Why Shapur carved his victory in Greek | THE KING WHO CAUGHT A CAESAR Part 4

History Onion · Part 4 · 2:57

On 7 November 2025 the Islamic Republic unveiled a statue in Enghelab Square, Tehran: Shapur I on horseback, the Roman emperor Valerian on his knees, and a slogan — Kneel Before Iran. A state that spent four decades erasing pre-Islamic Iran from its own schoolbooks, throwing a party for a Sasanian king. Why him? He answered that himself, seventeen centuries ago. On a stone tower at Naqsh-e Rostam, Shapur had his account of the Roman wars cut in three languages: Middle Persian, Parthian — and Greek. The Greek is the point: he was not writing it for Persians. It lists thirty-seven cities and says Valerian was captured "with our own hands." He put the picture directly beneath the tombs of Darius and Xerxes, seven hundred years older, and claimed them: I am the heir of those men. By the standards of his century he was not narrow. Zoroastrianism was the state religion, but it never went looking for converts. Mani lived at his court; Jews, Christians and Buddhists worshipped openly across the empire. He died at Bishapur in 270. His colossus lay face-down in a mountain cave for centuries. In 1957 Iran's last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, sent soldiers to stand it up. (Shah is simply Persian for king; Shapur's own title was shahanshah, king of kings — and "the last shah" means the most recent, not the final one.) Sixty-eight years later the republic that overthrew him cast its own — five months after the twelve-day war, and seven weeks before the country rose. On 8–9 January 2026 the government's forces opened fire; the UN special rapporteur put the dead in the tens of thousands (sourcing in the pinned comment).