Shapur and the Caesar

When King Hormozd, son of Narsi, died without a son, the throne stood empty. Then a mobed (Zoroastrian priest) searching the royal women's quarters found a beautiful young wife who was carrying a child. The nobles set her on a royal throne, hung a crown above her head and showered gold and silver over it. Forty days later the baby was born and named Shapur, and at forty days old, swaddled in silk, he was set on his father's throne beneath the golden crown.

A wise mobed named Shahru ruled for him. When the boy was five, sitting one evening in Tisfun, he heard a din from the bridge over the Tigris. Told that people going home from the market were jostling each other on the narrow bridge, he ordered a second one, one for going and one for coming back, paid for from the treasury. The priests rejoiced that the young tree was putting out leaves.

Years later his astrologers warned of a grievous trouble that no one could escape. Shapur put his trust in God, left his minister in charge and set off in secret for Rum with ten camel caravans, posing as a Persian merchant. He wanted to see the Caesar's army and treasury for himself. The Caesar received him kindly, but a malicious Iranian living in Rum whispered that the merchant was the king of kings. When Shapur rose from the feast, drunk, the guards seized him. By candlelight they sewed him into a raw ass's hide, jeering at the fool who had traded a throne for a donkey's skin, and shut him in a dark cell. The Caesar gave the key to his wife, ordered that the prisoner be kept barely alive and marched on Iran, which his army plundered and emptied. Many Iranians, the poem says, became Christians.

The maid and the milk

The Caesar's wife handed the key to her treasurer, a moon-faced girl of Iranian descent. She wept for the prisoner and begged to know who he was. When she had sworn by God, by Christ and by the Cross to keep his secret, Shapur told her everything and asked her to bring warm milk at mealtimes to soak the hide. This ass's skin, he said, would become a story told for years. In two weeks the milk had softened it and he climbed out. On a feast day, when the whole court went out to the plain, she brought two fine horses, weapons and jewels, and that night they rode for Iran.

Exhausted, they stopped at a gardener's house. The gardener told the stranger that Iran was ruined and no one knew whether its king was alive, and he insisted his guest drink first: "The scent of a crown comes from your hair." In the morning Shapur sent him to the high priest with a seal pressed into clay. The priest knew the royal seal, wept for joy and quietly gathered the army.

The bridle

Scouts found the Caesar at Tisfun, drunk, with no sentries and his men scattered to plunder. Shapur fell on the camp at night with three thousand riders and took him prisoner. He ordered him to return every captive and every stolen thing, to rebuild what he had ruined, to plant a tree for every tree his men had cut and to give ten Romans of royal blood for each Iranian killed. Then he slit the Caesar's ears, pierced his nose and put a bridle through it, in memory of the ass's hide.

Shapur carried the war into Rum and routed the Caesar's brother Yanus. The Romans chose a new Caesar, Baranush, who made peace, paid tribute and gave up Nasibin (Nisibis). When that city refused to accept a king of the old faith, Shapur took it after a week's fighting and then pardoned it. The old Caesar died in prison. The maid who had freed Shapur became the dearest of his wives, and he named her Delafruz-e Farrokhpey, the heart's delight of the lucky step.