Chapter I: The Parthian Empire (2)

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

[Sidenote: [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.

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.

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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.

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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

[Sidenote: [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.]