Ammianus Marcellinus, occasionally anglicised as Ammian, was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity. His work, known as the Res gestae, chronicled in Latin the history of Rome from the accession of the Emperor Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, although only the sections covering the period 353 to 378 survive.
Constantius II was Roman emperor from 337 to 361. His reign saw constant warfare on the borders against the Sasanian Empire and Germanic peoples, while internally the Roman Empire went through repeated civil wars, court intrigues, and usurpations. His religious policies inflamed domestic conflicts that would continue after his death.
Shapur II, also known as Shapur the Great, was the tenth Sasanian King of Kings (Shahanshah) of Iran. The longest-reigning monarch in Iranian history, he reigned for the entirety of his 70-year life, from 309 to 379. He was the son of Hormizd II.
Krum, often referred to as Krum the Fearsome was the Khan of Bulgaria from sometime between 796 and 803 until his death in 814. During his reign the Bulgarian territory doubled in size, spreading from the middle Danube to the Dnieper and from Odrin to the Tatra Mountains. His able and energetic rule brought law and order to Bulgaria and developed the rudiments of state organization.
Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae were a nomadic people in the Central Asian regions of Transoxiana and Bactria.
The Kidarites, or Kidara Huns, were a dynasty that ruled Bactria and adjoining parts of Central Asia and South Asia in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Kidarites belonged to a complex of peoples known collectively in India as the Huna, and in Europe as the Chionites, and may even be considered as identical to the Chionites. The 5th century Byzantine historian Priscus called them Kidarite Huns, or "Huns who are Kidarites". The Huna/Xionite tribes are often linked, albeit controversially, to the Huns who invaded Eastern Europe during a similar period. They are entirely different from the Hephthalites, who replaced them about a century later.
The siege of Amida was a military investment of the Roman fortified frontier city of Amida by the Sasanian Empire. It took place in AD 359 when the Sasanian army under king Shapur II invaded the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Shapur wanted to exploit the absence of the Roman Emperor Constantius II who was overseeing affairs in the western part of the Empire. The city fell, but the strategic gain was little.
The Battle of Ctesiphon took place on 29 May 363 between the armies of Roman Emperor Julian and an army of the Sasanian Empire outside the walls of the Persian capital Ctesiphon. The battle was a Roman victory, but eventually the Roman forces found themselves unable to continue their campaign as they were too far from their supply lines.
The Battle of Misiche, Mesiche (Μεσιχή), or Massice was fought between the Sasanians and the Romans in Misiche, Mesopotamia.
Hormizd was a Sassanid Persian prince, the third son of King Hormizd II and brother-in-law of King Shapur II. Imprisoned by him, he was freed by his wife in 323 and escaped to Constantinople, where Roman Emperor Constantine I helped him and gave him a palace near the shore of the Marmara Sea. This palace became an important toponym of the city: its neighborhood was known in Byzantine times as en tois Hormisdou, meaning "near the houses of Hormisdas". The palace became later the private residence of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, before his accession to the throne.
Count Aelianus was the chief Roman officer in charge of the defense of Amida during the siege of 359 by Shah Shapur II.
Antoninus was a member of the Household Cavalry under Emperor Constantius II, and later an advisor to the Sasanian king (shah) Shapur II. He played a key role in providing intelligence to the shah, culminating in the sack of Amida in 359 AD.
The Battle of Bagavan or the Battle of Vagabanta was fought in 371 near the settlement of Bagavan, in the district of Bagrevand in Greater Armenia, between a joint Roman-Armenian force and a Sassanid army, with the Romans and Armenians emerging victorious. It is recorded by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, as well as the Armenian historian Faustus of Byzantium.
Julian's Persian expedition began in March 363 AD and was the final military campaign of the Roman emperor Julian. The Romans fought against the Sasanian Empire, ruled at the time by Shapur II.
The Alchon Huns, also known as the Alchono, Alxon, Alkhon, Alkhan, Alakhana, and Walxon, were a nomadic people who established states in Central Asia and South Asia during the 4th and 6th centuries CE. They were first mentioned as being located in Paropamisus, and later expanded south-east, into the Punjab and Central India, as far as Eran and Kausambi. The Alchon invasion of the Indian subcontinent eradicated the Kidarite Huns who had preceded them by about a century, and contributed to the fall of the Gupta Empire, in a sense bringing an end to Classical India.
Kidara I fl. 350-390 CE) was the first major ruler of the Kidarite Kingdom, which replaced the Indo-Sasanians in northwestern India, in the areas of Kushanshahr, Gandhara, Kashmir and Punjab.
The term Iranian Huns is sometimes used for a group of different tribes that lived in Afghanistan and neighboring areas between the fourth and seventh centuries and expanded into northwest India. They are roughly equivalent to the Hunas. They also threatened the northeast borders of Sasanian Persia and forced the Shahs to lead many ill-documented campaigns against them.
The Perso-Roman wars of 337–361 were a series of military conflicts fought between the Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire between 337 and 361. They were a result of long-standing competition between the rival powers over influence in the border kingdoms of Armenia and Iberia, as well as the desire of Shapur II, after his Arab campaign, to revoke the unfavorable terms of the Treaty of Nisibis, which had concluded the previous war between the empires. Though the Romans under Constantius II were defeated in several sanguinary encounters, Shapur was unable to secure a decisive victory.
Peroz, was according to modern scholarship an early Kidarite ruler in Gandhara, right after the end of Kushano-Sasanians.
