THIS PAPER presents some provisional conclusions reached by an outsider who has made a number of forays into the history of the Sasanian empire, Rome's great eastern rival in late antiquity. Much of the expertise which ideally should underlie such a paper - knowledge of Pahlavi and Arabic, archaeological training, and wide-ranging travels over Iran which alone can give the historian of institutions, policy-making and policy-outcomes a real understanding of his subject - is lacking in this case. All that the outsider can claim in compensation for these grave defects are the advantages which come from a position of detachment, a willingness to question received opinion within the field and attention to the general rather than the particular. If positive contributions can be made by a Byzantinist who reaches back into the late Roman period, they will come from fresh scrutiny of those Roman (and Armenian) texts which throw light on Sasanian institutions and from an appreciation of the performance of the Sasanian empire in foreign affairs, principally (because of the bias of the surviving evidence) in its relations with the east Roman empire.

After giving a preliminary outline of Sasanian history and great power relations from the fourth to the early seventh century, concluding with a comparison of their military resources (section I) and an unavoidably selective survey of the extant source material and its failings (section ll), the paper concentrates on the fifth and sixth centuries. Rather than probing the prolonged internal crisis in its various political, social and religious manifestations, which was triggered by disaster in the steppe in 484 and Turan's temporary hegemony over Iran (a subject strictly for professionals, who are as yet far from devising a definitive interpretation), attention is directed at the periods of relative calm which frame it and an attempt is made to outline the main enduring structural features of the Sasanian empire. Close examination of the reforms of Kavād I and Khusro I has been undertaken by Zeev Rubin; it will be suggested here that there was probably more institutional continuity than has sometimes been supposed.

The agitated surface of events is largely disregarded, including the final climactic conflict in the first three decades of the seventh century (since this still awaits its historian). Instead, sketches are given of the geopolitical strengths and weaknesses of the Sasanian state (section lll), its level of economic development, city life being taken as the best indicator (section IV), and the apparatus and techniques devised and applied by the centre to manage the empire (section V).