In the palace of Khusro I Anoshirwan at Ctesiphon [...] three empty seats stood beneath the royal throne. These were for the emperor of China, for the great khagan (the ruler of the nomads of central Asia), and for the Roman emperor, in case these rulers came, as vassals, to the court of the king of kings. The three thrones summed up the vast horizons of the Sassanian empire.
(Peter Brown: The World of Late Antiquity)
There's a pair of posts about sassanian stuff down at Zenobia, Empress of the East. And here is a history of the Sassanian empire on Project Gutenberg.
Speaking about Late Antiquity, Avram Davidson wrote a series of novels set in that time period, sprinkled with touches of fantasy and humor: the Peregrine books.
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