Chapter I: The Parthian Empire (1)

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [323-250 B.C.]]

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

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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.

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.

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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

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.

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [64-53 B.C.]]