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A. D. Lee: Information and frontiers: Roman

foreign relations in late antiquity. xxii, 213 pp.
Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge University Press,
1993. £30.

Samuel N. C. Lieu

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 59 / Issue 01 / February 1996,
pp 133 - 135
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00028652, Published online: 05 February 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00028652

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Samuel N. C. Lieu (1996). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,
59, pp 133-135 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00028652

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 REVIEWS
chapters, the types of archaeological site and
the distribution of settlement are discussed.
There is a catalogue of sites running to 188
pages. In effect the work is a catalogue of
Roman and Islamic sites in Tripolitania, with
a commentary. The book is evidently a pub-
lished thesis or dissertation, although we are
not told of what level, or where defended. The
reviewer understands it to have been a M. Phil,
thesis in Islamic archaeology from the
University of Newcastle.
The subject is an interesting but not easy
one. The parallel region where the most work
has been done on the process of transition
between Antiquity and Islam is Jordan, fol-
lowed closely by Syria and Iraq. In Jordan
there is an exceptionally clear ceramic sequence,
which makes it possible to see in a detailed
way the continued use of old buildings, as well
as the proportion of abandonment and new
construction—thus one can gain an idea of
economic activity. Of course Jordan was an
area particularly favoured by the Umayyads,
and this favoured economic development stops
after the 'Abbasid revolution in 132/750, leav-
ing the ruins of the Umayyad and post-
Umayyad period on the surface. In Iraq the
view is rather more long term, in the sense that
the first distinctive ceramic ' horizon' after the
conquest belongs to the 'Abbasid period, and
more particularly to the third/ninth century.
Nevertheless Adams, in Land behind Baghdad
(Chicago, 1965) and Heartland of cities
(Chicago, 1981), has succeeded in giving an
excellent global picture of post-conquest devel-
opment, although certain aspects of his ceramic
sequence—and therefore the absolute dating of
the evolution described—have been criticized.
Even in Spain, more attention is now being
given to aspects of the continuity of the
Visigothic period. How does the evidence for
Libya compare with what is known elsewhere?
Given that the notion of transition implies
change between two known systems, the first
problem is the nature of Roman settlement.
The study turns on the evidence of Roman
settlement in the zone denominated the pre-
desert, in fortified and unfortified farms. These
have survived in sometimes excellent condition.
Some are said to be Islamic, because their
architectural features do not correspond with
Roman styles. It is obvious that such a well-
preserved system of wadi cultivation is in some
sense exceptional in its region—desert settle-
ment networks usually depend for their survival
on input from some external resource outside
the desert. Its success may have depended on a
high level of security provided by the Roman
army, a condition that may in fact have
obtained only relatively briefly, or else on a
particular combination of tribal power. The
question of whether the Roman system was
ever itself an economic success, is not really
answered in this book. The attempt to see how
long these sites were occupied on the basis of
their ceramic evidence raises a possibility that
some were occupied for a number of centuries.
But in general very little pottery is reported,
normally a sign of short occupation. In the end
the question remains open as to whether the
establishment of Roman farms in the pre-desert
was a short-term initiative, or a fundamental
element of the economy that was abandoned
133
because of the different character of the
Islamic period.
While settlement of the Roman period in
Libya has been well studied—work of a quality
which permits questions to be asked about its
conclusions—the same cannot be said of the
Islamic period. The Islamic elements in the
catalogue are identified from references in
historical sources—whether or not remains
have been identified on the ground—a few
inscriptions, and the views of the Libyan
Valleys Survey archaeologists, Roman special-
ists all, on what might be Islamic. Pottery,
probably the only widespread source of inde-
pendent dating evidence available in such a
region, is not used at all. It would have been
difficult to do so, for the transition period
pottery is virtually unknown throughout North
Africa. Even the extensive excavations at
Carthage have not provided a solution. Apart
from the new monumental construction initiat-
ives of the Muslims, mainly in Tunisia, we
really have no idea what happened in terms of
the evolution of the settlement pattern up to
the fourth/tenth century, or even later.
That we are not much better informed
after reading Sjostrom's work, and that the
promise of the title is not really fulfilled, is not
surprising. There are other compensations; the
work has a handy compendium of the results
of the work on Roman settlement in
Tripolitania, which might take longer to
assemble from elsewhere. Equally, the work
contains a first attempt to define the character
of Islamic settlement in Libya. This latter, if
provisional, is at least a move in the right
direction.
ALASTAIR NORTHEDGE
A. D. LEE: Information and frontiers:
Roman foreign relations in late
antiquity, xxii, 213 pp. Cambridge,
etc.: Cambridge University Press,
1993. £30.
In A.D. 359, the Roman soldier and historian
Ammianus Marcellinus accompanied his com-
mander Ursicinus in a hurried journey to reach
the eastern frontier. The latter had been
summoned at short notice to his new command
because of an impending major invasion by the
Sassanians under a vengeful Shapur II whose
armies had two decades earlier been badly
mauled at three unsuccessful sieges at Nisibis
and later at a bloody but indecisive battle at
Singara (344). This new invasion had greater
chance of success than previous ones because
Shapur had in his retinue a certain Antoninus,
a Roman turncoat who escaped across the
frontier in the face of bad debts, taking with
him vital information on the disposition of the
Roman troops along the frontier. En route,
Ammianus's party captured a soldier hiding in
a remote place who turned out to have been a
Gaul, born in Paris, who had deserted to the
Persians and who was employed by the Persians
to spy on the Romans. He disgorged the
information the Romans required but was
unable to save his life. The party then received
an' up-date' on the disposition of the Sassanian
army from an envoy to the Persian court,
134 REVIEWS
hidden in the scabbard of the messenger and
written in coded language, viz. making allusions
to person and place-names in earlier Persian
and eastern wars of the Greeks and Romans,
in the hope that any Persian soldiers who
captured the message might not have a good
enough classical education to grasp its strategic
implication even if they could understand
the Latin.
Thus in the short space of two chapters of
the Res Gestae of Ammianus (xvra, 5-6), we
have almost all the ingredients of modern
espionage—a traitor (who betrayed his country
because of personal financial problems), a spy,
and coded signal traffic between the embassies
of the two dominant powers of Late
Antiquity—missing perhaps only a sex scandal
or two with or without security implications.
Our sources, both pagan and Christian, classical
and oriental, provide a wealth of material on
information exchange between Rome and her
neighbours, especially with Sassanian Persia,
and it is extraordinary that there has been no
full-scale study of this fascinating and topical
subject in English until now. Lee's book sets
out to examine the entire process of cross-
frontier information gathering and its utiliza-
tion by the Roman government in its strategic
planning. The author has diligently culled from
a wide range of sources the relevant information
and used it with great skill to tackle a number
of obvious issues such as the organization of
information gathering, the personnel involved,
the nature of the information gathered and the
extent to which it influenced diplomatic over-
tures and military planning. Though the main
focus of the study is on the eastern frontier,
the northern frontier is not ignored and many
helpful comparisons, especially on the fre-
quency of interchange and its relation to
population density along the frontier, are drawn
from this cross-examination. Lee's basic theory
that the information gathering was dependent
on normal human social interchange between
the two frontiers and was not organized is a
sound one and so, too, is his argument that
the Romans often knew when best to launch
their invasions against the Persians, especially
when the latter was occupied by wars on her
Central Asian frontier or embroiled in
internal conflict.
The book is based on a Cambridge Ph.D.
thesis and is still organized like one, which
means that the evidence is often carefully
selected and the arguments tightly structured
to support specific viewpoints, which will make
the book difficult for use by readers who are
not familiar with the diplomatic history of the
Late Empire. The gestation period between
thesis and book was perhaps too short to do
the subject full justice. Sadly, in this day of
Research Selectivity, undue pressure is put on
scholars in our universities to commit prema-
turely to print. The lack of a detailed chrono-
logical framework deprives the reader of a
sense of thefluidityof the historical events and
the intricacies of personal motivation. It also
means that major changes in administration
which would undoubtedly have had great
impact on the whole process of information
gathering, such as the shift of the power-centre
of the Roman the Empire to the East with a
more clearly articulated bureaucracy and a
corresponding move by the Persians with regard
to Iraq, and the new ecclesiastical divisions in
the frontier regions brought about by the
Council of Chalcedon, are not given adequate
treatment. That much information of strategic
importance could be gleaned from merchants
and itinerant holy men and pilgrims by both
powers there is no doubt, but this is far from
saying that such cross-frontier travellers were
ready informants or were always on the look-
out for information, or that the potential value
of their knowledge of what lay beyond the
frontier was always recognized and passed on
to the right decision-making bodies. For an
avowedly interdisciplinary thesis, the author's
knowledge of the social structure of the
Northern 'Barbarians', the administrative
structure of the Sassanian Empire and the
complex history of the Christian Church astride
the Romano-Persian frontier is skin-deep. He
has clearly made little or no effort to work
closely with experts in these areas who are
mainly to be found these days in the USA,
Germany, Austria, Hungary and Israel.
A number of points raised in the book,
mainly on Romano-Persian relations call for
further discussion:
Nisibis (pp. 95fl\). Lee is quite correct in his
acknowledgement of Nisibis as a major centre
of contact between Rome and Persia, even after
the surrender of the city by Jovian in 363.
Modern Nusaybin remains a strategic frontier
town and a haven for smugglers operating
between Syria and Turkey. The border is
heavily patrolled, which shows that it remains
porous. The decision of the Romans to confine
commercial contact through Nisibis was based
probably on the knowledge that it was virtually
impossible to control movement on a fertile
plain with few observation points. In any case
knowledge of the strong defences of Nisibis,
which resisted all attacks by Persians and later
the Byzantines, might even deter would-be
invaders. Once the west-bound, travellers had
entered Roman territory through Nisibis, their
normal route would take them past the main
cities like Telia, Edessa and Zeugma, all
relatively well defended, and by-passing the
more sensitive desert limes which, as the near
success of the surprise raid by the Persians on
Batna in Mesopotamia in 354 (Ammianus, xrv,
3) has shown, was far from watertight.
The School of Nisibis and the See of Nisibis
(pp. 58-59 and 117-18). One of the statutes of
the famous Nestorian theological School of
Nisibis provides, as Lee rightly points out, a
clear indication of the porosity of the frontier,
as it prohibits students taking on paid vaca-
tional jobs as cross-frontier guides or merchants
or to go as pilgrims. Offenders were threatened
with dire penalties. Lee rightly concludes that
the penalties (and concessions) indicate that it
was impossible to control border-crossing.
However, it is worth pointing out that the
regulations existed because of the need for a
Christian institution located in the sensitive
marches to deflect inevitable charges by Persians
of espionage. The events surrounding the
martyrdom of the Catholicos Babowai in 484,
charged with treachery, and the role played by
his rival Barsauma, the bishop of Nisibis, who
was later accused of being a paid agent of the
King of Kings, are clearly relevant here and
deserve to be mentioned in connection with the
complex role of the Church in the frontier
 REVIEWS
regions. Babowai was elected Catholicos of the
Persian Church in Iraq (which then had not
yet fully embraced Nestorianism) under the
tolerant Hormizd HI in 457, but as a convert
from Zoroastrianism he was not favoured by
Peroz (459-84) and when persecution broke
out he wrote to the Roman emperor Zeno
requesting intercession. The letter, hidden in
the cane of a monk, was intercepted at Nisibis
which indicates that the Church probably
exercised more effective border-control than
the Persian marzban, whose vigilance the
Catholicos had every hope of evading. The
disclosure of the letter led to the arrest of
Babowai and his eventual execution when he
refused to re-apostasize to Zoroastrianism.
Barsauma, the bishop of Nisibis who hankered
after the Catholicate, was generally alleged to
have brought the exposure to the notice of
Peroz and gained a reputation as a major
informer for the King of Kings. As a high-
ranking official he kept a close eye on cross-
border movements, especially those of the
Arabs, and he was sufficiently trusted by the
Persian authorities to conduct missions to the
Byzantine capital. Although our sources do not
explicitly accuse him of undertaking intelligence
gathering for the Shahanshah, it would have
been extremely likely that he would have
transmitted some information of importance to
his master Peroz to bolster his claims of loyalty
vis a vis the treachery of Babowai. The cross-
frontier travels of another famous graduate of
the School of Nisibis, the Catholicos Mar Aba,
cannot simply be noted as yet another instance
of the ease with which clerics could cross
frontiers in pursuit of higher theological or
medical training (cf. Lee, 58-9). The Persian
authorities knew their loyalty could be trusted
and, in the case of Mar Aba, he was unlikely
to have gained much sympathy for the cause
of Nestorian Christians from an orthodox
Justinian whose wife Theodora was a known
Monophysite sympathizer. The entire Babowai
episode which is so germane to the subject of
Lee's book and illustrates so well the complex
and conflicting loyalties of the frontier Christian
communities inexplicably receives no coverage
in the relevant section.
The movement of rabbis between the Roman
and Persian Empires were frequent and well-
attested—Babylonia being a major centre of
exilic Judaism (cf. Lee 60-61). Their travels
attest to cross-border movements, but how
much the rabbis returning from their study
visits to Babylonia could have enriched the
intelligence picture of the opposing forces is
hard to determine. Transient travellers, as
distinct from bishops of the marches, unless
they had 'trained' eyes, were not likely to be
informative on military installations, state of
preparedness, etc. Rabbis would have been too
obvious targets for counter-espionage for either
side to be regarded as safe and, moreover, any
charge of espionage would have had serious
consequences for the Jewish communities of
either or both empires. The substantial docu-
mentation on contacts with Babylonian Jewry,
to the best of my knowledge—and here I
acknowledge my discussion with Professor
Ze'ev Rubin of Tel Aviv University, yields no
evidence of itinerant rabbis being implicated
in espionage.
135
Finally, the Roman Army in the East, which
had major headquarters in Amida, Nisibis and
Edessa, must have had its own intelligence arm
with paid informers (frequently mentioned in
literary sources) operating along the frontiers
and would have conducted in-depth cross-
border reconnaissance and raids, especially in
time of high tension. How the military intelli-
gence was conducted at ground level remains
obscure, but an interesting account of such a
reconnaissance-cum-looting raid by Persian
forces is found in a Christian fiction, the Ada
Archelai (Lat. vers. 2, pp. 2-3, ed. Beeson).
Despite the criticisms, the work is a substan-
tial achievement by a young scholar. It helps
to fill a much-felt gap in the study of Romano-
Persian relations and will undoubtedly remain
standard for some time to come.
SAMUEL N . C. LIEU
DAVID WEISS HALP/NI: Peshat and
derash: plain and applied meaning in
rabbinic exegesis, xii, 249 pp. New
York: Oxford University Press,
1991. £28.
Recent years have seen a wave of general
interest in Rabbinic exegesis, particularly
Midrash, which has come to serve as a model
for a hermeneutics that rejects the primacy of
authorial intent. Such an approach has made
itself felt in religious studies too, notably in the
work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (What is
scripture1}, London, 1993). Weiss Halivni's latest
volume is thus particularly timely. One of the
most accomplished and thoughtful Talmudists
in the academic world, W. H. seeks to under-
stand the nature of two of the central categories
in rabbinic scriptural exegesis, peshat and
derash (commonly translated as 'plain' vs.
'allusive' meaning), how they might have
originated, and how Jewish exegetes have
navigated between the two down the centuries
and into contemporary times.
Peshat, according to W. H (basing himself
on the root p-sh-t), meant for the Talmud not
the isolated meaning of a word but its meaning
in the context of discourse, which might well
be metaphorical. Derash meant 'reading in' a
meaning that ran counter to this context-based
meaning and—an important distinction for any
legal or hermeneutic system—to the exclusion
of the latter, so that 'an eye for an eye' (for
example) referred to monetary restitution and
not tit-for-tat. Perhaps the boldest idea in this
book is that derash, far from being (at times)
at total odds with the text, actually represents
an earlier recension, corrupted down the centur-
ies when scripture carried less popular weight
than prophecy, until orally reinstated by Ezra
as part of his new post-prophetic covenant (cf.
Josiah's long-lost scroll)^a theologically
attractive idea, but W. H. fails to spell out how
a corruption hypothesis would account for the
derash interpretation of' Thou shalt not seethe
a kid in its mother's milk' (Thou shalt not
cook, eat and benefit from any mix of meat
and milk) or for hundreds of other such
interpretations. And how would he explain
gezerah shavah (interpreting one word through
its counterpart, on the basis of incidental
context)?