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.

[Illustration: A PARTHIAN KING]

Seleucus III Soter (226-223 B.C.) died early, and was followed by

Antiochus (III) Magnus (223-137 B.C.), who in his brother’s life-time had

ruled from Babylon over the upper satrapies. Molon, governor of Media,

supported by his brother Alexander in Persis,[29] rose against him in 222

B.C. and assumed the diadem. The great resources of his province, which

followed him devotedly, enabled Molon to take the offensive and even to

occupy Seleucia, after a decisive battle with the royal general Xenœtas.

Babylonia, the Erythræan district, all Susiana except the fortress of

Susa, Parapotamia as far as Europus, and Mesopotamia as far as Dura were

successively reduced. But the young king soon turned the fortunes of the

war. Crossing the Tigris in person, he cut off Molon’s retreat. Molon was

forced to accept battle near Apollonia: his left wing passed over to the

enemy, and, after a crushing defeat, he and all his kinsmen and chief

followers died by their own hands (220 B.C.). Antiochus now marched to

Seleucia to regulate the affairs of the East. He used his victory with

moderation, mitigating the severities of his minister Hermias; but he had

effectually prevented the rise of a new kingdom in the most important

province of Iran.

[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

[Illustration: A SCYTHIAN WARRIOR]

Phraates paid funeral honours to the fallen king, and afterwards sent

his body to Syria in a silver coffin. He entertained his captive family

royally, married one of the two daughters, and sent the eldest son,

Seleucus, to Syria to claim the sovereignty, and to serve future plans

of his own; for an attempt to follow and recapture Demetrius, made

immediately after the battle, had proved too late. But dangers in the

east soon turned the Parthian’s attention away from enterprises in the

west. In his distress he had bribed the Scythians to send him help; as

they arrived too late he refused to pay them, and they in turn began to

ravage the Parthian country. Phraates marched against them, leaving his

charge at home to his favourite, the Hyrcanian Euhemerus, who chastised

the countries that had sided with Antiochus, made war with Mesene, and

treated Babylon and Seleucia with the utmost cruelty. But the Scythian

war proved a disastrous one; the enemy overran the whole empire, and for

the first time for five hundred years Scythian plunderers again appeared

in Mesopotamia; in a decisive battle Phraates was deserted by the old

soldiers of Antiochus, whom he had forced into his service and then

treated with insolent cruelty; the Parthian host sustained a ruinous

defeat, and the king himself was slain in the spring of 128 B.C., or

somewhat later.

[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.]]

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.

[Illustration: A PARTHIAN PEASANT]

Yet those were they in whom Crassus most trusted, having done wonderful

feats of war with them. For they received the Parthians’ pikes in their

hands, and took them about their middles, and threw them off their

horse, where they lay on the ground, and could not stir for the weight

of their harness: and there were divers of them also that, lighting from

their horse, lay under their enemies’ horses’ bellies, and thrust their

swords into them. Their horse flinging and bounding in the air for very

pain threw their masters under feet, and the enemies one upon another,

and in the end fell dead among them. Moreover, extreme heat and thirst

did marvellously cumber the Gauls, who were used to abide neither: and

the most part of their horse were slain, charging with all their power

upon the men at arms of the Parthians, and so ran themselves in upon the

points of their pikes.

At length, they were driven to retire towards their footmen, and Publius

Crassus among them, who was very ill by reason of the wounds he had

received. And seeing a sand hill by chance not far from them, they

went thither, and setting their horse in the midst of it, compassed it

round with their targets, thinking by this means to cover and defend

themselves the better from the barbarous people: howbeit they found it

contrary. For they that were behind, standing higher, could by no means

save themselves, but were all hurt alike, as well the one as the other,

bewailing their own misery and misfortune, that must needs die without

revenge or declaration of their valiancy. There were two Grecians who

counselled P. Crassus to steal away with them. But Publius answered them,

that there was no death so cruel as could make him forsake them that

died for his sake. When he had so said, wishing them to save themselves,

he embraced them, and took his leave of them: and being very sore hurt

with the shot of an arrow through one of his hands, commanded one of his

gentlemen to thrust him through with a sword, and so turned his side

to him for the purpose. It is reported Censorinus did the like. But

Megabacchus slew himself with his own hands, and so did the most part of

the gentlemen that were of that company.

And for those that were left alive, the Parthians got up the sand hill,

and fighting with them, thrust them through with their spears and

pikes, and took but five hundred prisoners. After that, they struck off

Publius Crassus’ head, and thereupon returned straight to set upon his

father Crassus, who was then in this state. Crassus the father, after

he had willed his son to charge the enemies, retired the best he could

by a hill’s side, looking ever that his son would not be long before he

returned from the chase. But Publius seeing himself in danger, had sent

divers messengers to his father, to advertise him of his distress, whom

the Parthians intercepted and slew by the way: and the last messengers

he sent, escaping very hardly, brought Crassus news that his son was

but cast away, if he did not presently aid him, and that with a great

power. These news were grievous to Crassus in two respects: first for the

fear he had, seeing himself in danger to lose all; and secondly for the

vehement desire he had to go to his son’s help. Thus he saw in reason all

would come to nought, and in fine determined to go with all his power to

the rescue of his son.

But in the meantime the enemies were returned from his son’s overthrow,

with a more dreadful noise and cry of victory than ever before: and

thereupon their deadly sounding drums filled the air with their wonderful

noise. The Romans then looked straight for a hot alarm. But the Parthians

that brought Publius Crassus’ head upon the point of a lance, coming

near to the Romans, showed them his head, and asked them in derision if

they knew what house he was of, and who were his parents: for it was not

likely (said they) that so noble and valiant a young man should be the

son of so cowardly a father as Crassus.

The sight of Publius Crassus’ head killed the Romans’ hearts more than

any other danger they had been in at any time in all the battle. For

it did not set their hearts on fire as it should have done with anger

and desire of revenge: but far otherwise, made them quake for fear, and

struck them stark dead to behold it. Yet Crassus’ self showed greater

courage in this misfortune than he before had done in all the war beside.

For riding by every band he cried out aloud: “Our ancestors in old time

lost a thousand ships, yea in Italy divers armies and chieftains for the

conquest of Sicilia: yet for all the loss of them, at the length they

were victorious over them by whom they were before vanquished. For the

empire of Rome came not to that greatness it now is at by good fortune

only, but by patience and constant suffering of trouble and adversity,

never yielding or giving place unto any danger.”

Crassus, using these persuasions to encourage his soldiers for

resolution, found that all his words wrought none effect: but contrarily,

after he had commanded them to give the shout of battle, he plainly

saw their hearts were done, for their shout rose but faint, and not

all alike. The Parthians on the other side, their shout was great, and

lustily they rang it out. Now when they came to join, the Parthians’

archers on horseback compassing in the Romans upon the wings shot an

infinite number of arrows at their sides. But their men at arms, giving

charge upon the front of the Romans, battled with their great lances,

compelled them to draw into a narrow room, a few excepted, that valiantly

and in desperate manner ran in among them, as men rather desiring so to

die than to be slain with their arrows, where they could do the Parthians

almost no hurt at all. So were they soon despatched, with the great

lances that ran them through, head, wood, and all, with such a force that

oftentimes they ran through two at once.

Thus when they had fought the whole day, night drew on, and made them

retire, saying they would give Crassus that night’s respite, to lament

and bewail his son’s death. So the Parthians, camping hard by the Romans,

were in very good hope to overthrow him the next morning. The Romans

on the other side had a marvellous ill night, making no reckoning to

bury their dead, nor to dress their wounded men, that died in miserable

pain; but every man bewailed his hard fortune, when they saw not one of

them could escape, if they tarried till the morning. But Crassus went

aside without light, and laid him down with his head covered, because he

would see no man, showing thereby the common sort an example of unstable

fortune; and the wise men, a good learning to know the fruits of ill

counsel and vain ambition, that had so much blinded him that he could not

be content to command so many thousands of men, but thought (as a man

would say) himself the meanest of all, and one that possessed nothing,

because he was accounted inferior unto two persons only, Pompey and Cæsar.

Notwithstanding, Octavius, one of his chieftains, and Cassius the

treasurer, seeing him so overcome with sorrow and out of heart that he

had no life nor spirit in him, they themselves called the captains and

centurions together, and sat in council for their departure, and so

agreed that there was no longer tarrying for them. Thus of their own

authority at the first they made the army march away without any sound of

trumpet or other noise.

But immediately after, they that were left hurt and sick, and could

not follow, seeing the camp remove, fell a-crying out and tormenting

themselves in such sort that they filled the whole camp with sorrow, and

put them out of all order with the great moan and loud lamentation; so

that the foremost rank that first dislodged fell into a marvellous fear,

thinking they had been the enemies that had come and set upon them. Then

turning oft, and setting themselves in battle array, one while loading

their beasts with the wounded men, another while unloading them again,

they were left behind.[d]

After getting dangerously entangled in marshy ground, Crassus had almost

reached the mountains when he was induced, by the despair of his troops

rather than by error of his own judgment, to yield to treacherous

proposals of Surenas and descend again into the plain. As he mounted the

horse which was to convey him to the meeting with the enemy’s general,

the gestures of the Parthians excited suspicions of treachery, a struggle

ensued, and Crassus was struck down and slain. Scarcely ten thousand out

of the whole host reached Syria by way of Armenia; twenty thousand had

fallen and ten thousand captives were settled in Antioch, the capital of

Margiana.

[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.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II. THE EMPIRE OF THE SASSANIDS

[Sidenote: [228-652 A.D.]]

Of the countries whose sovereigns were subject to the dominion (sometimes

actual and sometimes merely nominal) of the Parthian “king of kings,”

Persia proper itself was one. The names of some of the lesser kings of

that country during the Arsacid period are known to us, partly through a

reference here and there in literature, partly from their coins; but we

do not know whether they all belong to one and the same dynasty. About

the beginning of the third century after Christ, the country presented a

scene of confusion. The power of the local kings had fallen very low, and

the mountainous regions, cleft asunder by natural divisions, were full of

petty tyrants. Papak or Pabak, a son or descendant of Sassan, was one of

these. He came originally from the village of Khir on the southern shore

of the great salt lake east of Shiraz, and succeeded in overthrowing

the last prince of that dynasty, Gozihr by name, in whose service he

had been, and gaining dominion first over the district of Istakhr, the

ancient Persepolis. On coins and inscriptions his son gives him the title

of king. According to tradition, which in this instance is certainly

trustworthy, his lawful successor would have been his son Sapor, to

whom the Arsacid king is said to have granted the crown at his father’s

request during the life-time of the latter.

After his death, however, another of his sons, named Ardashir, refused

to submit to his brother, and rose in revolt; about which time Sapor

died--we can hardly suppose by accident. That Ardashir found his brothers

in his way and slew them, is so definitely affirmed by well authenticated

tradition that we cannot entertain a doubt that such was the case.

The empire of the Sassanids begins with Ardashir, just as that of the

Achæmenides begins with Cyrus, whose forefathers had likewise been kings.

His name, of which Artachshathr is the older form, is the same as that

which the Greeks rendered by Artaxerxes. It is a remarkable fact that in

the native home of the Achæmenides, who are otherwise unknown to genuine

Persian tradition, the ancient royal names should have survived in

common use; for several princes of the pre-Sassanid period were named

Artaxerxes and Darius (Darjaw, Darao, Dara). According to a fairly

probable estimate, Ardashir’s first appearance as king should be assigned

to the year 211-12 A.D.

[Sidenote: [211-233 A.D.]]

That he had hard work to exalt himself from prince of Persis to “king

of the kings of Iran” is recognised by tradition. He first made himself

master of the province of Carmania, which lies east of Persis, then of

Susiana, then of the small kingdom about the mouth of the Tigris. The

resistance which he had to overcome in the first instance was offered by

local sovereigns, not by the Parthian king, whose power was restricted

to an enormous extent by his nobles and vassals. Ultimately, however,

Ardashir came into conflict with him also.

According to Dion Cassius,[c] a contemporary, we are led to believe that

Ardashir defeated the Parthians in three battles. His decisive encounter

with Ardavan (Artabanus), the last Parthian Great King, probably took

place on April 22nd, 224 A.D.[30] Ardavan fell in the battle, and from

that time forward Ardashir assumed the title of “king of kings,” which

from ancient days had been borne by the ruler of the empire of anterior

Asia. All the evidence points to the decisive battle having taken place

in Babylonia or Susiana. This would fit in with Dion’s statement that

the first expedition afterwards undertaken was directed against Atra, in

the midst of the Mesopotamian desert, where a small independent state

had come into being in the near neighbourhood of the Parthian capital.

At first Ardashir beat in vain upon the walls of Atra, whose strength

can still be seen from the mighty ruins that remain, but the place was

soon taken and destroyed either by him or his successor. He succeeded in

conquering Media, where he was opposed by a scion of the Arsacid family,

and the greater part of the Iranian highlands; but not Armenia, whither

sons of Ardavan had fled.

The Romans had watched the rise of Ardashir with apprehension. There is

no question that he cherished the design of seizing upon as many of their

Asiatic possessions as he could. He gained some successes at first, but

was forced to give ground when Alexander Severus marched against him. The

history of the empire of the Sassanids was conditioned from the outset

by its relations with Rome. Peace was again and again concluded between

the two, but they invariably looked upon each other as adversaries, and

as adversaries of equal rank. Under capable rulers and tolerable internal

conditions Rome (that is Byzantium) maintained the ascendency of the

European over the Asiatic, but circumstances were frequently adverse, and

the Persians heaped disgrace upon the Roman name. This struggle fills the

chief place in the political history of the Sassanids.

SASSANIAN POWER

[Sidenote: [236-260 A.D.]]

Istakhr remained the capital in theory, as Persepolis had formerly been.

There stood the Fire temple of the royal house, in which the heads of

vanquished foreign kings were hung up among other trophies. But the real

metropolis was Ctesiphon, the capital of the Arsacids, and Seleucia,

which was divided from it only by the Tigris and which Ardashir restored

under the name of Veh-Ardashir (good Ardashir). The rich country in which

this double city lay was neither geographically nor ethnographically a

part of Iran, for the deep valley was peopled principally by Semites;

the choice of it as the seat of government was due to the precedent set

by the elder empire and in part, probably, to its nearness to Roman

territory. We cannot in all cases be sure over which countries Ardashir

ruled at the end of his life, for the national tradition tells of some

conquests really made by his successors, and others which the Sassanids

never made at all. But Ardashir won and consolidated a great empire that

held together for four centuries, giving a powerful blow to the system

of vassal states, which had become more and more prevalent under the

Arsacids, and reducing most of these states to provinces.

SAPOR FIGHTS ROME

The statement that he associated his son Sapor with him in the government

gains a degree of confirmation from the existence of coins bearing a

youthful head beside his own. He died at the end of 241 or the beginning

of 242. Sapor I (older form Shahpur; among Occidentals Sapor or Sapores)

was in all likelihood solemnly crowned on March 20th, 242. The mythical

statement that his mother was an Arcadian princess whom Ardashir took

to wife at the conquest of Ctesiphon is incompatible with the probably

more correct tradition that he had distinguished himself in the decisive

battle against Ardavan; nor is it likely that a child of thirteen or

fourteen would have taken so energetically in hand the war against Rome.

For Ardashir had resumed the struggle in his later years (in the reign

of Maximin, between February, 236, and about May, 238), and had taken

Nisibis (Nesibin) and Carrhæ (Haran), the two fortresses round which so

many battles were fought in the course of these wars.

In 242 Sapor had pressed forward to Antioch; but there he was met by the

emperor Gordian, and the latter, or rather his father-in-law Timesitheus,

drove him back and retook the two Mesopotamian strongholds. He defeated

the Persians at Reshaina, and purposed to march upon the Persian capital.

Like Julian after him, he chose the way along the Euphrates; and somewhat

below the junction of the Chaboras with the Euphrates, nearly on the

frontier between the two empires, Gordian was slain by the commander of

the guard, Philip the Arab (beginning of 244). The murderer had himself

proclaimed emperor and hastily concluded a shameful peace with Sapor, by

which he is said to have resigned Armenia and Mesopotamia to him.

There seems then to have been a breathing space of several years,

but in 251 or 252 Sapor made a fresh beginning. This time he really

occupied Armenia, which he had not been able to conquer before, and

forced the king to take refuge in Roman territory. From the isolated and

contradictory rumours that have come down to us we can hardly gather how

many times the Persians invaded Syria during this period. Nothing but the

frightful decrepitude of Rome could have rendered such a thing possible.

On one occasion Cyriades, a Syrian, led the Persians right to Antioch,

and under their protection assumed the title of emperor! At last the

emperor Valerian marched against them. For a while the war was waged on

Mesopotamian soil, but fortune turned against the Romans in the end; and

the bitterest of all humiliations befell them, for the emperor himself

was taken prisoner by Sapor (260). Under what circumstances this came to

pass we cannot tell; it was certainly preceded by negotiations in which

Valerian vainly tried to secure an unmolested retreat for himself and his

army on payment of a sum of money. The Romans laid the blame of it on

treachery or breach of faith.

THE WAR WITH PALMYRA

[Sidenote: [260-293 A.D.]]

After taking Valerian captive, Sapor pressed on towards Asia Minor, but

there was met by successful resistance. Many Persians were slaughtered by

Ballista, the Roman general. But the heaviest blow was dealt to the king

by the hand of a romanised Oriental. Odenathus (Odhenat), the chieftain

of the great trading city of Palmyra in the heart of the Syrian desert,

is said to have offered to enter into alliance with him, and to have been

completely repulsed. This is quite possible, for though Palmyra was a

part of the Roman Empire, yet since the emperor was a prisoner and Rome’s

dominion over the East was apparently broken, an ambitious Oriental might

easily have conceived the idea of playing an independent part as an ally

of the Great King. However that may be, Odenathus, on the watch for a

favourable place and opportunity, joined forces with Ballista, attacked

the Persians on their retreat, and inflicted a severe defeat upon them.

Part of the royal harem fell into his hands, and he even besieged

Ctesiphon once, if not twice.

Towards the end of Sapor’s reign a great change took place in the

oriental dominions of Rome. He appears to have supported Zenobia, the

widow of Odenathus, against Rome, though without lasting success. By the

time the emperor took Palmyra (273) and restored Roman supremacy over

those regions, Sapor was presumably already dead.

His son Hormuzd (Ohrmazd) I began to reign at the end of 272 or 273. As

a prince he appears to have fought gallantly against the Romans, and is

known to tradition by the surname of “the hero.” Among other legends of

all kinds he is said to have been satrap of Khorasan (which included all

the northeastern provinces) before his accession. As a king he had hardly

a chance of doing great deeds, for he reigned only one year.

According to the evidence of an inscription, his successor Bahram

(Varahran) I was not his son, as tradition has it, but his brother. He

is reported to have been an indolent and voluptuous sovereign. Manes

ventured to approach him, but by the machinations of the priests of

Zoroaster he was slain and his skin was stuffed and hung up to public

view. Bahram I reigned from about 274 to about 277.

Of his son, Bahram II (about 277-294), Persian tradition knows

practically nothing. Two large rock inscriptions, unfortunately much

defaced, probably date from his reign; they are religious, even hortatory

in substance, and strongly hierarchical in tendency. The emperor

Probus (276-282) concluded a peace with him on one occasion; of the

struggles which preceded it we have no knowledge. Probus himself was

assassinated before he could resume hostilities, but Carus carried out

his design (283), advanced to the very capital of the enemy’s empire,

and took Ctesiphon and Coche (a part of Seleucia). The sudden death of

the emperor, who is said to have been struck by a flash of lightning,

wrought deliverance for the Persians, for after it the Romans appear to

have withdrawn without much fighting. It is expressly stated that the

arms of Carus were favoured by civil broils among the Persians. Of such

the period was undoubtedly prolific, but we have no exact information

on the subject. In the year 291 a rhetorician referred to the revolt of

Prince Hormuzd (Ormies) against his brother the king, in conjunction with

barbarian tribes.

The youthful son whom Bahram II caused to be figured opposite his consort

upon his coins probably never came to the throne. It seems likely that

after his death two claimants fought for the succession, Bahram III,

presumably a son of Hormuzd, and Narseh, according to an inscription the

son of Sapor I. At all events Bahram III, who as prince had been satrap

of Sakenland (Sagastan, now Sistan) in the southeast of the empire, and

consequently bore the surname of Sagan Shah (Saken-king), reigned, or at

least held possession of the capital, for a very short time only.

[Sidenote: [293-339 A.D.]]

Narseh reigned about 293-303. He trod in the footsteps of Sapor, and

conquered Armenia. Cæsar Galerius took the field against him (probably

in 297) but was defeated in Mesopotamia, between Carrhæ and Callinicus

(Rakka). Under the wise direction of Diocletian, however, Galerius soon

restored the lustre of the Roman arms. He completely overthrew Narseh in

Armenia and took his wives and children prisoners. The negotiations for

peace, concerning which we have somewhat more definite information, ended

in a brilliant triumph; for Persia resigned all pretensions to Armenia

and Mesopotamia, and even ceded certain districts on the left of the

Tigris, extending as far as Kurdistan. The king willingly gave up the

provinces in return for the restoration of his family. This peace (dating

from 298) lasted for forty years. Narseh was succeeded by his son Hormuzd

II (about 303). Of his reign we know nothing.

After his death his son Adharnarseh ascended the throne (beginning of

310), but after a very short time was deposed--on account of his cruelty

it is said--and probably slain. The nobles, who then had the power in

their own hands, disqualified for rule another (unnamed) son of Hormuzd

II by putting out his eyes, and flung Hormuzd, the third son, into

prison. They then nominated for the kingship the newborn or still unborn

son of the queen Ifra--Hormuzd. All these events took place in the course

of the year 310. The royal infant was named Sapor II, oppressor of

Christians.

The state of things under the rule of his mother and the great nobles may

easily be imagined. But the child developed early into a man capable of

governing alone; he was one of the most famous sovereigns of the dynasty.

Before he had grown to manhood Hormuzd escaped from captivity and fled

to the Romans (323), amongst whom he remained till his death, fighting

with them against Sapor, his half-brother, down to the year 363. Persian

tradition, which has little of a historical nature to tell of Sapor II,

gives us accounts of his adventurous campaigns against the Arabs, who

had occupied or devastated various parts of Persian territory during his

minority. These legends are highly exaggerated, not without an anti-Arab

intention; but there can be no doubt that Sapor zealously devoted himself

to the task of keeping the rapacious Bedouins out of civilised regions--a

very serious problem for the rulers of countries bordering on the desert.

The restoration of the ancient city of Susa is notable amongst the

cities which he founded. The inhabitants had rebelled against him, and

in retaliation he had them put to death and their city trodden into the

dust by elephants; after which he built it afresh. Nishapur (properly

Nev-Shahpuhr), one of the largest cities of the East down to late

mediæval times, was founded either by him or by Sapor I.

During Sapor’s youth the mighty change had taken place by which

Constantine procured for Christianity the victory over paganism in the

Roman Empire. The Christians in the Persian Empire immediately recognised

in Rome the Christian state _par excellence_, and were strongly disposed

in its favour. When Sapor went to war with the Romans (337 or 338) they

openly displayed their own sentiments; at least a homily of Aphraates,

a Syrian bishop in the Persian Empire, written about this time, speaks

on the subject in no ambiguous tone. In addition to this, Simon, bishop

of the capital, indulged in such defiant utterances as no oriental

monarch was likely to let pass, least of all a young and energetic

sovereign like Sapor II. It was the signal for conflict, and a frightful

persecution of the Christians began almost simultaneously with the Roman

War (339-40). We have an animated picture of these events in the Syrian

_Acts of the Martyrs_, which throw much light on other things and persons

in the empire. The king was not actuated by religious fanaticism. The

Jews were as obnoxious to his priests as the Christians, but he left

them unmolested. Even in the _Acts of the Martyrs_ he repeatedly appears

as a man wholly without bias in purely religious matters. But, like

Diocletian, he wished to annihilate that state within the state--the

organisation of the church; and he therefore destroyed church buildings

and took the most vigorous measures against both the superior and the

inferior clergy.

A NEW WAR WITH ROME

[Sidenote: [337-363 A.D.]]

According to Roman assertions, the Persians began the war by an invasion

of Mesopotamia. Constantine died before he could take the field against

them (the 22nd of May, 337). But the king’s great preparations date from

the year which begins with the autumn of 337. On the first and longer

half of the war, which lasted with many vicissitudes and long pauses for

twenty-five years, our information is but scanty. On parts of the second,

on the contrary, we possess very full reports by contemporaries and even

eye-witnesses. The king’s object was to deprive the Romans of their

possessions on the upper Tigris, where it must have been exceedingly

inconvenient for the Persians to have them on account of their nearness

to Ctesiphon. Above all, he aimed at taking the strong fortress of

Nisibis; and he further desired to bring Armenia, that old apple of

discord between the Eastern and Western empires, into subjection to

himself once more. Three times he closely besieged Nisibis (in the years

338, 346, and 350), but in vain. Sieges, on the whole, play a very great

part in this war.

If Sapor did not in the long run succeed in gaining great advantages,

it was through no merit of the emperor Constantine, who was invariably

defeated when he took command in person, as, for example, in the famous

battle by night at Singara (Shingar, Arabic Sinjar) (348 A.D.). The

main reason was that the great emperors Diocletian and Constantine had

put the fortresses into admirable condition and taken other excellent

measures for the protection of the provinces exposed to attack. It was a

great thing gained that the Persians, even when victorious, could hardly

penetrate into western Mesopotamia. Moreover the king’s forces were not

large enough for him to leave garrisons in all the fortresses which

he took. Thus in 360 Amida (Amid), which Sapor had taken after a long

siege and with heavy loss in the previous year, was found by the Romans

unoccupied. The Romans were also favoured by the circumstance that the

king was at the same time engaged in conflict with several barbarous

tribes. The third siege of Nisibis had almost come to a successful

conclusion when he was obliged suddenly to depart to Khorasan, where his

presence was urgently required.

The wars in the East brought about a long truce (from 350 to 358),

interrupted only by small predatory excursions. But by the time

negotiations were opened on the Roman side (356-358) Sapor had concluded

peace with his enemies in the East, and offered terms which it was quite

impossible to accept. In 359 and 360 hostilities were resumed with

energy, and Sapor took several important fortresses. Another interval of

repose ensued; but in 363 a change came over the whole conduct of the

war.

[Sidenote: [363-379 A.D.]]

Vigorous, ambitious, and proved in arms, Julian, now sole emperor,

determined to follow the example of Trajan, Septimius Severus, and Carus,

and march straight upon the enemy’s capital. On the 5th of March he left

Antioch, went first to Mesopotamia, and thence proceeded rapidly down the

Euphrates. He ravaged Persian territory with fire and sword, took several

cities after a short siege, among them Mahoz Malka, one of the royal

cities close to Ctesiphon. He even reached Seleucia; but realising that

he was not able to take the strongly fortified city of Ctesiphon on the

far side of the Tigris by storm, he turned to retreat along the left bank

of the river. Here for the first time Sapor’s troops began to annoy him

seriously. None the less he would certainly have led the army back into

Roman territory without heavy loss, but he was mortally wounded in an

engagement on the 26th of June, 363.

Jovian, who was chosen emperor by the army after Julian’s death, was

by no means equal to the difficult position in which he found himself,

and conducted both the war and the negotiations in such a manner as

ultimately to bring about a shameful peace. After the death of his

dreaded enemy, Sapor behaved with equal adroitness and moderation. He

obtained the retrocession of the districts to the left of the Tigris,

which Galerius had won, and part of Mesopotamia, including Nisibis and

Singara. The Romans with much difficulty secured permission for the

inhabitants of these cities to depart elsewhere. The cession of Nisibis

was the heaviest blow of all, for in all subsequent wars it was a strong

point of departure to the Persians for offensive and defensive purposes.

More shameful even than these cessions was the stipulation that the

Romans should withdraw their support from King Arsaces of Armenia, who

had sided with them and given him up to Sapor. The king, however, did not

find Armenia easy to conquer. He got Arsaces into his power, but that did

not give him possession, still less permanent possession, of the country,

split up as it was by many natural divisions and ruled by numerous and

almost independent feudal lords. The Christians of Armenia inclined

in the main to the Romans; the Zoroastrians, of whom there were still

large numbers, to the Persians; while the varying private interests of

the great barons, who would have preferred to have no master over them,

constituted a third factor in the situation. The Romans supported, first

secretly and then openly, Papa, the son of Arsaces, who had taken refuge

with them, but only that they might use him as a tool to convert Armenia

into a Roman province. In Iberia (north of Armenia) the adherents of the

two empires likewise came into collision. At the end of five years the

country was practically once more in a state of war. In 371 the Persian

king came to open hostilities with the Roman troops in Armenia, both

parties trying to acquire the country by force or fraud. But however

often the negotiations between them came to naught, the pressure of

circumstances (in the case of the Romans, the troubles with the Goths)

and the dictates of reason prevented the outbreak of a general war.

ARDASHIR II TO BAHRAM IV

[Sidenote: [379-420 A.D.]]

Sapor II, who by even late tradition is held in honour as a mighty king,

died towards the end of the summer of 379, and was succeeded by his

brother, Ardashir II. The elevation of this old man to the throne may

have been due to the same kind of motives as had prompted the coronation

of the infant Sapor. As prince-satrap of Adiabene (a part of ancient

Assyria) he had taken an active part in the suppression of Christianity

as long before as 344, and again in 376. After his accession, however,

the persecution ceased, perhaps by deliberate intention, perhaps out of

mere oriental indolence. Even the capital could have its bishop again.

But, having taken forcible action against the great nobles and put

several of them to death, Ardashir was deposed by them in 383 or 384.

His successor, Sapor III, the son of Sapor II, had no sooner ascended

the throne than he despatched ambassadors to Constantinople, and there

concluded a settled peace (384). He reigned only a short time, being

murdered by the nobles in 388 or 389.

His son (or possibly brother) and successor, Bahram IV, who bore the

surname of Kerman Shah, “king of Carmania,” because as prince he had

ruled that province, remained on friendly terms with the Romans and was

clement towards the Christians. In 390 the two empires divided Armenia

between them by treaty, in such a manner that by far the greater part

became a vassal state to Persia and the remainder to Rome. There were

many complications still to come, but this division nevertheless remained

in force down to Arab times. Bahram IV also died a violent death, being

slain by the arrows of “evil-doers,” in the summer of 399.

THE RULE OF YEZDEGERD I

His successor, Yezdegerd I, a son of Sapor II or Sapor III, seemed to

have been designated as heir to the throne or otherwise invested with

some sovereign dignity even during the life-time of Bahram IV, for his

name appears on coins in conjunction with the king’s.

For all that he was far from being a Christian, and did not scruple to

visit with severe chastisement the blind zeal which led Bishop Abda of

Susiana to violate Zoroastrian sanctuaries. But the measure of toleration

which he extended to Christianity was enough to rouse the hatred of

the Persian priesthood, while the warlike nobility were probably ill

pleased by his earnest desire to maintain peace with Rome. In the summer

of 408 he concluded a firm treaty of peace and alliance, by which he

seems to have undertaken a formal guarantee for the reign of the emperor

Theodosius II, then a minor. He set a trustworthy vassal king over

Persian Armenia in the person of his son Sapor. We have every reason

to regard him as a skilful ruler for his time and country. But he was

not well pleasing to the god of Persia. Wherefore he caused him to die

suddenly in marvellous wise in far Hyrcania. We prosaically interpret

this miracle to mean that he was murdered by the despotic nobles

(probably late in the summer of 420); even as his three predecessors had

been violently deprived of their sovereignty, and two of them murdered.

After his death, his son Sapor hastened from Armenia to the capital, no

doubt intending to become king of the empire, but was murdered by the

great nobles, for the latter were so exasperated against Yezdegerd that

they resolved to exclude his sons from the succession. They chose a

distant relative of his, Chosroes by name, to be their king. But another

son of Yezdegerd, Bahram by name, contested his claim to the throne.

During his father’s life-time this son had lived, presumably in a sort of

banishment, with al-Mundhir (Alamundaros) the Arab king of Hira (west of

the Euphrates and on the borders of the desert), a powerful vassal king.

The latter supported Bahram’s pretensions with all his might, and this

is probably the first time that the Arabs effectively interfered in the

course of Persian history.

THE ARABS AID IN WAR WITH ROME

[Sidenote: [420-457 A.D.]]

Mundhir, with vast hordes of Arabs behind him, was soon at the gates of

the capital, which lay only three or four days’ journey distant from

Hira, and no doubt the rightful heir to the throne could count upon a

party among the Persians. A compromise was therefore effected between

the disputants, Chosroes withdrew his claim, and Bahram ascended the

throne, but under promise to rule differently from his father and to do

the will of the nobles and priests. Bahram V, who bears the surname of

Gor, “the wild ass,” is a favourite with Persian tradition, which tells

absolutely fabulous stories of him. He was young when he became king,

and to the end of his days he was jovial and much addicted to women. The

change of policy was immediately signalised by two things--the outbreak

of a systematic persecution of the Christians, and a war with Rome. Both

sides could easily find pretexts for war, but it is most likely that the

Persian nobles urged it on; the Romans would certainly not have entered

on the struggle merely on account of the persecution.

The main theatre of war was in Persian Mesopotamia and the mountain

tracts that bounded it on the north. The Persian commander was Mihr

Narseh, one of the most powerful nobles. A vainglorious Persian tradition

relates that he made a victorious entry into Constantinople, but we know

that, on the contrary, he suffered a severe defeat at the very beginning

of the war (August, 421). The Romans besieged Nisibis for a long time,

but the approach of a fresh force compelled them hastily to raise the

siege. Mundhir, to whom Bahram owed his throne, was eager to devastate

Syria with his Arabs, but was forced to retreat with great loss. The

war, concerning the progress of which we have no adequate information,

enfeebled both sides to such an extent that they quickly became anxious

to end it. In the terms of peace (422) the Persians promised to allow the

Christians the free exercise of their religion, and the Romans undertook

to do likewise to the Zoroastrians.

The desire of the Persians for peace was most likely due to the fact that

they were again involved in warfare with the rulers of the Bactria of

that day and the neighbouring countries, the tribe of the Kushan, Haital

(Hephthalites), or “white Huns.” To this perpetual conflict the Romans

probably owed their rest from Persian invasion in the fifth century.

We are not bound to take the word of Persian tradition for Bahram’s

brilliant victory over the Hephthalites.

In Persian Armenia yearnings after independence had asserted themselves

during the war with Rome, but when peace was concluded Bahram could

again install a vassal king there; the selfish Armenian nobles, however,

went to such lengths that the Persians were finally driven to do away

with the Armenian monarchy altogether and to convert the country into a

province (429), as the Romans had long since done with their portion of

it. In this the Persians had the assistance of a strong party among the

Armenians themselves, though as a matter of fact the Persian satraps had

no less trouble with the barons and priests than with the kings before

them.

After the death of Bahram (438 or 439) his son Yezdegerd II became

king. He persecuted both Christians and Jews, nor is there much to be

set to his credit in other respects. He abolished the audiences, on

the first day of every month, in which any man of consequence was free

to lay grievances or petitions before the king. The story goes that he

married his own daughter (though that was no crime in the opinion of the

Zoroastrians, who considered such marriages positively meritorious) and

afterwards killed her.