Two Eyes of the Earth or Just One? Byzantine-Persian Rivalry at the End of Antiquity

According to the testimony by Theophylaktos Simokates, Shah Khusro II characterized the Persian and Byzantine empires as the two eyes of the earth. This evocative metaphor stands in stark contrast to Khusro’s vigorous attack on Byzantium later in his reign, attempting to take even Constantinople. This paper sets out to contextualize this radical and rapid shift in foreign policy at the turn of the seventh century. I reconstruct the underlying ideological factors and narrative scripts that are known from hagiographical, apocalyptic, and historiographical sources dating from the late sixth to the mid-seventh century. Given the dearth of contemporaneous Persian sources, the texts under investigation are predominately in Greek and hostile in character. They often emulate Persian claims by adopting or inverting them. Ultimately, the paper argues that the radical abrogation of Byzantine-Persian cohabitation can be seen as the political materialization of certain narrative strategies, such as hyperbolas, typologies, and antitheses. Narrative scripts and techniques functioned as blueprints for historical action.