| Siege of Amida | |||||||||
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| Part of the Roman-Persian Wars | |||||||||
Shapur II, conqueror of Amida, along with Shapur III |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Roman Empire | Sassanid Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Ursicinus | Shapur II, Grumbates |
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The Siege of Amida took place when the Sassanids under King Shapur II besieged the Roman city of Amida in 359.
In this battle Ammianus Marcellinus, a historian of Greek origin from Antioch, was a Roman army officer; he described the siege in his work (res gestae).
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When Shapur II took control of the Sassanid Empire he sought to regain old territories previously lost to the Eastern Roman Empire. After crushing the Arabs in the south, he moved east to deal with nomadic forces, the most prominent being the Xionites. Following a prolonged struggle from (353-358) the Xionites were forced to conclude a peace, and their king, Grumbates, accompanied Shapur II in the war against the Romans.[1]
He started the western campaign in 359. Initially, some of the Roman held cities surrendered to him. However, as his forces approached the city of Amida, the Romans resolved to stand and give battle. The Sassanids began the attack with siege towers and attempted to take the city hastily, the siege dragged on for weeks with the Sassanids finally capturing the city.
According to Ammianus Marcellinus[1]
The king himself [Shapur II], mounted upon a charger and overtopping the others, rode before the whole army, wearing in place of a diadem a golden image of a ram's head set with precious stones, distinguished too by a great retinue of men of the highest rank and of various nations. But it was clear that he would merely try the effect of a conference on the defenders of the walls, since by the advice of Antoninus he was in haste to go elsewhere.
He continues with the account of how he reached the safety of the city heights:
I myself, having taken a direction apart from that of my comrades, was looking around to see what to do, when Verennianus, one of the guard, came up with an arrow in his thigh; and while at the earnest request of my colleague I was trying to pull it out, finding myself surrounded on all sides by the advancing Persians, I made up for the delay by breathless speed and aimed for the city, which from the point where we were attacked lay high up and could be approached only by a single very narrow ascent ; and this was made still narrower by mills which had been built or the cliffs for the purpose of making the paths. Here, mingled with the Persians, who were rushing to the higher ground with the same effort as ourselves, we remained motionless until sunrise of the next day, so crowded together that the bodies of the slain, held upright by the throng, could nowhere find room to fall, and that in front of me a soldier with his head cut in two, and split into equal halves by a powerful sword stroke, was so pressed on all sides that he stood erect like a stump.
The siege took 73 days. Shapur attempted to capture the city several times but every time it ended with disaster. Many times siege towers were set on fire by the Romans; even the son of King Grumbates was killed in one of the failed attempts. During the siege, plague broke out in Amida but ended after ten days by a light rain, according to Ammianus Marcellinus.
Finally, the city was captured on the night of day 72 when Shapur and Grumbates simultaneously stormed the city with siege towers and flaming arrows. A day before capture of the city, Ammianus Marcellinus escaped to Singara.
After capturing the city, Shapur II advanced further and took Singara and some other fortresses in the following years. In 363, Emperor Julian, at the head of a strong army, advanced to Ctesiphon, but was killed in a battle. His successor Jovian signed a treaty of peace, by which the districts on the Tigris and Nisibis (totalling five Roman provinces) were ceded to the Persians, and the Romans promised to interfere no more in Armenia.