[2][3] The Sasanian campaigns of Galerius were a series of military expeditions which saw the Romans and the Persian Sassanids clash, which were part of a war that lasted overall from 296 to 298 AD, which culminated in the Battle of Satala.

[6] With his accession to the throne Narseh had clearly expressed his intention to break the peace treaty signed in 287 between Diocletian and Vahram II, which had put an end to sixty years of wars between the Persians and the Romans, began with the rise of the new Sasanian dynasty of Artaxerxes.

Thus the tetrarchy was born; the four tetrarchs (two caesars and two augusts) divided the Empire between them: Thrace, Egypt and Asia went to Diocletian; to Maximinus Italy and Africa; to Galerius the Illyrian provinces; to Constantius Spain, Gaul and Britannia.

The Armenian sources, which also have problems of reliability, exalt Tiridates' skills and courage and state that he was a very athletic young man and possessed immense strength; one day he would have saved Licinius (whose identification with the future emperor is not certain) from an attempted lynching by stopping the attackers with his arm alone.

The gifts received from Bahram II were interpreted as the symbols of a Roman victory over the Sasanians (of which the solution of the Armenian question constituted the substantial aspect), so much so that Diocletian was hailed as the "founder of eternal peace".

[20] At this point the Romans decided to actively help Tiridates to ascend the throne of Armenia; Diocletian established his base in Antigonia and entrusted the command of military operations to Galerius.

[27] Another scholar, Roger Rees, suggests that Galerius' position at the head of the caravan was merely the conventional organization of an imperial progression, designed to show a Caesar's deference to his Augustus.

[28] Gibbon arbitrarily attributes to this battle an episode handed down by Armenian sources according to which, at the end of a defeat suffered against Persia, Tiridates, who had fought bravely, was chased up to the Euphrates and miraculously saved himself swimming across the river (at least half a mile deep at that point) in very heavy armor.

[32] Narseh retreated to Armenia to fight Galerius' force, putting himself at a disadvantage; the rugged Armenian terrain was favorable to Roman infantry, but not to Sassanid cavalry.

[4] Narseh's wife, Arsane, was captured during the fighting and would live out the remainder of the war in Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, serving as a constant reminder to the Persians of the Roman victory,[27] while another of his wives, Shapurdukhtak, was imprisoned.

They kept him in shameful captivity until the last moments of his life and after his death they exposed his body to perpetual ignominy.» (translated)After reassuring him that the Romans were not accustomed to trample on a defeated enemy, Galerius dismissed Afarbanus.

[2] When the day of the hearing finally arrived, Probus communicated the conditions for peace to the Shah: Narsetes only opposed the first point, which however he was forced to accept in the face of the firmness of the Romans.

[2] Diocletian celebrated his triumph on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his accession to the throne (in 304): «The arduous task of defending the troubled empire from tyrants and barbarians had now been completed by a series of Illyrian peasants.

[...] Africa and Britain, the Rhine, the Danube and the Nile provided their respective trophies, but the most splendid ornament was of a more singular nature: a Persian victory followed by a major conquest.

Before long, the Emperors ceased to win and Rome ceased to be the capital of the Empire.Mesopotamia returned under Rome for 40 years of peace (the frontier was moved up to Khabour, to the Tigris,[34] passing through the Djebel Sindjar),[38] the Armenia was recognized as a Roman protectorate together with Iberia, while in Nisibis the caravan routes for trade with the Far East (China and India) were centralised, but above all the construction of the military road of the frontier began east of the strata Diocletiana.