[76] Such is the account of the trustworthy Dio, lxxviii. 1; the version of Herodian, iv. 11, that Artabanus promised his daughter, and at the celebration of the betrothal allowed Antoninus to cut down the Parthians present, is unauthenticated.
[77] If there is any truth in the mention of the Cadusians in the biography, c. 6, the Romans induced this wild tribe, not subject to the government in the south-west of the Caspian Sea, to fall at the same time upon the Parthians.
[78] The subsequently received chronology puts the beginning of the Sassanid dynasty in the Seleucid year 538 = 1st Oct. 226–7 A.D., or the fourth (full) year of Severus Alexander, reigning since spring 222 (Agathias, iv. 24). According to other data king Ardashir numbered the year from the autumn 223–4 A.D. as his first, and so doubtless assumed in this the title of great-king (Nöldeke, Tabari, p. 410). The last dated coin as yet known of the older system is of the year 539. When Dio wrote between 230 and 234, Artabanus was dead and his adherents were overpowered, and the advance of Artaxares into Armenia and Mesopotamia was expected.
[79] The emperor remained probably in Palmyra; at least a Palmyrene inscription, C. I. Gr. 4483, mentions the ἐπιδημία θεοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου.
[80] The incomparably wretched accounts of this war (relatively the best is that drawn from a common source in Herodian, Zonaras, and Syncellus, p. 674) do not even decide the question who remained victor in these conflicts. While Herodian speaks of an unexampled defeat of the Romans, the Latin authorities, the Biography as well as Victor, Eutropius, and Rufius Festus, celebrate Alexander as the conqueror of Artaxerxes or Xerxes, and according to these latter the further course of things was favourable. Herodian vi. 6, 5, offers the means of adjustment. According to the Armenian accounts (Gutschmid, Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenländ. Gesellschaft, xxxi. 47) the Arsacids with the support of the tribes of the Caucasus held their ground in Armenia down to the year 237 against Ardashir; this diversion may be correct and may have tended to the advantage of the Romans.
[81] The best account is furnished by Syncellus, p. 683 and Zonaras, xii. 18, drawing from the same source. With this accord the individual statements of Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 7, 17, and nearly so the forged letter of Gordian to the Senate in the Biography, c. 27, from which the narrative, c. 26, is ignorantly prepared; Antioch was in danger, but not in the hands of the Persians.
[82] So Zonaras, xii. 19, represents the course of affairs; with this Zosimus, iii. 33, agrees, and the later course of things shows that Armenia was not quite in Persian possession. If, according to Euagrius, v. 7, at that time merely Lesser Armenia remained Roman, this may not be incorrect, in so far as the dependence of the vassal-king of Great Armenia after the peace was doubtless merely nominal.
[83] The Biblical account (1 Kings ix. 18) as to the building of the town Thamar in Idumaea by king Solomon has only been transferred to Tadmor by a misunderstanding doubtless old; at all events the erroneous reference of it to this town among the later Jews (2 Chron. viii. 4, and the Greek translation of 1 Kings, ix. 18) form the oldest testimony for its existence (Hitzig, Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft, viii. 222).
[84] This is nowhere expressly stated; but all the circumstances tell in favour of it. That the Romano-Parthian frontier, before the Romans established themselves on the left bank of the Euphrates, was on the right a little below Sura, is most distinctly said by Pliny (H. N. v. 26, 89: a Sura proxime est Philiscum—comp. p. 95, note 1—oppidum Parthorum ad Euphratem; ab eo Seleuciam dierum decem navigatio), and there it remained till the erection of the province of Mesopotamia under Severus. The Palmyrene of Ptolemy (v. 15, 24, 25) is a district of Coele-Syria, which seems to embrace a good part of the territory to the south of Palmyra, but certainly reaches as far as the Euphrates and includes Sura; other urban centres besides Palmyra seem not to be mentioned, and there is nothing to stand in the way of our taking this large district as civic territory. So long in particular as Mesopotamia was Parthian, but subsequently also with reference to the adjoining desert, a permanent protection of the frontier could not here be dispensed with; as indeed in the fourth century, according to the tenor of the Notitia, Palmyrene was strongly occupied, the northern portion by the troops of the Dux of Syria, Palmyra itself and the southern half by those of the Dux of Phoenice. That in the earlier imperial period no Roman troops were stationed here, is vouched for by the silence of authors and the absence of inscriptions, which in Palmyra itself are numerous. If in the Tabula Peutingeriana it is remarked under Sura: fines exercitus Syriatici et commercium barbarorum, that is, “here end the Roman garrisons and here is the place of exchange for the traffic of the barbarians,” this is only saying, what at a later time is repeated by Ammianus (xxiii. 3, 7: Callinicum munimentum robustum et commercandi opimitate gratissimum) and further by the emperor Honorius (Cod. Just. iv. 63, 4), that Callinicon was one of the few entrepôts devoted to the Romano-barbarian frontier-traffic; but it does not at all follow from this as regards the time when the Tabula originated, that these imperial troops were stationed there, since in fact the Palmyrenes in general belonged to the Syrian army and might be thought of in using the expression exercitus Syriaticus. The city must have furnished a force of its own in a way similar to that of the princes of Numidia and of Panticapaeum. By this means alone we come to understand as well the rejection of the troops of Antonius as the attitude of the Palmyrenes in the troubles of the third century, and not less the emergence of the numeri Palmyrenorum among the military novelties of this epoch.
[85] Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 2: Cercusium ... Diocletianus exiguum ante hoc et suspectum muris turribusque circumdedit celsis, ... ne vagarentur per Syriam Persae ita ut paucis ante annis cum magnis provinciarum contigerat damnis. Comp. Procopius de aed. ii. 6. Perhaps this place is not different from the Φάλγα or Φάλιγα of Isidorus of Charax (mans. Parth. 1; Stephanus Byz. s. v.) and the Philiscum of Pliny (p. 94, note).