucking kill that bitch.”“Shut up,” I said, loud enough for the others to hear. “She’d gut you like a fish. And I’d cut off whatever bits my shield mate left of you.”I pulled him up, and made a show of checking him over. I hissed into his ear. “You stupid bastard. Helena’s the Empress’ personal guard. Do you want your head to the decorate palace walls?”Gratian’s face blanched. He started to stammer something but I pushed him away. “I told you to shut the fuck up. Go get us some more wine.”“Whatever Kostas hasn’t pissed in for me,” Helena called.Sergius grin was wide. “Good punch, that. It's the only way to get him to shut his hole.”“Aye,” Niketas said, draining his cup. He burped. “Finally, some fucking peace.”“Centenarius,” Maurice said, leaning forward. “No offense to your lady, but a shield mate? Are you sure about this?”“This lady,” Helena said. “Can speak for herself. Look me in the eyes and tell me what you mean.”Maurice complied. “You’re a woman. You’re real pretty, I’ll give you that, but you don’t know what this means.”“I don’t need a phallus to piss standing up. Why would I need one to hold up a shield?”Maurice smirked. “Cute. But it's more than that, it's,”"Wait, you can piss standing up?” Gratian interrupted, returning with two clay pitchers of wine. “Seriously?”The others groaned.“That wasn’t the point, Grat,” Suda said. “Although, now I am a bit curious,”"It's easy,” Helena said, throwing him a wink. “And I guarantee that I can piss better than Grat fucks.”Laughter rolled around the table. Even Gratian snickered, though heat crawled up his face. He started pouring the wine, filling Helena’s cup and then mine.“So, what the hell are you talking about, then?”“If she can really be Leo’s shield mate,” Maurice said. “If she can fight.”“She knows what it means, Maur,” I said. “She’s good, too. Fast. And she’s got some sense, unlike you thick-headed bastards.”“Good enough for me,” Sergius said. “What do you say boys, we gonna keep her around?”“Let's drink!” Niketas said, grabbing his cup.Sergius banged the table, hoisting his own cup into the air. “To Helena!”“Helena!” We roared, slamming our empty cups down a few moments later.Helena joined in, her smile wide and her cheeks flushed a happy red. Our pitaroudia arrived, and we fell to bickering over the platter of fried balls. They were delicious; tomato, onion and bits of a leafy herb mixed into a patty of ground chickpea.These were rough men that lived rough lives. They were soldiers; killers that earned their coin in the grinding crush of the shield wall. They respected a foul mouth, a hard fist and loyalty to one’s brothers.They were stratiotai.And when Helena clacked her cup with a still sheepish looking Gratian; I saw them start to think of her as one too.“Leo never told me that he was a Centenarius,” Helena eventually said.I snorted. “That’s because I’m not. These idiots just call me that.”“The crest on the helmet don’t make the Centenarius,” Suda drawled. “Ain’t that right, Serg?”“You’re damned right about that, lad,” the older man replied. “Some wise words there.”I rolled my eyes, the rest of the boys snickering into their cups. Sergius liked to share whatever kernels of wisdom popped into his head. We’d all heard this particular one a hundred times already.“We call him that because of Callinicum,” Sergius continued, answering Helena’s question.“Ah,” she said. “You were all there?”Sergius nodded, “and my bones would be decorating some Persian’s trophy shelf if it wasn’t for the Centenarius here. All of ours would.”The mood sobered, each of us remembering. I looked down to my hands; seeing the flecks of old, old blood beneath my fingernails. The ones I could never seem to clean.“Was it bad?” Helena asked.“Aye,” Sergius answered. “The old Centenarius was a right stupid prick. He got himself killed in the first charge of the Sassanid horsemen. Leontius here took over after that. Things were real shaky for a bit, but he kept us from scattering and being cut to pieces. And when the general decided he’d had enough of watching us die, Leo got us retreating.”Nobody spoke for a while, memories holding us. Some of us put wine to our lips. I just stared out at nothing with unfocused eyes. The mood remained dark until Gratian, bless his fool soul, blurted out;“Fuck, but Centenarius Demetrius was a prick.”That brought out a few chuckles. Niketas let out another burp, and Maurice swatted the back of his head. Most of us felt lighter after that. It didn’t do any good to dwell on the past. The things we’d done, the friends we’d lost, It wasn’t good to remember. Stratiotai had to live for the moment.Maybe that was why I’d always been such a terrible soldier.Midnight guard duty.It was approaching midnight when Sergius hauled himself to his feet. He blinked bleary eyes, motioning to the others.“Right boys, we’ve got patrol in the morning. Let’s get moving.”The men swallowed their last mouthfuls of wine, said their goodbyes and stumbled away with various levels of coordination.Sergius watched them go with a shake of his head. He riffled through a pouch at his side for a moment before turning back to me.“I’ve got something for you here, Centenarius. It got to the barracks a week or so ago.”He held a folded envelope out towards me. It had my name on it, written out in my mother’s blocky hand. I snatched it from him, quickly stuffing it away and out of sight. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to ruin this night.“It was good to see you, Leo,” Sergius said. He pulled me to my feet, and pounded my back in a rough embrace. “Don’t forget about us rankers while you’re dining with nobles.”“Take care of yourself, Serg,” I said, returning his embrace. “And, thank you.”“We’re on garrison duty,” the old soldier grinned. “What’s going to happen in the capital?”Sergius surprised Helena by pulling her into a hug next. “Keep your shield tight to his. Our Centenarius always seems to be around when shit is the deepest.”“I’ll keep him the sword from his back,” Helena said. “Though, it might loosen him up a bit.”The older man laughed. “It was good to meet you, lass. And remember, you’ve got a brother in old Sergius.” With a last little wave, he ambled out and into the deepening night.“You were right,” Helena said, settling back. She popped the last of the pitaroudia in her mouth. “This is a great place.”“Even with Grat here?” I asked with a smile.“Even still,” she said, her lips curling upward. She put her elbow on the table, leaning her heads against her palm. “I’m happy that you introduced me to your friends. I didn’t think it would be this, nice.”“It was,” I said. I shifted in my seat, wanting to move my chair closer to her. But the movement jostled the letter in my pocket. Suddenly, my mother’s words weighed more than a boulder. I shifted again, an awkward jerk of my body that accomplished nothing.Helena’s smile softened. She took pity on me, scooting over until her leg pressed against mine. I let out a breath, leaning back in my chair. We sat in silence for a while. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth, and the quiet murmur of the few remaining patrons.“This was always my favorite part,” I said, after a while. I opened my eyes to find Helena watching me, waiting for me to continue.“A place like this,” I said. “With the others; once the campaigns done. It’s,”I trailed off, trying to order my thoughts. How could I explain this to someone who’d never been to war? How did I tell her of the constant tension; of the anxious expectation that came with knowing that somewhere, beyond the light of your campfire, someone wanted you dead.Kill or be killed; there was none of that here. I could drink with my friends, without wondering which of them I would lose. Or what I would have to do.It was just; "different,” I finished.Helena didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile or tease. She just watched me with eyes that took in so much of me. I caught a glimpse of it; the edge that wondrous vastness behind her cypress gaze. She leaned into me, resting her head against my shoulder and letting out a long breath.“Different,” she said. “I like that.”My eyes suddenly prickled. I blinked furiously, trying to clear the wetness seeping into them. I turned, leaning my chin against her hair; breathing in the scent of her. I shifted my arm to pull her closer, my mother’s letter forgotten.“Leo,” she said. “What would you do if you weren’t a soldier?”“I, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always been a soldier.”“But could you do it for ten more years?”“What else would I do? My father was stratiotai, and his father and his father. I don’t know anything else.”Helena shifted against my shoulder, her hair tickling my neck.“What was your plan once you retired?”I bobbed my shoulders in a small shrug, careful not to disturb her. “Go back to Rhodos. My mother is a seamstress. I’d help her run the shop.”“And marry a ‘good’ woman?” She said, her tone edged with mocking.I didn’t answer, though I tightened my grip on Helena. For a heartbeat, her body was stiff. Then, she let out another long breath, relaxing against me.“What about something like this?” She asked, gesturing around us. “A tavern.”“Running a Winehouse?”She pushed off of me, suddenly more animated. “Why not? You could open a soldier’s tavern on Rhodos; make a place for old stratiotai.”“A peaceful place,” I murmured.“Exactly!” She grinned. “It's a good idea, right?”“I’d have to learn how to make pitaroudia,” I said, feeling a smile tug at my lips.“I’m sure Kostas will give you his recipe.”I laughed. “I’m a solider, Helena, not a cook. I think I even burned water once.”“You are a soldier,” she said. Her eyes held mine. “But you can be something else.”I looked away, swallowing.“You’ll think about it?”“Sure,” I forced some lightness into my tone. “But only if you promise that you’d go out and catch fish for me every day.”Helena stiffened, her face suddenly bright red. Not the reaction I’d been expecting. Her eyes flicked over my face, searching. “You don’t think I’d be better as the cook? Or serving drinks?”“No,” I said, not having to force my smile. “You belong on the sea, right?”Her eyes were so wide. I felt my heart start to beat faster. That vastness, it was there, rising to the edge of her; on the verge of breaking through.“Leo,” she murmured. “I,”She was interrupted by the thump of a pouch onto our table. I looked over to find Kostas’ son standing by our table. The kid looked exhausted, but triumphant."You found what I asked for, then?” I said.He nodded, holding out a grubby hand.“Good man,” I grinned, flipping him a silver coin. He disappeared without another word. I quickly disengaged myself from Helena to put the lumpy, medium sized pouch away.“It's a surprise,” I told her. “For later.”She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t press me. She downed her last mouthful of wine, letting out a happy sigh. “We have to come back here.”I nodded, bringing my own wine to my lips.“It's nice to see that you can relax without my cunny in your mouth.”I choked, spraying out a mouthful of wine. Helena laughed, that deep, joy-filled sound. She pounded my back as I coughed myself hoarse. My face blazed, and I felt the eyes of everyone turn towards me.“Leo,” she said. “You’re defenseless.”I coughed, glaring at her through watery eyes.“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get back to the palace.”We walked out into the night, breathing in the city’s quiet. Although, it did not last long. We were but a handful of blocks from the Winehouse, when, out of the dark, we saw the fire.And heard the baying of the mob.A past shared with the Empress.The baying of the mob. The glow of fire.After a few moments of debate, Helena and I decided to move towards it. There were no screams of pain, no real sounds of violence coming from the streets ahead. We would see what there was, we decided, before returning to the Empress.We came into a square; one with a small, torch-lit church planted solidly at the northern end. A few squads of armored stratiotai, perhaps forty men, stood before the single door. They were imperial legionaries, though I did not recognize any of the grim-faced men. They all looked outward, swords drawn.Surrounding them, was the mob.The seething body of humanity was all around them. They totally filled the square; men, women, children. The old and the

Based on the work of Robyn Bee, In 7 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.The streets had been quiet as we’d passed, oddly subdued. The few people we saw had quickly ducked out of our way, though we were in our tunicae and sandals.Kostas’ place, I was happy to see, was lively. Drunken soldiers weren’t spilling out of the place, but there was enough of a crowd that we had to push our way past a few people. I led Helena to the back, where crusty old Kostas scowled from behind his bar.“Kostas,” I said, leaning against the bar. “I promised this Rhodian lady some pitaroudia. Are you going to disappoint her?”“Rhodian?” He said, suddenly a lot less grouchy looking.“From Lindos,” Helena said.We chatted for a bit, swapping the latest bit of island news that we had while Kostas poured us a couple of flagons of dark wine. The food would be ready in a few minutes, he told us.“She’s paying,” I said, when I spotted Kostas’ young son.The kid was coming back with an empty drink tray. I hooked him by the arm, leading him away. I put a silver coin in his hand, promising him another if he’d fetch something for me.Helena looked at me curiously, but I kept my mouth shut against her silent question.“Centenarius!” I heard a voice call. “Leontius!”I turned, already feeling a grin stretching my features. At a nearby table, five men were waving towards me. They wore happy smiles, their cheeks rosy with wine.“Sergius! You old bastard! What the hell are you doing here?”Sergius, a crusty old stratiotai with more scars on him than most had years, made a show of cupping one ear.“Can’t hear you so good, sir! Come here and whisper it to me.”The men at his table laughed. I did too, shaking my head.“Friends of yours?” Helena asked.“Men from my old cohort,” I said. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”Helena’s body tightened. I saw that same expression flash across her features. Resignation? Consternation? I wasn’t sure. Even here, away from the dark street, I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d seen. It was gone too fast.“Sure,” she said, stepping forward and forcing me to move after her.The men rose to meet me, and I greeted each with a rough embrace and a few rougher words. Sergius, Gratian, Suda, Maurice and Niketas; as good a squad of stratiotai that had ever served in Justinian’s legions.“Boys, this is Helena,” I said as we sat in the chairs pulled over for us. “My shield mate. She guards the Empress with me.”Sergius blinked. Maurice choked on his wine while Suda and Niketas glanced at each other in disbelief. Helena, however, seemed to loosen. Her gaze flicked to me, and I saw the faint crinkle of something disappear from the corners of her eyes.Gratian, horse’s ass that he was, guffawed.“Come on, Centenarius,” he said. He was seated on Helena’s other side, and took the opportunity to drape one arm around her shoulders. “You can’t expect us to believe that sweet little thing fights beside you?”Whatever else I could say about Gratian, and there was a lot, I couldn’t fault his eye.Helena was in her tunica, cut in the same simple, utilitarian shape as my own. It was loose, ending just above her knees and doing nothing to accentuate the feminine curves of her body. However, unlike the wrinkled, slightly stained pale gray of my tunica, hers had been dyed a deep green.It was near to the cypress of her eyes. It made them appear brighter, and more vivid than I’d ever seen them. The green brought out the copper of her hair, deepening it and adding layers to those tumbling waves.She was beautiful; the field of grass after rain.“You think I’m sweet?” Helena said, lips curling into a small smile.“Sweet enough to eat,” he said. His eyes roved up and down her body. “How much?”Helena stayed relaxed. That small smile never left her lips.“I’m good, too.” Gratian insisted. “You’ll see. My phallus’s so good that you should be the one paying me!”He snickered through his leering grin. I shook my head when Sergius opened his mouth to interfere. Although I needn’t have. Because, an instant later, Helena’s fist crunched into Gratian’s throat.He gagged, falling backwards, his chair crashing to the ground. The tavern fell silent, all eyes on Helena as she slowly stood. Helena’s eyes swept the room. There was a heartbeat of silence, and then two. Her lip suddenly quirked.“Nobody touches before they pay.”The room exploded with laughter, covering the sound of Gratian’s moaning. Helena sat back down, while I moved to help the man pick himself off the floor.“I’ll kill her,” he choked. “I’ll fucking kill that bitch.”“Shut up,” I said, loud enough for the others to hear. “She’d gut you like a fish. And I’d cut off whatever bits my shield mate left of you.”I pulled him up, and made a show of checking him over. I hissed into his ear. “You stupid bastard. Helena’s the Empress’ personal guard. Do you want your head to the decorate palace walls?”Gratian’s face blanched. He started to stammer something but I pushed him away. “I told you to shut the fuck up. Go get us some more wine.”“Whatever Kostas hasn’t pissed in for me,” Helena called.Sergius grin was wide. “Good punch, that. It's the only way to get him to shut his hole.”“Aye,” Niketas said, draining his cup. He burped. “Finally, some fucking peace.”“Centenarius,” Maurice said, leaning forward. “No offense to your lady, but a shield mate? Are you sure about this?”“This lady,” Helena said. “Can speak for herself. Look me in the eyes and tell me what you mean.”Maurice complied. “You’re a woman. You’re real pretty, I’ll give you that, but you don’t know what this means.”“I don’t need a phallus to piss standing up. Why would I need one to hold up a shield?”Maurice smirked. “Cute. But it's more than that, it's,”"Wait, you can piss standing up?” Gratian interrupted, returning with two clay pitchers of wine. “Seriously?”The others groaned.“That wasn’t the point, Grat,” Suda said. “Although, now I am a bit curious,”"It's easy,” Helena said, throwing him a wink. “And I guarantee that I can piss better than Grat fucks.”Laughter rolled around the table. Even Gratian snickered, though heat crawled up his face. He started pouring the wine, filling Helena’s cup and then mine.“So, what the hell are you talking about, then?”“If she can really be Leo’s shield mate,” Maurice said. “If she can fight.”“She knows what it means, Maur,” I said. “She’s good, too. Fast. And she’s got some sense, unlike you thick-headed bastards.”“Good enough for me,” Sergius said. “What do you say boys, we gonna keep her around?”“Let's drink!” Niketas said, grabbing his cup.Sergius banged the table, hoisting his own cup into the air. “To Helena!”“Helena!” We roared, slamming our empty cups down a few moments later.Helena joined in, her smile wide and her cheeks flushed a happy red. Our pitaroudia arrived, and we fell to bickering over the platter of fried balls. They were delicious; tomato, onion and bits of a leafy herb mixed into a patty of ground chickpea.These were rough men that lived rough lives. They were soldiers; killers that earned their coin in the grinding crush of the shield wall. They respected a foul mouth, a hard fist and loyalty to one’s brothers.They were stratiotai.And when Helena clacked her cup with a still sheepish looking Gratian; I saw them start to think of her as one too.“Leo never told me that he was a Centenarius,” Helena eventually said.I snorted. “That’s because I’m not. These idiots just call me that.”“The crest on the helmet don’t make the Centenarius,” Suda drawled. “Ain’t that right, Serg?”“You’re damned right about that, lad,” the older man replied. “Some wise words there.”I rolled my eyes, the rest of the boys snickering into their cups. Sergius liked to share whatever kernels of wisdom popped into his head. We’d all heard this particular one a hundred times already.“We call him that because of Callinicum,” Sergius continued, answering Helena’s question.“Ah,” she said. “You were all there?”Sergius nodded, “and my bones would be decorating some Persian’s trophy shelf if it wasn’t for the Centenarius here. All of ours would.”The mood sobered, each of us remembering. I looked down to my hands; seeing the flecks of old, old blood beneath my fingernails. The ones I could never seem to clean.“Was it bad?” Helena asked.“Aye,” Sergius answered. “The old Centenarius was a right stupid prick. He got himself killed in the first charge of the Sassanid horsemen. Leontius here took over after that. Things were real shaky for a bit, but he kept us from scattering and being cut to pieces. And when the general decided he’d had enough of watching us die, Leo got us retreating.”Nobody spoke for a while, memories holding us. Some of us put wine to our lips. I just stared out at nothing with unfocused eyes. The mood remained dark until Gratian, bless his fool soul, blurted out;“Fuck, but Centenarius Demetrius was a prick.”That brought out a few chuckles. Niketas let out another burp, and Maurice swatted the back of his head. Most of us felt lighter after that. It didn’t do any good to dwell on the past. The things we’d done, the friends we’d lost, It wasn’t good to remember. Stratiotai had to live for the moment.Maybe that was why I’d always been such a terrible soldier.Midnight guard duty.It was approaching midnight when Sergius hauled himself to his feet. He blinked bleary eyes, motioning to the others.“Right boys, we’ve got patrol in the morning. Let’s get moving.”The men swallowed their last mouthfuls of wine, said their goodbyes and stumbled away with various levels of coordination.Sergius watched them go with a shake of his head. He riffled through a pouch at his side for a moment before turning back to me.“I’ve got something for you here, Centenarius. It got to the barracks a week or so ago.”He held a folded envelope out towards me. It had my name on it, written out in my mother’s blocky hand. I snatched it from him, quickly stuffing it away and out of sight. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to ruin this night.“It was good to see you, Leo,” Sergius said. He pulled me to my feet, and pounded my back in a rough embrace. “Don’t forget about us rankers while you’re dining with nobles.”“Take care of yourself, Serg,” I said, returning his embrace. “And, thank you.”“We’re on garrison duty,” the old soldier grinned. “What’s going to happen in the capital?”Sergius surprised Helena by pulling her into a hug next. “Keep your shield tight to his. Our Centenarius always seems to be around when shit is the deepest.”“I’ll keep him the sword from his back,” Helena said. “Though, it might loosen him up a bit.”The older man laughed. “It was good to meet you, lass. And remember, you’ve got a brother in old Sergius.” With a last little wave, he ambled out and into the deepening night.“You were right,” Helena said, settling back. She popped the last of the pitaroudia in her mouth. “This is a great place.”“Even with Grat here?” I asked with a smile.“Even still,” she said, her lips curling upward. She put her elbow on the table, leaning her heads against her palm. “I’m happy that you introduced me to your friends. I didn’t think it would be this, nice.”“It was,” I said. I shifted in my seat, wanting to move my chair closer to her. But the movement jostled the letter in my pocket. Suddenly, my mother’s words weighed more than a boulder. I shifted again, an awkward jerk of my body that accomplished nothing.Helena’s smile softened. She took pity on me, scooting over until her leg pressed against mine. I let out a breath, leaning back in my chair. We sat in silence for a while. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth, and the quiet murmur of the few remaining patrons.“This was always my favorite part,” I said, after a while. I opened my eyes to find Helena watching me, waiting for me to continue.“A place like this,” I said. “With the others; once the campaigns done. It’s,”I trailed off, trying to order my thoughts. How could I explain this to someone who’d never been to war? How did I tell her of the constant tension; of the anxious expectation that came with knowing that somewhere, beyond the light of your campfire, someone wanted you dead.Kill or be killed; there was none of that here. I could drink with my friends, without wondering which of them I would lose. Or what I would have to do.It was just; "different,” I finished.Helena didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile or tease. She just watched me with eyes that took in so much of me. I caught a glimpse of it; the edge that wondrous vastness behind her cypress gaze. She leaned into me, resting her head against my shoulder and letting out a long breath.“Different,” she said. “I like that.”My eyes suddenly prickled. I blinked furiously, trying to clear the wetness seeping into them. I turned, leaning my chin against her hair; breathing in the scent of her. I shifted my arm to pull her closer, my mother’s letter forgotten.“Leo,” she said. “What would you do if you weren’t a soldier?”“I, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always been a soldier.”“But could you do it for ten more years?”“What else would I do? My father was stratiotai, and his father and his father. I don’t know anything else.”Helena shifted against my shoulder, her hair tickling my neck.“What was your plan once you retired?”I bobbed my shoulders in a small shrug, careful not to disturb her. “Go back to Rhodos. My mother is a seamstress. I’d help her run the shop.”“And marry a ‘good’ woman?” She said, her tone edged with mocking.I didn’t answer, though I tightened my grip on Helena. For a heartbeat, her body was stiff. Then, she let out another long breath, relaxing against me.“What about something like this?” She asked, gesturing around us. “A tavern.”“Running a Winehouse?”She pushed off of me, suddenly more animated. “Why not? You could open a soldier’s tavern on Rhodos; make a place for old stratiotai.”“A peaceful place,” I murmured.“Exactly!” She grinned. “It's a good idea, right?”“I’d have to learn how to make pitaroudia,” I said, feeling a smile tug at my lips.“I’m sure Kostas will give you his recipe.”I laughed. “I’m a solider, Helena, not a cook. I think I even burned water once.”“You are a soldier,” she said. Her eyes held mine. “But you can be something else.”I looked away, swallowing.“You’ll think about it?”“Sure,” I forced some lightness into my tone. “But only if you promise that you’d go out and catch fish for me every day.”Helena stiffened, her face suddenly bright red. Not the reaction I’d been expecting. Her eyes flicked over my face, searching. “You don’t think I’d be better as the cook? Or serving drinks?”“No,” I said, not having to force my smile. “You belong on the sea, right?”Her eyes were so wide. I felt my heart start to beat faster. That vastness, it was there, rising to the edge of her; on the verge of breaking through.“Leo,” she murmured. “I,”She was interrupted by the thump of a pouch onto our table. I looked over to find Kostas’ son standing by our table. The kid looked exhausted, but triumphant."You found what I asked for, then?” I said.He nodded, holding out a grubby hand.“Good man,” I grinned, flipping him a silver coin. He disappeared without another word. I quickly disengaged myself from Helena to put the lumpy, medium sized pouch away.“It's a surprise,” I told her. “For later.”She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t press me. She downed her last mouthful of wine, letting out a happy sigh. “We have to come back here.”I nodded, bringing my own wine to my lips.“It's nice to see that you can relax without my cunny in your mouth.”I choked, spraying out a mouthful of wine. Helena laughed, that deep, joy-filled sound. She pounded my back as I coughed myself hoarse. My face blazed, and I felt the eyes of everyone turn towards me.“Leo,” she said. “You’re defenseless.”I coughed, glaring at her through watery eyes.“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get back to the palace.”We walked out into the night, breathing in the city’s quiet. Although, it did not last long. We were but a handful of blocks from the Winehouse, when, out of the dark, we saw the fire.And heard the baying of the mob.A past shared with the Empress.The baying of the mob. The glow of fire.After a few moments of debate, Helena and I decided to move towards it. There were no screams of pain, no real sounds of violence coming from the streets ahead. We would see what there was, we decided, before returning to the Empress.We came into a square; one with a small, torch-lit church planted solidly at the northern end. A few squads of armored stratiotai, perhaps forty men, stood before the single door. They were imperial legionaries, though I did not recognize any of the grim-faced men. They all looked outward, swords drawn.Surrounding them, was the mob.The seething body of humanity was all around them. They totally filled the square; men, women, children. The old and the

Based on the work of Robyn Bee, In 7 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.The streets had been quiet as we’d passed, oddly subdued. The few people we saw had quickly ducked out of our way, though we were in our tunicae and sandals.Kostas’ place, I was happy to see, was lively. Drunken soldiers weren’t spilling out of the place, but there was enough of a crowd that we had to push our way past a few people. I led Helena to the back, where crusty old Kostas scowled from behind his bar.“Kostas,” I said, leaning against the bar. “I promised this Rhodian lady some pitaroudia. Are you going to disappoint her?”“Rhodian?” He said, suddenly a lot less grouchy looking.“From Lindos,” Helena said.We chatted for a bit, swapping the latest bit of island news that we had while Kostas poured us a couple of flagons of dark wine. The food would be ready in a few minutes, he told us.“She’s paying,” I said, when I spotted Kostas’ young son.The kid was coming back with an empty drink tray. I hooked him by the arm, leading him away. I put a silver coin in his hand, promising him another if he’d fetch something for me.Helena looked at me curiously, but I kept my mouth shut against her silent question.“Centenarius!” I heard a voice call. “Leontius!”I turned, already feeling a grin stretching my features. At a nearby table, five men were waving towards me. They wore happy smiles, their cheeks rosy with wine.“Sergius! You old bastard! What the hell are you doing here?”Sergius, a crusty old stratiotai with more scars on him than most had years, made a show of cupping one ear.“Can’t hear you so good, sir! Come here and whisper it to me.”The men at his table laughed. I did too, shaking my head.“Friends of yours?” Helena asked.“Men from my old cohort,” I said. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”Helena’s body tightened. I saw that same expression flash across her features. Resignation? Consternation? I wasn’t sure. Even here, away from the dark street, I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d seen. It was gone too fast.“Sure,” she said, stepping forward and forcing me to move after her.The men rose to meet me, and I greeted each with a rough embrace and a few rougher words. Sergius, Gratian, Suda, Maurice and Niketas; as good a squad of stratiotai that had ever served in Justinian’s legions.“Boys, this is Helena,” I said as we sat in the chairs pulled over for us. “My shield mate. She guards the Empress with me.”Sergius blinked. Maurice choked on his wine while Suda and Niketas glanced at each other in disbelief. Helena, however, seemed to loosen. Her gaze flicked to me, and I saw the faint crinkle of something disappear from the corners of her eyes.Gratian, horse’s ass that he was, guffawed.“Come on, Centenarius,” he said. He was seated on Helena’s other side, and took the opportunity to drape one arm around her shoulders. “You can’t expect us to believe that sweet little thing fights beside you?”Whatever else I could say about Gratian, and there was a lot, I couldn’t fault his eye.Helena was in her tunica, cut in the same simple, utilitarian shape as my own. It was loose, ending just above her knees and doing nothing to accentuate the feminine curves of her body. However, unlike the wrinkled, slightly stained pale gray of my tunica, hers had been dyed a deep green.It was near to the cypress of her eyes. It made them appear brighter, and more vivid than I’d ever seen them. The green brought out the copper of her hair, deepening it and adding layers to those tumbling waves.She was beautiful; the field of grass after rain.“You think I’m sweet?” Helena said, lips curling into a small smile.“Sweet enough to eat,” he said. His eyes roved up and down her body. “How much?”Helena stayed relaxed. That small smile never left her lips.“I’m good, too.” Gratian insisted. “You’ll see. My phallus’s so good that you should be the one paying me!”He snickered through his leering grin. I shook my head when Sergius opened his mouth to interfere. Although I needn’t have. Because, an instant later, Helena’s fist crunched into Gratian’s throat.He gagged, falling backwards, his chair crashing to the ground. The tavern fell silent, all eyes on Helena as she slowly stood. Helena’s eyes swept the room. There was a heartbeat of silence, and then two. Her lip suddenly quirked.“Nobody touches before they pay.”The room exploded with laughter, covering the sound of Gratian’s moaning. Helena sat back down, while I moved to help the man pick himself off the floor.“I’ll kill her,” he choked. “I’ll fucking kill that bitch.”“Shut up,” I said, loud enough for the others to hear. “She’d gut you like a fish. And I’d cut off whatever bits my shield mate left of you.”I pulled him up, and made a show of checking him over. I hissed into his ear. “You stupid bastard. Helena’s the Empress’ personal guard. Do you want your head to the decorate palace walls?”Gratian’s face blanched. He started to stammer something but I pushed him away. “I told you to shut the fuck up. Go get us some more wine.”“Whatever Kostas hasn’t pissed in for me,” Helena called.Sergius grin was wide. “Good punch, that. It's the only way to get him to shut his hole.”“Aye,” Niketas said, draining his cup. He burped. “Finally, some fucking peace.”“Centenarius,” Maurice said, leaning forward. “No offense to your lady, but a shield mate? Are you sure about this?”“This lady,” Helena said. “Can speak for herself. Look me in the eyes and tell me what you mean.”Maurice complied. “You’re a woman. You’re real pretty, I’ll give you that, but you don’t know what this means.”“I don’t need a phallus to piss standing up. Why would I need one to hold up a shield?”Maurice smirked. “Cute. But it's more than that, it's,”"Wait, you can piss standing up?” Gratian interrupted, returning with two clay pitchers of wine. “Seriously?”The others groaned.“That wasn’t the point, Grat,” Suda said. “Although, now I am a bit curious,”"It's easy,” Helena said, throwing him a wink. “And I guarantee that I can piss better than Grat fucks.”Laughter rolled around the table. Even Gratian snickered, though heat crawled up his face. He started pouring the wine, filling Helena’s cup and then mine.“So, what the hell are you talking about, then?”“If she can really be Leo’s shield mate,” Maurice said. “If she can fight.”“She knows what it means, Maur,” I said. “She’s good, too. Fast. And she’s got some sense, unlike you thick-headed bastards.”“Good enough for me,” Sergius said. “What do you say boys, we gonna keep her around?”“Let's drink!” Niketas said, grabbing his cup.Sergius banged the table, hoisting his own cup into the air. “To Helena!”“Helena!” We roared, slamming our empty cups down a few moments later.Helena joined in, her smile wide and her cheeks flushed a happy red. Our pitaroudia arrived, and we fell to bickering over the platter of fried balls. They were delicious; tomato, onion and bits of a leafy herb mixed into a patty of ground chickpea.These were rough men that lived rough lives. They were soldiers; killers that earned their coin in the grinding crush of the shield wall. They respected a foul mouth, a hard fist and loyalty to one’s brothers.They were stratiotai.And when Helena clacked her cup with a still sheepish looking Gratian; I saw them start to think of her as one too.“Leo never told me that he was a Centenarius,” Helena eventually said.I snorted. “That’s because I’m not. These idiots just call me that.”“The crest on the helmet don’t make the Centenarius,” Suda drawled. “Ain’t that right, Serg?”“You’re damned right about that, lad,” the older man replied. “Some wise words there.”I rolled my eyes, the rest of the boys snickering into their cups. Sergius liked to share whatever kernels of wisdom popped into his head. We’d all heard this particular one a hundred times already.“We call him that because of Callinicum,” Sergius continued, answering Helena’s question.“Ah,” she said. “You were all there?”Sergius nodded, “and my bones would be decorating some Persian’s trophy shelf if it wasn’t for the Centenarius here. All of ours would.”The mood sobered, each of us remembering. I looked down to my hands; seeing the flecks of old, old blood beneath my fingernails. The ones I could never seem to clean.“Was it bad?” Helena asked.“Aye,” Sergius answered. “The old Centenarius was a right stupid prick. He got himself killed in the first charge of the Sassanid horsemen. Leontius here took over after that. Things were real shaky for a bit, but he kept us from scattering and being cut to pieces. And when the general decided he’d had enough of watching us die, Leo got us retreating.”Nobody spoke for a while, memories holding us. Some of us put wine to our lips. I just stared out at nothing with unfocused eyes. The mood remained dark until Gratian, bless his fool soul, blurted out;“Fuck, but Centenarius Demetrius was a prick.”That brought out a few chuckles. Niketas let out another burp, and Maurice swatted the back of his head. Most of us felt lighter after that. It didn’t do any good to dwell on the past. The things we’d done, the friends we’d lost, It wasn’t good to remember. Stratiotai had to live for the moment.Maybe that was why I’d always been such a terrible soldier.Midnight guard duty.It was approaching midnight when Sergius hauled himself to his feet. He blinked bleary eyes, motioning to the others.“Right boys, we’ve got patrol in the morning. Let’s get moving.”The men swallowed their last mouthfuls of wine, said their goodbyes and stumbled away with various levels of coordination.Sergius watched them go with a shake of his head. He riffled through a pouch at his side for a moment before turning back to me.“I’ve got something for you here, Centenarius. It got to the barracks a week or so ago.”He held a folded envelope out towards me. It had my name on it, written out in my mother’s blocky hand. I snatched it from him, quickly stuffing it away and out of sight. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to ruin this night.“It was good to see you, Leo,” Sergius said. He pulled me to my feet, and pounded my back in a rough embrace. “Don’t forget about us rankers while you’re dining with nobles.”“Take care of yourself, Serg,” I said, returning his embrace. “And, thank you.”“We’re on garrison duty,” the old soldier grinned. “What’s going to happen in the capital?”Sergius surprised Helena by pulling her into a hug next. “Keep your shield tight to his. Our Centenarius always seems to be around when shit is the deepest.”“I’ll keep him the sword from his back,” Helena said. “Though, it might loosen him up a bit.”The older man laughed. “It was good to meet you, lass. And remember, you’ve got a brother in old Sergius.” With a last little wave, he ambled out and into the deepening night.“You were right,” Helena said, settling back. She popped the last of the pitaroudia in her mouth. “This is a great place.”“Even with Grat here?” I asked with a smile.“Even still,” she said, her lips curling upward. She put her elbow on the table, leaning her heads against her palm. “I’m happy that you introduced me to your friends. I didn’t think it would be this, nice.”“It was,” I said. I shifted in my seat, wanting to move my chair closer to her. But the movement jostled the letter in my pocket. Suddenly, my mother’s words weighed more than a boulder. I shifted again, an awkward jerk of my body that accomplished nothing.Helena’s smile softened. She took pity on me, scooting over until her leg pressed against mine. I let out a breath, leaning back in my chair. We sat in silence for a while. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth, and the quiet murmur of the few remaining patrons.“This was always my favorite part,” I said, after a while. I opened my eyes to find Helena watching me, waiting for me to continue.“A place like this,” I said. “With the others; once the campaigns done. It’s,”I trailed off, trying to order my thoughts. How could I explain this to someone who’d never been to war? How did I tell her of the constant tension; of the anxious expectation that came with knowing that somewhere, beyond the light of your campfire, someone wanted you dead.Kill or be killed; there was none of that here. I could drink with my friends, without wondering which of them I would lose. Or what I would have to do.It was just; "different,” I finished.Helena didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile or tease. She just watched me with eyes that took in so much of me. I caught a glimpse of it; the edge that wondrous vastness behind her cypress gaze. She leaned into me, resting her head against my shoulder and letting out a long breath.“Different,” she said. “I like that.”My eyes suddenly prickled. I blinked furiously, trying to clear the wetness seeping into them. I turned, leaning my chin against her hair; breathing in the scent of her. I shifted my arm to pull her closer, my mother’s letter forgotten.“Leo,” she said. “What would you do if you weren’t a soldier?”“I, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always been a soldier.”“But could you do it for ten more years?”“What else would I do? My father was stratiotai, and his father and his father. I don’t know anything else.”Helena shifted against my shoulder, her hair tickling my neck.“What was your plan once you retired?”I bobbed my shoulders in a small shrug, careful not to disturb her. “Go back to Rhodos. My mother is a seamstress. I’d help her run the shop.”“And marry a ‘good’ woman?” She said, her tone edged with mocking.I didn’t answer, though I tightened my grip on Helena. For a heartbeat, her body was stiff. Then, she let out another long breath, relaxing against me.“What about something like this?” She asked, gesturing around us. “A tavern.”“Running a Winehouse?”She pushed off of me, suddenly more animated. “Why not? You could open a soldier’s tavern on Rhodos; make a place for old stratiotai.”“A peaceful place,” I murmured.“Exactly!” She grinned. “It's a good idea, right?”“I’d have to learn how to make pitaroudia,” I said, feeling a smile tug at my lips.“I’m sure Kostas will give you his recipe.”I laughed. “I’m a solider, Helena, not a cook. I think I even burned water once.”“You are a soldier,” she said. Her eyes held mine. “But you can be something else.”I looked away, swallowing.“You’ll think about it?”“Sure,” I forced some lightness into my tone. “But only if you promise that you’d go out and catch fish for me every day.”Helena stiffened, her face suddenly bright red. Not the reaction I’d been expecting. Her eyes flicked over my face, searching. “You don’t think I’d be better as the cook? Or serving drinks?”“No,” I said, not having to force my smile. “You belong on the sea, right?”Her eyes were so wide. I felt my heart start to beat faster. That vastness, it was there, rising to the edge of her; on the verge of breaking through.“Leo,” she murmured. “I,”She was interrupted by the thump of a pouch onto our table. I looked over to find Kostas’ son standing by our table. The kid looked exhausted, but triumphant."You found what I asked for, then?” I said.He nodded, holding out a grubby hand.“Good man,” I grinned, flipping him a silver coin. He disappeared without another word. I quickly disengaged myself from Helena to put the lumpy, medium sized pouch away.“It's a surprise,” I told her. “For later.”She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t press me. She downed her last mouthful of wine, letting out a happy sigh. “We have to come back here.”I nodded, bringing my own wine to my lips.“It's nice to see that you can relax without my cunny in your mouth.”I choked, spraying out a mouthful of wine. Helena laughed, that deep, joy-filled sound. She pounded my back as I coughed myself hoarse. My face blazed, and I felt the eyes of everyone turn towards me.“Leo,” she said. “You’re defenseless.”I coughed, glaring at her through watery eyes.“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get back to the palace.”We walked out into the night, breathing in the city’s quiet. Although, it did not last long. We were but a handful of blocks from the Winehouse, when, out of the dark, we saw the fire.And heard the baying of the mob.A past shared with the Empress.The baying of the mob. The glow of fire.After a few moments of debate, Helena and I decided to move towards it. There were no screams of pain, no real sounds of violence coming from the streets ahead. We would see what there was, we decided, before returning to the Empress.We came into a square; one with a small, torch-lit church planted solidly at the northern end. A few squads of armored stratiotai, perhaps forty men, stood before the single door. They were imperial legionaries, though I did not recognize any of the grim-faced men. They all looked outward, swords drawn.Surrounding them, was the mob.The seething body of humanity was all around them. They totally filled the square; men, women, children. The old and the

Based on the work of Robyn Bee, In 7 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.“Quit torturing the girl, ‘Nina,” the Empress finally cut in. “Put those away.”Theodora considered the young noblewoman for a time, weighing what she saw in her before speaking again.“Although, Antonina is right, my dear. You need to make sex a greater priority.” The young woman opened her mouth to speak, but shut it when the Empress held up a hand.“Hush now, love. Listen for a moment. The world out there might belong to men; but the bedchamber is ours. Take charge of it. You lead him to your bed, instead of following him in. Make a fortress of your sheets, Irene; a place where you are queen.”The young woman’s breath was still quick, and her face still burned. But she listened to the Empress with a focused intensity.“Find what makes your body shiver,” Theodora continued. “What drenches your lips and what makes you want to scream in pleasure. Making love is sport of two. Insist on your pleasure as much as his own and make your bodies sing. Then, when he is drained and warm and contentedly nestled in the pillow of your chest; that is when you start making suggestions.”“It's almost too easy,” Antonina said, pulling the neckline of her dress back up to cover herself. “Once you know the trick of it. Get him used to following you between the sheets, and pretty soon he’ll follow you in everything else.”Theodora’s eyes sparkled, leaning towards the young woman.“Be gentle at first; as if whatever you say is just a passing thought. Don’t press, but bring up the next time you lay together; and then do it again. If he’s content, he’ll start to listen despite himself. Your conversations will become longer, deeper; and that’s when you’ll know you have him.”Lady Irene’s eyes were still a bit wild along the edges, though the flush had started to leech from her face.“I don’t,” She let out a ragged breath, shaking her head and pulling herself together. After another exhalation, she spoke again. "I’m not like you. I don’t know how.”The Empress’ smile was gentle. She nodded towards the woman’s buttoned up frame. “With that, my dear. Your mind is sharp, but it is your body that you must use. That will change in time, if you use it well. But for now, while you are young, it is your greatest weapon.”The young noblewoman nodded uncertainly, gazing down at the many layered dress she wore.“It is God’s gift to you,” the Empress continued. “Use it, take pride and revel in it. For it is yours, sweet Irene, and it is as beautiful as the soul it shelters.”“And remember what I said about your tits,” Antonina added.Theodora laughed softly, leaning back into her divan. I saw her gaze drift to the tightly bound swell of the other woman’s chest. She sighed. “They really are spectacular, aren’t they?”Irene was gazing down at herself, her fingers bunched in her lap. She was silent for a moment, then I saw her loosen.“I always have been rather proud of them,” she said, hesitantly. “They’re heavy but, are they really that nice?”“That’s right” Antonina said. “Be proud of what you’ve got. Now, loosen up that dress and push them out a bit. I want take a better look at them.”And then, slowly, as if she couldn’t really believe what she was doing, Irene reached for the collar of her dress.I shook my head, turning my back to them to face the door. This place, there was always something new. I smiled, hearing footsteps. It was Helena coming to stand beside me. She leaned against the wall.“She’s got them out now,” Helena said. “Are you sure that you don’t want to look?”“Are they as nice as we thought?”Helena laughed. “They’re even better.”I let out a long, regretful sigh, but did not turn around.“Ever the proper soldier,” she teased. “Although, I can’t help but remember how you didn’t hesitate to stare at me this morning.”I winced. “Yeah, well, that was different.”“Oh, was it now?” Her cypress eyes alight. “I’m excited for this explanation.”I reddened. “You’re going to do so many push-ups tomorrow morning.”I expected her to laugh again, but she didn’t. I glanced over, and found a strange expression on her face.“Tell me something,” she said. “If you were the Lady Irene’s husband, would you listen to her?”I considered her question, answering after a few moments. “I would.”“Why?”I blinked, resisting the urge to look back towards the young-woman. “Because she looks smart and serious. I’m sure that her suggestions are at least worth considering.”“But look at her,” Helena said. “She’s got her tits out in a room full of strangers.”I bristled, strangely defensive. “Yes, but that doesn’t change anything.”“Of course, it does. It's not proper. It's not her place.”“What?” I said, leaning back. “Helena, what the hell is going on?”“It's not her place,” she repeated.“You sound like my mother.”“I’m sure you’ve had the same thought.”I was angry now. “What the fuck is this? The girl isn’t stupid just because she’s got her breasts out. It doesn’t make her worse or somehow unworthy. Why the hell are you saying this horseshit?”“Because it's what you believe.”“Not anymore,” I growled.She smiled, and I was suddenly taken a back. I was still angry, but Helena had neatly slipped out from its focus. It whirled about me instead; directionless.“Really?” She asked.“Yes!” And as I said the word, I realized that it was completely and utterly true.“Good,” she said, her smile satisfied. “I’m happy to hear that.”“Why?” I demanded. “What the hell was this all about, Helena?”“Nothing,” she said, grinning into my narrow-eyed stare. “But how about I buy you a flagon of wine to make up for it?”I stared at her for a few more moments, trying to hold on to some piece of my rightfully felt indignation. I was, however, powerless beneath that smile.“Fine,” I said. My own lips quirked upward. “But its two flagons.”“Deal,” she said. “Then, it's a date.”Helena’s smile didn’t fade. She shifted towards me, a little pink staining her cheeks. My stomach burst into a thousand little embers. Here she was, beside me, closer than we’ve been all day.Then, like the sky seen through a leafy canopy, I saw the light dance in her cypress eyes. She leaned even closer; close enough that I was filled with the scent of her hair.“And Leo,” she breathed; the sound deep and full of hidden promise. “When I pull my tits out, you’d better not look away.”I shivered; staring at her, my eyes wide and mouth agape. I was unable to hear anything, save the thundering of my heart.She laughed, that full, toe-tingling sound. She slid away, but not far; her eyes so merry. I let out my own breath, smiling and shaking my head at the wonder of this place. Because in that moment, Helena was beside me. And with the sound of these four laughing, gasping, joyful women all around me; I couldn’t hear my mother’s voice at all.The Empress makes a demand.“This was a disaster,” the Emperor said. “This entire week; ever since those fools killed themselves on the track.”He sunk down into a thickly padded divan, rubbing at his eyes. The Empress lowered herself beside her husband, running her fingers through the hair on the back of his head.“It’s not been that bad, love,” she said. “The race was only two days ago.”“Christ,” Justinian groaned. “It’s felt like a lifetime.”We were in the Empress’ sumptuously decorated sitting room; the imperial couple having retreated here after a midday session within the senate hall. I was at my post by the door, fighting to keep myself straight.It had been a long day.“And Hypatius,” the Emperor said. “You heard him today; like a wolf smelling blood. He spoke well, the bastard. I saw too many of those other old fools nodding their heads along with him.”“All he’s got is fear,” Theodora said, still stroking her husband’s hair. “That will pass in time.”“Perhaps, but we may not have that time.” The Emperor let out a long breath. “Maybe we are pushing things too hard, Theodora. Or going too fast. We’ve changed much in our five years on the throne.”“Change that has been for the better,” the Empress said. “You remember how it was.”“Aye, well, traditions die hard.”Theodora snorted. “'Tradition’ is just another word for fear. Our predecessors were weak. The Blues, the Greens, and those fools on the senate have long held the wealth and power. Of course, they don’t want anything to change.”“Don’t forget the men of the Empire,” Justinian said, bitterly. “Whom we are apparently oppressing more than our slaves.”“I refuse to believe a law against a father selling his daughter into bondage qualifies as oppression,” the Empress snapped. “Neither is the condemnation of rapists.”“How is it that Hypatius said it? 'Men are being run over roughshod by their wives, in full defiance of our traditions and those of Christ himself?”“And those of 'God’ Himself,” Theodora corrected. She pressed her lips together. “As if women aren’t themselves creatures of God. How is the greater sin not keeping womankind in this soft sort of slavery?”Justinian let out another long breath, sagging against the divan. “I know that we’re right in this, Theodora. I’m just tired. And with yesterday’s botched executions,”"I know,” the Empress said.She relaxed her body. She pulled her husband down into her lap, trailing her fingers over his jaw. “We don’t meet the Sassanid delegates for another hour. Rest, my love.”Justinian protested, but had soon loosened into relaxation beneath his wife’s gentle hands and murmuring voice.I turned my attention from them, staring out through a nearby open balcony. The sky was bright, the sun just beginning to descend from its zenith. I couldn’t hear any noise from the city. That was strange, as things had not exactly been quiet.It had taken them a day to finish setting up the gallows. And since then, the Emperor had put them to work. A dozen and more men; both Blues and Greens had been hanged without much ceremony or fanfare. That had been yesterday, the day having proceeded smoothly from the morning onward.This morning, however, Helena and I had returned from our training to find the Empress already waiting to leave. Two men had escaped justice, she’d told us on the way to the senate chambers. A Blue and Green. They were holed up in a church, surrounded by some of Belisarius’ men.And therein lay the problem.As long as they stayed within the church’s walls, they were safe from any sort of secular interference. And the longer they stayed there, an obvious spectacle of the Emperor’s oppressive might; the more a people already on edge would seethe.The Empress’ voice pulled me from my reverie. She motioned me over to where Helena had already joined her by her divan.Both women smiled when I approached; the Empress, bare-footed in a thin dress, and my shield mate in her stratiotai kit.“Leontius,” the Empress spoke softly. Her fingers still stroked her husband’s hair and face; the man’s breathing having deepened into sleep. “You look tired.”I forced a little stiffness into my spine, matching her tone of voice. “I am fit for duty, Augusta. ”She smiled. “As you always are, my soldier. Though, neither of you have had much rest, have you?”I exchanged a glance with Helena. The Empress continued. “You train every morning, and attend me all day until I go to sleep. Even then, there are nights when one of you guards my door. You need rest.”Neither of us spoke, sensing that the Empress had more to say. She was looking down at her husband now, her smile, a little sad.“Like my husband. He works so hard. There is always something that needs his attention. I’m happy he has these moments, but it is not enough. And so, I am imposing a night of relaxation. On all of us.”“Highness?” Helena said.“Once the day’s duties are done, I will retire to my husband’s chambers. There, I will spend the hours making love to him and ensure that, for this night at least, he thinks no more of our Empire.”My face reddened. I averted my eyes, but not before I saw her smile tick a notch higher. “Perhaps I’ll even invite 'Nina and Beli; and one or two others.”I squirmed. Luckily, Helena was there to speak. “They are trustworthy, but even so, highness. We should,”"Not concern yourself with it,” Theodora interrupted firmly. “The Excubitors are fully capable of guarding us on their own. Go down into the city, spend some of your wages. With the way things are going, it may be a while before you have another chance.”“Augusta,” I started.“No, Leontius, enough. I will hear none of it.”I shut my mouth and bowed. She was my Empress, and it was my place to obey; even if I didn’t agree with the command.Helena and I returned to our posts; she at her desk and I by the door. A night off, the thought electrified me. And as the Emperor woke up, and we started moving through the palace, I thought about all that I could do. Where might I go? Who might I see? I had a few friends in the city, a few places I’d found to relax.We went first to his chambers; allowing him to change into something more regal before his meeting with the Persians. Theodora went with him, Helena and I, stationed outside the door.As I pulled the door shut, I became sure of one thing; no matter how I spent these next few, precious hours of freedom, I wanted to spend them with Helena.She was beside me in the suddenly quiet hallway, already looking up towards my face. I met her gaze, my heart starting to pound.“Tonight, would you,” I coughed. Why in God’s name was my throat so dry? I tried again. "Would you like to go down into the city? With me, I mean,” I added hurriedly. “Together.”Heat crawled up my neck. Why the hell had I said it like that? What was wrong with me? I’d ruined it. No way she would ever,”“Sure,” she said.A faint pink rose to color her cheeks. She smiled, reaching one hand up to brush at a lock of hair. I saw the warmth in her eyes, and I suddenly felt like I would float away.“Let’s go into the city,” Helena said. “Together.”She said I stink.Evening came, and I was in my room.I’d stripped out of my armor, and the tunica beneath. I stood bare chested, in nothing but my loincloth in sandals; trying to decide which of my two remaining tunica’s was the cleanest.Knuckles rapped on my door, and my stomach lurched.“One second,” I called. “I’m not ready.”I threw on my darker tunica, deciding that the small wine stain on it couldn't really be seen, and pulled open the door.Helena was there, her lip quirked into a small smile. She was naked, save for the training wraps she’d worn that morning.“I, ahem, guess you’re not ready either,” I said.The scent of her filled the hallway, making my heart quicken. Helena shook her head, a smile still pulling at the corners of her mouth.“I suspected as much,” she said. “We sweated together this morning. Were you really not planning on taking a bath first?”I blinked. “I, uh, wanted to get there fast.”“Why? We have all night.”I didn’t have an answer to that, staring at her stupidly until she laughed. She hooked an arm around mine, pulling me into the hallway.“Come on,” she said. “You stink.”She looked me up and down, peering back into my room. “And bring the white tunica instead. It looks better on you.”We were stepping through into the Empress’ bath chamber before I could really wrap my head around what was happening.The room was empty; though the tiled pool had already been filled with steaming water. Great clouds of humidity billowed through the room, moisture quickly beading onto our skin.Helena and I had carried our clothes bundled within our arms, we left them and our sandals in a sheltered wooden cubby. We were in nothing but our training wraps now, and I hesitated to follow Helena as she drifted towards the water.What the hell was I supposed to do? Bathe with her?My heart was pounding now, heat rising through me. Is that why she had brought me here? No. Surely not. That wasn’t possible. There had to be some other reason why,“Leo,” Helena said.My gaze snapped back to her. She was standing within the clouds of steam, facing me from only a handful of paces away.“Don’t look away.”She reached a hand up to the cloth that bound her chest. Her fingers pulled on a single loop, slipping it free from the rest of the cloth. My heart beat against my chest, like a smith at his anvil, sending sparks of heat flashing through me.I watched her, following the slow unraveling of the cloth around her chest.Helena’s eyes, deeper than ever before, never left my face. She shifted her body beneath the unwinding loops of cloth; drawing me further in. I glimpsed her nakedness through the tumbling lengths of fabric. And with every heartbeat, with every one of her breaths, more of her was revealed to me.I saw the plunging valley between her breasts; deep enough lose myself in. The flesh rising above it was smooth, stained pink by heat and moisture. It curved gently outward, blooming into the full shape of her chest.A nipple peeked out at me through the still falling curtain; shockingly pink next to the warm bronze of her flesh.“Well?” Helena asked. She flexed the naked muscles of her stomach, shifting to let the last of the cloth tumble away.The motion swung her naked breasts from side to side. Air was lodged in my throat, stopping whatever answer I might e

Based on the work of Robyn Bee, In 7 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.“Quit torturing the girl, ‘Nina,” the Empress finally cut in. “Put those away.”Theodora considered the young noblewoman for a time, weighing what she saw in her before speaking again.“Although, Antonina is right, my dear. You need to make sex a greater priority.” The young woman opened her mouth to speak, but shut it when the Empress held up a hand.“Hush now, love. Listen for a moment. The world out there might belong to men; but the bedchamber is ours. Take charge of it. You lead him to your bed, instead of following him in. Make a fortress of your sheets, Irene; a place where you are queen.”The young woman’s breath was still quick, and her face still burned. But she listened to the Empress with a focused intensity.“Find what makes your body shiver,” Theodora continued. “What drenches your lips and what makes you want to scream in pleasure. Making love is sport of two. Insist on your pleasure as much as his own and make your bodies sing. Then, when he is drained and warm and contentedly nestled in the pillow of your chest; that is when you start making suggestions.”“It's almost too easy,” Antonina said, pulling the neckline of her dress back up to cover herself. “Once you know the trick of it. Get him used to following you between the sheets, and pretty soon he’ll follow you in everything else.”Theodora’s eyes sparkled, leaning towards the young woman.“Be gentle at first; as if whatever you say is just a passing thought. Don’t press, but bring up the next time you lay together; and then do it again. If he’s content, he’ll start to listen despite himself. Your conversations will become longer, deeper; and that’s when you’ll know you have him.”Lady Irene’s eyes were still a bit wild along the edges, though the flush had started to leech from her face.“I don’t,” She let out a ragged breath, shaking her head and pulling herself together. After another exhalation, she spoke again. "I’m not like you. I don’t know how.”The Empress’ smile was gentle. She nodded towards the woman’s buttoned up frame. “With that, my dear. Your mind is sharp, but it is your body that you must use. That will change in time, if you use it well. But for now, while you are young, it is your greatest weapon.”The young noblewoman nodded uncertainly, gazing down at the many layered dress she wore.“It is God’s gift to you,” the Empress continued. “Use it, take pride and revel in it. For it is yours, sweet Irene, and it is as beautiful as the soul it shelters.”“And remember what I said about your tits,” Antonina added.Theodora laughed softly, leaning back into her divan. I saw her gaze drift to the tightly bound swell of the other woman’s chest. She sighed. “They really are spectacular, aren’t they?”Irene was gazing down at herself, her fingers bunched in her lap. She was silent for a moment, then I saw her loosen.“I always have been rather proud of them,” she said, hesitantly. “They’re heavy but, are they really that nice?”“That’s right” Antonina said. “Be proud of what you’ve got. Now, loosen up that dress and push them out a bit. I want take a better look at them.”And then, slowly, as if she couldn’t really believe what she was doing, Irene reached for the collar of her dress.I shook my head, turning my back to them to face the door. This place, there was always something new. I smiled, hearing footsteps. It was Helena coming to stand beside me. She leaned against the wall.“She’s got them out now,” Helena said. “Are you sure that you don’t want to look?”“Are they as nice as we thought?”Helena laughed. “They’re even better.”I let out a long, regretful sigh, but did not turn around.“Ever the proper soldier,” she teased. “Although, I can’t help but remember how you didn’t hesitate to stare at me this morning.”I winced. “Yeah, well, that was different.”“Oh, was it now?” Her cypress eyes alight. “I’m excited for this explanation.”I reddened. “You’re going to do so many push-ups tomorrow morning.”I expected her to laugh again, but she didn’t. I glanced over, and found a strange expression on her face.“Tell me something,” she said. “If you were the Lady Irene’s husband, would you listen to her?”I considered her question, answering after a few moments. “I would.”“Why?”I blinked, resisting the urge to look back towards the young-woman. “Because she looks smart and serious. I’m sure that her suggestions are at least worth considering.”“But look at her,” Helena said. “She’s got her tits out in a room full of strangers.”I bristled, strangely defensive. “Yes, but that doesn’t change anything.”“Of course, it does. It's not proper. It's not her place.”“What?” I said, leaning back. “Helena, what the hell is going on?”“It's not her place,” she repeated.“You sound like my mother.”“I’m sure you’ve had the same thought.”I was angry now. “What the fuck is this? The girl isn’t stupid just because she’s got her breasts out. It doesn’t make her worse or somehow unworthy. Why the hell are you saying this horseshit?”“Because it's what you believe.”“Not anymore,” I growled.She smiled, and I was suddenly taken a back. I was still angry, but Helena had neatly slipped out from its focus. It whirled about me instead; directionless.“Really?” She asked.“Yes!” And as I said the word, I realized that it was completely and utterly true.“Good,” she said, her smile satisfied. “I’m happy to hear that.”“Why?” I demanded. “What the hell was this all about, Helena?”“Nothing,” she said, grinning into my narrow-eyed stare. “But how about I buy you a flagon of wine to make up for it?”I stared at her for a few more moments, trying to hold on to some piece of my rightfully felt indignation. I was, however, powerless beneath that smile.“Fine,” I said. My own lips quirked upward. “But its two flagons.”“Deal,” she said. “Then, it's a date.”Helena’s smile didn’t fade. She shifted towards me, a little pink staining her cheeks. My stomach burst into a thousand little embers. Here she was, beside me, closer than we’ve been all day.Then, like the sky seen through a leafy canopy, I saw the light dance in her cypress eyes. She leaned even closer; close enough that I was filled with the scent of her hair.“And Leo,” she breathed; the sound deep and full of hidden promise. “When I pull my tits out, you’d better not look away.”I shivered; staring at her, my eyes wide and mouth agape. I was unable to hear anything, save the thundering of my heart.She laughed, that full, toe-tingling sound. She slid away, but not far; her eyes so merry. I let out my own breath, smiling and shaking my head at the wonder of this place. Because in that moment, Helena was beside me. And with the sound of these four laughing, gasping, joyful women all around me; I couldn’t hear my mother’s voice at all.The Empress makes a demand.“This was a disaster,” the Emperor said. “This entire week; ever since those fools killed themselves on the track.”He sunk down into a thickly padded divan, rubbing at his eyes. The Empress lowered herself beside her husband, running her fingers through the hair on the back of his head.“It’s not been that bad, love,” she said. “The race was only two days ago.”“Christ,” Justinian groaned. “It’s felt like a lifetime.”We were in the Empress’ sumptuously decorated sitting room; the imperial couple having retreated here after a midday session within the senate hall. I was at my post by the door, fighting to keep myself straight.It had been a long day.“And Hypatius,” the Emperor said. “You heard him today; like a wolf smelling blood. He spoke well, the bastard. I saw too many of those other old fools nodding their heads along with him.”“All he’s got is fear,” Theodora said, still stroking her husband’s hair. “That will pass in time.”“Perhaps, but we may not have that time.” The Emperor let out a long breath. “Maybe we are pushing things too hard, Theodora. Or going too fast. We’ve changed much in our five years on the throne.”“Change that has been for the better,” the Empress said. “You remember how it was.”“Aye, well, traditions die hard.”Theodora snorted. “'Tradition’ is just another word for fear. Our predecessors were weak. The Blues, the Greens, and those fools on the senate have long held the wealth and power. Of course, they don’t want anything to change.”“Don’t forget the men of the Empire,” Justinian said, bitterly. “Whom we are apparently oppressing more than our slaves.”“I refuse to believe a law against a father selling his daughter into bondage qualifies as oppression,” the Empress snapped. “Neither is the condemnation of rapists.”“How is it that Hypatius said it? 'Men are being run over roughshod by their wives, in full defiance of our traditions and those of Christ himself?”“And those of 'God’ Himself,” Theodora corrected. She pressed her lips together. “As if women aren’t themselves creatures of God. How is the greater sin not keeping womankind in this soft sort of slavery?”Justinian let out another long breath, sagging against the divan. “I know that we’re right in this, Theodora. I’m just tired. And with yesterday’s botched executions,”"I know,” the Empress said.She relaxed her body. She pulled her husband down into her lap, trailing her fingers over his jaw. “We don’t meet the Sassanid delegates for another hour. Rest, my love.”Justinian protested, but had soon loosened into relaxation beneath his wife’s gentle hands and murmuring voice.I turned my attention from them, staring out through a nearby open balcony. The sky was bright, the sun just beginning to descend from its zenith. I couldn’t hear any noise from the city. That was strange, as things had not exactly been quiet.It had taken them a day to finish setting up the gallows. And since then, the Emperor had put them to work. A dozen and more men; both Blues and Greens had been hanged without much ceremony or fanfare. That had been yesterday, the day having proceeded smoothly from the morning onward.This morning, however, Helena and I had returned from our training to find the Empress already waiting to leave. Two men had escaped justice, she’d told us on the way to the senate chambers. A Blue and Green. They were holed up in a church, surrounded by some of Belisarius’ men.And therein lay the problem.As long as they stayed within the church’s walls, they were safe from any sort of secular interference. And the longer they stayed there, an obvious spectacle of the Emperor’s oppressive might; the more a people already on edge would seethe.The Empress’ voice pulled me from my reverie. She motioned me over to where Helena had already joined her by her divan.Both women smiled when I approached; the Empress, bare-footed in a thin dress, and my shield mate in her stratiotai kit.“Leontius,” the Empress spoke softly. Her fingers still stroked her husband’s hair and face; the man’s breathing having deepened into sleep. “You look tired.”I forced a little stiffness into my spine, matching her tone of voice. “I am fit for duty, Augusta. ”She smiled. “As you always are, my soldier. Though, neither of you have had much rest, have you?”I exchanged a glance with Helena. The Empress continued. “You train every morning, and attend me all day until I go to sleep. Even then, there are nights when one of you guards my door. You need rest.”Neither of us spoke, sensing that the Empress had more to say. She was looking down at her husband now, her smile, a little sad.“Like my husband. He works so hard. There is always something that needs his attention. I’m happy he has these moments, but it is not enough. And so, I am imposing a night of relaxation. On all of us.”“Highness?” Helena said.“Once the day’s duties are done, I will retire to my husband’s chambers. There, I will spend the hours making love to him and ensure that, for this night at least, he thinks no more of our Empire.”My face reddened. I averted my eyes, but not before I saw her smile tick a notch higher. “Perhaps I’ll even invite 'Nina and Beli; and one or two others.”I squirmed. Luckily, Helena was there to speak. “They are trustworthy, but even so, highness. We should,”"Not concern yourself with it,” Theodora interrupted firmly. “The Excubitors are fully capable of guarding us on their own. Go down into the city, spend some of your wages. With the way things are going, it may be a while before you have another chance.”“Augusta,” I started.“No, Leontius, enough. I will hear none of it.”I shut my mouth and bowed. She was my Empress, and it was my place to obey; even if I didn’t agree with the command.Helena and I returned to our posts; she at her desk and I by the door. A night off, the thought electrified me. And as the Emperor woke up, and we started moving through the palace, I thought about all that I could do. Where might I go? Who might I see? I had a few friends in the city, a few places I’d found to relax.We went first to his chambers; allowing him to change into something more regal before his meeting with the Persians. Theodora went with him, Helena and I, stationed outside the door.As I pulled the door shut, I became sure of one thing; no matter how I spent these next few, precious hours of freedom, I wanted to spend them with Helena.She was beside me in the suddenly quiet hallway, already looking up towards my face. I met her gaze, my heart starting to pound.“Tonight, would you,” I coughed. Why in God’s name was my throat so dry? I tried again. "Would you like to go down into the city? With me, I mean,” I added hurriedly. “Together.”Heat crawled up my neck. Why the hell had I said it like that? What was wrong with me? I’d ruined it. No way she would ever,”“Sure,” she said.A faint pink rose to color her cheeks. She smiled, reaching one hand up to brush at a lock of hair. I saw the warmth in her eyes, and I suddenly felt like I would float away.“Let’s go into the city,” Helena said. “Together.”She said I stink.Evening came, and I was in my room.I’d stripped out of my armor, and the tunica beneath. I stood bare chested, in nothing but my loincloth in sandals; trying to decide which of my two remaining tunica’s was the cleanest.Knuckles rapped on my door, and my stomach lurched.“One second,” I called. “I’m not ready.”I threw on my darker tunica, deciding that the small wine stain on it couldn't really be seen, and pulled open the door.Helena was there, her lip quirked into a small smile. She was naked, save for the training wraps she’d worn that morning.“I, ahem, guess you’re not ready either,” I said.The scent of her filled the hallway, making my heart quicken. Helena shook her head, a smile still pulling at the corners of her mouth.“I suspected as much,” she said. “We sweated together this morning. Were you really not planning on taking a bath first?”I blinked. “I, uh, wanted to get there fast.”“Why? We have all night.”I didn’t have an answer to that, staring at her stupidly until she laughed. She hooked an arm around mine, pulling me into the hallway.“Come on,” she said. “You stink.”She looked me up and down, peering back into my room. “And bring the white tunica instead. It looks better on you.”We were stepping through into the Empress’ bath chamber before I could really wrap my head around what was happening.The room was empty; though the tiled pool had already been filled with steaming water. Great clouds of humidity billowed through the room, moisture quickly beading onto our skin.Helena and I had carried our clothes bundled within our arms, we left them and our sandals in a sheltered wooden cubby. We were in nothing but our training wraps now, and I hesitated to follow Helena as she drifted towards the water.What the hell was I supposed to do? Bathe with her?My heart was pounding now, heat rising through me. Is that why she had brought me here? No. Surely not. That wasn’t possible. There had to be some other reason why,“Leo,” Helena said.My gaze snapped back to her. She was standing within the clouds of steam, facing me from only a handful of paces away.“Don’t look away.”She reached a hand up to the cloth that bound her chest. Her fingers pulled on a single loop, slipping it free from the rest of the cloth. My heart beat against my chest, like a smith at his anvil, sending sparks of heat flashing through me.I watched her, following the slow unraveling of the cloth around her chest.Helena’s eyes, deeper than ever before, never left my face. She shifted her body beneath the unwinding loops of cloth; drawing me further in. I glimpsed her nakedness through the tumbling lengths of fabric. And with every heartbeat, with every one of her breaths, more of her was revealed to me.I saw the plunging valley between her breasts; deep enough lose myself in. The flesh rising above it was smooth, stained pink by heat and moisture. It curved gently outward, blooming into the full shape of her chest.A nipple peeked out at me through the still falling curtain; shockingly pink next to the warm bronze of her flesh.“Well?” Helena asked. She flexed the naked muscles of her stomach, shifting to let the last of the cloth tumble away.The motion swung her naked breasts from side to side. Air was lodged in my throat, stopping whatever answer I might e

Based on the work of Robyn Bee, In 7 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.“Quit torturing the girl, ‘Nina,” the Empress finally cut in. “Put those away.”Theodora considered the young noblewoman for a time, weighing what she saw in her before speaking again.“Although, Antonina is right, my dear. You need to make sex a greater priority.” The young woman opened her mouth to speak, but shut it when the Empress held up a hand.“Hush now, love. Listen for a moment. The world out there might belong to men; but the bedchamber is ours. Take charge of it. You lead him to your bed, instead of following him in. Make a fortress of your sheets, Irene; a place where you are queen.”The young woman’s breath was still quick, and her face still burned. But she listened to the Empress with a focused intensity.“Find what makes your body shiver,” Theodora continued. “What drenches your lips and what makes you want to scream in pleasure. Making love is sport of two. Insist on your pleasure as much as his own and make your bodies sing. Then, when he is drained and warm and contentedly nestled in the pillow of your chest; that is when you start making suggestions.”“It's almost too easy,” Antonina said, pulling the neckline of her dress back up to cover herself. “Once you know the trick of it. Get him used to following you between the sheets, and pretty soon he’ll follow you in everything else.”Theodora’s eyes sparkled, leaning towards the young woman.“Be gentle at first; as if whatever you say is just a passing thought. Don’t press, but bring up the next time you lay together; and then do it again. If he’s content, he’ll start to listen despite himself. Your conversations will become longer, deeper; and that’s when you’ll know you have him.”Lady Irene’s eyes were still a bit wild along the edges, though the flush had started to leech from her face.“I don’t,” She let out a ragged breath, shaking her head and pulling herself together. After another exhalation, she spoke again. "I’m not like you. I don’t know how.”The Empress’ smile was gentle. She nodded towards the woman’s buttoned up frame. “With that, my dear. Your mind is sharp, but it is your body that you must use. That will change in time, if you use it well. But for now, while you are young, it is your greatest weapon.”The young noblewoman nodded uncertainly, gazing down at the many layered dress she wore.“It is God’s gift to you,” the Empress continued. “Use it, take pride and revel in it. For it is yours, sweet Irene, and it is as beautiful as the soul it shelters.”“And remember what I said about your tits,” Antonina added.Theodora laughed softly, leaning back into her divan. I saw her gaze drift to the tightly bound swell of the other woman’s chest. She sighed. “They really are spectacular, aren’t they?”Irene was gazing down at herself, her fingers bunched in her lap. She was silent for a moment, then I saw her loosen.“I always have been rather proud of them,” she said, hesitantly. “They’re heavy but, are they really that nice?”“That’s right” Antonina said. “Be proud of what you’ve got. Now, loosen up that dress and push them out a bit. I want take a better look at them.”And then, slowly, as if she couldn’t really believe what she was doing, Irene reached for the collar of her dress.I shook my head, turning my back to them to face the door. This place, there was always something new. I smiled, hearing footsteps. It was Helena coming to stand beside me. She leaned against the wall.“She’s got them out now,” Helena said. “Are you sure that you don’t want to look?”“Are they as nice as we thought?”Helena laughed. “They’re even better.”I let out a long, regretful sigh, but did not turn around.“Ever the proper soldier,” she teased. “Although, I can’t help but remember how you didn’t hesitate to stare at me this morning.”I winced. “Yeah, well, that was different.”“Oh, was it now?” Her cypress eyes alight. “I’m excited for this explanation.”I reddened. “You’re going to do so many push-ups tomorrow morning.”I expected her to laugh again, but she didn’t. I glanced over, and found a strange expression on her face.“Tell me something,” she said. “If you were the Lady Irene’s husband, would you listen to her?”I considered her question, answering after a few moments. “I would.”“Why?”I blinked, resisting the urge to look back towards the young-woman. “Because she looks smart and serious. I’m sure that her suggestions are at least worth considering.”“But look at her,” Helena said. “She’s got her tits out in a room full of strangers.”I bristled, strangely defensive. “Yes, but that doesn’t change anything.”“Of course, it does. It's not proper. It's not her place.”“What?” I said, leaning back. “Helena, what the hell is going on?”“It's not her place,” she repeated.“You sound like my mother.”“I’m sure you’ve had the same thought.”I was angry now. “What the fuck is this? The girl isn’t stupid just because she’s got her breasts out. It doesn’t make her worse or somehow unworthy. Why the hell are you saying this horseshit?”“Because it's what you believe.”“Not anymore,” I growled.She smiled, and I was suddenly taken a back. I was still angry, but Helena had neatly slipped out from its focus. It whirled about me instead; directionless.“Really?” She asked.“Yes!” And as I said the word, I realized that it was completely and utterly true.“Good,” she said, her smile satisfied. “I’m happy to hear that.”“Why?” I demanded. “What the hell was this all about, Helena?”“Nothing,” she said, grinning into my narrow-eyed stare. “But how about I buy you a flagon of wine to make up for it?”I stared at her for a few more moments, trying to hold on to some piece of my rightfully felt indignation. I was, however, powerless beneath that smile.“Fine,” I said. My own lips quirked upward. “But its two flagons.”“Deal,” she said. “Then, it's a date.”Helena’s smile didn’t fade. She shifted towards me, a little pink staining her cheeks. My stomach burst into a thousand little embers. Here she was, beside me, closer than we’ve been all day.Then, like the sky seen through a leafy canopy, I saw the light dance in her cypress eyes. She leaned even closer; close enough that I was filled with the scent of her hair.“And Leo,” she breathed; the sound deep and full of hidden promise. “When I pull my tits out, you’d better not look away.”I shivered; staring at her, my eyes wide and mouth agape. I was unable to hear anything, save the thundering of my heart.She laughed, that full, toe-tingling sound. She slid away, but not far; her eyes so merry. I let out my own breath, smiling and shaking my head at the wonder of this place. Because in that moment, Helena was beside me. And with the sound of these four laughing, gasping, joyful women all around me; I couldn’t hear my mother’s voice at all.The Empress makes a demand.“This was a disaster,” the Emperor said. “This entire week; ever since those fools killed themselves on the track.”He sunk down into a thickly padded divan, rubbing at his eyes. The Empress lowered herself beside her husband, running her fingers through the hair on the back of his head.“It’s not been that bad, love,” she said. “The race was only two days ago.”“Christ,” Justinian groaned. “It’s felt like a lifetime.”We were in the Empress’ sumptuously decorated sitting room; the imperial couple having retreated here after a midday session within the senate hall. I was at my post by the door, fighting to keep myself straight.It had been a long day.“And Hypatius,” the Emperor said. “You heard him today; like a wolf smelling blood. He spoke well, the bastard. I saw too many of those other old fools nodding their heads along with him.”“All he’s got is fear,” Theodora said, still stroking her husband’s hair. “That will pass in time.”“Perhaps, but we may not have that time.” The Emperor let out a long breath. “Maybe we are pushing things too hard, Theodora. Or going too fast. We’ve changed much in our five years on the throne.”“Change that has been for the better,” the Empress said. “You remember how it was.”“Aye, well, traditions die hard.”Theodora snorted. “'Tradition’ is just another word for fear. Our predecessors were weak. The Blues, the Greens, and those fools on the senate have long held the wealth and power. Of course, they don’t want anything to change.”“Don’t forget the men of the Empire,” Justinian said, bitterly. “Whom we are apparently oppressing more than our slaves.”“I refuse to believe a law against a father selling his daughter into bondage qualifies as oppression,” the Empress snapped. “Neither is the condemnation of rapists.”“How is it that Hypatius said it? 'Men are being run over roughshod by their wives, in full defiance of our traditions and those of Christ himself?”“And those of 'God’ Himself,” Theodora corrected. She pressed her lips together. “As if women aren’t themselves creatures of God. How is the greater sin not keeping womankind in this soft sort of slavery?”Justinian let out another long breath, sagging against the divan. “I know that we’re right in this, Theodora. I’m just tired. And with yesterday’s botched executions,”"I know,” the Empress said.She relaxed her body. She pulled her husband down into her lap, trailing her fingers over his jaw. “We don’t meet the Sassanid delegates for another hour. Rest, my love.”Justinian protested, but had soon loosened into relaxation beneath his wife’s gentle hands and murmuring voice.I turned my attention from them, staring out through a nearby open balcony. The sky was bright, the sun just beginning to descend from its zenith. I couldn’t hear any noise from the city. That was strange, as things had not exactly been quiet.It had taken them a day to finish setting up the gallows. And since then, the Emperor had put them to work. A dozen and more men; both Blues and Greens had been hanged without much ceremony or fanfare. That had been yesterday, the day having proceeded smoothly from the morning onward.This morning, however, Helena and I had returned from our training to find the Empress already waiting to leave. Two men had escaped justice, she’d told us on the way to the senate chambers. A Blue and Green. They were holed up in a church, surrounded by some of Belisarius’ men.And therein lay the problem.As long as they stayed within the church’s walls, they were safe from any sort of secular interference. And the longer they stayed there, an obvious spectacle of the Emperor’s oppressive might; the more a people already on edge would seethe.The Empress’ voice pulled me from my reverie. She motioned me over to where Helena had already joined her by her divan.Both women smiled when I approached; the Empress, bare-footed in a thin dress, and my shield mate in her stratiotai kit.“Leontius,” the Empress spoke softly. Her fingers still stroked her husband’s hair and face; the man’s breathing having deepened into sleep. “You look tired.”I forced a little stiffness into my spine, matching her tone of voice. “I am fit for duty, Augusta. ”She smiled. “As you always are, my soldier. Though, neither of you have had much rest, have you?”I exchanged a glance with Helena. The Empress continued. “You train every morning, and attend me all day until I go to sleep. Even then, there are nights when one of you guards my door. You need rest.”Neither of us spoke, sensing that the Empress had more to say. She was looking down at her husband now, her smile, a little sad.“Like my husband. He works so hard. There is always something that needs his attention. I’m happy he has these moments, but it is not enough. And so, I am imposing a night of relaxation. On all of us.”“Highness?” Helena said.“Once the day’s duties are done, I will retire to my husband’s chambers. There, I will spend the hours making love to him and ensure that, for this night at least, he thinks no more of our Empire.”My face reddened. I averted my eyes, but not before I saw her smile tick a notch higher. “Perhaps I’ll even invite 'Nina and Beli; and one or two others.”I squirmed. Luckily, Helena was there to speak. “They are trustworthy, but even so, highness. We should,”"Not concern yourself with it,” Theodora interrupted firmly. “The Excubitors are fully capable of guarding us on their own. Go down into the city, spend some of your wages. With the way things are going, it may be a while before you have another chance.”“Augusta,” I started.“No, Leontius, enough. I will hear none of it.”I shut my mouth and bowed. She was my Empress, and it was my place to obey; even if I didn’t agree with the command.Helena and I returned to our posts; she at her desk and I by the door. A night off, the thought electrified me. And as the Emperor woke up, and we started moving through the palace, I thought about all that I could do. Where might I go? Who might I see? I had a few friends in the city, a few places I’d found to relax.We went first to his chambers; allowing him to change into something more regal before his meeting with the Persians. Theodora went with him, Helena and I, stationed outside the door.As I pulled the door shut, I became sure of one thing; no matter how I spent these next few, precious hours of freedom, I wanted to spend them with Helena.She was beside me in the suddenly quiet hallway, already looking up towards my face. I met her gaze, my heart starting to pound.“Tonight, would you,” I coughed. Why in God’s name was my throat so dry? I tried again. "Would you like to go down into the city? With me, I mean,” I added hurriedly. “Together.”Heat crawled up my neck. Why the hell had I said it like that? What was wrong with me? I’d ruined it. No way she would ever,”“Sure,” she said.A faint pink rose to color her cheeks. She smiled, reaching one hand up to brush at a lock of hair. I saw the warmth in her eyes, and I suddenly felt like I would float away.“Let’s go into the city,” Helena said. “Together.”She said I stink.Evening came, and I was in my room.I’d stripped out of my armor, and the tunica beneath. I stood bare chested, in nothing but my loincloth in sandals; trying to decide which of my two remaining tunica’s was the cleanest.Knuckles rapped on my door, and my stomach lurched.“One second,” I called. “I’m not ready.”I threw on my darker tunica, deciding that the small wine stain on it couldn't really be seen, and pulled open the door.Helena was there, her lip quirked into a small smile. She was naked, save for the training wraps she’d worn that morning.“I, ahem, guess you’re not ready either,” I said.The scent of her filled the hallway, making my heart quicken. Helena shook her head, a smile still pulling at the corners of her mouth.“I suspected as much,” she said. “We sweated together this morning. Were you really not planning on taking a bath first?”I blinked. “I, uh, wanted to get there fast.”“Why? We have all night.”I didn’t have an answer to that, staring at her stupidly until she laughed. She hooked an arm around mine, pulling me into the hallway.“Come on,” she said. “You stink.”She looked me up and down, peering back into my room. “And bring the white tunica instead. It looks better on you.”We were stepping through into the Empress’ bath chamber before I could really wrap my head around what was happening.The room was empty; though the tiled pool had already been filled with steaming water. Great clouds of humidity billowed through the room, moisture quickly beading onto our skin.Helena and I had carried our clothes bundled within our arms, we left them and our sandals in a sheltered wooden cubby. We were in nothing but our training wraps now, and I hesitated to follow Helena as she drifted towards the water.What the hell was I supposed to do? Bathe with her?My heart was pounding now, heat rising through me. Is that why she had brought me here? No. Surely not. That wasn’t possible. There had to be some other reason why,“Leo,” Helena said.My gaze snapped back to her. She was standing within the clouds of steam, facing me from only a handful of paces away.“Don’t look away.”She reached a hand up to the cloth that bound her chest. Her fingers pulled on a single loop, slipping it free from the rest of the cloth. My heart beat against my chest, like a smith at his anvil, sending sparks of heat flashing through me.I watched her, following the slow unraveling of the cloth around her chest.Helena’s eyes, deeper than ever before, never left my face. She shifted her body beneath the unwinding loops of cloth; drawing me further in. I glimpsed her nakedness through the tumbling lengths of fabric. And with every heartbeat, with every one of her breaths, more of her was revealed to me.I saw the plunging valley between her breasts; deep enough lose myself in. The flesh rising above it was smooth, stained pink by heat and moisture. It curved gently outward, blooming into the full shape of her chest.A nipple peeked out at me through the still falling curtain; shockingly pink next to the warm bronze of her flesh.“Well?” Helena asked. She flexed the naked muscles of her stomach, shifting to let the last of the cloth tumble away.The motion swung her naked breasts from side to side. Air was lodged in my throat, stopping whatever answer I might e

News items read by Laura Kennedy include: Newly discovered Pompeii paintings tell of the Trojan War (details) New research in Tonga reveals high population living in low-density city system (details) Virginia dig at historic log house documents Black American life after Civil War (details) 1800-year-old clay seal reveals name of Sassanid city (details)

This newest Bahram comes highly recommended by his father and the religious establishment, anyone else? Not really. Oh and this comes at a time when all the Sassanid neighbors are in turmoil? Excellent. You can find all the images on our website! https://soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia.wordpress.com/2024/04/14/63-bahram-ii/ Here's the link to our Patreon! www.patreon.com/soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia

A Sassanid cataphract in Oxford–fortunately a re-enactor  From the Ionian revolt of the 490s, through the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, the vastAchaemenid Persian Empire was pitted against the pitifully small Greek states on its western periphery, until the astonishing successes of Alexander of Macedon decapitated it, placing him and his companions atop that imperial trunk. But Alexander's death, and the wars of his successors, gave an opportunity for a new power to rise in the far west and march eastward. In time imperial Rome would face new Persian dynasties; and for centuries Rome and Persia warred in the Caucuses and across Mesopotamia, until at the beginning of the seventh century an apocalyptic struggle resulted in the downfall of Persia, and the crippling of Rome, just as a new world-changing force emerged from the Arabian peninsula.  That is a pretty good analogue to a Chat GPT description of a millennia's worth of history, and while some of the facts are correct, nearly all of its interpretations are false. Such is Adrian Goldsworthy's argument in his new book Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry. While there were periods of warfare, they were given the length of the two empires coexistence very sporadic indeed. Moreover, both empires had a respect for each other that they offered no other polity, and the trade and commerce between them–not just in products, but also in cultural mores–was perhaps the most important feature of their relationship. This is Adrian's fourth appearance on the podcast. He was last on the podcast discussing his book Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors; he has also explained how Hadrian's Wall worked, and why Julius Caesar needs to be taken seriously as a historian. For Further Investigation The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars AD 226-363: A Documentary History, edited by Michael H. Dodgeon and Samuel N. C. Lieu, and The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars AD 363-628, edited by Geoffrey Greatrex and Samuel N. C. Lieu–Adrian writes that "both very well done for the later periods with sources and comments" Ammianus Marcellinus, The Late Roman Empire (AD 354-378) Goldsworthy also recommends the Perseus Digital Library for all your classical reading and research needs For why battles aren't as important as you think they are, see my conversation with Cathal Nolan   Conversation with Adrian Goldsworthy Al: [00:00:00] Welcome to Historically Thinking, a podcast about history and how to think about history. For more on this episode, go to historically thinking.org, where you can find links and readings related to today's podcast. Comment on the conversation and sign up for our newsletter, and consider becoming a member of the Historically Thinking Common Room, a community of Patreon supporters. Hello, from the Ionian Revolt of the 490s, through the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, the vast Persian Empire of the Achaemenid Dynasty was pitted against the pitifully small Greek states on its western periphery, until the astonishing successes of Alexander of Macedon decapitated it, placing him and his companions atop that imperial trunk. But Alexander's death, and the wars of his successors, gave an opportunity to a new power to rise in the far west. In time Rome, first as republic and then as empire, would face new Persian dynasties. For centuries, Rome and Persia warred in the Caucasus and across [00:01:00] Mesopotamia, until at the beginning of the 7th century, an apocalyptic struggle resulted in the downfall of Persia, the crippling of Rome, just as a new world changing force emerged from out of the Arabian Peninsula. That is a pretty good analogue to a chat GPT description of a millennia's worth of history. And, like lots of chat GPT descriptions, while some of the facts are correct, nearly all of the interpretations are false. Such would be Adrian Goldsworthy's argument in...

Quarter-Arsed History presents: Khosrow's Better Antioch, an entire copy of the city of Antioch built by the Sassanid king Khosrow I after he destroyed the original. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode we look at some of the physical evidence from this period.  In particular, since we are talking about the sovereign known as Ankan Tenno, we will look at a glass bowl, said to have come from his tomb, which appears to have made its way all the way from Sassanid Persia to Japan between the 5th and 6th centuries CE.  Along the way we'll take a brief look at the route that such an item may have taken to travel across the Eurasian continent all the way to Japan. For more on this episode, check out https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-79 Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 79:  Ankan's Glass Bowl. We are currently in the early part of the 6th century.  Last episode was our New Year's wrapup, but just before that we talked about the reign of Magari no Ōye, aka Ohine, aka Ankan Tennō.   According to the Chronicles, he was the eldest son of Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennō, coming to the throne in 534.  For all of the various Miyake, or Royal Grannaries, that he granted, his reign only lasted about two years, coming to an unfortunate end in the 12th month of 535.  The Chronicles claim that Ohine was 70 years old when he died, which would seem to indicate he was born when his father, Wohodo, was only 13 years of age.  That seems rather young, but not impossibly so. It is said that Ankan Tennō was buried on the hill of Takaya, in the area of Furuichi.  And that is where my personal interest in him and his short reign might end, if not for a glass bowl that caught my eye in the Tokyo National Museum. Specifically, it was the Heiseikan, which is where the Tokyo National Museum hosts special exhibitions, but it also hosts a regular exhibition on Japanese archaeology.  In fact, if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend checking it out.  I mean, let's be honest, the Tokyo National Museum is one of my favorite places to visit when I'm in Tokyo.  I think there is always something new—or at least something old that I find I'm taking a second look at. The Japanese archaeology section of the Heiseikan covers from the earliest stone tools through the Jomon, Yayoi, Kofun, and up to about the Nara period.  They have originals or replicas of many items that we've talked about on the podcast, including the gold seal of King Na of Wa, the Suda Hachiman mirror, and the swords from Eta Funayama and Inariyama kofun, which mention Wakatakiru no Ōkimi, generally thought to be the sovereign known as Yuuryaku Tennō.  They also have one of the large iron tate, or shields, on loan from Isonokami Shrine, and lots of bronze mirrors and various types of haniwa. Amongst this treasure trove of archaeological artifacts, one thing caught my eye from early on.  It is a small, glass bowl, round in shape, impressed throughout with a series of round indentations, almost like a giant golf ball.  Dark brown streaks crisscross the bowl, where it has been broken and put back together at some point in the past.  According to the placard, this Juuyo Bunkazai, or Important Cultural Property, is dated to about the 6th century, was produced somewhere in West Asia, and it is said to have come from the tomb of none other than Ankan Tennō himself. This has always intrigued me.  First and foremost there is the question of provenance—while there are plenty of tombs that have been opened over the years, generally speaking the tombs of the imperial family, especially those identified as belonging to reigning sovereigns, have been off limits to most archaeological investigations.  So how is it that we have artifacts identified with the tomb of Ankan Tennō, if that is the case? The second question, which almost trumps the first, is just how did a glass bowl from west Asia make it all the way to Japan in the 6th century?  Of course, Japan and northeast Asia in general were not strangers to glassmaking—glass beads have a long history both on the Korean peninsula and in the archipelago, including the molds used to make them.  However, it is one thing to melt glass and pour it into molds, similar to working with cast bronze.  These bowls, however, appear to be something different.  They were definitely foreign, and, as we shall see, they had made quite the journey. So let's take a look and see if we can't answer both of these questions, and maybe learn a little bit more about the world of 6th century Japan along the way. To start with, let's look at the provenance of this glass bowl.  Provenance is important—there are numerous stories of famous “finds” that turned out to be fakes, or else items planted by someone who wanted to get their name out there.  Archaeology—and its close cousin, paleontology—can get extremely competitive, and if you don't believe me just look up the Bone Wars of the late 19th century.  Other names that come to mind:  The infamous Piltdown man, the Cardiff Giant, and someone we mentioned in one of our first episodes, Fujimura Shin'ichi, who was accused of salting digs to try to claim human habitation in Japan going back hundreds of thousands of years. This is further complicated by the fact that, in many cases, the situation behind a given find is not necessarily well documented.  There are Edo period examples of Jomon pottery, or haniwa, that were found, but whose actual origins have been lost to time.  Then there are things like the seal of King Na of Wa, which is said to have been discovered by a farmer, devoid of the context that would help to otherwise clear the questions that continue to surround such an object.  On top of this, there are plenty of tombs that have been worn down over the ages—where wind and water have eroded the soil, leaving only the giant stone bones, or perhaps washing burial goods into nearby fields or otherwise displacing them. So what is the story with the tomb of Ankan Tennō, and this glass bowl? To answer this, let's first look at the tomb attributed to Ankan Tennō.  The Nihon Shoki tells us in the 8th century that this tomb was located at Takaya, in the area of Furuichi.  This claim is later repeated by the Engi Shiki in the 10th century.  Theoretically, the compilers of both of these works had some idea of where this was, but in the hundreds of years since then, a lot has happened.  Japan has seen numerous governments, as well as war, famine, natural disaster, and more.  At one point, members of the royal household were selling off calligraphy just to pay for the upkeep of the court, and while the giant kofun no doubt continued to be prominent features for locals in the surrounding areas, the civilian and military governments of the intervening centuries had little to no budget to spare for their upkeep.  Records were lost, as were many details. Towards the end of the Edo period, and into the early Meiji, a resurgence in interest in the royal, or Imperial, family and their ancient mausoleums caused people to investigate the texts and attempt to identify mausoleums for each of the sovereigns, as well as other notable figures, in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.  Given that many of those figures are likely fictional or legendary individuals, one can see how this may be problematic.  And yet, the list that eventually emerged has become the current list of kofun protected by the Imperial Household Agency as imperial mausolea. Based on what we know, today, some of these official associations seem obviously questionable.  Some of them, for instance, are not even keyhole shaped tombs—for instance, some are circular, or round tombs, where the claim is often made that the other parts of the tomb were eroded or washed away.  Still others engender their own controversy, such as who, exactly, is buried in Daisen-ryō, the largest kofun, claimed to be the resting place of Ōsazaki no Mikoto, aka Nintoku Tennō.  Some people, however, claim that it is actually the sovereign Woasatsuma Wakugo, aka Ingyō Tennō, who is buried there, instead.  What is the truth?  Well, without opening up the main tomb, who is to say, and even then it is possible that any evidence may have already been lost to the acidic soils of the archipelago, which are hardly kind to organic matter. By the way, quick divergence, here—if you look up information on Daisen-ryō, aka Daisen Kofun, you may notice that there are drawings of a grave, including a coffin, associated with it.  That might get you thinking, as I did at one point, that Daisen kofun had already been opened, but it turns out that was a grave on the slopes of the square end of the kofun, and not from the main, circular burial mound.  Theoretically this may have been an important consort, or perhaps offspring or close relative of the main individual interred in the kofun, but most likely it is not for the person for whom the giant mound was actually erected.  So, yes, Daisen kofun remains unopened, at least as far as we know. As for the kofun identified for Ankan Tennō, today that is the tomb known as Furuichi Tsukiyama Kofun, aka Takaya Tsukiyama Kofun.  While the connection to Ankan Tennō may be somewhat unclear, the kofun has had its own colorful history, in a way.  Now most of the reports I could find, from about '92 up to 2022, place this kofun, which is a keyhole shaped kofun, in the correct time period—about the early to mid-6th century, matching up nicely with a 534 to 535 date for the reign given to Ankan Tennō.  But what is fascinating is the history around the 15th to 16th centuries.  It was just after the Ounin War, in 1479, when Hatakeyama Yoshihiro decided to build a castle here, placing the honmaru, the main enclosure, around the kofun, apparently incorporating the kofun and its moats into the castle design.  The castle, known as Takaya Castle, would eventually fall to Oda Nobunaga's forces in 1575, and most of the surrounding area was burned down in the fighting, bringing the kofun's life as a castle to an end. Some of the old earthworks still exist, however, and excavations in the area have helped determine the shape of the old castle, though there still have not been any fulsome excavations of the mound that I have found.  This makes sense as the kofun is designated as belonging to a member of the imperial lineage. There are, however, other keyhole shaped kofun from around the early 6th century that are also found in the same area, which also could be considered royal mausolea, and would seem to fit the bill just as well as this particular tomb.  In addition, there are details in the Chronicles, such as the fact that Magari no Ohine, aka Ankan Tennō, was supposedly buried with his wife and his younger sister.  This is, however, contradicted by records like the 10th century Engi Shiki, where two tombs are identified, one for Ankan Tennō and one for his wife, Kasuga no Yamada, so either the Chronicles got it wrong, or there were already problems with tomb identification just two centuries later.  So we still aren't entirely sure that this is Ankan Tennō's tomb. But at least we know that the glass bowl came from a 6th century kingly tomb, even if that tomb was only later identified as belonging to Ankan Tennō, right? Well, not so fast. The provenance on the bowl is a bit more tricky than that.  You see, the bowl itself came to light in 1950, when a private individual in Fuse, Ōsaka invited visiting scholar Ishida Mosaku to take a look.  According to his report at the time, the bowl was in a black lacquered box and wrapped in a special cloth, with a written inscription that indicated that the bowl had been donated to a temple in Furuichi named Sairin-ji. There are documents from the late Edo period indicating that various items were donated to Sairin-ji temple between the 16th to the 18th centuries, including quote-unquote “utensils” said to have been washed out of the tomb believed to be that of Ankan Tennō.  Ishida Mosaku and other scholars immediately connected this glass bowl with one or more of those accounts.  They were encouraged by the fact that there is a similar bowl found in the Shōsōin, an 8th century repository at Tōdai-ji temple, in Nara, which houses numerous artifacts donated on behalf of Shōmu Tennō.  Despite the gulf of time between them—two hundred years between the 6th and 8th centuries—this was explained away in the same way that Han dynasty mirrors, made in about the 3rd century, continued to show up in burials for many hundreds of years afterwards, likewise passed down as familial heirlooms. Still, the method of its discovery, the paucity of direct evidence, and the lack of any direct connection with where it came from leaves us wondering—did this bowl really come from the tomb of Ankan Tennō?  Even moreso, did it come from a 6th century tomb at all?  Could it not have come from some other tomb? We could tie ourselves up in knots around this question, and I would note that if you look carefully at the Tokyo National Museum's own accounting of the object they do mention that it is quote-unquote “possibly” from the tomb of Ankan Tennō. What does seem clear, however, is that its manufacture was not in Japan.  Indeed, however it came to our small group of islands on the northeastern edge of the Eurasian continent, it had quite the journey, because it does appear to be genuinely from the Middle East—specifically from around the time of the Sassanian or Sassanid empire, the first Iranian empire, centered on the area of modern Iran. And it isn't the only one.  First off, of course, there is the 8th century bowl in the Shousoin I just mentioned, but there are also examples of broken glass found on Okinoshima, an island deep in the middle of the strait between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula, which has a long history as a sacred site, mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, and attached to the Munakata shrine in modern Fukuoka.  Both Okinoshima and the Shōsōin—at least as part of the larger Nara cultural area—are on the UNESCO register of World Heritage sites, along with the Mozu-Furuichi kofun group, of which the Takaya Tsukiyama kofun is one.. Okinoshima is a literal treasure trove for archaeologists. However, its location and status have made it difficult to fully explore.  The island is still an active sacred site, and so investigations are balanced with respect for local tradition.  The lone occupant of the island is a Shinto priest, one of about two dozen who rotate spending 10 days out at the island, tending the sacred site.  Women are still not allowed, and for centuries, one day a year they allowed up to 200 men on the island after they had purified themselves in the ocean around the island.  Since then, they have also opened up to researchers, as well as military and media, at least in some instances. The island is apparently littered with offerings.  Investigations have demonstrated that this island has been in use since at least the 4th century.  As a sacred site, guarding the strait between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula, fishermen and sailors of all kinds would make journeys to the island and leave offerings of one kind or another, and many of them are still there: clay vessels, swords, iron ingots, bronze mirrors, and more.  The island's location, which really is in the middle of the straits, and not truly convenient to any of the regular trading routes, means that it has never really been much of a strategic site, just a religious one, and one that had various religious taboos, so it hasn't undergone the centuries of farming and building that have occurred elsewhere. Offerings are scattered in various places, often scattered around or under boulders and large rocks that were perhaps seen as particularly worthy of devotion.  Since researchers have been allowed in, over 80,000 treasures have been found and catalogued.  Among those artifacts that have been brought back is glass, including glass from Sassanid Persia.  Pieces of broken glass bowls, like the one said to have come from Ankan's tomb, as well as what appear to be beads made from broken glass pieces, have been recovered over the years, once more indicating their presence in the trade routes to the mainland, although when, exactly, they came over can be a little more difficult to place. That might be helped by two other glass artifacts, also found in the archaeological exhibit of the Heiseikan in the Tokyo National Museum: a glass bowl and dish discovered at Niizawa Senzuka kofun Number 126, in Kashihara city, in Nara. This burial is believed to date to the latter half of the 5th century, and included an iron sword, numerous gold fittings and jewelry, and even an ancient clothes iron, which at the time looked like a small frying pan, where you could put hot coals or similar items in the pan and use the flat bottom to help iron out wrinkles in cloth.  Alongside all of this were also discovered two glass vessels.  One was a dark, cobalt-blue plate, with a stand and very shallow conical shape.  The other was a round glass bowl with an outwardly flared lip.  Around the smooth sides, the glass has been marked with three rows of circular dots that go all the way around, not dissimilar from the indentations in the Ankan and Shōsōin glass bowls. All of these, again, are believed to have come from Sassanid Persia, modern Iran, and regardless of the provenance of the Ankan bowl, it seems that we have clear evidence that Sassanian glassworks were making their way to Japan.  But how?  How did something like glass—hardly known for being the most robust of materials—make it all the way from Sassanid Persia to Yamato between the 5th and 8th centuries? To start with, let's look at Sassanid Persia and its glass. Sassanid Persia—aka Sassanid or Sassanian Iran—is the name given to the empire that replaced the Parthian empire, and is generally agreed to have been founded sometime in the early 3rd century.  The name “Sassanid” refers to the legendary dynastic founder, Sassan, though the first historical sovereign appears to be Ardeshir I, who helped put the empire on the map. Ardeshir I called his empire “Eran sahr”, and it is often known as an Iranian or Persian empire, based on their ties to Pars and the use of the Middle Persian, or Farsi, language.   For those not already well aware, Farsi is one of several Iranian languages, though over the years many of the various Iranian speaking peoples would often be classified as “Persian” in English literature.  That said, there is quite a diversity of Iranian languages and people who speak them, including Farsi, Pashto, Dari, Tajik, and the ancient Sogdian language, which I'm sure we'll touch on more given their importance in the ancient silk road trade.  Because of the ease with which historical “Iranian” ethnic groups can be conflated with the modern state, I am going to largely stick with the term Persian, here, but just be aware that the two words are often, though not always, interchangeable. The Sassanid dynasty claimed a link to the older Achaemenid dynasty, and over the subsequent five centuries of their rule they extended their borders, dominating the area between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, eastward to much of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan, running right up to the Hindu Kush and the Pamir mountains.  They held sway over much of Central Asia, including the area of Transoxiana.  With that they had access to both the sea routes, south of India and the overland routes through the Tianshan mountains and the northern and southern routes around the great Taklamakan desert – so, basically, any trade passing between Central and East Asia would pass through Sassanid territory. The Persian empire of the Sassanids was pre-Islamic—Islamic Arab armies would not arrive until about the 7th century, eventually bringing an end to the Sassanid dynasty.  Until that point, the Persian empire was largely Zoroastrian, an Iranian religion based around fire temples, restored after the defeat of the Parthians, where eternal flames were kept burning day and night as part of their ritual practice.  The Sassanids inherited a Persian culture in an area that had been dominated by the Parthians, and before that the Hellenistic Seleucids, and their western edge bordered with the Roman empire.  Rome's establishment in the first century BCE coincided with the invention of glassblowing techniques, and by the time of the Sassanid Empire these techniques seem to have been well established in the region. Sassanid glass decorated with patterns of ground, cut, and polished hollow facets—much like what we see in the examples known in the Japanese islands—comes from about the 5th century onward.  Prior to that, the Sassanian taste seems to have been for slightly less extravagant vessels, with straight or slightly rounded walls. Sassanid glass was dispersed in many different directions along their many trade routes across the Eurasian continent, and archaeologists have been able to identify glass from this region not just by its shape, but by the various physical properties based on the formulas and various raw materials used to make the glass. As for the trip to Japan, this was most likely through the overland routes.  And so the glass would have been sold to merchants who would take it up through Transoxiana, through passes between the Pamirs and the Tianshan mountains, and then through a series of oasis towns and city-states until it reached Dunhuang, on the edge of the ethnic Han sphere of influence. For a majority of this route, the glass was likely carried by Sogdians, another Iranian speaking people from the region of Transoxiana.  Often simply lumped in with the rest of the Iranian speaking world as “Persians”, Sogdians had their own cultural identity, and the area of Sogdia is known to have existed since at least the ancient Achaemenid dynasty.  From the 4th to the 8th century, Sogdian traders plied the sands of Central Eurasia, setting up a network of communities along what would come to be known as the Silk Road. It is along this route that the glassware, likely packed in straw or some other protective material, was carried on the backs of horses, camels, and people along a journey of several thousand kilometers, eventually coming to the fractious edge of the ethnic Han sphere.  Whether it was these same Sogdian traders that then made their way to the ocean and upon boats out to the Japanese islands is unknown, but it is not hard imagining crates being transferred from merchant to merchant, east, to the Korean Peninsula, and eventually across the sea. The overland route from Sogdia is one of the more well-known—and well-worn—routes on what we modernly know as the Silk Road, and it's very much worth taking the time here to give a brief history of how this conduit between Western Asia/Europe and Eastern Asia developed over the centuries.  One of the main crossroads of this area is the Tarim Basin, the area that, today, forms much of Western China, with the Tianshan mountains in the north and the Kunlun Mountains, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, to the south.  In between is a large desert, the Taklamakan desert, which may have once been a vast inland sea.  Even by the Han dynasty, a vast saltwater body known as the Puchang Sea existed in its easternmost regions.  Comparable to some of the largest of the Great Lakes, and fed by glacial run-off, the lake eventually dwindled to become the salt-marshes around Lop Nur.  And yet, researchers still find prominent boat burials out in what otherwise seems to be the middle of the desert. Around the Tarim basin were various cultures, often centered on oases at the base of the mountains.  Runoff from melting ice and snow in the mountains meant a regular supply of water, and by following the mountains one could navigate from watering hole to watering hole, creating a natural roadway through the arid lands.  In the middle of the Basin, however, is the great Taklamakan desert, and even during the Han dynasty it was a formidable and almost unpassable wasteland.  One could wander the sands for days or weeks with no water and no indication of direction other than the punishing sun overhead.  It is hardly a nice place and remains largely unpopulated, even today. While there were various cultures and city-states around the oasis towns, the first major power that we know held sway, at least over the northern route, were the Xiongnu.  Based in the area of modern Mongolia, the Xiongnu swept down during the Qin and early Han dynasties, displacing or conquering various people. An early exploration of the Tarim basin and its surroundings was conducted by the Han dynasty diplomat, Zhang Qian.  Zhang Qian secretly entered Xiongnu territory with the goal of reaching the Yuezhi—a nomadic group that had been one of those displaced by the Xiongnu.  The Yuezhi had been kicked out of their lands in the Gansu region and moved all the way to the Ferghana valley, in modern Tajikistan, a part of the region known as Transoxiana.  Although Zhang Qian was captured and spent 10 years in service to the Xiongnu, he never forgot his mission and eventually made his way to the Yuezhi.  By that time, however, the Yuezhi had settled in to their new life, and they weren't looking for revenge. While Zhang Qian's news may have been somewhat disappointing for the Han court, what was perhaps more important was the intelligence he brought back concerning the routes through the Tarim basin, and the various people there, as well as lands beyond.  The Han dynasty continued to assert itself in the area they called the “Western Regions”, and General Ban Chao would eventually be sent to defeat the Xiongnu and loosen their hold in the region, opening up the area all the way to modern Kashgar.  Ban Chao would even send an emissary, Gan Ying, to try to make the journey all the way to the Roman empire, known to the Han court as “Daqin”, using the name of the former Qin dynasty as a sign of respect for what they had heard.  However, Gan Ying only made it as far as the land of Anxi—the name given to Parthia—where he was told that to make it to Rome, or Daqin, would require crossing the ocean on a voyage that could take months or even years.  Hearing this, Gan Ying decided to turn back and report on what he knew. Of course if he actually made it to the Persian Gulf—or even to the Black Sea, as some claim—Gan Ying would have been much closer to Rome than the accounts lead us to believe. It is generally thought that he was being deliberately mislead by Parthian merchants who felt they might be cut out if Rome and the Han Dynasty formed more direct relations.  Silks from East Asia, along with other products, were already a lucrative opportunity for middlemen across the trade routes, and nobody wanted to be cut out of that position if they could help it. That said, the Parthians and, following them the Sassanid Persians, continued to maintain relationships with dynasties at the other end of what we know as the Silk Road, at least when they could.  The Sassanid Persians, when they came to power, were known to the various northern and southern dynasties as Bosi—possibly pronounced something like Puasie, at the time, no doubt their attempt to render the term “Parsi”.  We know of numerous missions in both directions between various dynasties, and Sassanian coins are regularly found the south of modern China. And so we can see that even in the first and second centuries, Eurasia was much more connected than one might otherwise believe.  Goods would travel from oasis town to oasis town, and be sold in markets, where they might just be picked up by another merchant.  Starting in the fourth century, the Sogdian merchants began to really make their own presence known along these trade routes.  They would set up enclaves in various towns, and merchants would travel from Sogdian enclave to Sogdian enclave with letters of recommendation, as well as personal letters for members of the community, setting up their own early postal service.  This allowed the Sogdian traders to coordinate activities and kept them abreast of the latest news.     I'm not sure we have a clear indication how long this trip would take.  Theoretically, one could travel from Kashgar to Xi'an and back in well under a year, if one were properly motivated and provisioned—it is roughly 4,000 kilometers, and travel would have likely been broken up with long stays to rest and refresh at the various towns along the way. I've personally had the opportunity to travel from Kashgar to Turpan, though granted it was in the comfort of an air conditioned bus.  Still, having seen the modern conditions, the trip would be grueling, but not impossible back in the day, and if the profits were lucrative enough, then why not do it—it is not dissimilar to the adventurers from Europe in the 16th century who went out to sea to find their own fortunes.  And so the glass bowl likely made its way through the markets of the Tarim basin, to the markets of various capitals in the Yellow River or Yangzi regions—depending on who was in charge in any given year—and eventually made its way to the Korean peninsula and from there to a ship across the Korean strait. Of course, those ships weren't simply holding a single glass vessel.  Likely they were laden with a wide variety of goods.  Some things, such as fabric, incense, and other more biodegradable products would not be as likely to remain, and even glass breaks and oxidizes, and metal rusts away.  Furthermore, many of the goods had likely been picked over by the time any shipments arrived in the islands, making things such as these glass bowls even more rare and scarce. Still, this bowl, whether it belonged to Ankan or not, tells us a story.  It is the story of a much larger world, well beyond the Japanese archipelago, and one that will be encroaching more and more as we continue to explore this period.  Because it wasn't just physical goods that were being transported along the Silk Road.  The travelers also carried with them news and new ideas.  One of these ideas was a series of teachings that came out of India and arrived in China during the Han dynasty, known as Buddhism.  It would take until the 6th century, but Buddhism would eventually make its way to Japan, the end of the Silk Road. But that is for another episode.  For now, I think we'll close out our story of Ankan and his glass bowl.  I hope you've enjoyed this little diversion, and from here we'll continue on with our narrative as we edge closer and closer to the formal introduction of Buddhism and the era known as the Asuka Period. Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support.  If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.      

Most Americans are vaguely aware of a few rulers of ancient Achaemenid Persia: Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes, whether from the Bible, from historically grounded films like 300, or in the rare case, from reading Herodotus' The Histories. More recently, Iran has loomed large due to its geopolitical significance, and for Americans of a certain age, the Shah Reza Pahlavi and his successor Ayatollah Khomeini loom large as figures who for a time monopolized television screens and front pages of news magazines. But these are drops in a bucket; the history of Persia or Iran, the two being synonymous, spans nearly 3,000 years. The Farsi language in modern Iran is directly descended from Old Persian, the language of Cyrus the Great, the Persian Empire's founder. Directly in the middle of Persia's millennia of history are the Sassanids, who ruled Iran for four centuries after the fall of the Parthians and made appearances in Roman histories, playing an instrumental role in the deaths of Emperors Valerian and Julian. Most Westerners will know the Sassanids only as the name of the last pre-Islamic dynasty of Iran, the last guardians of Zoroastrian Iran, fated to be washed away by history. But according to Michael Bonner's The Last Empire of Iran, they served as a critical prelude to the emergence of Islamic and modern Iran.  In this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib discusses with Bonner the role of religion and ethnicity in Sassanid Iran, how they relate to what came after during the Islamic period, and how they shape Iran's civilization today. Bonner also covers the role of the Sassanids in the “world war” of Late Antiquity between Rome and Persia, as the last great Shah of the Sassanids almost completed the conquest left unfinished by the Achaemenids. Though the Sassanids and their civilization were overthrown by Islam, Razib and Bonner entertain the idea that Islam, as it developed after the Abbassid Caliphate in the 9th century AD, cannot be understood without the key of Zoroastrian Persian influence.  

Alex and Benjamin discuss Persian political theorist and Seljuk Vizier Nizam al-Mulk, a talented administrator who nonetheless left behind quite a mess. We compare him to Michael Psellos (his contemporary). We discuss the Sassanid origins of his political thought. We also go into the deep, intractable problems he had with both women and heretics, making it difficult for the Seljuk Empire to replicate the long-term success of the enormous ancient Persian states.

Gamarjoba! In this episode we talk about two kings of Kartli, Archil and Mihrdat V, and their issues with Rani and Movakan, aka the former Caucasian Albania. Make sure to listen to: Tsar Power Find us on: Website | Patreon | Ko-fi | Amazon | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historysaqartvelogeorgia/support

This book is about the continuing adventures, romances, and fighting of Beat Zug and his Anatolian Shepherd Dog, Leon. Originally, they lived-in modern-day Switzerland where they were somehow cajoled into joining the Roman Army.  After winning many battles and saving Rome from the Goths, Beat is promoted to the rank of Commander of the Eastern Roman army. Although […] The post BEAT AND LEON THE WARRIOR DOG: Into the Sassanid Empire and Beyond- Book 2 In the LEON THE WARRIOR DOG series by CY Sansum appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

This book is about the continuing adventures, romances, and fighting of Beat Zug and his Anatolian Shepherd Dog, Leon. Originally, they lived-in modern-day Switzerland where they were somehow cajoled into joining the Roman Army.  After winning many battles and saving Rome from the Goths, Beat is promoted to the rank of Commander of the Eastern Roman army. Although […] The post BEAT AND LEON THE WARRIOR DOG: Into the Sassanid Empire and Beyond- Book 2 In the LEON THE WARRIOR DOG series by CY Sansum appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

Attila the Hun! Does his name conjure up images of savagery in your mind? Of a bloodthirsty warrior-king who ruthlessly tortured and killed his enemies as he sacked city after city?  An especially barbaric man who stood out for violence in a time known for so much violence? OR - was he a man of his times? Was he no more or less violent than the Romans, whose historians wrote his story? And when they wrote his story, how much was truth and how much was hyperbole and slander? Today we look into 5th century CE Europe, when the Western Roman Empire is falling, when Attila and his Huns are sacking city after city. We try to separate fact from fiction, and get to know the real Attila, not the evil cartoon presented in clickbait articles and videos. The Bad Magic Charity of the month is SEO: Sponsors for Educational Opportunity. SEO's mission is to create a more equitable society by closing the opportunity gap for young people from historically excluded communities. To find out more, go to seo-use.orgWatch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/95AGdmpbw88Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/  Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Nghìn lẻ một đêm là tác phẩm vĩ đại bậc nhất của nền văn học Ả Rập. Tác phẩm khởi đầu với lý do mà truyện này được kể lại, viết ra. Đó là câu chuyện về hai vị vua anh em của đế chế Ba Tư cổ đại SASSANID hùng mạnh một thời (đế chế Ba Tư cổ đại Sassanid tồn tại từ thế kỷ thứ 2 đến thế kỷ thứ 6 khởi nguồn từ Ba Tư (Iran ngày nay) và đã chiếm lĩnh toàn bộ khu vực từ Israel cho đến Pakistan ngày nay) đều bị hai bà vợ các hoàng hậu mà hai người vô cùng yêu thương phản bội. Hai vị vua quyết định ra và thề chỉ trở về khi gặp được người bất hạnh hơn cả mình (bị phản bội đau đớn hơn mình). Họ đã gặp một người đàn bà xinh đẹp (vợ của một tên hung thần to lớn) bắt phải quan hệ với bà ta. Hai vua trở về và vị vua anh, ông vua của đế chế Ba Tư hùng mạnh quyết định bắt tất cả các cô gái trinh phục vụ ông ta một đêm rồi ngay sáng hôm sau đem họ ra pháp trường và giết chết để họ không có cơ hội phản bội mình. Không khí tang tóc đau thương lan ra khắp kinh thành, nhà nhà lo lắng cho số phận con gái họ. Lúc đó xuất hiện vị cứu tinh của nhân dân đó là nàng SÊHÊRAZAT, con gái của tể tướng người được vua ra lệnh thực thi việc tuyển các cô gái trinh và đem đi xử tử. Nàng đã giữ lại mạng sống của mình bằng cách kể cho nhà vua và em gái mình nghe những câu chuyện dân gian vùng Ả Rập_Ba Tư mà cứ khi trời sáng, thời điểm nàng phải bị dẫn ra pháp trường thì là lúc câu chuyện đang đoạn hay nhất. Vua tạm hoãn lệnh hành hình nàng cho đến ngày hôm sau để nghe tiếp câu chuyện, cứ như vậy Một nghìn lẻ một đêm trôi qua. Mời các bạn cùng nghe Nghìn lẻ một đêm tác phẩm vĩ đại bậc nhất của nền văn học Ả Rập!

The Sassanid Empire overcomes the Parthians by storm, and Emperor Elagabalus proves to be an emperor who isn’t that Roman at all. The post Founding the Sassanid Empire & Elagabalus: The Roman Emperor Who Wasn’t Truly Roman? | 221AD 230AD appeared first on TGNR.

The reign of Abu Bakr lasted a little over two years, and he kept Omar close in order to prepare him for the role of caliph. But the leadership of the community Omar inherited came with the burden of waging two simultaneous wars against empires that had bordered the Arabs for as long as they they could remember. We very briefly discussed the Byzantine and Sassanid empires in the previous episode, and today we'll talk about the challenges they posed to the new caliph, and how he responded to them and other dangers to the Umma.

The Rashidun Caliphate's decisive victory at the Battle of Nahavand annihilated the Sassanid military.  The fall of the Sassanid Empire was now assured.  In the aftermath of Nahavand, however, a tragedy would befall the Muslim community.

Name The Surah takes its name Ar-Rum from the second verse in which the words ghulibat-ir-Rum have occurred. Period of Revelation The period of the revelation of this Surah is determined absolutely by the historical event that has been mentioned at the outset. It says: "The Romans have been vanquished in the neighboring land."In those days the Byzantine occupied territories adjacent to Arabia were Jordan, Syria and Palestine, and in these territories the Romans were completely overpowered by the Iranians in 615 A. D. Therefore, it can be said with absolute certainty that this Surah was sent down in the same year, and this was the year in which the migration to Habash took place. Historical Background The prediction made in the initial verses of this Surah is one of the most outstanding evidences of the Quran's being the Word of Allah and the Holy Prophet Muhammad's being a true Messenger of Allah. Let us have a look at the historical background relevant to the verses. Eight years before the Holy Prophet's advent as a Prophet the Byzantine Emperor Maurice was overthrown by Phocus, who captured the throne and became king. Phocus first got the Emperor's five sons executed in front of him, and then got the Emperor also killed and hung their heads in a thoroughfare in Constantinople. A few days after this he had the empress and her three daughters also put to death. The event provided Khusrau Parvez, the Sassanid king of Iran; a good moral excuse to attack Byzantium. For Emperor Maurice had been his benefactor; with his help he had got the throne of Iran. Therefore, he declared that he would avenge his godfather's and his children's murder upon Phocus, the usurper. So, he started war against Byzantium in 603 A. D. and within a few years, putting the Phocus armies to rout in succession, he reached Edessa (modern, Urfa) in Asia Minor, on the one hand, and Aleppo and Antioch in Syria, on the other. When the Byzantine ministers saw that Phocus could not save the country, they sought the African governor's help, who sent his son, Heraclius, to Constantinople with a strong fleet. Phocus was immediately deposed and Heraclius made emperor. He treated Phocus as he had treated Maurice. This happened in 610 A. D., the year the Holy Prophet was appointed to Prophethood. The moral excuse for which Khusrau Parvez had started the war was no more valid after the deposition and death of Phocus. Had the object of his war really been to avenge the murder of his ally on Phocus for his cruelty, he would have come to terms with the new Emperor after the death of Phocus. But he continued the war, and gave it the color of a crusade between Zoroastrianism and Christianity. The sympathies of the Christian sects (i. e. Nestorians and Jacobians, etc.) which had been excommunicated by the Roman ecclesiastical authority and tyrannized for years also went with the Magian (Zoroastrian) invaders, and the Jews also joined hands with them; so much so that the number of the Jews who enlisted in Khusrau's army rose up to 26,000. Heraclius could not stop this storm. The very first news that he received from the East after ascending the throne was that of the Iranian occupation of Antioch. After this Damascus fell in 613 A. D. Then in 614 A.D. the Iranians occupying Jerusalem played havoc with the Christian world. Ninety thousand Christians were massacred and the Holy Sepulcher was desecrated. The Original Cross on which, according to the Christian belief, Jesus had died was seized and carried to Mada'in. The chief priest Zacharia was taken prisoner and all the important churches of the city were destroyed. How puffed up was Khusrau Parvez at this victory can be judged from the letter that he wrote to Heraclius from Jerusalem. He wrote: "From Khusrau, the greatest of all gods, the master of the whole world: To Heraclius, his most wretched and most stupid servant: You say that you have trust in your Lord. why didn't then your Lord save Jerusalem from me?...

Our Story – A Chronological Overview of the Muslim Ummah Prophetic period 575 CE – Sassanid’s reconquer Yemen ending Christian Axumite rule 576 CE – Death of Aminah 591 CE – Pact of Chivalry 595 CE – Muhammad (saw) marries Khadijah bint Khuwaylid 605 CE – Ka’bah rebuilding & arbitration 610 CE – Heraclius crowned ... Read more

This episode talks about the frontier between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Persians. Were they natural rivals who were forced to fight each other? Or were they simply neighbouring factions who desired the spoils of war? Welcome to the AIQ podcast, bringing the world of Ancient History to your ears. No matter if you are a leading academic, or have just found an interest in history, this podcast tries to discuss highly academic topics in a free and easy going way.

A surprisingly informative and educational podcast this week, in which I interview Richard Case, current UK #1 player and winner of the BHGS Challenge 2017 about how he designed and concieved the Sassanid Persian army list he used to win the Challenge with. This podcast accompanies the match reports on Madaxeman.com of the competition, in which I also use a Sassanid list, but with less success...  (Recorded via Skype, so good sound quality throughout as well.) A video version of this podcast exists on Youtube

Name The Surah takes its name Ar-Rum from the second verse in which the words ghulibat-ir-Rum have occurred. Period of Revelation The period of the revelation of this Surah is determined absolutely by the historical event that has been mentioned at the outset. It says: "The Romans have been vanquished in the neighboring land."In those days the Byzantine occupied territories adjacent to Arabia were Jordan, Syria and Palestine, and in these territories the Romans were completely overpowered by the Iranians in 615 A. D. Therefore, it can be said with absolute certainty that this Surah was sent down in the same year, and this was the year in which the migration to Habash took place. Historical Background The prediction made in the initial verses of this Surah is one of the most outstanding evidences of the Quran's being the Word of Allah and the Holy Prophet Muhammad's being a true Messenger of Allah. Let us have a look at the historical background relevant to the verses. Eight years before the Holy Prophet's advent as a Prophet the Byzantine Emperor Maurice was overthrown by Phocus, who captured the throne and became king. Phocus first got the Emperor's five sons executed in front of him, and then got the Emperor also killed and hung their heads in a thoroughfare in Constantinople. A few days after this he had the empress and her three daughters also put to death. The event provided Khusrau Parvez, the Sassanid king of Iran; a good moral excuse to attack Byzantium. For Emperor Maurice had been his benefactor; with his help he had got the throne of Iran. Therefore, he declared that he would avenge his godfather's and his children's murder upon Phocus, the usurper. So, he started war against Byzantium in 603 A. D. and within a few years, putting the Phocus armies to rout in succession, he reached Edessa (modern, Urfa) in Asia Minor, on the one hand, and Aleppo and Antioch in Syria, on the other. When the Byzantine ministers saw that Phocus could not save the country, they sought the African governor's help, who sent his son, Heraclius, to Constantinople with a strong fleet. Phocus was immediately deposed and Heraclius made emperor. He treated Phocus as he had treated Maurice. This happened in 610 A. D., the year the Holy Prophet was appointed to Prophethood. The moral excuse for which Khusrau Parvez had started the war was no more valid after the deposition and death of Phocus. Had the object of his war really been to avenge the murder of his ally on Phocus for his cruelty, he would have come to terms with the new Emperor after the death of Phocus. But he continued the war, and gave it the color of a crusade between Zoroastrianism and Christianity. The sympathies of the Christian sects (i. e. Nestorians and Jacobians, etc.) which had been excommunicated by the Roman ecclesiastical authority and tyrannized for years also went with the Magian (Zoroastrian) invaders, and the Jews also joined hands with them; so much so that the number of the Jews who enlisted in Khusrau's army rose up to 26,000. Heraclius could not stop this storm. The very first news that he received from the East after ascending the throne was that of the Iranian occupation of Antioch. After this Damascus fell in 613 A. D. Then in 614 A.D. the Iranians occupying Jerusalem played havoc with the Christian world. Ninety thousand Christians were massacred and the Holy Sepulcher was desecrated. The Original Cross on which, according to the Christian belief, Jesus had died was seized and carried to Mada'in. The chief priest Zacharia was taken prisoner and all the important churches of the city were destroyed. How puffed up was Khusrau Parvez at this victory can be judged from the letter that he wrote to Heraclius from Jerusalem. He wrote: "From Khusrau, the greatest of all gods, the master of the whole world: To Heraclius, his most wretched and most stupid servant: You say that you have trust in your Lord. why didn't then your Lord save Jerusalem from me?" Within a year after this victory the Iranian armies over-ran Jordan, Palestine and the whole of the Sinai Peninsula, and reached the frontiers of Egypt. In those very days another conflict of a far greater historical consequence was going on in Makkah. The believers in One God, under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace be upon him), were fighting for their existence against the followers of shirk under the command of the chiefs of the Quraish, and the conflict had reached such a stage that in 615 A. D., a substantial number of the Muslims had to leave their homes and take refuge with the Christian kingdom of Habash, which was an ally of the Byzantine Empire. In those days the Sassanid victories against Byzantium were the talk of the town, and the pagans of Makkah were delighted and were taunting the Muslims to the effect: "Look the fire worshipers of Iran are winning victories and the Christian believers in Revelation and Prophethood are being routed everywhere. Likewise, we, the idol worshipers of Arabia, will exterminate you and your religion." These were the conditions when this Surah of the Quran was sent down, and in it a prediction was made, saying:"The Romans have been vanquished in the neighboring land and within a few years after their defeat, they shall be victorious. And it will be the day when the believers will rejoice in the victory granted by Allah." It contained not one but two predictions: First, the Romans shall be victorious; and second, the Muslims also shall win a victory at the same time. Apparently, there was not a remote chance of the fulfillment of the either prediction in the next few years. On the one hand, there were a handful of the Muslims, who were being beaten and tortured in Makkah, and even till eight years after this prediction there appeared no chance of their victory and domination. On the other, the Romans were losing more and more ground every next day. By 619 A. D. the whole of Egypt had passed into Sassanid hands and the Magian armies had reached as far as Tripoli. In Asia Minor they beat and pushed back the Romans to Bosporus, and in 617 A. D. they captured Chalcedon (modern, Kadikoy) just opposite Constantinople. The Emperor sent an envoy to Khusrau, praying that he was ready to have peace on any terms, but he replied, "I shall not give protection to the emperor until he is brought in chains before me and gives up obedience to his crucified god and adopts submission to the fire god." At last, the Emperor became so depressed by defeat that he decided to leave Constantinople and shift to Carthage (modern, Tunis). In short, as the British historian Gibbon says, even seven to eight years after this prediction of the Quran, the conditions were such that no one could even imagine that the Byzantine Empire would ever gain an upper hand over Iran. Not to speak of gaining domination, no one could hope that the Empire, under the circumstances, would even survive. bid`i sinin, and the word bid` in Arabic applies to a number upto ten. Therefore, make the bet for ten years and increase the number of camels to a hundred." So, Hadrat Abu Bakr spoke to Ubayy again and bet a hundred camels for ten years. In 622 A. D. as the Holy Prophet migrated to Madinah, the Emperor Heraclius set off quietly for Trabzon from Constantinople via the Black Sea and started preparations to attack Iran from rear. For this he asked the Church for money, and Pope Sergius lent him the Church collections on interest, in a bid to save Christianity from Zoroastrianism. Heraclius started his counter attack in 623 A. D. from Armenia. Next year, in 624 A. D., he entered Azerbaijan and destroyed Clorumia, the birthplace of Zoroaster, and ravaged the principal fire temple of Iran. Great are the powers of Allah, this was the very year when the Muslims achieved a decisive victory at Badr for the first time against the mushriks. Thus both the predictions made in Surah Rum were fulfilled simultaneously within the stipulated period of ten years. The Byzantine forces continued to press the Iranians hard and in the decisive battle at Nineveh (627 A.D.) they dealt them the hardest blow. They captured the royal residence of Dastagerd, and then pressing forward reached right opposite to Ctesiphon, capital of Iran in those days. In 628 A. D. in an internal revolt, Khusrau Parvez was imprisoned and 18 of his sons were executed in front of him and a few days later he himself died in the prison. This was the year when the peace treaty of Hudaibiya was concluded, which the Quran has termed as "the supreme victory", and in this very year Khusrau's son, Qubad II, gave up all the occupied Roman territories, restored the True Cross and made peace with Byzantium. In 628 A. D., the Emperor himself went to Jerusalem to install the "Holy Cross" in its place, and in the same year the Holy Prophet entered Makkah for the first time after the Hijrah to perform the `Umra-tul-Qada'. After this no one could have any doubt about the truth of the prophecy of the Quran, with the result that most of the Arab polytheists accepted Islam. The heirs of Ubayy bin Khalaf lost their bet and had to give a hundred camels to Hadrat Abu Bakr Siddiq. He took them before the Holy Prophet, who ordered that they be given away in charity, because the bet had been made at a time when gambling had not yet been forbidden by the Shari`ah ; now it was forbidden. Therefore, the bet was allowed to be accepted from the belligerent disbelievers, but instruction given that it should be given away in charity and should not be brought in personal use. Theme and Subject matter The discourse begins with the theme that the Romans have been overcome and the people the world over think that the empire is about to collapse, but the fact is that within a few years the tables will be turned and the vanquished will again become victorious. This introductory theme contains the great truth that man is accustomed to seeing only what is apparent and superficial. That which is behind the apparent and superficial he does not know. When in the petty matters of life, this habit to see only the apparent and superficial can lead man to misunderstandings and miscalculations, and when he is liable to make wrong estimates only due to lack of knowledge about "what will happen tomorrow", how stupendous will be his error if he risks his whole life-activity by placing reliance only upon what is visible and apparent with respect to his worldly life as a whole. In this connection, the Signs of the universe which have been presented as evidence to prove the doctrine of the Hereafter arc precisely the same which support the doctrine of Tauhid. Therefore from verse 28 onward, the discourse turns to the affirmation of Tauhid and the refutation of shirk, and it is stressed that the natural way of life for man is none else but to serve One God exclusively. Shirk is opposed to the nature of the universe as to the nature of man. Therefore, whenever man has adopted this deviation, chaos has resulted. Again here, an allusion has been made to the great chaos that had gripped the world on account of the war between the two major powers of the time, and it has been indicated that this chaos too, is the result of shirk, and all the nations who were ever involved in mischief and chaos in the history of mankind were also mushriks. In conclusion, a parable has been presented to make the people understand that just as dead earth comes to life, all of a sudden, by a shower of rain sent by God and swells with vegetation and plant life, so is the case with the dead humanity. When God sends a shower of His mercy in the form of Revelation and Prophethood, it also gives a new life to mankind and causes it to grow and develop and flourish. Therefore: "If you take full advantage of this opportunity, the barren land of Arabia will bloom by Allah's mercy and the whole advantage will be your. But if you do not take advantage of it, you will harm only your selves. Then no regret will avail and no opportunity will be provided to make amends." Source: Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi - Tafhim al-Qur'an - The Meaning of the Quran

Battle of Qadisiyyah was more devastating for the Persians than the Battle of Yarmouk was for the Romans Their defeat at Qadisiyyah left the Persian capital exposed to Muslim forces However, the Roman capital was hundreds of miles away in Constantinople and very safe from Muslim forces The Romans still had the ability to wage war against the Muslims However, the Persians were now just trying to survive We'll look at the events in Syria after Yarmouk first, and then take a look at Persia after Qadisiyyah

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire. Founded around 226 AD, in Persia, the Sassanian Empire lasted over 400 years as a grand imperial rival to Rome. In modern day Iran, just down the road from the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, there is a picture carved into a rock. It depicts a king, triumphant on horseback, facing two defeated enemies. This is no pair of petty princes, they are Roman Emperors - Philip and Valerian - and the king towering above them is Shapur I of the Sassanian Empire. So complete was his victory that Shapur is reputed to have used Valerian as a footstool when mounting his horse. This super-power traded goods from Constantinople to Beijing, handed regular defeats to the Roman army and only fell to the Islamic conquests of the 7th century. It still influences Persian identity to this day. But what was the culture and the literature of the empire, its structure and organisation? And what was its role in the great geopolitical game played out between the decaying empires in late antiquity?With Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Curator of Iranian and Islamic Coins in the British Museum; James Howard-Johnston, University Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at the University of Oxford.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire. Founded around 226 AD, in Persia, the Sassanian Empire lasted over 400 years as a grand imperial rival to Rome. In modern day Iran, just down the road from the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, there is a picture carved into a rock. It depicts a king, triumphant on horseback, facing two defeated enemies. This is no pair of petty princes, they are Roman Emperors - Philip and Valerian - and the king towering above them is Shapur I of the Sassanian Empire. So complete was his victory that Shapur is reputed to have used Valerian as a footstool when mounting his horse. This super-power traded goods from Constantinople to Beijing, handed regular defeats to the Roman army and only fell to the Islamic conquests of the 7th century. It still influences Persian identity to this day. But what was the culture and the literature of the empire, its structure and organisation? And what was its role in the great geopolitical game played out between the decaying empires in late antiquity?With Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Curator of Iranian and Islamic Coins in the British Museum; James Howard-Johnston, University Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at the University of Oxford.

The Sword of Allah refers to Khalid ibn al-Walid, the prophet Mohammad's top general.  Khalid commanded over 100 battles and never lost, making him the most undefeated general in history.  He usually fought in the front lines either as a cavalry commander or as a champion dueler.  This is the first of a two-part episode.  This part will cover Khalid's conquests of Arabia and Persia: Khalid ibn al-Walid originally fought with the Meccan Quraiysh tribe against Mohammad and the Muslims.  However, he converted after the Battle of the Trench and joined the forces of Mohammad.  His first campaign as a Muslim commander was into Ghassanid Territory to fight the Battle of Mutah, in which he led an expert retreat after the first three Muslim commanders were killed.  His second campaign involved attacking south and east in order to conquer the Arabian Peninsula.  He participated in the conquest of Mecca and in the Battle of Hunayn.  After Mohammad's death, Abu Bakr took over and formed the Rashidun Caliphate (the first of three great Islamic Empires with the other two being the Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties).  Khalid led the campaign to reconquer all the tribes that left the Muslim confederation after Mohammad's death.  Specifically, he commanded the Muslims at the Battle of Yamama, which was fought against the "liar prophet", Musailima. After the Arabian Peninsula was retaken, Khalid was put in charge of the Rashidun invasion of Iraq (which was held by the Sassanid Persians).  Some of the famous battles of the invasion include the Battle of Chains, the Battle of Ullais, the Battle of Hira, and the Battle of Al-Anbar.  However, the most famous is the Battle of Walaja, which is known as the eastern Battle of Cannae because of Khalid's successful double envelopment of the Persians.  To this day, Khalid and Hannibal are the only ones to pull this off against a numerically superior force.  The Battle of Firaz is also important because Khalid defeated a Persian army ten times his own (in numbers).  The second part of this episode will cover Khalid's exploits in Syria. For more information, read: Dictionary of Battles by David Chandler http://www.ezsoftech.com/islamic/ohod.asp http://islambyquestions.net/moreAbout/Hunayn.htm http://islam.pakistanway.com/showtopic.aspx?topicid=266&typeid=25 http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Articles/companion/10_abu_bakr.htm http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9045249/Khalid-ibn-al-Walid http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Articles/companion/00_abu_bakr.htm http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=1206 http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/muslimwars/articles/yarmuk.aspx Military History Podcast is sponsored by Armchair General Magazine

Nader Shah was the founder of the Afsharid Dynasty of Persia, lasting from 1736 to 1747.  During this time, this "second Alexander" returned Persia to its Sassanid-era borders.  After pushing the anti-Safavid Afghan invaders out of Persia, Nader invaded Afghanistan and took the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, and Lahore.  In the western theater, Nader Shah gained many cities from Ottoman Mesopotamia, including Najaf, Karbala, and Basra.  However, he was stopped at the walls of Baghdad.  In the Eastern Theater, Nader Shah defeated the Mughals decisively at the Battle of Karnal.  From here, he continued on into Delhi, where he indirectly killed 30,000 civilians and took many crown jewels, including the Peacock Throne (valued at $1 billion dollars now) and two 180+ carat diamonds.  Nader Shah also conquered Oman and Bahrain.  He founded the modern Persian Navy.  He even tried to reconcile Shiite Islam and Sunni Islam but failed.  Upon his assassination in 1747, the Persian Empire descended, once again, into chaos.  For more information, read: http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-225443 http://www.iranchamber.com/history/afsharids/afsharids.php http://irane-man.tripod.com/NaderShah.html Military History Podcast is sponsored by Armchair General Magazine

This episode of Communio Santorum is titled, “And In the East – Part 1.”The 5th C Church Father Jerome wrote, “[Jesus] was present in all places with Thomas in India, with Peter in Rome, with Paul in Illyria, with Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Greece, with each apostle . . . in his own separate region.”So far we've been following the track of most western studies of history, both secular & religious, by concentrating on what took place in the West & Roman Empire. Even though we've delved briefly into the Eastern Roman Empire, as Lars Brownworth aptly reminds us in his outstanding podcast, 12 Byzantine Emperors, even after the West fell in the 5th Century, the Eastern Empire continued to think of & call itself Roman. It's later historians who refer to it as the Byzantine Empire.Recently we've seen the focus of attention shift to the East with the Christological controversies of the 4th & 5th Cs. In this episode, we'll stay in the East and follow the track of the expansion of the Faith as it moved Eastward. This is an amazing chapter often neglected in traditional treatments of church history. It's well captured by Philip Jenkins in his book, The Lost History of Christianity.We start all the way back at the beginning with the apostle Thomas.  He's linked by pretty solid tradition to the spread of Christianity into the East. In the quote we started with from the early 5th C Church Father Jerome, we learn that the Apostle Thomas carried the Gospel East all the way to India.In the early 4th C, Eusebius also attributed the expansion of the faith in India to Thomas. Though these traditions do face some dispute, there are still so-called ‘Thomas Christians' in the southern Indian state of Kerala today. They use an Aramaic form of worship that had to have been transported there very early. A tomb & shrine in honor of Thomas at Mylapore is built of bricks used by a Roman trading colony but was abandoned after ad 50. There's abundant evidence of several Roman trading colonies along the coast of India, with hundreds of 1st C coins & ample evidence of Jewish communities. Jews were known to be a significant part of Roman trade ventures. Their communities were prime stopping places for the efforts of Christian missionaries as they followed the Apostle Paul's model as described in the Book of Acts.A song commemorating Thomas' role in bringing the faith to India, wasn't committed to writing till 1601 but was said to have been passed on in Kerala for 50 generations. Many trading vessels sailed to India in the 1st C when the secret of the monsoon winds was finally discovered, so it's quite possible Thomas did indeed make the journey.  Once the monsoons were finally figured out, over 100 trade ships a year crossed from the Red Sea to India.Jesus told the disciples to take the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. While they were slow to catch on to the need to leave Jerusalem, persecution eventually convinced them to get moving. It's not hard to imagine Thomas considering a voyage to India as a way to literally fulfill the command of Christ. India would have seemed the end of the Earth.Thomas's work in India began in the northwest region of the country. A 4th C work called The Acts of Thomas says that he led a ruler there named Gundafor to faith. That story was rejected by most scholars & critics until an inscription was discovered in 1890 along with some coins which verify the 20-year reign in the 1st C of a King Gundafor.After planting the church in the North, Thomas traveled by ship to the Malabar Coast in the South. He planted several churches, mainly along the Periyar River.  He preached to all classes of people and had about 17,000 converts from all Indian castes. Stone crosses were erected at the places where churches were founded, and they became centers for pilgrimages. Thomas was careful to appoint local leadership for the churches he founded.He then traveled overland to the Southeast Indian coast & the area around Madras. Another local king and many of his subjects were converted. But the Brahmins, highest of the Indian castes, were concerned the Gospel would undermine a cultural system that was to their advantage, so they convinced the king at Mylapore, to arrest & interrogate him. Thomas was sentenced to death & executed in AD 72. The church in that area then came under persecution and many Christians fled for refuge to Kerala.A hundred years later, according to both Eusebius & Jerome, a theologian from the great school at Alexandria named Pantaenus, traveled to India to “preach Christ to the Brahmins.”[1]Serving to confirm Thomas' work in India is the writing of Bar-Daisan. At the opening of the 3rd Century, he spoke of entire tribes following Jesus in North India who claimed to have been converted by Thomas.  They had numerous books and relics to prove it. By AD 226 there were bishops of the Church in the East in northwest India, Afghanistan & Baluchistan, with thousands of laymen and clergy engaging in missionary activity. Such a well-established Christian community means the presence of the Faith there for the previous several decades at the least.The first church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, to whom we owe so much of our information about the early Church, attributed to Thomas the spread of the Gospel to the East. As those familiar with the history of the Roman Empire know, the Romans faced continuous grief in the East by one Persian group after another. Their contest with the Parthians & Sassanids is a thing of legend. The buffer zone between the Romans & Persians was called Osrhoene with its capital city of Edessa, located at the border of what today is northern Syria & eastern Turkey. According to Eusebius, Thomas received a request from Abgar, king of Edessa, for healing & responded by sending Thaddaeus, one of the disciples mentioned in Luke 10.[2] Thus, the Gospel took root there. There was a sizeable Jewish community in Edessa from which the Gospel made several converts. Word got back to Israel of the Church community growing in the city & when persecution broke out in the Roman Empire, many refugees made their way East to settle in a place that welcomed them.Edessa became a center of the Syrian-speaking church which began sending missionaries East into Mesopotamia, North into Persia, Central Asia, then even further eastward. The missionary Mari managed to plant a church in the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, which became a center of missionary outreach in its own right.By the late 2nd C, Christianity had spread throughout Media, Persia, Parthia, and Bactria. The 2 dozen bishops who oversaw the region carried out their ministry more as itinerant missionaries than by staying in a single city and church. They were what we refer to as tent-makers; earning their way as merchants & craftsmen as they shared the Faith where ever they went.By AD 280 the churches of Mesopotamia & Persia adopted the title of “Catholic” to acknowledge their unity with the Western church during the last days of persecution by the Roman Emperors. In 424 the Mesopotamian church held a council at the city of Ctesiphon where they elected their first lead bishop to have jurisdiction over the whole Church of the East, including India & Ceylon, known today as Sri Lanka. Ctesiphon was an important point on the East-West trade routes which extended to India, China, Java, & Japan.The shift of ecclesiastical authority was away from Edessa, which in 216 became a tributary of Rome. The establishment of an independent patriarchate contributed to a more favorable attitude by the Persians, who no longer had to fear an alliance with the hated Romans.To the west of Persia was the ancient kingdom of Armenia, which had been a political football between the Persians & Romans for generations. Both the Persians & Romans used Armenia as a place to try out new diplomatic maneuvers with each other. The poor Armenians just wanted to be left alone, but that was not to be, given their location between the two empires. Armenia has the historical distinction of being the first state to embrace Christianity as a national religion, even before the conversion of Constantine the Great in the early 4th C.The one who brought the Gospel to Armenia was a member of the royal family named Gregory, called “the Illuminator.” While still a boy, Gregory's family was exiled from Armenia to Cappadocia when his father was thought to have been part of a plot to assassinate the King. As a grown man who'd become a Christian, Gregory returned to Armenia where he shared the Faith with King Tiridates who ruled at the dawn of the 4th C. Tiridates was converted & Gregory's son succeeded him as bishop of the new Armenian church. This son attended the Council of Nicea in 325. Armenian Christianity has remained a distinctive and important brand of the Faith, with 5 million still professing allegiance to the Armenian Church.[3]Though persecution came to an official end in the Roman Empire with Constantine's Edict of Toleration in 313, it BEGAN for the church in Persia in 340. The primary cause for persecution was political. When Rome became Christian, its old enemy turned anti-Christian. Up to that point, the situation had been reversed. For the first 300 hundred years, it was in the West Christians were persecuted & Persia was a refuge. The Parthians were religiously tolerant while their less tolerant Sassanid successors were too busy fighting Rome to waste time or effort on the Christians among them.But in 315 a letter from Constantine to his Persian counterpart Shapur II  triggered the beginnings of an ominous change in the Persian attitude toward Christians. Constantine believed he was writing to help his fellow believers in Persia but succeeded only in exposing them. He wrote to the young Persian ruler: “I rejoice to hear that the fairest provinces of Persia are adorned with Christians. Since you are so powerful and pious, I commend them to your care, and leave them in your protection.”The schemes & intrigues that had flowed for generations between Rome & the Persians were so intense this letter moved Shapur to become suspicious the Christians were a kind of 5th column, working from inside the Empire to bring the Sassanids down. Any doubts were dispelled 20 years later when Constantine gathered his forces in the East for war. Eusebius says Roman bishops accompanied the army into battle. To make matters worse, in Persia, one of their own preachers predicted Rome would defeat the Sassanids.Little wonder then, when persecution began shortly after, the first accusation brought against Christians was that they aided the enemy. Shapur ordered a double taxation on Christians & held their bishop responsible for collecting it. Shapur knew Christians tended to be poor since so many had come from the West fleeing persecution, so the bishop would be hard-pressed to come up w/the money. But Bishop Simon refused to be intimidated. He declared the tax unjust and said, “I'm no tax collector! I'm a shepherd of the Lord's flock.” Shapur counter-declared the church was in rebellion & the killings began.A 2nd decree ordered the destruction of churches and the execution of clergy who refused to participate in the official Sassanid-sponsored sun-worship. Bishop Simon was seized & brought before Shapur. Offered a huge bribe to capitulate, he refused. The Persians promised if he alone would renounce Christ, the rest of the Christian community wouldn't be harmed, but that if he refused he'd be condemning all Christians to destruction. When the Christians heard of this, they rose up, protesting en masse that this was shameful. So Bishop Simon & a large number of the clergy were executed.For the next 20 years, Christians were hunted down from one end of Persia to the other. At times it was a general massacre. But more often it was organized elimination of the church's leaders.Another form of suppression was the search for that part of the Christian community that was most vulnerable to persecution; Persians who'd converted from Zoroastrianism. The faith spread first among non-Persians in the population, especially Jews & Syrians. But by the beginning of the 4th C, Persians in increasing numbers were attracted to the Christian faith. For such converts, church membership often meant the loss of everything - family, property rights, even life.The martyrdom of Bishop Simon and the years of persecution that followed gutted the Persian church of its leadership & organization. As soon as the Christians of Ctesiphon elected a new bishop, he was seized & killed. Adding to the anti-Roman motivation of the government's role in the persecutions was a deep undercurrent of Zoroastrian fanaticism that came as a result of the conversion of so many of their number to Christianity; it was a shocking example of religious envy.Shortly before Shapur II's death in 379, persecution slackened. It had lasted for 40 years and only ended with his death. When at last the suffering ceased, it's estimated close to 200,000 Persian Christians had been put to death.[1] Yates, T. (2004). The expansion of Christianity. Lion Histories Series (28–29). Oxford, England: Lion Publishing.[2] Yates, T. (2004). The expansion of Christianity. Lion Histories Series (24). Oxford, England: Lion Publishing.[3] Yates, T. (2004). The expansion of Christianity. Lion Histories Series (25). Oxford, England: Lion Publishing.