Shapur II

Shapur II became King of Kings of the Sasanian Empire in 309, taking the title the day he was born — his father Hormizd II had just died. At sixteen he launched campaigns against Arab insurrections and crushed them. What followed was the military resurgence that opened the first Sasanian golden age: territorial expansion, a hard religious policy that completed the collection of the Avesta and persecuted Christians in response to Constantine's Christianization of Rome, and a tightening grip on the east and on Armenia. He held the throne until 379, seventy years start to finish, longer than any…