The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 08

by Unknown

CHAPTER I. THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE

[250 B.C.-228 A.D.]

The battle of Arbela (331 B.C.) made Alexander the heir of the Persian Empire. In the volumes devoted to Grecian history we have shown how he verified his claims of conquest, subdivided his empire among satraps of his own appointment, and left the enormous heritage, when he died, to “the best man.” It was further shown how no one man among the generals of the Alexandrian school could prove himself the best man, and how, in consequence, the empire fell into a chaos of civil wars until at last certain major divisions assumed a particularly definite form—among them the Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Iran of Seleucus and his family the Seleucidæ, among whom the name Antiochus frequently appears, the city of Antioch in Syria being taken as a capital. The degeneracy of these rulers was the opportunity of the obscure race of Parthians, who, with qualities and customs that in many ways remind one of the American Indian, rose to a power so great that under the first Cæsars the Romans thought of them as dividing the power of the world with Rome.

The only continuous ancient history of this race is that of Justin, which ends with the year 9 B.C. and shows a gap between 94 and 55 B.C. We quote this unique account entire; but the reader is cautioned that it is not to be given full credence everywhere: it is introductory to the more critical modern account that follows.[a]

Justin’s Account of the Parthians

[331-9 B.C.]

The Parthians, who are now in possession of the empire of the East, having, as it were, divided the world with the Romans, came originally from Scythian exiles. This too is evident from their name: for in the Scythian language the word Parthi signifies exiles. This nation, in the times both of the Assyrians and Medes, was the obscurest in the East. Afterwards too, when the empire of the East was transferred from the Medes to the Persians, they were an easy prey to the conquerors, like a vulgar herd without a name. At last, they came under the Macedonian yoke, when they carried their triumphant arms into these parts of the world; so that it is really strange that they should have arrived to such power as to rule over those nations, whose slaves they had formerly been.

Being thrice attacked by the Romans, under the conduct of their greatest generals, in the most flourishing times of the republic, they alone of all nations were not only a match for them, but came off victorious; yet perhaps it was still a greater glory for them to be able to rise, amidst the Assyrian, Median, and Persian kingdoms, so famous of old, and the most opulent empire of Bactria, consisting of a thousand cities, than that they defeated a people that came from so remote a part of the world; especially when at that time they were incessantly alarmed by the Scythians and their other neighbours, and exposed to so many uncertainties of war. They being forced to leave Scythia by seditions at home did, by stealth, possess themselves of the deserts between Hyrcania, the Dahæ, the Arians, the Spartans, and Margians. After which, their neighbours not resisting at first, they at last, in spite of their opposition, when they came too late to hinder them, so far extended their frontiers that they not only took possession of vast plains, but also of craggy hills and steep mountains. And hence it comes that the heat and cold are excessive in several provinces of Parthia; for the snow is troublesome in the mountainous parts, and the heat in the plains.

THEIR CUSTOMS

[323-250 B.C.]

A Parthian Noble

This nation was under kingly government, after their revolt from the Macedonian Empire. With them the chiefs of the populace were next in power to the king. Out of them were chosen their generals in war and their governors in peace. Their language is a mixture of the Median and Scythian, borrowing words from both. Their habit was formerly very particular; but after they were increased in power, it was like that of the Medes, full flowing and thin. They are armed like the Scythians, from whom they are descended. Their armies are not, like those of other nations, composed wholly of freemen, but chiefly of slaves; the numbers of which increase prodigiously, none having the power of manumitting. They treat these with as much care as their children, and teach them with great industry both riding and shooting. Everyone furnishes his prince with horsemen, in proportion to his ability. To conclude, when fifty thousand horsemen met Antony, upon his attacking the Parthians, four hundred of them only were freemen. They are ignorant of the art of besieging towns, or of engaging in close fight. They fight on horseback, sometimes advancing, and sometimes turning back upon their enemies. They often counterfeit flight, that they may have an advantage of their pursuers, less upon their guard. The signal for battle is not given by trumpet, but by drum. They do not hold out long in fight; and indeed it would be impossible to stand before them, if their perseverance was equal to the fury of their onset. For the most part, they quit the battle in the very heat of an engagement, and on the sudden renew it with great vehemence; so that one is in greatest danger from them when he thinks he has conquered them. A sort of strong coats, made of little plates, in the fashion of feathers, are used by them, to cover both them and their horses. They use no gold nor silver, but only in their arms.

Each particular man was allowed to have several wives, for the pleasure of variety; and they punish no crime so severely as adultery. To prevent it, they not only exclude their women from their feasts, but forbid them the very sight of men. They eat no flesh, but what they take by hunting. They ride on horseback at all times; on horse they go to feasts; pay civilities, public and private; march out, stand still, traffic, converse. This, in fine, is the difference between slaves and freemen, that the slaves go on foot, the freemen on horseback. Their common way of sepulture is being devoured by dogs or birds, and after that, burying the bare bones in the ground. In their superstition and worship of the gods, the principal veneration is paid to rivers.

The nation is naturally proud, treacherous, seditious, and insolent; for a boisterous rough behaviour they think manly. Gentleness, they think, belongs to women, as their character. They are restless to be engaged in some quarrel, at home or abroad; taciturn by temper, and more ready to act than speak; wherefore they conceal their good or bad fortune by their silence. They are strictly subject to their princes, not out of duty however but through fear. They are much addicted to lust, though very temperate in their diet; and they pay no more regard to their word, than suits with their interest.

SELEUCUS AND ARSACES

[250-155 B.C.]

After the death of Alexander the Great, when the kingdoms of the East were divided amongst his successors, because none of the Macedonians would condescend to accept of the kingdom of the Parthians, it was delivered to Stasanor, a foreign ally. And afterwards, when the Macedonians were involved in a civil war, they, with the rest of the nations of upper Asia, followed Eumenes; and when he was defeated, they went over to Antigonus. After him, they were under Nicator Seleucus; and soon after, under Antiochus and his successors; from whose grandson Seleucus they first revolted in the First Punic War, when L. Manlius Vulso and M. Atilius Regulus were consuls. The divisions of the two brothers, Seleucus and Antiochus, procured them an immunity for this revolt, who during their contentions to wrest the sceptre out of one another’s hands, neglected to pursue the revolters. At the same time Theodotus too, the governor of the thousand cities of Bactria, revolted, and commanded himself to be called king; which example all the Eastern nations soon followed, and shook off the Macedonian yoke.

There was, at this time, one Arsaces, a man of tried valour, though of uncertain extraction. He, being accustomed to live by robbery and plunder, having heard that Seleucus had been overthrown by the Gauls in Asia, fearing the king no longer, entered the country of the Parthians with a band of robbers, defeated and killed Andragoras his lieutenant, and seized the government of the whole country. Not long after, he likewise made himself master of Hyrcania; and being now in possession of two kingdoms, he raised a great army, for fear of Seleucus and Theodotus king of the Bactrians. But being soon delivered from his fears by the death of Theodotus, he made peace and entered into an alliance with his son, who was likewise named Theodotus: and not long after, engaging with King Seleucus, who came to punish the revolters, he had a victory; and this day the Parthians observe ever since with great solemnity, as the commencement of their liberty.

Some new disturbances obliging Seleucus to return into Asia, some respite was by this means given to Arsaces, who took this opportunity to establish the Parthian government, levy soldiers, fortify castles, and secure the fidelity of his cities. He built a city too, called Dara, upon the mountain Zapaortenon; which was so situated that no city could be stronger or pleasanter. For it was so environed with rough rocks on all sides, that it needed no garrison to defend it; and so fertile was the adjacent soil, that it was abundantly furnished with all necessaries by its own riches. Then there were in such plenty woods and fountains, that there was never any scarcity of water; and it had vast store of game. Thus Arsaces, having at once acquired and established a kingdom, was no less memorable among the Parthians than Cyrus among the Persians, Alexander among the Macedonians, or Romulus among the Romans; and he died in a good old age. To his memory the Parthians paid this honour, that from him they called all their kings by the name of Arsaces. His son and successor in the kingdom, who was Arsaces by name, fought with great bravery against Antiochus the son of Seleucus, who came against him with a hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse; and at last made an alliance with him. The third king of the Parthians was Priapatius; but he too was named Arsaces; for, as was said above, they called all their kings by that name, as the Romans do theirs Cæsar and Augustus. He died, after he had reigned fifteen years, leaving two sons, Mithridates and Phraates, the elder of whom, Phraates, being according to the custom of this nation heir of the kingdom, subdued by his arms the Mardians, a strong nation, and died not long after, leaving several sons behind him, whom he passed by, and left his kingdom to his brother Mithridates, a man of uncommon abilities; judging that more was due to the name of king than that of father; and that he ought to prefer the interest of his country to the grandeur of his children.

[155-54 B.C.]

Almost at the same time, as Mithridates among the Parthians so Eucratides amongst the Bactrians, both princes of great merit, began to reign. But the uncommon good fortune of the Parthians brought them, under this monarch, to the highest pitch of greatness. The Bactrians, on the other hand, being distressed by several wars, not only lost their sovereignty, but their liberty; for being exhausted by wars with the Sogdians, Drangians, and Indians, were, like a people quite enfeebled and expiring, subdued by the Persians, who had been a little before much weaker than they. However, Eucratides carried on many wars with great vigour; and though his losses had much weakened him, yet being besieged by Demetrius, king of the Indians, with only three hundred soldiers he made continual sallies, and so fatigued the enemy, consisting of forty thousand men, that he obliged them to raise the siege. Wherefore, being delivered from the siege, in the fifth month he reduced India under his power; but in his return from thence, he was assassinated by his son, whom he had made his partner in the kingdom; who was so far from concealing the parricide that, as if he had killed an enemy and not his father, he drove his chariot through his blood, and ordered his body to be thrown out unburied. During these transactions in Bactria, a war broke out between the Parthians and the Medes. After the success of this war had for some time been various, victory at last fell to the Parthians. Mithridates, enforced with this addition to his strength, set Bacasis over Media, and went himself into Hyrcania; from whence returning, he made war upon the king of the Elymæans; and, after the conquest of him, he added this nation likewise to his dominions; and so extended the Parthian Empire from Mount Caucasus as far as the river Euphrates, by reducing many nations under his yoke. After this, being seized with an illness, he died in an honourable old age, not at all inferior in glory to his great-grandfather Arsaces.

After the death of Mithridates, king of Parthia, Phraates his son succeeded to the kingdom; who being resolved to revenge himself upon Antiochus for attacking the kingdom of Parthia, was recalled by disturbances from Scythia, to defend his own country. For the Scythians, being invited by promises to assist the Parthians against Antiochus, king of Syria, having arrived after the war was ended, were frustrated of their promised reward, under the idle pretence of their coming too late; and it made the Scythians so angry that they should have had so long a march for nothing, that they demanded either pay for their trouble or that some other enemy should be allotted them. The haughty reply given to this demand so enraged them, that they began to ravage the country of the Parthians.

Wherefore Phraates, marching against them, left one Hymerus, who had recommended himself to his favour by prostituting the bloom of his youth to his infamous lust, the care of his kingdom in his absence. This governor, forgetting his past life and the trust he was charged with, miserably harassed the Babylonians, and many other cities, by his tyrannical cruelties. But Phraates himself carried along with him to the war an army of Greeks, which he had taken in the war against Antiochus, and treated with great pride and barbarity; not at all considering that their hatred to him was so far from being lessened by their captivity, that they were rather more exasperated against him by the indignity of the outrages they had suffered. Wherefore, when they saw the army of the Parthians give ground, they joined their arms with those of the enemy, and executed their long wished-for revenge for their captivity by the bloody havoc they made on the Parthian army, and by the death of King Phraates himself.

Artabanus his uncle was made king in his room; but the Scythians being content with victory, having laid waste Parthia, returned home. But Artabanus, in a war made upon the Thogarians, received a wound in his arm, of which he died immediately. He was succeeded by his son Mithridates, to whom his exploits gained the surname of Great; for, being fired with a brave emulation of his forefathers, he surpassed their fame by the greatness of his soul. Accordingly, he carried on many wars against his neighbours with signal gallantry, and added many provinces to the Parthian Empire. Not satisfied with this, he often had war with the Scythians; and by the victories he obtained over them revenged the injury his father had received from them. At last, he employed his arms against Ortoadistes, king of the Armenians.

WARS WITH ROME

[54-36 B.C.]

After the war of Armenia, Mithridates, king of the Parthians, was banished his kingdom for his cruelty, by the Parthian senate. Orodes his brother, having possessed himself of the vacant throne, besieged Babylon, to which city this fugitive prince had fled; and after a long siege forced the people, by famine, to surrender. Mithridates, relying upon his being so nearly related to Orodes, voluntarily gave himself up to him; but Orodes, considering him rather as an enemy than a brother, commanded him to be killed in his own presence; and after these things carried on a war with the Romans, and cut to pieces their general Crassus, together with his son and all his army. His son Pacorus being sent to pursue the remainder of the Roman war, after he had performed very great actions in Syria was recalled by his father, who was become jealous of him. In his absence, the Parthian army left in Syria was cut off, with its commanders, by Cassius, paymaster to Crassus.

Not long after this, the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey broke out, in which the Parthians declared for the latter, because of the friendship contracted with him in the Mithridatic War and because of Crassus’ death, whose son they had heard was of Cæsar’s party, who they made no doubt would revenge his father, if Cæsar proved conqueror. Wherefore Pompey’s party having lost the day, they both sent assistance to Cassius and Brutus against Augustus and Antony; and after the war was over, under their leader Pacorus, making an alliance with Labienus, they laid waste Syria and Asia; and with a mighty force attacked the camp of Ventidius, who, in the absence of Pacorus, had routed the Parthian armies, as Cassius had done before him. But Ventidius, counterfeiting fear, kept himself a long time in his camp, and for some time suffered the Parthians to insult him. At last, he sent out some of his legions against the enemy, now grown secure and off their guard and full of joy, who, not able to resist them, fled several ways. Pacorus imagining that the victorious legions had pursued the fliers too far, attacked Ventidius’ camp, as if there had been none left to defend it. Upon this, the Roman general drew out the rest of his legions, killed Pacorus upon the spot, and put the whole army of the Parthians to the sword, who never received so great a blow in any of their wars.

When this news came to Parthia, Orodes, the father of Pacorus, who a little before had heard that his troops had ravaged Syria, and conquered Asia, and had boasted of his son as conqueror of the Romans, hearing on a sudden of his son’s death and entire defeat of his army, was struck with grief that threw him into a frenzy. For during several days he would speak to nobody; so that he seemed to be dumb; nor would he take any refreshment. And when his grief, at last, had found a vent, he called incessantly upon Pacorus; Pacorus he fancied to appear to him, to speak to him, to stand with him, and be heard by him. Sometimes he mournfully bewailed himself as lost; then, after long mourning, another care seized this miserable old man, and that was, whom of his thirty sons he should declare his successor in the room of Pacorus. His many concubines, by whom he had so many sons, being each concerned for her own, laid all of them very close siege to the king, each in favour of her own; but the fate of Parthia, in which country it is now become customary to have princes stained with the blood of their fathers and brothers, would so have it that the choice fell upon the wickedest of them all, Phraates too by name.

[36-9 B.C.]

Wherefore he immediately killed his father, thinking he would never die. He likewise killed all his thirty brothers. Neither did his cruelty stop there: for finding he was hated by the nobility for his daily barbarities, he ordered his son, who was almost grown up to the years of maturity, to be slain; that there might none be left to be proclaimed king. Antony made war upon him with sixteen very able legions, because he had furnished assistance against him and Cæsar; but being sadly mauled in several battles, he fled from Parthia. This victory making Phraates insupportably insolent and cruel, he was forced by his people into banishment. After he had for a long time wearied the neighbouring states, and at last the Scythians too, with his importunity, he was restored to his kingdom by a powerful assistance from the Scythians. In his absence, the Parthians had made one Tiridates their king, who hearing of the approach of the Scythians, fled with a great body of his friends to Cæsar, at that time waging war with Spain, bringing the youngest son of Phraates as hostage to Cæsar, whom being negligently guarded he had stolen away. Upon this news, Phraates immediately sent ambassadors to Cæsar, and demanded that his son, together with his vassal Tiridates, should be sent back to him.

Cæsar, having given audience to the ambassadors of Phraates and heard the reasons of Tiridates, who desired to be restored to his crown, declaring that the kingdom of Parthia would be in a manner subject to the Romans if he held it from them, said that he would neither surrender Tiridates to the Parthians, nor give assistance to Tiridates against the Parthians. However, that he might not seem to refuse them everything they demanded, he sent Phraates his son to him, without any ransom, and ordered a handsome maintenance for Tiridates, so long as he had a mind to continue amongst the Romans. After this, the Spanish War being ended, when he came into Syria to settle the state of the East, Phraates was afraid that he might have some designs upon Parthia. Wherefore the prisoners who had been taken at the defeat of Crassus and Antony were gathered together, and they, together with the military standards either of them had lost, were sent back to Augustus. Nor was this all, but the sons and grandsons of Phraates were likewise delivered as hostages to Augustus. And thus Augustus did more by the terror of his name than any other general could have done by his arms.[b]

Modern Accounts of Parthia

This is the history of the Parthians as given by Justin in his abridgement of the lost work of Trogus Pompeius. Later investigations and criticism have thrown a little light on various portions of the history, and from the point where Justin grows briefest other Roman historians took up the chronicles of the Parthians with avid interest. The study of coins has also been of invaluable aid. It has seemed better to give Justin’s account in its original fluency without interpolating criticisms here and there. Now, however, we must make a brief presentation of Parthian history from the start in a modern view.[a]

THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE

[261-241 B.C.]

Hellenism made no deep impression on Iran as on the West, nor did the loose-jointed empire attain to anything higher than a Hellenistic reproduction of the kingdom of the Achæmenians. Even in the fragmentary records that we possess we hear from the first of rebellions little favourable to consolidation of the realm; Seleucus, like Alexander, still had an army of Macedonians and Persians together, while the later Seleucids, at least in their western wars, used natives sparingly and only as bowmen, slingers, or the like, and preferred for these services the wild desert and mountain tribes of Iran.

Under the weak Antiochus II northeastern Iran was lost to the empire. While the Seleucids were busy elsewhere, probably in the long war with Ptolemy Philadelphus, which occupied Antiochus’ later years, Diodotus, viceroy of Bactria, took the title of king. The new kingdom included Sogdiana and Margiana from the first, while the rest of the East, with a single exception scarcely noticed at the time, adhered to the Seleucids. Now the formation of a strong local kingdom, heartily supported by the Greek colonies and likely to control the neighbouring nomads and strictly to protect its own frontiers, was by no means agreeable to the chief of the desert tribes who, like the modern Turkomans, had been wont to pillage the settled lands and raise blackmail with little hindrance from the weak and distant central authority at Antioch. Accordingly two brothers, Arsaces and Tiridates—whose tribe, the Parnians, a subdivision of the Dahæ, had hitherto pastured their flocks in Bactria on the banks of the Ochus—moved west into Seleucid territory near Parthia. An insult offered to the younger brother by the satrap Pherecles moved them to revolt; Pherecles was slain, and Parthia freed from the Macedonians.

ARSACES AND THE ARSACIDS

Arsaces was then proclaimed first king of Parthia (250 B.C.). Such is the later official tradition, and we possess no other account of the beginnings of the Arsacid dynasty. But when the official account transforms Arsaces, who according to genuine tradition was the leader of a robber horde and of uncertain descent, into a Bactrian, the descendant of Phriapites son of Artaxerxes II (who was called Arsaces before his accession), and makes him conspire with his brother and five others, like the seven who slew the false Smerdis, we detect the invention of a period when the Arsacids had entered on the inheritance of the Achæmenians, and imitated the order of their court. The seven conspirators are the heads of the seven noble houses to whom, beyond doubt, the Karen, the Suren, and the Aspahapet belonged. And further, genuine tradition does not know the first Arsaces as king of Parthia at all, and as late as 105 B.C. the Parthians themselves reckoned the year (autumn) 248-247 B.C. as the first of their empire. But 248 B.C. is the year in which Arsaces I is said to have been killed, after a reign of two years, and succeeded by his brother; who, like all subsequent kings of the line, took the throne name of Arsaces.

The first Arsaces must have existed, for he appears as deified on the reverse of his brother’s drachmæ, but he was not king of Parthia. Nay, we have authentic record that even in the epoch-year 248-247 B.C., the year of the accession of Tiridates, Parthia was still under the Seleucids. These contradictions are solved by a notice of Isidore of Charax, which names a city Asaak, not in Parthia but northwest of it, in the neighbouring Astauene, where Arsaces was proclaimed king and where an everlasting fire was kept burning. This, therefore, was the first seat of the monarchy, and Pherecles was presumably satrap of Astauene, not eparch of Parthia.

[241-238 B.C.]

The times were not favourable for the reduction of the rebels. When Antiochus II died, the horrors that accompanied the succession of his son Seleucus (II) Callinicus (246-226 B.C.) gave the king of Egypt the pretext for a war, in which he overran almost the whole lands of the Seleucids as far as Bactria. Meantime a civil war was raging between Seleucus and his brother Antiochus Hierax, whom the Galatians supported, and at the great battle of Ancyra in 242 or 241 B.C. Seleucus was totally defeated and thought to be slain. At this news Arsaces Tiridates, whom the genuine tradition still represents as a brave robber-chief, broke into Parthia at the head of the Parnians, slew the Macedonian eparch Andragoras, and took possession of the province. These Parnian Dahæ, in consequence of eternal dissensions, had migrated at a remote date to Hyrcania and the desert adjoining the Caspian. Here, and in great measure even after they conquered Parthia, they retained the peculiarities of Scythian nomads.

PARTHIAN CUSTOMS

The common tradition connects the migration with the conquests of the Scythian king Iandysus, a contemporary of Sesostris [Ramses II]. It adds that Parthian means “fugitive” or “exile” (Zend, peretu). But the name Parthava is found on the inscriptions of Darius long before the immigration of the Parnians. The Parthian language is described as a sort of compound between Median and Scythian; and, since the name of the Dahæ and those of their tribes show that they belong to the nomads of Iranian kin, who in antiquity were widely spread from the Jaxartes as far as the steppes of south Russia, we must conclude that the mixed language arose by the action and reaction of two Iranian dialects, that of the Parthians and that of their masters. Their nomad costume the Parnians in Parthia gradually gave up for the Median dress, but they kept their old war-dress, the characteristic scale-armour completely covering man and horse. The founder of the empire appears on coins in this dress, with the addition of a short mantle; and so again does Mithridates II. The hands and feet alone are unprotected by mail; shoes with laces, and a conical helmet with flaps to protect the neck and ears, complete the costume.

The conquerors of Parthia continued to be a nation of cavalry; to walk on foot was a shame for a free man; the national weapon was the bow, and their way of fighting was to make a series of attacks, separated by a simulated flight, in which the rider discharged his shafts backwards. Many habits of the life they had led in the desert were retained, and the Parthian rulers never lost connection with the nomad tribes on their frontiers, among whom several Arsacids found temporary refuge. Gradually, of course, the rulers were assimilated to their subjects; the habitual faithlessness and other qualities ascribed to the Parthians by the Romans are such as are common to all Iranians. The origin of the Parthian power naturally produced a rigid aristocratic system: a few freemen governed a vast population of bondsmen; manumission was forbidden, or rather was impossible, since social condition was fixed by descent; the ten thousand horsemen who followed Surenas into battle were all his serfs or slaves, and of the fifty thousand cavalry who fought against Antony only four hundred were freemen.

BACTRIA AND PARTHIA CONSOLIDATE

[238-206 B.C.]

Arsaces Tiridates soon added Hyrcania to his realm and raised a great host to maintain himself against Seleucus, but still more against a nearer enemy, Diodotus of Bactria. On the death of the latter, the common interests of Parthians and Bactrians as against the Seleucids brought about an alliance between Arsaces Tiridates and Diodotus II. With much ado, Seleucus had got the better of his foreign and intestine foes and kept his kingdom together; and in 238 B.C., or a little later, having made peace with Egypt and silenced his brother, he marched from Babylon into the upper satrapies. Tiridates at first retired and took shelter with the nomadic Apasiacæ, but he advanced again and gained a victory, which the Parthians continued to commemorate as the birthday of their independence. Seleucus was unable to avenge his defeat, being presently called back by the rebellion stirred up by his aunt Stratonice at Antioch. This gave the great Hellenic kingdom in Bactria and the small native state in Parthia time to consolidate themselves. Tiridates used the respite to strengthen his army, to fortify town and castles, and to found the city of Dara or Dareium in the smiling landscape of Abévard. Tiridates, who on his coins appears first merely as Arsaces, then as King Arsaces, and finally as “great king,” reigned thirty-seven years, dying in 211 or 210 B.C. His nation ever held his memory in almost divine honour.

A Parthian King

Seleucus III Soter (226-223 B.C.) died early, and was followed by Antiochus (III) Magnus (223-137 B.C.), who in his brother’s life-time had ruled from Babylon over the upper satrapies. Molon, governor of Media, supported by his brother Alexander in Persis,[29] rose against him in 222 B.C. and assumed the diadem. The great resources of his province, which followed him devotedly, enabled Molon to take the offensive and even to occupy Seleucia, after a decisive battle with the royal general Xenœtas. Babylonia, the Erythræan district, all Susiana except the fortress of Susa, Parapotamia as far as Europus, and Mesopotamia as far as Dura were successively reduced. But the young king soon turned the fortunes of the war. Crossing the Tigris in person, he cut off Molon’s retreat. Molon was forced to accept battle near Apollonia: his left wing passed over to the enemy, and, after a crushing defeat, he and all his kinsmen and chief followers died by their own hands (220 B.C.). Antiochus now marched to Seleucia to regulate the affairs of the East. He used his victory with moderation, mitigating the severities of his minister Hermias; but he had effectually prevented the rise of a new kingdom in the most important province of Iran.

[206-155 B.C.]

In 209 B.C., with one hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse, he marched against the new Parthian king, Arsaces II, son and successor of Tiridates. The war ended in a treaty which left Arsaces his kingdom, but beyond question reduced him to a vassal. In 208 B.C. began the much more serious war with Bactria. At length, in 206 B.C., a peace was arranged, and Antiochus was visited in his camp by Demetrius, the youthful son of Euthydemus, who pleased the king so well that he betrothed to him his daughter; Euthydemus was left on his throne, and the two powers swore an alliance offensive and defensive, which cost Bactria no more than certain payments of money, the victualling of the Macedonian troops, and the surrender of the war-elephants. The Bactrian Greeks were grateful for this moderation; their memorial coins place Antiochus Nicator with Euthydemus Theos, Diodotus Soter, and Alexander Philippi among the founders of their political existence.

The kings of Parthia had long remained quiet after the war with Antiochus the Great. Priapatius, successor of Arsaces II (191-176 B.C.), calls himself on his coins “Arsaces Philadelphus,” perhaps because he had married a sister, and was the first of all Parthian kings to call himself “Philhellen.” By the last title he presents himself, at a time when the Seleucid power was sinking, as the protector of his present and future Greek subjects. His eldest son and successor, Phraates I (Arsaces Theopater of the coins), conquered the brave Mardian highlanders and transplanted them to Charax in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Gates, a proof that the Parthians had already detached Comisene and Choarene from Media, probably just after the death of Antiochus the Great.

CONQUESTS OF MITHRIDATES

About 171 B.C. Phraates died and left the crown not to his sons but to his brother Mithridates, a prince of remarkable capacity, who made Parthia the ruling power in Iran. His first conquests, it would seem, were made at the expense of Bactria.

The kingdom of Bactria had made vast advances under Euthydemus, whose son Demetrius crossed the Indian Caucasus and began the Indian conquests, which soon carried the Greeks far beyond the farthest point of Alexander. The object, it is plain, was to reach the sea and get a share in the trade of the world; and it is possible that the extension of the power of the Bactrian Greeks over Chinese Tatary as far as the Seres and Phaunians had a similar object—to protect the trade-route with China. For the Seres are the Chinese, and the Phauni, according to Pliny, lay west of the Attacori (the mythical people at the sources of the Hwangho). They occupied, therefore, the very region which, according to Chinese sources, was then held by a nomadic pastoral people, the Tibetan No-kiang. Demetrius, having succeeded his father, was displaced in Bactria by the able usurper Eucratides, sometime between 181 and 171 B.C. A thousand cities obeyed Eucratides, and both he and his rival Demetrius sought to extend the Greek settlements. Now Justin tells us that the Bactrians were so exhausted by wars that they at length fell an easy prey to the weaker Parthians; but Eucratides he describes as a valiant prince, who once with three hundred men held out during five months, though besieged by sixty thousand men of Demetrius, king of India; and then, receiving succours, subdued India.

This implies that besides the kingdom of Bactria and that of Demetrius (the latter now confined to India and probably to the lands east of the Indus) there were independent states in various districts still Seleucid in 206 B.C. Justin’s statement is confirmed by the coins, which also show that Eucratides came forth as victor from a series of wars with the lesser states. Sogdiana, according to Chinese authorities, was occupied by the Scythians in the life-time of Eucratides.

[155-138 B.C.]

On his way back from India Eucratides was murdered by his son and co-regent, probably Heliocles [ca. 155 B.C.]. The date of this murder may be fixed by that of Demetrius, who must have been born not later than 224 B.C., and may be taken to have lost his kingdom not later than 159 B.C. Eucratides cannot, according to Justin’s account, have lived many years longer.

In the midst of the civil wars, which became more serious after the death of Eucratides, Mithridates of Parthia began to extend his dominions at the expense of Bactria: even in the life-time of Eucratides he succeeded in annexing two satrapies. Another account makes Mithridates rule as far as India, and declares him to have obtained without war the old kingdom of Porus, or the rule over all nations between the Indus and the Hydaspes. The two accounts are reconciled by Chinese records, which tell that, about 161 B.C., the nomad people Sse broke into the valley of the Cophen and founded a kingdom in the very place of the Parthian conquests in India, which must therefore have been ephemeral. This fact has its importance, as illustrating the way in which the internal wars of the east Iranian Greeks helped to prepare the ground for the Scythian invasion. After this success in the east Mithridates turned his attention to the west, where the chances of success were not less inviting. Demetrius had at length fallen before a coalition of the neighbouring sovereigns, powerfully supported by the Romans through their instrument, the exile Heraclides. A pretender, Alexander, in 145 B.C., was utterly defeated by Ptolemy, and slain in his flight by an Arab chieftain. Demetrius (II) Nicator, however, soon made himself bitterly hated, and five years of fighting drove him out of the greater part of Syria.

MEDIA AND BABYLONIA CONQUERED

Such was the state of the empire when war broke out between Media and Parthia, which was finally decided in favour of the latter. The short-lived independence of Media was soon cut short by Mithridates, who did not lose the opportunity afforded by the civil wars of Syria in 147 B.C. Babylonia followed the fate of Media; and the whole province, with its capital Seleucia, fell into the hands of the Parthians. Thus the East was finally lost to the Macedonians.

The change of rule was not well received by the new subjects of Parthia, least of all by the Greeks and Macedonians of the upper provinces, who sent embassy after embassy to Demetrius. In 140 B.C. he marched into Mesopotamia, and thence by Babylon to the upper provinces. He was well received by the natives, and even the small native states made common cause with him against the proud barbarians, whose neighbourhood they felt to be oppressive. He was joined by the Persians and Elymæans, and the Bactrians helped him by a diversion, appearing now for the first time as an independent people. At first things went well, and the Parthians were defeated in several battles, but in Media in 139 B.C. Demetrius was surprised by the lieutenant of Mithridates during negotiations for peace; his forces were annihilated, and he himself was taken prisoner and dragged in chains through the provinces that had joined his cause. The Parthian king received his captive with favour and assigned him a residence and suitable establishment in Hyrcania. He even gave him his daughter Rhodogune, and promised to restore him to his kingdom, but this plan was interrupted by death.

[138 B.C.]

Mithridates’ latest campaign was against the king of Elymais; the rich temples yielding him a booty of ten thousand talents (£2,258,000 or $11,290,000). The country was brought under Parthia, but continued to have its own kings. The coins make it likely that Mithridates simply set up a new dynasty, a branch of his own house. Mithridates died at a good old age in 138 B.C., or a little later. His memory was reverenced almost equally with that of the founder of his house, but his real glory was much greater, for it was he who made Parthia a great power. He is praised as a just and humane ruler, who, having become lord of all the lands from the Indian Caucasus to the Euphrates, introduced among the Parthians the best institutions of each country, and so became the legislator of his nation.

PARTHIAN “KINGDOMS”

The divisions of the empire which he founded can be sketched by the aid of an excerpt from the itinerary of Isidore of Charax (at the beginning of the Christian era) and from Pliny. The empire was divided into the upper and lower kingdoms, separated by the Caspian Gates. The lower kingdoms were seven: (1) Mesopotamia and Babylonia, (2) Apolloniatis, (3) Chalonitis, (4) Carina, (5) Cambadene, (6) Upper Media, (7) Lower or Rhagian Media. The upper kingdoms were eleven: (8) Choarene, (9) Comisene, (10) Hyrcania, (11) Astauene, (12) Parthyene, (13) Apauarcticene, (14) Margiana, a part of Bactria, (15) Aria, (16) the country of the Anauans, (17) Zarangiana, and (18) Arachosia, now called “White India.” The eighteen Parthian kingdoms thus correspond to six old satrapies. The Parthians gave much less attention to the west than did their predecessors, and they still left Mesopotamia as the only great satrapy. We note also that they cared little for reaching the sea, which they can have touched only for a little way at the mouth of the Euphrates; and even here they allowed the petty Characene quite to outstrip them in competing for the great sea trade.

As compared with the older Macedonian Empire, the Parthian realm lacked the east Iranian satrapies, Bactria with Sogdiana, and the Paropanisadæ, and also the three Indian ones, which, with Parætacene, or as it was afterwards called Sacastane, remained under the Bactrian Greeks and their successors. In the north they lacked Lesser Media, which had long been an independent state, and in the south they lacked Susiana, which now belonged to Elymais, and the satrapies of Persis and Carmania, which the Persians held along with the western part of Gedrosia. In the extreme west they lacked Arebelitis proper, which formed a small kingdom under the name of Adiabene, first mentioned in 69 B.C. The kingdom of Mannus of Orrha in northern Mesopotamia, which according to Isidore reached a good way south of Edessa, seems also to have been independent, and, like Adiabene, probably existed before the Parthian time.

From these small kingdoms the Parthians asked only an acknowledgment of vassalship. When Parthia was vigorous the vassalship was real, but when Parthia was torn by factions it became a mere name. The relation was always loose, and the political power of Parthia was therefore never comparable to the later power of the Sassanians. Arsaces Tiridates and his successors called themselves “great king.” Mithridates, as overlord of the minor kingships, first bore the title “great king of kings.” The title seems to have been conferred, not assumed in mere boastfulness.

The nobility had great influence in all things, and especially in the nomination of the king, who, however, was always an Arsacid. Next to the king stood the senate of probuli, from whom all generals and lieutenant-governors were chosen. They were called the king’s kin, and were no doubt the old Parnian martial nobility. A second senate was composed of the magians and wise men, and by these two senates the king was nominated. The Parthians were, in fact, very pious, conscientious in observing even the most troublesome precepts in Zoroastrianism as to the disposal of dead bodies, which were exposed to birds of prey and dogs, the bare bones alone being buried. When the Parthian prince Tiridates visited Nero he journeyed overland that he might not be forced to defile the sea when he spat, and his spiritual advisers the magians travelled with him. The magians were not, indeed, so all-powerful as under the Sassanians, but it is quite a mistake to think that the Parthians were but lukewarm Zoroastrians.

SCYTHIAN CONQUEST OF BACTRIA

[177-130 B.C.]

The complete annihilation of the Macedonian Empire in Iran was closely followed by the destruction of Greek independence in eastern Iran. The last mention of independent Bactria is in 140 B.C.; no king of Bactria and Sogdiana is known from coins after the parricide Heliocles. Classical writers give only two laconic accounts of the catastrophe. Strabo says that the nomadic peoples of the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacaraucæ, dwellers in the land of the Sacæ, beyond the Jaxartes, opposite to the Sacæ and Sogdians, came and took Bactria from the Greeks. Trogus names the Scythian peoples Saraucæ and Asiani. Fortunately the lively interest taken by the Chinese in the movements of the nomads of central Asia enables us to fill up this meagre notice from the report of the Chinese agent in Bactria in 128 B.C., as recorded a little later by the oldest Chinese historian, and from other notices collected by the Chinese after the opening of the regular caravan route with the West, about 115 B.C., and embodied in their second oldest history.

According to these sources the Yue-chi, a nomad people akin to the Tibetans, lived aforetime between Tun-hoang (Sha-cheu) and the Kilien-shan Mountains, and about 177 B.C. were subjugated, like all their neighbours, by the Turkish Hiung-nu. Between 167 and 161 B.C. they renewed the struggle without success; Lao-shang, the great khan of the Hiung-nu, slew their king Chang-lun, and made a drinking-cup of his skull, and the great mass of the vanquished people (the great Yue-chi) left their homes and moved westward, and occupied the land on Lake Issyk-kul, driving before them another nomad race, the Sse. The Sse took the road by Utch and Kashgar, ultimately reaching and subduing the kingdom of Kipin (the Kabul valley), while their old seats were occupied by the great Yue-chi, till they in turn were soon attacked by the Usun, who lived west of the Hiung-nu, and forced to move further west (160 or 159 B.C.). In 159 B.C. they moved straight on Sogdiana, reaching that land just at the time when internal wars were undermining the might of Eucratides. The conquest, however, may have been gradual, since Bactria is still named as independent in 140 B.C.

[130-128 B.C.]

Phraates II, who succeeded his father in 138 B.C. and continued his work, wresting Margiana from the Scythians of Bactria in an expedition commemorated on extant coins, had also to meet the last and most formidable attempt to restore the sovereignty of the Seleucids. Antiochus VII, one of the ablest kings of his race, marched eastward at the head of a force of eighty thousand combatants, swollen by camp-followers to a total of three hundred thousand. Many of the small princes, on whom the hand of Parthia lay heavy, joined him as they had joined his brother; the enemy was smitten on the great Zab, and in two other battles; Babylon and then Ecbatana opened their gates to the conqueror; and the subject nations rose against the Parthians, who, when Antiochus took up his winter quarters in Media, were again confined to their ancient limits. When the snows began to melt, an embassy from Phraates appeared to ask for peace; but the terms demanded by Antiochus (the liberation of Demetrius, the surrender of all conquests, and the payment of tribute for the old Parthian country) were such as could not be accepted without another appeal to the fortunes of war. Antiochus was met by the Parthian with a superior force of 120,000 men; he refused the advice of his officers to fall back to the neighbouring mountains, and accepted battle on a field too narrow for the evolution of his troops. The Syriac soldiers, enervated by luxury, were readier to imitate the flight of Athenæus than the valour of his master; the whole host was involved in the rout and annihilated. Antiochus himself escaped wounded from the fray, and cast himself from a rock that he might not be taken alive. This catastrophe (February, 129 B.C.) freed the Parthians forever from danger from Syria.

THE SCYTHIANS RAVAGE PARTHIA

A Scythian Warrior

Phraates paid funeral honours to the fallen king, and afterwards sent his body to Syria in a silver coffin. He entertained his captive family royally, married one of the two daughters, and sent the eldest son, Seleucus, to Syria to claim the sovereignty, and to serve future plans of his own; for an attempt to follow and recapture Demetrius, made immediately after the battle, had proved too late. But dangers in the east soon turned the Parthian’s attention away from enterprises in the west. In his distress he had bribed the Scythians to send him help; as they arrived too late he refused to pay them, and they in turn began to ravage the Parthian country. Phraates marched against them, leaving his charge at home to his favourite, the Hyrcanian Euhemerus, who chastised the countries that had sided with Antiochus, made war with Mesene, and treated Babylon and Seleucia with the utmost cruelty. But the Scythian war proved a disastrous one; the enemy overran the whole empire, and for the first time for five hundred years Scythian plunderers again appeared in Mesopotamia; in a decisive battle Phraates was deserted by the old soldiers of Antiochus, whom he had forced into his service and then treated with insolent cruelty; the Parthian host sustained a ruinous defeat, and the king himself was slain in the spring of 128 B.C., or somewhat later.

[128-64 B.C.]

Artabanus I (third son of Priapatius), who now became king, was an elderly man. The Scythians, according to the too favourable account by our chief authority, were content with their victory, and moved homewards, ravaging the country. But we know from John of Antioch that the successor of Phraates paid them tribute; and the southern part of Drangiana must now have been permanently occupied by the Scythian tribes. Finally, the coins reveal the existence of Arsacids who were rival kings to Artabanus I and Mithridates II, and perhaps borrow from individual successes against the Scythians the proud titles which so strongly contrast with the really wretched condition of the empire. Meanwhile it would appear that the men from Seleucia, driven to desperation, had seized the tyrant Euhemerus and put him to a cruel death. Artabanus, when they sought his pardon, threatened to put out the eyes of every man of Seleucia, and was prevented only by his death, in battle with the Tochari, after a very short reign.

Mithridates II, the Great, his son and successor, was the restorer of the empire. We are briefly told that he valiantly waged many wars with his neighbours, added many nations to the empire, and had several successes against the Scythians, so avenging the disgrace of his predecessors. His successes, however, must have been practically limited to the recovery of lost ground, and the eastern frontier was not advanced. It has been common to connect with his successes the appearance of Parthian names among the Indo-Scythian princes of the Kabul valley; but this must be false. On the other hand, Mithridates, if not the first to conquer Mesopotamia, was the first to fix the Euphrates as the western boundary of the empire, and towards the end of his reign he was strong enough to interfere with the concerns of Great Armenia and place Tigranes II on the throne in a time of disputed succession (94 B.C.), accepting in return the cession of seventy Armenian valleys.

FIRST CONFLICT WITH ROME

Now, too, the Parthians, as lords of Mesopotamia, came for the first time into contact with Rome, and in 92 B.C., when Sulla came to Cappadocia as proprætor of Cilicia, he met on the Euphrates the ambassador of Mithridates seeking the Roman alliance. This embassy was no doubt connected with the Parthian schemes against Syria. Demetrius III, the Seleucid, who reigned at Damascus, was compelled to surrender with his whole army and ended his life as a captive at the Parthian court. Mithridates the Great seems to have died just after this event; there is no reason to suppose that he lived to see the disasters which followed so close on his great successes.

[64-53 B.C.]

Artabanus II was the next monarch, but after him the title of king of kings was taken by the Armenian Tigranes, one of the most dangerous foes Parthia ever had. In 86 B.C. it was still a reason for choosing Tigranes, as king of part of Syria, that he was in alliance with Parthia; but very soon the latter state was so ruined by civil and foreign war, that it was no match for Armenia. In 77 B.C. the Arsacid Sinatruces took the throne. Tigranes conquered Media, ravaged the country of Arbela and Nineveh, and compelled the cession of Adiabene and Mesopotamia. Phraates III succeeded his father, Sinatruces, after a period of hesitating neutrality, accepted the overtures of Pompey, and prepared to invade Armenia (66 B.C.), guided by the younger Tigranes, who had quarrelled with his father and taken refuge in Parthia, where he wedded the daughter of the king. Tigranes the elder fled to the mountains; and Phraates turned homeward, leaving young Tigranes with part of the army to continue the war. The latter, who alone was no match for his father, fled after an utter defeat to Pompey, who was just preparing to invade Armenia, and to whom the elder Tigranes presently surrendered at discretion. The Roman, however, gave him very good terms, altogether abandoned his son’s cause, and even put him in chains. Meantime Phraates had occupied the Parthian conquests of Tigranes, which the Romans had promised him, and sent an embassy to Pompey to intercede for his son-in-law. But the Romans had no further occasion for Parthian help; and, instead of granting his request, sent Afranius to clear the country and restore it to Tigranes. Immediately afterwards Pompey’s officer marched into Syria through Mesopotamia, which by treaty had been expressly recognised as Parthian; and it was another grievous insult that Pompey in writing to Phraates had withheld from him the title of king of kings. About 57 B.C. Phraates, the restorer of the empire, was murdered by his two sons, one of whom, Orodes or Hyrodes I, took the throne, while his brother Mithridates III got Media; but the latter ruled so cruelly that he was expelled by the Parthian nobles, and Orodes reigned alone.

ORODES DEFEATS THE ROMANS

A Parthian embassy appeared in Syria in the spring to remonstrate against the faithlessness of Rome, but at the same time the Parthians were ready for war. Surenas, with Silaces, satrap of Mesopotamia, was pressing the Roman garrisons, and prepared to confront Crassus with an army wholly composed of cavalry, while Orodes in person invaded Armenia. In the spring of 53 B.C., Crassus and his son Publius crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma with seven legions and eight thousand cavalry and light troops, making up a total of forty-two or forty-three thousand men, and was persuaded by Abgar of Orrhoene to leave the river and march straight across the plains to Surenas. Surenas kept the mass of his troops concealed by a wooded hill, showing only the not very numerous vanguard of cataphracts till the Romans were committed to do battle. The Roman cavalry charged the enemy to prevent a threatening flank movement, and were drawn away from the mass of the army by the favourite Parthian manœuvre of a simulated flight.[c]

So vivid a picture of the ferocity of this battle is given in Plutarch’s Life of Crassus, that we may well quote it here.[a]

PLUTARCH’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF CARRHÆ

[53 B.C.]

The enemies seemed not to the Romans at the first to be so great a number, neither so bravely armed as they thought they had been. For, concerning their great number, Surenas had of purpose hid them, with certain troops he sent before; and to hide their bright armours he had cast cloaks and beasts’ skins upon them, but when both the armies approached near the one to the other, and that the sign to give charge was lift up in the air: first they filled the field with a dreadful noise to hear. For the Parthians do not encourage their men to fight with the sound of a horn, neither with trumpets nor hautboys, but with great kettle-drums hollow within, and about them they hang little bells and copper rings, and with them they all make a noise everywhere together, and it is like a dead sound, mingled as it were with the braying or bellowing of a wild beast, and a fearful noise as if it thundered, knowing that hearing is one of the senses that soonest moves the heart and spirit of any man, and makes him soonest beside himself.

The Romans being put in fear with this dead sound, the Parthians straight threw the clothes and coverings from them that hid their armour, and then showed their bright helmets and cuirasses of Margian tempered steel, that glared like fire, and their horses barbed with steel and copper. The bowmen drew a great strength, and had big strong bows, which sent the arrows from them with a wonderful force. The Romans by means of these bows were in hard state. For if they kept their ranks, they were grievously wounded: again if they left them, and sought to run upon the Parthians to fight at hand with them, they saw they could do them but little hurt, and yet were very likely to take the greater harm themselves. For, as fast as the Romans came upon them, so fast did the Parthians fly from them, and yet in flying continued still their shooting: which no nation but the Scythians could better do than they, being a matter indeed most greatly to their advantage. For by their flight they best did save themselves, and fighting still they thereby shunned the shame that their flying would have brought down upon them.

The Romans still defended themselves, and held it out, so long as they had any hope that the Parthians would leave fighting, when they had spent their arrows or would join battle with them. But after they understood that there were a great number of camels laden with quivers full of arrows, where the first that had bestowed their arrows fetched about to take new quivers: then Crassus, seeing no end of their shot, began to faint, and sent to Publius his son, willing him in any case to charge with desperate power upon the enemies, and to give an onset, before they were compassed in on every side.

But they, seeing him coming, turned straight their horse and fled. Publius Crassus seeing them fly, cried out, “These men will not abide us,” and so spurred on for life after them. They thought all had been won, and that there was no more to do, but to follow the chase: till they were gone far from the army, and then they found the deceit. For the horsemen that fled before them suddenly turned again, and a number of others besides came and set upon them. Whereupon the Romans halted, thinking that the enemies, perceiving they were so few, would come and fight with them hand to hand. Howbeit they set out against them their men at arms with their barbed horse, and made their light horsemen wheel round about them, keeping no order at all: who galloping up and down the plain, whirled up the sand hills from the bottom with their horses’ feet, which raised such a wonderful cloud of dust, that the Romans could scarce see or speak one to another.

For they, being shut up into a little room, and standing close one to another, were sore wounded with the Parthians’ arrows, and died of a cruel lingering death, crying out for anguish and pain they felt: and turning and tormenting themselves upon the sand, they brake the arrows sticking in them. Again, striving by force to pluck out the forked arrow heads, that had pierced far into their bodies through their veins and sinews: thereby they opened their wounds wider, and so cast themselves away. Many of them died thus miserably martyred: and such as died not, were not able to defend themselves.

Then when Publius Crassus prayed and besought them to charge the men at arms with their barbed horse, they showed him their hands fast nailed to their targets with arrows, and their feet likewise shot through and nailed to the ground: so as they could neither fly nor yet defend themselves. Thereupon himself encouraging his horsemen, went and gave a charge, and did valiantly set upon the enemies, but it was with too great disadvantage, both for offence and also for defence. For himself and his men with weak and light staves brake upon them that were armed with cuirasses of steel, or stiff leathern jackets. And the Parthians in contrary manner with mighty strong pikes gave charge upon these Gauls, which were either unarmed or else but lightly armed.

A Parthian Peasant

Yet those were they in whom Crassus most trusted, having done wonderful feats of war with them. For they received the Parthians’ pikes in their hands, and took them about their middles, and threw them off their horse, where they lay on the ground, and could not stir for the weight of their harness: and there were divers of them also that, lighting from their horse, lay under their enemies’ horses’ bellies, and thrust their swords into them. Their horse flinging and bounding in the air for very pain threw their masters under feet, and the enemies one upon another, and in the end fell dead among them. Moreover, extreme heat and thirst did marvellously cumber the Gauls, who were used to abide neither: and the most part of their horse were slain, charging with all their power upon the men at arms of the Parthians, and so ran themselves in upon the points of their pikes.

At length, they were driven to retire towards their footmen, and Publius Crassus among them, who was very ill by reason of the wounds he had received. And seeing a sand hill by chance not far from them, they went thither, and setting their horse in the midst of it, compassed it round with their targets, thinking by this means to cover and defend themselves the better from the barbarous people: howbeit they found it contrary. For they that were behind, standing higher, could by no means save themselves, but were all hurt alike, as well the one as the other, bewailing their own misery and misfortune, that must needs die without revenge or declaration of their valiancy. There were two Grecians who counselled P. Crassus to steal away with them. But Publius answered them, that there was no death so cruel as could make him forsake them that died for his sake. When he had so said, wishing them to save themselves, he embraced them, and took his leave of them: and being very sore hurt with the shot of an arrow through one of his hands, commanded one of his gentlemen to thrust him through with a sword, and so turned his side to him for the purpose. It is reported Censorinus did the like. But Megabacchus slew himself with his own hands, and so did the most part of the gentlemen that were of that company.

And for those that were left alive, the Parthians got up the sand hill, and fighting with them, thrust them through with their spears and pikes, and took but five hundred prisoners. After that, they struck off Publius Crassus’ head, and thereupon returned straight to set upon his father Crassus, who was then in this state. Crassus the father, after he had willed his son to charge the enemies, retired the best he could by a hill’s side, looking ever that his son would not be long before he returned from the chase. But Publius seeing himself in danger, had sent divers messengers to his father, to advertise him of his distress, whom the Parthians intercepted and slew by the way: and the last messengers he sent, escaping very hardly, brought Crassus news that his son was but cast away, if he did not presently aid him, and that with a great power. These news were grievous to Crassus in two respects: first for the fear he had, seeing himself in danger to lose all; and secondly for the vehement desire he had to go to his son’s help. Thus he saw in reason all would come to nought, and in fine determined to go with all his power to the rescue of his son.

But in the meantime the enemies were returned from his son’s overthrow, with a more dreadful noise and cry of victory than ever before: and thereupon their deadly sounding drums filled the air with their wonderful noise. The Romans then looked straight for a hot alarm. But the Parthians that brought Publius Crassus’ head upon the point of a lance, coming near to the Romans, showed them his head, and asked them in derision if they knew what house he was of, and who were his parents: for it was not likely (said they) that so noble and valiant a young man should be the son of so cowardly a father as Crassus.

The sight of Publius Crassus’ head killed the Romans’ hearts more than any other danger they had been in at any time in all the battle. For it did not set their hearts on fire as it should have done with anger and desire of revenge: but far otherwise, made them quake for fear, and struck them stark dead to behold it. Yet Crassus’ self showed greater courage in this misfortune than he before had done in all the war beside. For riding by every band he cried out aloud: “Our ancestors in old time lost a thousand ships, yea in Italy divers armies and chieftains for the conquest of Sicilia: yet for all the loss of them, at the length they were victorious over them by whom they were before vanquished. For the empire of Rome came not to that greatness it now is at by good fortune only, but by patience and constant suffering of trouble and adversity, never yielding or giving place unto any danger.”

Crassus, using these persuasions to encourage his soldiers for resolution, found that all his words wrought none effect: but contrarily, after he had commanded them to give the shout of battle, he plainly saw their hearts were done, for their shout rose but faint, and not all alike. The Parthians on the other side, their shout was great, and lustily they rang it out. Now when they came to join, the Parthians’ archers on horseback compassing in the Romans upon the wings shot an infinite number of arrows at their sides. But their men at arms, giving charge upon the front of the Romans, battled with their great lances, compelled them to draw into a narrow room, a few excepted, that valiantly and in desperate manner ran in among them, as men rather desiring so to die than to be slain with their arrows, where they could do the Parthians almost no hurt at all. So were they soon despatched, with the great lances that ran them through, head, wood, and all, with such a force that oftentimes they ran through two at once.

Thus when they had fought the whole day, night drew on, and made them retire, saying they would give Crassus that night’s respite, to lament and bewail his son’s death. So the Parthians, camping hard by the Romans, were in very good hope to overthrow him the next morning. The Romans on the other side had a marvellous ill night, making no reckoning to bury their dead, nor to dress their wounded men, that died in miserable pain; but every man bewailed his hard fortune, when they saw not one of them could escape, if they tarried till the morning. But Crassus went aside without light, and laid him down with his head covered, because he would see no man, showing thereby the common sort an example of unstable fortune; and the wise men, a good learning to know the fruits of ill counsel and vain ambition, that had so much blinded him that he could not be content to command so many thousands of men, but thought (as a man would say) himself the meanest of all, and one that possessed nothing, because he was accounted inferior unto two persons only, Pompey and Cæsar.

Notwithstanding, Octavius, one of his chieftains, and Cassius the treasurer, seeing him so overcome with sorrow and out of heart that he had no life nor spirit in him, they themselves called the captains and centurions together, and sat in council for their departure, and so agreed that there was no longer tarrying for them. Thus of their own authority at the first they made the army march away without any sound of trumpet or other noise.

But immediately after, they that were left hurt and sick, and could not follow, seeing the camp remove, fell a-crying out and tormenting themselves in such sort that they filled the whole camp with sorrow, and put them out of all order with the great moan and loud lamentation; so that the foremost rank that first dislodged fell into a marvellous fear, thinking they had been the enemies that had come and set upon them. Then turning oft, and setting themselves in battle array, one while loading their beasts with the wounded men, another while unloading them again, they were left behind.

d

After getting dangerously entangled in marshy ground, Crassus had almost reached the mountains when he was induced, by the despair of his troops rather than by error of his own judgment, to yield to treacherous proposals of Surenas and descend again into the plain. As he mounted the horse which was to convey him to the meeting with the enemy’s general, the gestures of the Parthians excited suspicions of treachery, a struggle ensued, and Crassus was struck down and slain. Scarcely ten thousand out of the whole host reached Syria by way of Armenia; twenty thousand had fallen and ten thousand captives were settled in Antioch, the capital of Margiana.

[53-40 B.C.]

The token of victory, the hand and head of Crassus, reached Orodes in Armenia just as he had made peace with Artavasdes and betrothed his eldest son Pacorus to the daughter of the Armenian king. The Roman disaster was due primarily to the novelty of the Parthian way of assault, which took them wholly by surprise, and partly also to bad generalship; but the Romans always sought a traitor to account for a defeat, and in the present case they threw the blame partly on Andromachus of Carrhæ, who really did mislead Crassus in his retreat, and was rewarded by the Parthians with the tyranny of his native town, but had no great influence on the disaster; and partly on Abgar, whose advice was no doubt bad, but not necessarily treacherous.

Surenas, the victor of Carrhæ, whose fame was now too great for the condition of a mere subject, was put to death a little later, the victim of Orodes’ jealousy; the victory itself was weakly followed up. Not till 52 B.C. was Syria invaded, and then with forces so weak that Cassius found the defence easy.

Orodes avoided a threatened breach with his son Pacorus, by associating him in the empire; but the Parthians took little advantage of the civil wars that preceded the fall of the Roman Republic. They occasionally stepped in to save the weaker party from utter annihilation, but even this policy was not followed with energy, and Orodes refused to help Pompey in his distress because the Roman would not promise to give him Syria. Labienus was with Orodes negotiating for help on a larger scale when the news of Philippi arrived, and remained with him till 40 B.C., when he was at last sent back to Syria, together with Pacorus and a numerous host. The Roman garrisons in Syria were old troops of Brutus and Cassius, who had been taken over by Antony; those in the region of Apamea joined Labienus; Antony’s legate Decidius Saxa was defeated, and fled from the camp afraid of his own men.

[43-36 B.C.]

Apamea, Antioch, and all Syria soon fell into the hands of the Parthians, and Decidius was pursued and slain. Pacorus advanced along the great road and received the submission of all the Phœnician cities save Tyre. Simultaneously the satrap Barzaphranes appeared in Galilee; the patriots all over Palestine rose against Phasael and Herod; and five hundred Parthian horse appearing before Jerusalem were enough to overthrow the Roman party and substitute Antigonus for Hyrcanus. The Parthian administration was a favourable contrast to the rule of the oppressive proconsuls, and the justice and clemency of Pacorus won the hearts of the Syrians. Meantime Labienus had penetrated Asia Minor as far as Lydia and Ionia. The Roman governor Plancus could only hold the islands; most of the cities opened their gates to Labienus, the “Parthicus imperator.”

But Rome even in its time of civil divisions was stronger than Parthia; in 39 B.C. Ventidius Bassus, general for Antony, suddenly appeared in Asia and drove Labienus and his provincial levies before him without a battle as far as the Taurus. Here the Parthians came to Labienus’ help, but, attacking rashly and without his co-operation, they were defeated by Ventidius and Labienus’ troops were involved in the disaster; Phranipates, the ablest lieutenant of Pacorus, fell, and the Parthians evacuated Syria. Before Ventidius had completed the resettlement of the Roman power in Syria and Palestine, and while his troops were dispersed in winter quarters, the Parthians fell on him again with a force of more than twenty thousand men and an unusually large proportion of free cavaliers in full armour. A battle was fought near the shrine of Hercules at Gindarus in Cyrrhestica, on the anniversary, it is said, of the defeat of Crassus (9th of June, 38 B.C.); the Parthians were utterly routed and Pacorus himself was slain. His head was sent round to the cities of Syria which were still in revolt, to prove to them that their hopes had failed. There was no further resistance save from Aradus and Jerusalem.

Orodes, now an old man and sorely afflicted by the death of his favourite son, nominated his next son, Phraates, as his colleague, and the latter began to reign by making away with brothers of whom he was jealous, and then strangling his father, who had not concealed his anger at the former crime (37 B.C.). The reign of Orodes was the culminating point of Parthian greatness, and all his successors adopted his title of king of kings, “Arsaces Euergetes.” It was he who moved the capital westward to Seleucia, or rather to Ctesiphon (Taisefún), its eastern suburb.

PHRAATES IV REPELS MARK ANTONY

[36-9 B.C.]

Phraates IV continued his reign in a series of crimes, murdering every prominent man among his brothers, and even his own adult son, that the nobles might find no Arsacid to lead their discontent. Many of the nobles fled to foreign parts, and Antony felt encouraged to plan a war of vengeance against Parthia. Antony had no hope of forcing the well-guarded Euphrates frontier; but since the death of Pacorus, Armenia had again been brought under Roman patronage, and he hoped to strike a blow at the heart of Parthia. Keeping the Parthians in play by feigned proposals of peace while he matured his preparations, he appeared in Atropatene in 36 B.C. with sixty thousand legionaries and forty thousand cavalry and auxiliary troops, and at once formed the siege of the capital Phraaspa. The Median king Artavasdes, son of Ariobarzanes, had marched to join Phraates, who looked for the attack in another quarter. Phraates had only forty thousand Parthians, including but four hundred freemen who never left the king, and probably ten thousand Median cavalry; but these forces were well handled, and the two kings had reached the scene of war before Antony was joined by his baggage and heavy siege-train, and opened the campaign by capturing the train and cutting to pieces its escort of seventy-five hundred men under the legate Oppius Statianus. Antony was still able to repel a demonstration to relieve Phraaspa; but his provisions ran short, and the foraging parties were so harassed that the siege made no progress. As it was now October, he was at length forced to open negotiations with Phraates.

The Parthians promised peace if the Romans withdrew; but when Antony took him at his word, abandoning the siege-engines, he began a vigorous pursuit, and kept the Romans constantly on the defensive, chastising one officer who hazarded an engagement by a defeat which cost the Romans three thousand killed and five thousand wounded. Still greater were the losses by famine and thirst and dysentery; and the whole force was utterly demoralised and had lost a fourth part of its fighting men, a third of the camp-followers, and all the baggage when, after a retreat of twenty-seven days from Phraaspa to the Araxes by way of Mianeh (276 miles), they reached the Armenian frontier. Eight thousand more perished of cold and from snow-storms in the Armenian mountains; the mortality among the wounded was terrible; the Romans would have been undone had not Artavasdes of Armenia allowed them to winter in his land.

The failure of the expedition was due partly to the usual Roman ignorance of the geographical and climatic conditions, partly to a rash haste in the earlier operations; but very largely also (as in the case of Napoleon’s Russian campaign) to the lack of discipline in the soldiers of the Civil War, which called for very severe chastisement even during the siege of Phraaspa, and culminated at length in frequent desertions and in open mutiny, driving Antony to think of suicide. The Romans laid the whole blame on Artavasdes, but without any adequate reason. At the same time, the disaster of Antony following that of Crassus seemed to show that within their own country the Parthians could not safely be attacked on any side, and for a century and a half Roman cupidity left them alone.

Media and Armenia fell before the Parthians; the Romans who were still in the country were slain, and Artaxes II was raised to the Armenian throne (30 B.C.). In the very next year, however, the course of the Parthian affairs led Artaxes to make his peace with Rome. Phraates’ tyranny had only been aggravated by his successes, and open rebellion broke out in 33 B.C. We have coins of an anonymous pretender dated March to June 32 B.C. To him succeeded Tiridates II, whose rebellion was at a climax during the war of Actium. Phraates was taken by surprise and fled, slaying his concubines that they might not fall a prey to his victor. Tiridates seated himself on the throne in June, 27 B.C., and Phraates wandered for some time in exile till he persuaded the Scythians to undertake his cause. Before the great host of the Scythians Tiridates retired without a contest. In June, 26 B.C., as the coins prove, Phraates again held the throne. In 10 or 9 B.C. Phraates took the precaution of sending his family to Rome so that the rebels might have no Arsacid pretender to put forward, keeping only and designating as heir his youngest son by his favourite wife Thea Musa Urania, an Italian slave girl presented to him by Augustus. This was mainly a scheme of Urania’s, and she and her son crowned it by murdering the old tyrant.

ANARCHY IN PARTHIA

[9 B.C.-40 A.D.]

Phraates V, or as he is usually called Phraataces (diminutive), was thus the third Arsacid in successive generations to reach the throne by parricide. Phraates V, whose first coin is of 2 B.C., tried an energetic policy, expelling Artavasdes III, and the Roman troops that supported him from Armenia, and seating on the throne Tigranes IV, who had been a fugitive under Parthian protection. As Augustus did not wish to extend the empire, and Phraates was not very secure on his throne, neither party cared to fight, and an agreement was patched up after some angry words, Phraates resigning all claim on Armenia and leaving his brothers as hostages in Rome (1 A.D.). Phraates now married his mother, a match probably meant to conciliate the clergy, as he knew that the nobles hated him. In fact he was soon driven by a rebellion (after October, 4 A.D.) to flee to Roman soil, where he died, it seems, not long afterwards.

The Parthians called Orodes II from exile to the throne. Of him we have a coin of autumn, 6 A.D.; but his wild and cruel temper soon made him hated, and he was murdered while out hunting. Anarchy and bloodshed now gaining the upper hand, the Parthians sent to Rome (before 9 A.D.), and received thence as king Vonones, the eldest of the sons of Phraates IV, a well-meaning prince, whose foreign education put him quite out of sympathy with his country. A strong reaction of national feeling took place, and the main line of the Arsacids being now exhausted by death or exile, Artabanus, an Arsacid on the mother’s side, who had grown up among the Dahæ and had afterwards been made king of Media (Atropatene), was set up as pretendant in 10 or 11 A.D. Artabanus was defeated at first, but ultimately gained a great and bloody victory and seated himself in Ctesiphon. Vonones fled to Armenia and was chosen as king of that country (16 A.D.); but Tiberius, who was anxious to avoid war, and did not wish to give Artabanus III any pretext to invade Armenia, persuaded Vonones to retire to Syria. Later he was interned in Cilicia, and in 19 A.D. lost his life in an attempt to escape.

Amidst such constant rebellions Artabanus III, shrewd and energetic, not merely held his own but waged successful foreign wars, set his son Arsaces on the throne of Armenia, and challenged Rome still more directly by raising claims to lordship over the Iranian population of Cappadocia. Through the whole first century of the Roman Empire all relations to Parthia turned on the struggle for influence in Armenia, and, much as he loved peace, Tiberius could not suffer this disturbance of the balance of power to pass unnoticed. Much as Artabanus hated the Romans, his insecure position at home drove him in 37 A.D. to make an accommodation on terms favourable to them and send his son Darius as hostage to Tiberius.

[40-81 A.D.]

In Artabanus’ life-time the second place in the empire had been held by one Gotarzes, who appears to have been his colleague in the upper satrapies, and perhaps his lieutenant in his flight to Adiabene. But there is monumental evidence that he was not, as Josephus says and Tacitus implies, Artabanus’ son (except by adoption), and so we find that the succession first fell to Vardanes, who coined money in September, 40 A.D. But in 41 A.D., Gotarzes gave Vardanes an opportunity to return; in two days he rode 345 miles, and taking his rival by surprise he forced him to flee, and occupied the lower satrapies, where he coined regularly from July, 42 A.D., onwards. The renewal of civil war enabled the emperor Claudius, with the aid of the Iberians, to drive the Parthian satrap Demonax from Armenia and reseat Mithridates on the throne. Meantime Gotarzes and Vardanes were face to face in the plain of western or Parthian Bactria, but an attempt on the life of the latter having been disclosed by his foe they made peace, and Gotarzes withdrew to Hyrcania; while Vardanes, confirmed in his empire, returned to Seleucia and took it in 43 A.D. after a siege of seven years.

That Vardanes was a great king is plain from the high praise of Tacitus and the attention which the greatest of Roman historians bestows on a reign which had no direct relations to Rome. Vardanes, whose last coin is of August, 45 A.D., was murdered while hunting—a victim, we are told, to the hatred produced by his severity to his subjects. But in judging of the charges brought against him and his two predecessors, we must remember that the rise of a new dynasty like that of Artabanus is always accompanied by deeds of violence, and that the oppressed subjects are simply the utterly unruly Parthian nobles who had lost all discipline in the long civil wars, and could only be controlled by force.

Gotarzes died of a sickness, not before June, 51 A.D., and was followed by Vonones II, who had been king in Atropatene, and was probably a brother of Artabanus III. According to the coins his short reign began before September, 51 A.D., and did not end before October, 54 A.D. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Volagases I, the brothers acquiescing in his advancement, although his mother was only a concubine from Miletus; and receiving their compensation by being nominated to kingdoms which gave them the second and third places after the king of kings—Pacorus to Media or Atropatene, and Tiridates to Armenia. The Armenians now offered no resistance to the Parthians, but the Romans were not content to lose their influence in the land. Open war with Rome, however, was still delayed by negotiations. Finally Rome refused to confirm a treaty, and war was declared. The first year of the war (62 A.D.) was unfortunate for the Romans. Next year the war was resumed, and Corbulo, crossing the Euphrates at Melitene, had penetrated into Sophene when the Parthians earnestly sought peace. It was agreed that Tiridates should lay down his diadem and go to Rome in person to receive it again from the emperor, which was done accordingly in 66 A.D. The real advantage of the war lay more with Parthia than with Rome; for if the Roman suzerainty over Armenia was admitted, the Parthians had succeeded, after a contest which had lasted a generation, in placing an Arsacid on the Armenian throne. After Nero’s death Volagases (Vologeses) formed very friendly relations with Vespasian, which endured till 75 A.D.

Volagases I died soon after the Alan wars, leaving a just reputation by his friendly relation to his brothers (a relation so long unknown), his patient steadfastness in foreign war and home troubles, and his foundation of a new capital. Perhaps also he has the merit of collecting from fragments or oral tradition all that remained of the Avesta. From June, 78 A.D., we find two kings coining and reigning together, Volagases II and Pacorus II, probably brothers. From 79 A.D. there is a long break in the coins of the former, and Artabanus IV takes his place with a coin struck in July, 81 A.D. This Artabanus appears as the protector of a certain Terentius Maximus, who pretended to be Nero; he threatened to restore him and displace Titus by force, and though the pretender was at length given up, the farce, which was kept up till 88 A.D., might have ended in earnest but for the disorders of the times—indicated by a break in the Parthian coinage between 84 and 93 A.D., in which latter year Pacorus appears as sole king.

[88-116 A.D.]

At this time the political horizon of Parthia was very wide, and its intercourse with the farthest East was livelier than at any other date. In 90 A.D. the Yue-chi had come to war with the governor of Chinese Tatary and been reduced to vassalship: in 94 A.D. a Chinese expedition slew their king, and advancing to the “North Sea” (Lake Aral) subdued fifty kingdoms. The Tochari, one sees, like the Greeks before them, had neglected the lands north of the Hindu-Kush in their designs on India; even of Ooemo-Kadphises no coins are found north of that range. In 97 A.D. Chinese envoys directed to Rome actually reached the Mediterranean, but were dissuaded from going further from Parthian accounts of the terrors of the sea voyage; and in 101 A.D. Muon-kiu, king of An-si (Parthians), sent lions and gazelles to the emperor of China. Muon-kiu reigned in Ho-to—i.e., Carta or Zadracarta in Hyrcania; he was therefore a king of the Hyrcanians, who also held the old Parthian lands east of the Caspian Gate, and may be identical with a king, rival to Pacorus, who struck copper coins in 107 and 108 A.D., if the latter is not identical with the later monarch Osroes.

But at any rate the representative of the Parthian power in the West was still Pacorus II, who in 110 A.D. sold the crown of Edessa to Abgar VII, bar Izat, and died soon after, making way for his brother Osroes, who had to reckon with two rivals—Volagases II from 112 A.D. onwards, and Meherdates (Mithridates) VI. The latter was a brother of Osroes, and so probably was the former. None of the three was strong enough to conquer the others, and continual war went on between them till Osroes was foolish enough to provoke Roman intervention by taking Armenia from Exedares, son of Pacorus, to whose appointment Rome had not objected, and transferring it to another son of Pacorus called Parthamasiris.

THE ROMANS INTERVENE

Trajan, who had quite thrown over the principle of the Julii and Flavii (that the Danube and the Euphrates were the boundaries of the empire) and was fully embarked on the old Chauvinist traditions of the republic, would not let such an occasion slip; and refusing an answer to an embassy that met him at Athens, he entered Armenia and took Arsamosata without battle, after receiving the homage of western Armenia (114 A.D.). Parthamasiris submitted himself to the emperor, but Trajan declared that Armenia must be a Roman province, appointed an escort to see the Parthian over the border, and when he resisted and tried to escape ordered his execution—a brutal act, meant to inspire terror and show that the Arsacids should no longer be treated with on equal terms. Armenia and the neighbouring kings to the north having given in their submission, Trajan marched back to Edessa, receiving the homage of Abgar. The campaign of 115 A.D. was in Mesopotamia. At its close Mesopotamia was made a Roman province; the Cardueni and the Marcomedi of the Armenian frontier had also been reduced, and Trajan received the title of “Parthicus.” In 116 A.D. the Tigris was crossed in the face of the enemy, and a third new province of Assyria absorbed the whole kingdom of Mebarsapes. Once more the Tigris was crossed and Babylonia invaded, still without resistance from the Parthians.

[116-166 A.D.]

A Roman fleet descended the Euphrates and the ships were conveyed across on rollers to the Tigris, to co-operate with the army; and now Ctesiphon fell and Osroes fled to Armenia, the northeast parts of which cannot have been thoroughly subdued. The Roman fleet descended the Tigris and received the submission of Mesene; but now, while Trajan was engaged in a voyage of reconnaissance in the Persian Gulf, plainly aiming at Bahrein, all the new provinces revolted and destroyed or expelled the Roman garrisons. The rebellion was at length put down, but Trajan now saw what it would cost to maintain direct Roman rule over such wide and distant conquests, and Parthamaspates was solemnly crowned in the great plain by Ctesiphon in the presence of Romans and Parthians (winter of 117 A.D.). An unsuccessful siege of Atra (Hatrá) in the Mesopotamian desert was Trajan’s next undertaking; illness and the revolt of the Jews prevented him from resuming the campaign, and after Trajan’s death (7th of August, 117 A.D.) Hadrian wisely withdrew the garrisons from the new provinces, which would have demanded the constant presence of the imperial armies, and again made the Euphrates the limit of the empire. Parthamaspates, too, had soon to leave Parthia, and Hadrian gave him Orrhoene. Thus Trajan’s Chauvinist policy had no other result than to show to the world the miserable weakness to which discord had reduced the Parthians. Osroes died soon after, and Volagases II became sole monarch, dying in November, 148 A.D., at the age of about ninety-six, after a reign of seventy-one years.

Volagases III, who succeeded, had designs on Armenia, and in 162 A.D. expelled the Arsacid Sohæmus, who was a client of Rome, and made Pacorus king. The destruction of a Roman legion under the legate of Cappadocia (Ælius Severianus), who fell on his own sword, laid Cappadocia and Syria open to the Parthians. When late in the year Ælius Verus arrived from the capital he found the troops so demoralised by defeat that he was ready to offer peace; but when Volagases refused to treat, the able lieutenants whom Verus directed from Antioch soon changed the face of affairs.

The war had two theatres, and was officially called the Armenian and Parthian War. Armenia was regained and Sohæmus restored (163, 164 A.D.), while Avidius Cassius drove Volagases from Syria in a bloody battle at Europus, and entering north Mesopotamia, took Edessa and Nisibis, though not without serious opposition. At length, deserted by his allies (the local kings, who were becoming more and more independent), Volagases abandoned Mesopotamia, and Cassius entered Babylonia, where, on a frivolous pretext, he gave up to rapine and the flames the friendly city of Seleucia, still the first city of the East, with four hundred thousand inhabitants.

The destruction of Seleucia was a hideous crime, a mortal wound dealt to Eastern Hellenism by its natural protectors; that Cassius next, advancing to Ctesiphon, razed the palace of Volagases to the ground may, on the other hand, be defended as a symbolical act calculated more than anything else to impair the prestige of the Parthian with his oriental subjects. Cassius returned to Syria in 165 A.D., with his victorious army much weakened through the failure of the commissariat and by the plague, which, breaking out in Parthia immediately after the fall of Seleucia, spread over the whole known world. In the same year Martius Verus won hardly less considerable successes in Media Atropatene, then apparently a separate kingdom. The peace which followed in 166 A.D. gave Mesopotamia to Rome.

This was the greatest of all wars between Rome and Parthia, alike in the extent of the lands involved and the energy of attack shown by the Parthians. Parthia, after this last effort, continued steadily to decline.

THE DECAY OF PARTHIAN GREATNESS

[166-217 A.D.]

The Romans at the same time made an effort to compete with Parthia for the Chinese trade (especially in silk), which the latter had jealously kept in their own hands, and in 166 A.D. an envoy of An-thun (M. Antoninus) reached the court of the emperor Huan-ti, via the sea and Tongking. But the effort to establish a direct trade with China was unavailing, and the trade still flowed in its old channels when a second Roman agent reached China in 226 A.D., a little before the fall of the Parthian Empire. The Chinese tell us that with India also the Parthians drove a considerable trade.

Volagases III died in 191 A.D., having reigned forty-two years without civil war, and was succeeded by Volagases IV, who fought several vain battles with Rome. In 199 A.D. a fleet on the Euphrates co-operated with the Roman army, and Severus, taking up an unaccomplished plan of Trajan, dredged out the old Naarmalca canal, through which his ships sailed into the Tigris, and took the Parthians wholly by surprise. Seleucia and Coche were deserted by their inhabitants; Ctesiphon was taken by the end of the year with terrible slaughter, one hundred thousand inhabitants being led captive and the place given up to pillage, for the Great King had fled powerless at the approach of the foe. Severus, whose force was reduced by famine and dysentery, did not attempt pursuit, but drew off up the Tigris. The army was again in its quarters by the 1st of April, 200 A.D., and for some time thereafter Severus was occupied in Armenia. But in 201 A.D. he undertook a carefully organised expedition against Atra, from whose walls the Romans had been repulsed with great loss when Severus, returning from the Tigris in the previous year, had attempted to carry it by a coup de main. This city, which in Trajan’s time was neither great nor rich, was now a wealthy place, and the sun temple contained vast treasures. The classical authors call it Arabian, but the king’s name is Syriac—Barsenius, i.e., Bar Sín, son of the moon, and we may suppose that it was really an Aramæan principality, which like Palmyra had its strength from the surrounding Arab tribes that it could call into the field. Severus lay before Atra for twenty days, but the enemy’s cavalry cut off his foraging parties, the admirable archers galled the Roman troops, a great part of the siege-train was burned with naphtha; and when, in addition, two assaults had been repulsed with tremendous loss on two successive days, the emperor was compelled to raise the siege—a severe blow to Roman prestige in the East, and one that greatly exalted the name of Atra and its prince, but did not help in the least the decaying power of Parthia.

In 209 A.D. Volagases IV was succeeded by his son Volagases V, under whom in 212 A.D. the fatal troubles in Persia began; while in 213 A.D. his brother Artabanus rose as rival claimant of the kingship, and the civil war lasted for many years. A fresh danger arose when Tiridates, a brother of Volagases IV, who had long been a refugee with the Romans and had accomplished Severus’ campaign of 199 A.D., escaped, in company with a Cilician adventurer, the cynic Antiochus, to the court of his nephew Volagases; for the emperor Antoninus (Caracalla) demanded their surrender, and obtained it only by a declaration of war (215 A.D.). About the same time Artabanus gained the upper hand, and in 216 A.D. he held Ctesiphon and its district; but Volagases still held out in the Greek cities of Babylonia, as his tetradrachms prove (till 222 A.D.). Artabanus’ strength lay in the north; the Arab histories of the Sassanians make him king of the Median region. Presently Artabanus had a war with Rome on his hands. An overwhelming Parthian force fell on Mesopotamia and refused to be appeased by the restoration of the captives of the previous year; Macrinus was beaten in two engagements and compelled to retire to Syria, abandoning the Mesopotamian plain; and in the winter of 217-218 A.D. he was glad to purchase peace for an indemnity of 50,000,000 denarii (£1,774,298 or $8,871,490). In or about 222 A.D. Artabanus must also have displaced his brother in Babylonia.

PERSIA CONQUERS PARTHIA

[217-228 A.D.]

Persia, which dealt the last blow to the Arsacids, had through the whole Parthian period held an isolated position, and is so seldom mentioned that our knowledge of its history and native princes is almost wholly due to recently found coins. The emblems on the coins show that Persia was always loyally Zoroastrian, and at Istakhr stood the famous Fire temple of the goddess Anahedh. Its priest was Sassan, whose marriage with a Bazrangian princess, Rambehisht, laid the foundation of the greatness of his house, while priestly influence, which was very strong, doubtless favoured its rise. Pabak, son of Sassan, and Ardashir, son of Pabak, begin the history of the Sassanian dynasty, which occupies the next chapter. Artabanus did nothing to check the rise of the new power till Ardashir had all Persia in his hands (224 A.D.) and had begun to erect a palace and temple at Gor (Firuzabad). Nirofar, king of Elymais, was then sent against him, but was defeated, and now Ardashir passed beyond Persia and successively reduced Ispahan (Farætacene), Ahwaz (Elymais), and Mesene.

After this victory Ardashir sent a challenge to Artabanus himself; their armies met by appointment in the plain of Hormizdjan, and Artabanus fell (the 28th of April, 227 A.D.). Ctesiphon and Babylonia must have fallen not much later, though Volagases V seems to have re-established himself there on his brother’s death, and a tetradrachm shows that he held the city till autumn 227 A.D. The conquest of Assyria and great part of Media and Parthia is assigned by Dion expressly or by implication to the year 228 A.D. And so the Parthian Empire was at an end.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[29] [Persia, or rather Persis, is the latinised form of a name which originally and exclusively designated only the country bounded on the north by Media and on the northwest by Susiana, which of old had its capital at Persepolis or Istakhr, and for almost twelve centuries since has had it at Shiraz.]

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