The empire of Iran.
The only great state with which the Roman empire bordered was the empire of Iran,[1] based upon that nationality which was best known in antiquity, as it is in the present day, under the name of the Persians, consolidated politically by the old Persian royal family of the Achaemenids and its first great-king Cyrus, united religiously by the faith of Ahura Mazda and of Mithra. No one of the ancient peoples of culture solved the problem of national union equally early and with equal completeness. The Iranian tribes reached on the south as far as the Indian Ocean, on the north as far as the Caspian Sea; on the north–east the steppes of inland Asia formed the constant battle-ground between the settled Persians and the nomadic tribes of Turan. On the east mighty mountains formed a boundary separating them from the Indians. In western Asia three great nations early encountered one another, each pushing forward on its own account: the Hellenes, who from Europe grasped at the coast of Asia Minor, the Aramaic peoples, who from Arabia and Syria advanced in a northern and north–eastern direction and substantially filled the valley of the Euphrates, and lastly, the races of Iran, not merely inhabiting the country as far as the Tigris, but even penetrating to Armenia and Cappadocia, while primitive inhabitants of other types in these far–extending regions succumbed under these leading powers and disappeared. In the epoch of the Achaemenids, the culminating point of the glory of Iran, the Iranian rule went far beyond this wide domain proper to the stock on all sides, but especially towards the west. Apart from the times, when Turan gained the upper hand over Iran and the Seljuks and Mongols ruled over the Persians, foreign rule, strictly so called, has only been established over the flower of the Iranian stocks twice, by Alexander the Great and his immediate successors and by the Arabian Abbasids, and on both occasions only for a comparatively short time; the eastern regions—in the former case the Parthians, in the latter the inhabitants of the ancient Bactria—not merely threw off again the yoke of the foreigner, but dislodged him also from the cognate west.
The rule of the Parthians.When the Romans in the last age of the republic came into immediate contact with Iran as a consequence of the occupation of Syria, they found in existence the Persian empire regenerated by the Parthians. We have formerly had to make mention of this state on several occasions; this is the place to gather together the little that can be ascertained regarding the peculiar character of the empire, which so often exercised a decisive influence on the destinies of the neighbouring state. Certainly to most questions, which the historical inquirer has here to put, tradition has no answer. The Occidentals give but occasional notices, which may in their isolation easily mislead us, concerning the internal condition of their Parthian neighbours and foes; and, if the Orientals in general have hardly understood how to fix and to preserve historical tradition, this holds doubly true of the period of the Arsacids, seeing that it was by the later Iranians regarded, together with the preceding foreign rule of the Seleucids, as an unwarranted usurpation between the periods of the old and the new Persian rule—the Achaemenids and the Sassanids; this period of five hundred years is, so to speak, eliminated by way of correction[2] from the history of Iran, and is as if nonexistent.
The Parthians Scythian.The standpoint, thus occupied by the court-historiographers of the Sassanid dynasty, is more the legitimist–dynastic one of the Persian nobility than that of Iranian nationality. No doubt the authors of the first imperial epoch describe the language of the Parthians, whose home corresponds nearly to the modern Chorasan, as intermediate between the Median and the Scythian, that is, as an impure Iranian dialect; accordingly they were regarded as immigrants from the land of the Scythians, and in this sense their name is interpreted as “fugitive people,” while the founder of the dynasty, Arsaces, is declared by some indeed to have been a Bactrian, but by others a Scythian from the Maeotis. The fact that their princes did not take up their residence in Seleucia on the Tigris, but pitched their winter quarters in the immediate neighbourhood at Ctesiphon, is traced to their wish not to quarter Scythian troops in the rich mercantile city. Much in the manners and arrangements of the Parthians is alien from Iranian habits, and reminds us of the customs of nomadic life; they transact business and eat on horseback, and the free man never goes on foot. It cannot well be doubted that the Parthians, whose name alone of all the tribes of this region is not named in the sacred books of the Persians, stand aloof from Iran proper, in which the Achaemenids and the Magians are at home. The antagonism of this Iran to the ruling family springing from an uncivilised and half foreign district, and to its immediate followers—this antagonism, which the Roman authors not unwillingly took over from their Persian neighbours—certainly subsisted and fermented throughout the whole rule of the Arsacids, till it at length brought about their fall. But the rule of the Arsacids may not on that account be conceived as a foreign rule. No privileges were conceded to the Parthian stock and to the Parthian province. It is true that the Parthian town Hecatompylos is named as residence of the Arsacids; but they chiefly sojourned in summer at Ecbatana (Hamadan), or else at Rhagae like the Achaemenids, in winter, as already stated, in the camp-town of Ctesiphon, or else in Babylon on the extreme western border of the empire. The hereditary burial-place continued in the Parthian town Nisaea; but subsequently Arbela in Assyria served for that purpose more frequently. The poor and remote native province of the Parthians was in no way suited for the luxurious court-life, and the important relations to the West, especially of the later Arsacids. The chief country continued even now to be Media, just as under the Achaemenids. Although the Arsacids might be of Scythian descent, not so much depended on what they were as on what they desired to be; and they regarded and professed themselves throughout as the successors of Cyrus and of Darius. As the seven Persian family-princes had set aside the false Achaemenid, and had restored the legitimate rule by the elevation of Darius, so needs must other seven have overthrown the Macedonian foreign yoke and placed king Arsaces on the throne. With this patriotic fiction must further be connected the circumstance that a Bactrian nativity instead of a Scythian was assigned to the first Arsaces. The dress and the etiquette at the court of the Arsacids were those of the Persian court; after king Mithradates I. had extended his rule to the Indus and Tigris, the dynasty exchanged the simple title of king for that of king of kings which the Achaemenids had borne, and the pointed Scythian cap for the high tiara adorned with pearls; on the coins the king carries the bow like Darius. The aristocracy, too, that came into the land with the Arsacids and doubtless became in many ways mixed with the old indigenous one, adopted Persian manners and dress, mostly also Persian names; of the Parthian army which fought with Crassus it is said that the soldiers still wore their hair rough after the Scythian fashion, but the general appeared after the Median manner with the hair parted in the middle and with painted face.
The regal office.The political organisation, as it was established by the first Mithradates, was accordingly in substance that of the Achaemenids. The family of the founder of the dynasty is invested with all the lustre and with all the consecration of ancestral and divinely-ordained rule; his name is transferred de jure to each of his successors and divine honour is assigned to him; his successors are therefore called sons of God,[3] and besides brothers of the sun-god and the moon-goddess, like the Shah of Persia still at the present day; to shed the blood of a member of the royal family even by mere accident is a sacrilege—all of them regulations, which with few abatements recur among the Roman Caesars, and are perhaps borrowed in part from those of the older great-monarchy.
Megistanes.Although the royal dignity was thus firmly attached to the family, there yet subsisted a certain choice as to the king. As the new ruler had to belong as well to the college of the “kinsmen of the royal house” as to the council of priests, in order to be able to ascend the throne, an act must have taken place, whereby, it may be presumed, these same colleges themselves acknowledged the new ruler.[4] By the “kinsmen” are doubtless to be understood not merely the Arsacids themselves, but the “seven houses” of the Achaemenid organisation, princely families, to which according to that arrangement equality of rank and free access to the great-king belonged, and which must have had similar privileges under the Arsacids.[5] These families were at the same time holders of hereditary crown offices,[6] e.g. the Surên—the name is like the name Arsaces, a designation at once of person and of office—the second family after the royal house, as crown-masters, placed on each occasion the tiara on the head of the new Arsaces. But as the Arsacids themselves belonged to the Parthian province, so the Surên were at home in Sacastane (Seistân) and perhaps Sacae, thus Scythians; the Carên likewise descended from western Media, while the highest aristocracy under the Achaemenids was purely Persian.
Satraps.The administration lay in the hands of the under-kings or satraps; according to the Roman geographers of Vespasian’s time the state of the Parthians consisted of eighteen “kingdoms.” Some of these satrapies were appanages of a second son of the ruling house; in particular the two north–western provinces, the Atropatenian Media (Aderbijan) and Armenia, so far as it was in the power of the Parthians, appear to have been entrusted for administration to the prince standing next to the ruler for the time.[7] We may add that prominent among the satraps were the king of the province of Elymais or of Susa, to whom was conceded a specially powerful and exceptional position, and next to him the king of Persis, the ancestral land of the Achaemenids. The form of administration, if not exclusive, yet preponderant and conditioning the title, was in the Parthian empire—otherwise than in the case of the Caesars—that of vassal-kingdom, so that the satraps entered by hereditary right, but were subject to confirmation by the great-king.[8] To all appearance this continued downwards, so that smaller dynasts and family chiefs stood in the same relation to the under-kings as the latter occupied to the great-king.[9] Thus the office of great-king among the Parthians was limited to the utmost in favour of the high aristocracy by the accompanying subdivision of the hereditary administration of the land. With this it is quite in keeping, that the mass of the population consisted of persons half or wholly non-free,[10] and emancipation was not allowable. In the army which fought against Antonius there are said to have been only 400 free among 50,000. The chief among the vassals of Orodes, who as his general defeated Crassus, marched to the field with a harem of 200 wives and a baggage train of 1000 sumpter-camels; he himself furnished to the army 10,000 horsemen from his clients and slaves. The Parthians never had a standing army, but at all times the waging of war here was left to depend on the general levy of the vassal-princes and of the vassals subordinate to these, as well as of the great mass of the non-free over whom these bore sway.
The Greek towns of the Parthian empire.Certainly the urban element was not quite wanting in the political organisation of the Parthian empire. It is true that the larger townships, which arose out of the distinctive development of the East, were not urban commonwealths, as indeed even the Parthian royal residence, Ctesiphon, is named in contrast to the neighbouring Greek foundation of Seleucia a village; they had no presidents of their own and no common council, and the administration lay here, as in the country districts, exclusively with the royal officials. But a portion—comparatively small, it is true—of the foundations of the Greek rulers had come under Parthian rule. In the provinces of Mesopotamia and Babylonia by nationality Aramaean the Greek town-system had gained a firm footing under Alexander and his successors. Mesopotamia was covered with Greek commonwealths; and in Babylonia, the successor of the ancient Babylon, the precursor of Bagdad, and for a time the residence of the Greek kings of Asia—Seleucia on the Tigris—had by its favourable commercial position and its manufactures risen to be the first mercantile city beyond the Roman bounds, with more, it is alleged, than half a million of inhabitants. Its free Hellenic organisation, on which beyond doubt its prosperity above all depended, was not touched even by the Parthian rulers in their own interest, and the city preserved not merely its town council of 300 elected members, but also the Greek language and Greek habits amidst the non-Greek East. It is true that the Hellenes in these towns formed only the dominant element; alongside of them lived numerous Syrians, and, as a third constituent, there were associated with these the not much less numerous Jews, so that the population of these Greek towns of the Parthian empire, just like that of Alexandria, was composed of three separate nationalities standing side by side. Between these, just as in Alexandria, conflicts not seldom occurred, as e.g. at the time of the reign of Gaius under the eyes of the Parthian government the three nations came to blows, and ultimately the Jews were driven out of the larger towns.
In so far the Parthian empire was the genuine counterpart to the Roman. As in the one the Oriental viceroyship is an exceptional occurrence, so in the other is the Greek city; the general Oriental aristocratic character of the Parthian government is as little injuriously affected by the Greek mercantile towns on the west coast as is the civic organisation of the Roman state by the vassal kingdoms of Cappadocia and Armenia. While in the state of the Caesars the Romano-Greek urban commonwealth spreads more and more, and gradually becomes the general form of administration, the foundation of towns—the true mark of Helleno-Roman civilisation, which embraces the Greek mercantile cities and the military colonies of Rome as well as the grand settlements of Alexander and the Alexandrids—suddenly breaks off with the emergence of the Parthian government in the East, and even the existing Greek cities of the Parthian empire wane in the further course of development. There, as here, the rule more and more prevails over the exceptions.
Religion.The religion of Iran with its worship—approximating to monotheism—of the “highest of the gods, who has made heaven and earth and men and for these everything good,” with its absence of images and its spirituality, with its stern morality and truthfulness, with its influence upon practical activity and energetic conduct of life, laid hold of the minds of its confessors in quite another and deeper way than the religions of the West ever could; and, while neither Zeus nor Jupiter maintained their ground in presence of a developed civilisation, the faith among the Parsees remained ever young till it succumbed to another gospel—that of the confessors of Mohammed—or at any rate retreated before it to India. It is not our task to set forth how the old Mazda-faith, which the Achaemenids professed, and the origin of which falls in prehistoric time, was related to that which the sacred books of the Persians having their origin probably under the later Achaemenids—the Avestâ—announce as the doctrine of the wise Zarathustra; for the epoch, when the West is placed in contact with the East, only the later form of religion comes under consideration. Perhaps the Avestâ took first shape in the east of Iran, in Bactria, but it spread thence to Media and from there it exercised its influence on the West. But the national religion and the national state were bound up with one another in Iran more closely than even among the Celts. It has already been noticed that the legitimate kingship in Iran was at the same time a religious institution, that the supreme ruler of the land was conceived as specially called to the government by the supreme deity of the land, and even in some measure divine. On the coins of a national type there appears regularly the great fire-altar, and hovering over it the winged god Ahura Mazda, alongside of him in lesser size, and in an attitude of prayer, the king, and over-against the king the imperial banner. In keeping with this, the ascendency of the nobility in the Parthian empire goes hand in hand with the privileged position of the clergy. The priests of this religion, the Magians, appear already in the documents of the Achaemenids and in the narratives of Herodotus, and have, probably with right, always been regarded by the Occidentals as a national Persian institution. The priesthood was hereditary, and at least in Media, presumably also in other provinces, the collective body of the priests was accounted, somewhat like the Levites in the later Israel, as a separate portion of the people. Even under the rule of the Greeks the old religion of the state and the national priesthood maintained their place. When the first Seleucus wished to found the new capital of his empire, the already mentioned Seleucia, he caused the Magians to fix day and hour for it, and it was only after those Persians, not very willingly, had cast the desired horoscope, that the king and his army, in accordance with their indication, accomplished the solemn laying of the foundation-stone of the new Greek city. Thus by his side stood the priests of Ahura Mazda as counsellors, and they, not those of the Hellenic Olympus, were interrogated in public affairs, so far as these concerned divine things. As a matter of course this was all the more the case with the Arsacids. We have already observed that in the election of king, along with the council of the nobility, that of the priests took part. King Tiridates of Armenia, of the house of the Arsacids, came to Rome attended by a train of Magians, and travelled and took food according to their directions, even in company with the emperor Nero, who gladly allowed the foreign wise men to preach their doctrine and to conjure spirits for him. From this certainly it does not follow that the priestly order as such exercised an essentially determining influence on the management of the state; but the Mazda-faith was by no means re-established only by the Sassanids; on the contrary, amidst all change of dynasties, and amidst all its own development, the religion of the land of Iran remained in its outline the same.