The Last Great War of Antiquity

Between 602 and 628 AD, the Byzantine Empire fought a long and grueling war with their neighbors and rivals to the east, the Sassanian Persian Empire.

The Byzantines were on the back foot for most of the war and lost a majority of their territory to the Persian onslaught. But at the eleventh hour, the emperor Heraclius led a daring counterattack deep into the Persian heartland. This is the best and most comprehensive account of one of the most dramatic wars of the entire early Byzantine period.

Howard-Johnston makes brilliant use of difficult and scattered sources to tell the story.… show more.

This book is, to me, the Platonic Ideal of scholarly military history. Howard-Johnston examines a somewhat obscure but vastly important war between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire that lasted from 602 to 628 and left both empires vulnerable to the new Islamic power that was about to emerge in Arabia. His narrative is lively, his knowledge of the sources is unmatched, his interpretations masterful, and he exposes the inner workings of the book regularly in philosophical comments on the job of the military historian, causation in history, and the problems of source interpretation. That it took him longer… show more.