Sack of Antioch by Khosrow I

Antioch on the Orontes, the seat of the governor of the Diocese of the East, had been shattered by earthquakes in 526 and 528 — in the first, Procopius was told, 300,000 people perished — and Justinian had rebuilt it and renamed it Theopolis, “City of God”. In 539–540 Khosrow accused Justinian of trying to win over Khosrow’s own Arab vassal, the Lakhmid al-Mundhir III, and of inciting the Huns against Persia; encouraged by envoys of the Ostrogothic king Vitiges, then at war with Justinian in Italy, he invaded Roman Syria in May 540. He sacked Sura, took 2,000 pounds of silver from Hierapolis, sacked Beroea (Aleppo) and in June stood before Antioch, offering to withdraw for ten centenaria (1,000 pounds) of gold.

The citizens jeered at the king from the walls. The next day the Persians attacked the height above the city, where the wall was weakest; the timber platforms slung between the towers collapsed, the 6,000 soldiers who had come from Lebanon fled through the gate towards Daphne, and only the young men of the circus factions fought on in the streets before they were overwhelmed. Procopius, who called Antioch the first of the Roman cities of the East in wealth, size and beauty, describes the slaughter that followed. Khosrow carried off the gold, silver and marbles of the great church and had the whole city set on fire; only the church, spared at the request of Justinian’s envoys, and some houses at the edge of the city survived, while the walls were left untouched.

Justinian’s envoys agreed that Khosrow would receive 50 centenaria (5,000 pounds) of gold at once and five more every year. Before leaving, the king bathed in the Mediterranean at Seleucia Pieria and held chariot races at Apamea, and on the way home he extorted more money from Roman towns, whereupon Justinian repudiated the agreement and sent Belisarius to the East; the war lasted until 562. The captives were settled near Ctesiphon in a city built on the plan of Antioch, with baths and a hippodrome, whose official name, Weh-Antiok-Khosrow, meant “Khosrow’s Better Antioch”. Three centuries earlier Shapur I had likewise resettled Roman prisoners in Iran.