The 240s decade ran from January 1, 240, to December 31, 249.
Year 256 (CCLVI) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Claudius and Glabrio. The denomination 256 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Dura-Europos was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 metres above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in present-day Syria. Dura-Europos was founded around 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, who founded the Seleucid Empire as one of the Diadochi of Alexander the Great. In 113 BC, Parthians conquered the city, and held it, with one brief Roman intermission, until 165 AD. Under Parthian rule, it became an important provincial administrative centre. The Romans decisively captured Dura-Europos in 165 AD and greatly enlarged it as their easternmost stronghold in Mesopotamia, until it was captured by the Sasanian Empire after a siege in 256–257 AD. Its population was deported, and the abandoned city eventually became covered by sand and mud and disappeared from sight.
The scutum was a type of shield used among Italic peoples in antiquity, most notably by the army of ancient Rome starting about the fourth century BC.
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 Roman–Persian Wars, also known as the Roman–Iranian Wars, were a series of conflicts between states of the Greco-Roman world and two successive Iranian empires: the Parthian and the Sasanian. Battles between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic began in 54 BC; wars began under the late Republic, and continued through the Roman and Sasanian Empires. A plethora of vassal kingdoms and allied nomadic nations in the form of buffer states and proxies also played a role. The wars were ended by the early Muslim conquests, which led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire and huge territorial losses for the Byzantine Empire, shortly after the end of the last war between them.
Dinogetia was an ancient Geto-Dacian settlement and later Roman fort located not far from the right (southern) bank of the Danube near the junction of the Siret River. The Dinogetia site is situated in Northern Dobruja, Romania, 8 km east of Galați and 2 km north of Garvăn, a village in Jijila commune.
Tunnel warfare is using tunnels and other underground cavities in war. It often includes the construction of underground facilities in order to attack or defend, and the use of existing natural caves and artificial underground facilities for military purposes. Tunnels can be used to undermine fortifications and slip into enemy territory for a surprise attack, while it can strengthen a defense by creating the possibility of ambush, counterattack and the ability to transfer troops from one portion of the battleground to another unseen and protected. Also, tunnels can serve as shelter from enemy attack.
The Battle of Barbalissos was fought between the Sasanians and Romans at Barbalissos. Shapur I used Roman incursions into Armenia as pretext and resumed hostilities with the Romans. The Sassanids attacked a Roman force of 60,000 strong at Barbalissos and the Roman army was destroyed. The defeat of this large Roman force left the Roman east open to attack and led to the eventual capture of Antioch and Dura Europos three years later. This battle is only known through Shapur I's inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam.
Simon James is an archeologist of the Iron Age and Roman period and an author. He is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester in England. His research interests are the Roman world and its interactions with the Celts and Middle Eastern peoples.
The Feriale Duranum is a calendar of religious observances for a Roman military garrison at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, Roman Syria, under the reign of Severus Alexander.
The Dura-Europos route map, also known as stages map, is the fragment of a speciality map from Late Antiquity discovered 1923 in Dura-Europos. The map had been drawn onto the leather covering of a shield by a Roman soldier of the Cohors XX Palmyrenorum between AD 230 and AD 235. The fragment is considered the oldest map of Europe preserved in the original.
The Cohors XX Palmyrenorum was an auxiliary cohort of the Roman Imperial army. It was a cohors equitata milliaria, mixed infantry and cavalry regiment, originally recruited from the inhabitants of Palmyra in Roman Syria. There were also a small number (32–36) of dromedarii forces attached to the infantry.
Coele Syria was a Roman province which Septimius Severus created with Syria Phoenice in 198 by dividing the province of Syria. Its metropolis was Antioch.
The scutum from Dura-Europos is the only surviving semi-cylindrical shield (scutum) from Roman times. It is now in the Yale University Art Gallery. The shield was found in the excavation campaign of 1928/37 on Tower 19 of Dura-Europos. The city was besieged by the Sassanids in 256, eventually captured and destroyed. The dry climate enables very good conservation conditions for organic materials such as wood. Since the city housed a Roman garrison and was lost during a siege, a particularly large number of weapons were found during the excavations.
The so-called Dolicheneum is a temple in Dura Europos in the east of today's Syria, where Jupiter Dolichenus and god called Zeus Helios Mithras Turmasgade may have been worshiped. The remains of the temple were excavated in 1935/36, but results were never fully published.
The Mithraeum of Dura Europos was found during excavations in the city in 1934. It is considered to be one of the best-preserved and best-documented cult buildings of Mithraism.
The Temple of Artemis Azzanathkona was a sacred space located in block E7 at Dura Europos dedicated to a syncretic belief of Artemis and the Syrian deity named Azzanathkona. While established as a religious structure, portions of the temple were requisitioned by the Roman military after the Romans captured the city in 165 CE.
The Mesopotamian campaigns of Ardashir I represented the first episode in a new period of wars between the Romans and Sasanids. The war between the Roman Empire, ruled by the Roman emperor Severus Alexander (222-235), and the Sasanian rule, led by Ardashir I (224-241), lasted for more than a decade, from 229 to 241 when the Sasanian ruler died and was replaced by his son, Shapur I.
Siege in ancient Rome was one of the techniques used by the Roman army to achieve ultimate victory, although pitched battles were considered the only true form of warfare. Nevertheless, the importance that siege action could have in the warfare framework of that era cannot be underestimated. Hannibal was unable to defeat the might of Rome because, although he had defeated the Roman armies in the open field, he had proved unable to assault the city of Rome. As time went on, the armies of the late Roman and Imperial Republics also became particularly adept at siege warfare: Gaius Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul was the combination of a whole series of pitched battles and long sieges, culminating in that of Alesia in 52 BCE. To seize the main center of an enemy people seemed to be the best way to bring a conflict to an end, as also happened in the time of Trajan, during the conquest of Dacia, when the enemy capital, Sarmizegetusa Regia, was besieged and occupied. For this purpose, numerous works and siege machines were, therefore, required for variety and functionality, engaging soldiers in the execution of important military engineering works.
Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo used to say that the enemy was won with the hoe, that is, with construction works.
