A note on the rhetoric of peace negotiations, with reference to the 562 Sasanian-Byzantine peace negotiations

In a world that continues to fight, usually without much reason, and keeps on invoking the past to justify present hostilities, looking at the wars of the past, and more so, the peace that follows them, can be of much use. With every conflict, we are constantly told that things are “different,” dispite the fact that the reason those conflicts start of commonly because of how “similar” new disagreements are to those who were before them. While fighting on the actual battlefield can be a very confusing and complicated process to follow – although that has its own fans and scholars – understanding what follows a battle is much easier thanks to the negotiations that lead to a process of peace. These negotiations, despite the passage of time, reveal themselves to be as repetitive as the wars they follow, and they also make constant references to that past. While the present conflict that occupies our minds at present, the joint American-Israeli attack on Iran and Iran’s surprising response, and the ongoing ceasefire and negotiations has but superficially made references to the ancient past (seee this very unusual Tweet: https://x.com/IRIMFA_SPOX/status/2058291965305762045), one cannot help but see similarities in negotiations and the stances of the belligerent sides at the ongoing peace process. The following, a quick recap of a famous episode of war and peace between the Sasanian Empire of Iran and the Eastern Roman Empire, bears some interesting similarities that might be at least amusing to read in light of the present conflict and the contemporary world. I am not claiming any ‘sides’ in this, but as a historian, wish to bring attention to how remarkably consistent the acts of war and peace negotiations have remained, and how much they can tell us of human fallibility, shortsightedness, and cruelty.

I. The Peace of 562 and Its Context

The Persian-Roman peace treaty of 562 AD was the resolution, formal if not quite final, of a conflict between Rome and Persia that had been grinding along, with varying degrees of intensity, for the better part of six decades. Its immediate background is the series of wars that had started with the siege of Amida in 502 and that Geoffrey Greatrex traces in his monograph Rome and Persia at War, 502–532.  Procopius, our great source for this episode of the war in his Bellum Persicum, describes this stage in an effective way, forming the bulk of our knowledge of the events (for Procopius, now also see Greatrex;s new translatio and commentary Procopius of Caesarea: The Persian Wars. CUP 2022). That conflict had produced the infamous Eternal Peace of 532, a settlement burdened with an unfortunately optimistic name: it held for eight years before the war was started over a conflict involving the Arabs living on the borders of both empires in Syria and southern Iraq and the Lazican territory on the southeast of the Black Sea. By the late 550s, both powers had reasons to want a durable arrangement. Rome had overstretched itself across multiple theatres; Persia had its own frontier anxieties to the east and needed to secure the west. The result was a negotiated fifty-year peace, conducted at the frontier city of Daras and documented by Menander Protector in what survives as Fragments 6.1–3 of his History.

What makes the 562 negotiations remarkable, beyond their diplomatic outcome, is their texture. Ekaterina Nechaeva, in her study Embassies, Negotiations, Gifts: Systems of East Roman Diplomacy in Late Antiquity (Stuttgard: Franz Steiner 2014), has shown how late antique diplomacy operated as a structured system. Distinct phases, formal embassy, ceremonial reception, gift exchange, treaty ratification, followed by elaborate protocol, each carrying a weight of symbolic meaning that supplemented and sometimes substituted for, the substantive content of what was said. Menander Protector’s account of the Daras conference is one of the richest surviving illustrations of this system in operation: we have the opening speeches, the counter-arguments, the production of documents from inside diplomatic cloaks, the simultaneous signing of parallel treaty texts by envoys and interpreters, and the careful exchange of sealed copies. We also have, preserved almost accidentally, something Nechaeva identifies as characteristic of the genre, the gap between what the speeches say and what the speakers know perfectly well is actually happening. It is that gap, and its persistence across fifteen centuries, that makes Menander worth reading in 2026.

The negotiations in Daras, a Roman border town quite close to the Sasanian city of Nisibis (itself a bone of contention), took place between Peter, Master of Offices for the Roman Emperor Justinian, and Yesdegusnaph (MP. Yazdan-gushnasp), known as the Zikh, chamberlain and senior envoy of the Sasanian King of Kings Khosro I. At the start of the negotiations, both men spent a considerable amount of time explaining to each other that peace was desirable. This was one thing both sides could agree on, no matter which had been the initial belligerent. This is what justifies the verbose speeches leading up to the actual agreement, where each side is trying to establish its own moral refinement and justification, trying to outdo the other’s claim to being peace loving, despite having engaged in over half a century of almost constant warfare!

Peter, the Roman envoy, opens the Daras conference with a long speech. It is, by any measure, a remarkable performance. He tells the Persians that peace is good, that war is bad, that the human mind weighs advantages, that fortune is unstable, that all men share the same nature and the same emotions. Part of this is to put a sense of urgency in the talks, essentially highlighting the limited time and opportunity that there is for the negotiations. This is a diplomatic trick that is quote old, but also enduring, and can be observed even today in high stakes negotiations, where one side emophasises the urgency of negotiations and presents their own willingness and desire to reach an agreement as a a brief “opportunity” offered to prevent a restoration of the state of war. Crucially though, Peter is insisting that Rome is not proposing peace because it fears Persia, but because it is so very fond of peace that it wishes to get there first! This is somehow a strange admission perhaps showing the real Roman conditions, as the Roman sources often suggest that the Persians were initiators of peace – and thus the weaker partner in the negotiations (see Nechaeva 2014: 85-86). Here, Peter says (all quotations are from Menander Protector, Fragment 6.1-3; trans. R. Blockley, 1985):

“He does this not because he fears war but because he dreads that you might anticipate him in proposing the peace which is so dear to us.”

The statement, while claiming a moral stance, seems to rather suggest a desire to pre-empt any further Sasanian action, an perhaps an opportunity to dictate terms, that might then either reveal or cause Roman weakness. It could also reveal a Roman anxiety at mounting Sasanian advantage in the war, and thus need for an immediate end to the hostitlities.

The Zikh listens to all of this with evident patience, and then replies in a manner that deserves to be quoted in full, since it is one of the more elegant diplomatic put-downs in the historical record:

“Who, Romans, is so uncivilised and savage as to say that your mission is not appropriate and just? All men agree in regarding peace as a blessing. I should have been taken in by your fine words, were you not Romans and we Persians. Do not imagine that your convoluted arguments hide from us what kind of men you are who have come here, seeking your own advantage. Since you use peace as a blind for your own cowardice and seek to hide your manifest dishonour behind it.”

The Zikh, an eidently straight shooter to borrow from American slang, seems not to be fooled by the rthetoric. Not holding anything back, the Zikh continues on, describing what he feels is Peter’s rhetorical strategy in using peace as a way of hiding the Roman disadvantages, posing as morally superior in the conflict and meaning to avoid war:

“For the Romans customarily are the first to offer treaty negotiations to the Persians. Though defeated by us, you salvage victory through your speedy requests for peace. By this means you hide the dishonour you have earned in war and, while unwilling to fight, you give the appearance of acting properly. Yet if you had waited, we, the victors, would have done the same.Nevertheless, since we value peace most highly, we are open to your proposals”

Here, the Zikh clearly presents the Sasanian side as the victors, a claim which does NOT get disputed by Peter later. He also appears to suggest that the Romans should present terms first, which would suggest that he wants to have the advantage of knowing what the Romans really want before agreeing to any actual negotiation. The Zikh then goes on to claim equal Persian love for peace and acceptance of the Roman request for a cease fire and end to hostilities, with the condition that “a treaty without a time limit and a fixed amount of gold every year from the Romans.” The final treaty terms are summarised by Menander as:

“it was agreed that the peace be for fifty years; that be ceded to the Romans; that the terms of the treaty be firmly adhered to and prevail on both sides, not only in the East and Armenia but also in Lazica itself; that under these conditions the Romans pay thirty thousand golden nomismata per year to the Persians for peace.”

A fascinating further detail is what Menander tells us of the process of keeping the terms of peace in tact, providing each side with copies written with much care:

“the texts of the two documents and polished their contents, using language of equivalent force. Then they made facsimiles of both. The originals were rolled up and secured by seals both of wax and of the other substance used by the Persians, and were impressed by the signets of the envoys and of twelve interpreters, six Roman and six Persian. Then the two sides exchanged the treaty documents, the Zikh handing the one in Persian to Peter, and Peter the one in Greek to the
Zikh.”

A final fascinating detail is Menander’s careful description of the language used for the treaty documents. In addition to guaranteeing terms of “equivalent force”, the treaty documents were drawn in both languages, as Menander says:

“Then the Zikh was given an unsealed Persian translation of the Greek original to be kept as a reference for him, and Peter likewise was given a Greek translation of the Persian.”

So, each side not only got sealed treaties, but were given a translation of the way the other side’s documents were written in order to guarantee consistency and assure that terms were not added or ommitted on either side’s treaty.

Peter’s speech at Daras is, in essence, a piece of diplomatic throat-clearing: it establishes the speaker’s logical stance, preëmpts the obvious counterargument, and frames the request for negotiation as a gesture of strength rather than necessity. The Zikh seems to see straight through it, not because he is particularly shrewd, though Menander notes he was “an extremely intelligent man”, but because this is simply what diplomatic speeches do, and both parties know it. These principles and rhetorics seem understandable and agreeable to most of us today, even their nuances being easy to comprehend, because they have stayed largely the same into our times. Peace negotiations and conflict resolutions still operate based on the same rhetorical and moral muscle-flexing and claims.

II. On Financial Arrangements and the Saving of (the water) of the Face

In the seventh century, as with today, wars had a strong economic aspect to them. Apart from the economic motivations, wars – and the subsequent peace always included payments of money, seen as guarantees against breaking of peace as well as reparations. The treaty of 562 involved a payment of thirty thousand gold nomismata per year from Rome to Persia. The provision for this payment, as described by Menander Protector, was highly favourable to the Sasanians:

“It was also agreed that the Romans should make a lump-sum payment of ten years’ instalments as follows: those for seven years would be made immediately, and at the end of the seven years the three remaining instalments would be paid without delay. Thereafter the Persians would receive annually the payment due.”

The financial architecture was constructed specifically to avoid the word tribute, despite the fact that both sides knew what it was. The fictions associated with this payment previously, namely that it was for the mutual protection of both empires against the attacks of the steppe people (as mentioned in previous treaties such as 540) is notably missing here. This might be due to the fact that as the Zikh claims, the Sasanians had by that point managed to rid themselves of the Hephthalite threat to the east:

“the Zikh began to boast and exalt king Khosro, saying that he was invincible and adorned with many victories; that from the time when he had assumed the tiara, he had conquered about ten peoples and made them tributary; that he had destroyed the power of the Ephthalites and had defeated very many kings; that the barbarians there were in wonderment and awe of him”

Fragment 6.3 ends with a sentence of quiet devastation. Peter travelled to the court of Khosro to discuss the one outstanding issue, the territory of Suania, in the Caucasus, directly with the King of Kings. Here, he gave his arguments. The King gave his. Several further rounds of increasingly technical disputation followed, involving lists of historical rulers, claims about the customs of the Lazi, and a document produced, somewhat theatrically, from inside Peter’s cloak. None of it worked. “Peter made no progress over Suania and left the land of the Medes without settling the matter. Nevertheless, he had made a treaty with the Persians.” The never resolved issue, like so many in our times, remained unresolved. The state of war continued, as we know, for another half a century, before the start of what has been called the Last Great War of Antiquity, or if you excuse my semi-humourous take on it, the First Great Waar of the Middle Ages.

Conclusion

Wars are as much about peace as they are about actual fighting. We are used to see wars as battles between soldiers, of bloodshed and destruction in the battlefields, and increasingly sadly in civilian areas. But soldiers are seldom those who hold any grudge against each other and are almost never the ones who start wars. Wars are, in fact, most often between GreatMen (yes, Men, as Ursula K. le Guinn reminds us), and as such, those Great Men often also need to end wars with negotiations and peace, where the war often continues for longer than it was fought on the battlefield. Focusing on negotiations, and tactics of negotiations, is a good way of understanding the motivations, tactics, and Grand Strategies of powers who commission them, and maybe a way of understsanding the futility of war.

A few things to read…

Blockley, R. C., introductory essay, in The History of Menander the Guardsman, F. Cairns, Liverpool, 1985. (Annotated edition of fragments used: Rezakhani, Khodadad. Menander Protector, Fragments 6.1–3. Sasanika Sources, 2008. Available at https://cpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.edu/dist/c/347/files/2020/01/Menander6-1.pdf)

Greatrex, Geoffrey. Rome and Persia at War. Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1998.

_________. Procopius of Caesarea: The Persian Wars.Cambridge University Press, 2022

Greatrex, Geoffrey and Sam N. C. Lieu. The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, Part II AD 363–630. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Nechaeva, Ekaterina. Embassies, Negotiations, Gifts: Systems of East Roman Diplomacy in Late Antiquity. Geographica Historica, Bd 30. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014.