SANDBOX PARTHIAN EMPIRE

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Cambridge History of Iran, Vol 3, Part 1

The Political History of Iran Under the Arsacids (A.D.H. Bivar)

Bivar, A.D.H. (1983). "The Political History of Iran Under the Arsacids," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:1), 21-99. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

The nature of the sources

Page 21: Bivar writes that much of what is known about Parthian history is derived from Greek and Latin sources. However, QUOTE: "Both the Seleucid kings of Syria, and the Roman republic and empire, the patrons of the majority of writers concerned with this subject, were frequently at war with Parthia, so that the tone of the writings is naturally often tinged with hostility. Yet more serious for our understanding than direct hostility (which could be easily discounted) is their lack of inner understanding of Parthia and its society. Such matters as the dominant Parthian ideals and aspirations, or the ethnic and linguistic make-up of the kingdom, would not have been apparent to uninformed observers under the stress of military operations. Moreover, the literary fashion of the classical world frowned on detailed descriptions of far-away peoples and places, as is clear from the scornful comment of Lucian on the author of a Parthian history..."
Page 21: Bivar mentions that some Greek authors residing within the Parthian empire fortunately provided some accounts of contemporary Parthia. He presents the Parthica by Apollodorus of Artemita (a city in modern-day eastern Iraq) as an example, but it now only exists in fragments as quoted in the Geography of Strabo.
Page 22: Bivar writes that the Historiae Philippicae by Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, which survives in the Epitome by Roman historian Justin, was probably derived from a work by a Greek author living within the Parthian Empire. He asserts that a Greek living in Mesopotamia must have provided information for Plutarch's Life of Crassus and the Battle of Carrhae. The 1st-century-AD historian Isidore of Charax (from Charax Spasinu near the Persian Gulf) wrote the Parthian Stations, which was perhaps part of a larger work known as the Description of Parthia (as mentioned by Athenaeus). The historians Polybius, Cassius Dio, and Tacitus provide lesser accounts of the Parthian empire.
Page 22: Another source for Parthian history include Greek, Parthian, and Aramaic inscriptions. Fragmentary ostraca written in the Parthian language are counted as another source. The largest cache of Parthian ostraca was found at Nisa, Turkmenistan, the first Parthian capital. They contain QUOTE: "information on land tenure, qualities of wine, official titles, and occasionally the names and regnal dates of rulers."
Page 22-23: Other ostraca sources come from Dura-Europos (Syria), Nippur (Iraq), and Hecatompylos (Iran) near modern-day Damghan.
Page 23: The oral poetry of Parthian minstrels, preserved in sources written in later centuries, also provide source material for Parthian history.

The geographical settings

Page 24: Bivar writes that even before the time of Darius I of Persia (whose Behistun Inscription of 521 BC mentions Parthia), the area of Parthia in northeast Iran was known as the satrapy of Parthava.
Page 24-26: Bivar goes into a lengthy discussion about the exact border lines between ancient Parthia and Hyrcania and the changing geographical definition of Parthian territory which expanded and contracted over time.
Page 26-27: Bivar writes that the nomadic Dahae confederacy was first mentioned in an inscription at Persepolis written during the reign of Xerxes I of Persia. The Parni tribe, one of the many tribes of the Dahae confederacy, would provide the royal Arsacid family who ruled Parthia. Bivar assumes that the northwestern Iranian dialect which was later known as Parthian was native to the region before the Parni arrived, while the Parni most likely spoke an eastern Iranian language.

The Beginning of Arsacid Rule

Page 28: QUOTE: "The first fixed point in Parthian history is provided by the starting point of the Arsacid era, the vernal equinox of 247 B.C. The significance for the Parthians of this moment in time has been variously explained: by Gardiner it was seen as the date of a Parthian revolt against Seleucid suzerainty; by Tarn, as the coronation year of Tiridates I, the second Parthian king. Another evident possibility is that it could represent the actual enthronement year of Arsaces I, the founder and eponym of the dynasty. However, this less sophisticated theory has until recently proved difficult to reconcile with the literary accounts relating to the foundation of the Arsacid kingdom. The plausibility of yet a fourth explanation for the origin of the era in 247 B.C. should also not be lost to view. Since the year 246 B.C. was the last of the reign of Antiochus II over the Seleucid empire, and allowance has moreover to be made for the autonomous reign of the satrap Andragoras in Parthia, it may be that 247 B.C. was reckoned the last year of legitimate Seleucid authority in the province, and that Arsaces subsequently backdated his regnal years to this moment and ignored the unconstitutional episode of Andragoras."
Page 28-29: QUOTE: "The literary sources for the rise of the Arsacid dynasty have recently been re-examined in a series of articles by Wolski. Whilst the view had previously prevailed that the tribe of the Parni rose against the Seleucid authority in about 250 B.C., or at any rate shortly before 247 B.C., this scholar embarked upon a detailed source-criticism of the ancient texts which refer to the event, and has concluded that the version provided by Justin and Strabo is a distinct tradition, and superior to that represented by the fragments of Arrian's Parthica in Photius and Syncellus, and the statements of Eusebius. In Wolski's view, therefore, the authentic version is that the Seleucid satrapy of Bactria established its autonomy of the Seleucid kingdom in about 239 B.C. under its governor Diodotus; and that Arsaces established his independent rule in Parthia in the following year, 238 B.C. Shortly afterwards must have taken place the inconclusive eastern campaign of the Seleucid ruler Seleucus II Callinicus. After a number of skirmishes with the Parthians, he was obliged by further disturbances in Asia Minor to return to Antioch, and leave the newly founded Parthian kingdom to its own devides. In Wolski's opinion, indeed, 'The so-called Arsacid era and the numismatic evidence are of no importance' for the question of chronology. Such an attitude may be thought extreme; yet if Wolski's interpretation of the literary sources can indeed be reconciled with a satisfactory explanation of the inauguration of the Arsacid era, as on the lines suggested above, it would be possible to arrive at an acceptable sequence of events."
Page 29: QUOTE: "Accordingly, we might conclude that the epoch of 247 B.C. marks rather the commencement of the bid by Andragoras for power in Parthia than that of Arsaces and his Parni. The historicity of Andragoras is confirmed by the discovery of his gold and silver coins in the Oxus Treasure and more recently, by a Greek inscription published by Robert. The latter, indeed, refers to Andragoras as a satrap already under Antiochus I, and suggests that he may have held his office for nearly twenty years before he was overcome by the Parni. This circumstance makes it less likely that the satrap's rule could have been prolonged to so late a date as 238 B.C."
Page 29: QUOTE: "According to what may have been regarded as the traditional account, the revolt of the Parni against Andragoras was led by two brothers, Arsaces the founder, and Tiridates; the latter is the Tiridates I of the Arsacid dynastic table. After the death of Arsaces, at a date not precisely known, Tiridates succeeded to the throne. He reigned until about 211 B.C., shortly before the eastern campaign of Antiochus III the Great. His successor, who apparently occupied the throne during the hostilities against Antiochus, was Artabanus I [NOTE: also known as Arsaces II]. The peace terms eventually agreed by the Parthians with Antiochus involved their formal acceptance of a feudatory status; but the rapid withdrawal of the Seleucid forces when Antiochus returned to the west, and in 189 B.C. sustained defeat at the hands of the Romans in the battle of Magnesia, meant that in fact the young kingdom was subjected to little interference. In about 191 B.C. Artabanus was in turn succeeded by his son Priapatius."
Page 30-31: Bivar mentions opposing theories that posit either Arsaces I, Tiridates, or even Arsaces II as legendary figures and non-historical personages who were conflated with one or the other in Latin and Greek histories. However, recent finds of ostraca at Nisa, Turkmenistan confirm the traditional narrative of succession from Arsaces I of Parthia --> Tiridates of Parthia --> Arsaces II of Parthia --> Phriapatius of Parthia.
Page 31: Bivar writes that, although Phraates I of Parthia expanded Parthian control past the Gates of Alexander, taking control of Charax (Apamea Ragiana), it was not until the reign of Mithridates I of Parthia (assuming the throne in 171 BC) that the kingdom reached empire status with the conquest of Medes from the Seleucids.

The expansion of Arsacid power

Page 33: Bivar writes that when Mithridates I of Parthia took the throne, he contended with Eucratides I of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and was able to annex Tapuria and Traxiana, two Bactrian eparchies. Nearby Medes was controlled by Timarchus, a former Seleucid satrap and ally of Eucratides, but Timarchus was overthrown by the Seleucid king Demetrius I Soter before Parthia advanced into the region.
Page 34: While the former Seleucid military officer Diodotus Tryphon established independent control over Antioch in opposition to Demetrius II Nicator, Mithridates took advantage of this situation by invading Babylonia and capturing the city of Seleucia in 141 BC. His forces then defeated Elymais and occupied Susa. All of these events were commemorated with the minting of new coins.
Page 35: In response, Demetrius II Nicator led his forces into Babylonia the following year to drive out the Parthians. Although the campaign was partly a success in the beginning, he was defeated and captured by the Parthians in battle. He was then sent to Mithridates' court in Hyrcania, where he was treated generously and even married Mithridates' daughter Rhodogune of Parthia. After his conquests in Babylonia, Mithridates' newly-conquered territories stretched from the Karkha River along the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the Indus River in what is now modern Sindh province.

The consolidation of the Parthian kingdom

Page 36: Bivar claims that the last year of the reign of Mithridates I of Parthia, i.e. 138 BC, is QUOTE: "the first precisely established regnal date of Parthian history."
Page 36-37: When Phraates II of Parthia (138-128 BC) took the throne, he was faced with almost immediate crises. The Saka tribes were pressing on the eastern border after being expelled from their homelands by the migrant Yuezhi (originally of Gansu province, China during the Han Dynasty). To the west, Cleopatra Thea, wife of the now Parthian-held hostage Demetrius II Nicator, married his brother Antiochus VII Sidetes, who was able to overthrow the usurper Diodotus Tryphon in Syria and set his sights on reconquering Babylonia for the Seleucid Empire. Starting the campaign in 130 BC, he was able to defeat the Parthians in three different battles. In one of these along the Great Zab River, he defeated the Parthian general Indates. After this, the Parthian governor of Babylonia, Enius, was killed in a local uprising. Antiochus then had coins minted at Susa and advanced his army into Medes.
Page 37: Parthian diplomats tried to make a settlement with Antiochus VII Sidetes, but the latter would only accept peace if Phraates II of Parthia surrendered all lands except for Parthia proper, released the prisoner Demetrius II Nicator, and paid tribute to the Seleucids as was done in the past. Phraates refused these demands except for the release of Demetrius, who he sent to Syria in hopes to distract Antiochus' rear.
Page 37-38: However, by spring of 129 BC, the citizens of Medes were growing tired of supplying the Seleucid garrisons and were incited by Phraates' agents to revolt against King Antiochus. While the latter attempted to put down the revolts, he was caught off-guard by the main Parthian army which advanced into the region. Antiochus was then killed in battle. Phraates II had his body sent back home to Syria honorably in a silver coffin. Antiochus' son Seleucus was captured and made a Parthian prince, while one of his daughters was placed in Phraates' royal harem.
Page 38: Phraates II of Parthia intended to invade Syria after this victory, but he faced a serious problem now with the Saka tribes. Some of them were previously enlisted into Parthian forces to fight Antiochus VII Sidetes, but when they arrived the war was already over. Despite this, they demanded to be paid their wages or fight in another campaign. When Phraates II refused, the Saka revolted against him and ravaged lands perhaps as far as Mesopotamia. Phraates used the Greek-Seleucid POWs of the previous war with Antiochus as troops against the Saka, but once they took to the field, the Greeks abandoned Phraates and joined the Saka instead! Phraates II was unable to resist their forces and he himself was killed in battle in 128 BC.
Page 38-39: It is recorded by Justin (historian) that the next Parthian ruler Artabanus II of Parthia died from a wound received in battle against the Tocharians (Yuezhi), but it is speculated that Justin is inaccurate and that these were the Saka who fought Phraates II. In any case, Artabanus' successor Mithridates II of Parthia (surnamed "The Great") restored order along the eastern borders and cemented Parthian control over Babylonia. It was here where the Parthian headquarters of government gradually shifted, perhaps in response to the threat of nomadic tribes across the Oxus River who occasionally raided the Parthian homeland around Nisa, Turkmenistan. Bivar speculates that the move to Ctesiphon as the capital may not have been permanent until the reign of Gotarzes I of Parthia (91 - c. 80 BC).
Page 40: With the withdrawal of Seleucid control in Mesopotamia, the satrap Hyspaosines became the independent ruler of Characene, his seat of government located at Charax Spasinu (near modern Al-Qurnah, Iraq where the Tigris and Euphrates conjoin). After the Parthian governor of Babylonia, Himerus, failed to conquer Characene, Hyspaosines apparently invaded Babylonia in 127 BC, purportedly briefly capturing Seleucia. However, Susa remained in Parthian control. In 122 BC, Mithridates II of Parthia must have made a settlement with Hyspaosines, since Parthian coins replaced even the Characene coins minted at Charax Spasinu. Bivar states that the Characene kings remained under the suzerainty of Parthian rule until the Sassanids toppled the Arsacids.
Page 40-41: Mithridates II of Parthia launched a successful campaign against Artavasdes I of the Kingdom of Armenia, taking his son the future Tigranes the Great as hostage. Mithridates also reconquered the region of Sistan which had been overrun by the Saka tribes.
Page 41: Bivar writes that the Indo-Parthian Kingdom, which eventually ruled over what is now modern Kandahar Province and Helmand Province of Afghanistan, and the Punjab region as far east as Taxila, became allies and political equals of Arsacid Parthia during the 1st century AD.
Page 41-44: Using rock inscriptions at Bisitun, clay cuneiform tablets, and metal coins, Bivar presents the clouded history of Gotarzes I of Parthia, "satrap of satraps", who most likely ruled over Babylonia during the reign of Mithridates II of Parthia. He continued to reign alongside Mithridates and Orodes I of Parthia, but died sometime around 80 BC, so that Orodes was sole ruler of Parthia until his death and succession by the elderly Sanatruces of Parthia in 76 BC.
Page 44-45: In 72 or 71 BC, Mithridates VI of Pontus sent message to Sanatruces of Parthia requesting aid against the Roman Republic in the Third Mithridatic War. However, Sanatruces was unable to commit and died in either 71 or 70 BC. He was succeeded by Phraates III of Parthia (r. c. 70-58 or 57 BC), whose kingdom for the first time came into significant contact with the expanding Roman state and caught the attention of Roman historians. The Roman commander Lucullus had driven Mithridates VI of Pontus out of his kingdom in Anatolia so that Mithridates found refuge with Tigranes the Great, his son-in-law, in the Kingdom of Armenia.
Page 45-46: While Lucullus marched towards the Armenian capital at Tigranocerta in 69 BC (see Battle of Tigranocerta), Mithridates VI of Pontus and Tigranes the Great sent message to Phraates III of Parthia requesting aid against the Roman forces. Phraates did not send help, and after Lucullus captured Tigranocerta, he negotiated with Phraates not to intervene in the conflict over Armenia. Pompey succeeded Lucullus as commander of Rome's armies in the region in 66 BC; he reaffirmed the settlement with Phraates that Parthia would not intervene in Armenia.
Page 46-47: However, when Tigranes the Younger, son of Tigranes the Great, rebelled against his father and fled to Phraates III, he convinced Phraates to invade the new Armenian capital at Artaxata, near modern Artashat. Phraates agreed, laying siege to Artaxata, but when he placed Tigranes the Younger in charge of his forces, Tigranes the Great counterattacked and defeated Tigranes the Younger. The latter fled to Pompey and acted as a guide for the Romans in their march towards Artaxata. Yet before the Romans arrived, Tigranes the Great submitted as a client king to Rome, so Tigranes the Younger was put in captivity by the Romans who planned to exhibit him in Rome as part of their military triumph.
Page 47: Phraates III of Parthia demanded of Pompey that Tigranes the Younger be returned to him, seeing as how the latter was now his son-in-law. Pompey refused this, saying the Younger was closer to his father Tigranes the Great, and in regards to fixing the border with Parthia at the Euphrates, Pompey replied that the border "would be fixed where justice directed." In response, Phraates III garrisoned Arbela (modern-day Arbil, Iraq) from where he launched an invasion into Corduene (modern-day Turkey) just south of Diyarbakr. The Roman legate Lucius Afranius (consul) forced him to leave, but his methods are unclear since Cassius Dio writes that he reoccupied the region without confronting the Parthian army, whereas Plutarch asserts that Afranius drove him out by military means and chased the Parthian force all the way to Arbela (see footnote #1 on this page). For the meantime, the border between Parthia and Armenia remained in place and Pompey marched into Syria.

The campaign of Carrhae

Page 48-49: Cassius Dio writes that Phraates III of Parthia was assassinated by his sons Orodes II of Parthia and Mithridates III of Parthia. Shorlty afterwards in 58 or 57 BC, Orodes fought and dislodged his brother Mithridates from his stronghold in Medes, forcing him to flee to Roman Syria and seek refuge with Aulus Gabinius, the Roman proconsul of Syria. Gabinius decided to support Mithridates' claim to the throne, and so marched an army across the Euphrates. However, he reversed course once the exiled Ptolemy XII Auletes requested help in Ptolemaic Egypt. Mithridates was left largely to his own devices, but he was able to conquer Babylonia and occupy Seleucia without the aid of Gabinius.
Page 49: Although Mithridates III of Parthia was able to mint coins at Seleucia for a time (which bore his personal name instead of just Arsaces, which was an exception in Parthian history), Orodes II of Parthia made a counterattack. His chief general Surena recaptured Seleucia in the last month of 54 BC, and Orodes overstruck the coins of Mithridates. After Mithridates surrendered to his brother Orodes, he was immediately executed.
Page 49: In early 53 BC, just weeks after General Surena recaptured Seleucia for Orodes, he led the Parthian forces against the Roman commander Crassus in the Battle of Carrhae.
Page 49-50: QUOTE: "Plutarch's account of the motives of Crassus' expedition, coloured as it was bound to be by the advantages of hindsight, acquires a more intelligible context when its synchronism with events in Parthia is clearly seen. Crassus had left Rome to assume his command in Syria in November 55 B.C., and at that time the attempts of Mithridates III upon Babylonia was meeting with some success. The projected Roman expedition was not to be an unsupported incursion into unknown and hostile territory or, as Parthians and later even Romans were to represent it, as a wanton aggression against an inoffensive ally. It would rather have been seen by Crassus and his party as a judicious move in support of a legitimate candidate for the throne; its aim, to relieve the gallant Mithridates, besieged in Seleucia, and to assist a Roman sympathizer on to the Parthian throne. Thus at this stage the Roman enterprise was by no means so rash as later developments were to make it appear. The historical narratives understandably put Crassus in the least favourable light. His preoccupation with financial considerations, acquisitiveness and ambition were no doubt notorious, and of course he was lacking in first-class military experience, particularly of the novel cavalry weapons of the Parthians, and the conditions of steppe warfare. On the other hand, as a prince of Roman industry and finance, he was by no means devoid of ruthlessness and astuteness. His previous career showed his capacity for handling a dangerous enterprise. As long as Mithridates continued to hold out at Seleucia, there might have been no question of a pitched battle. The Roman expedition might have required nothing more than a show of force."
Page 50: QUOTE: "In such circumstances, Plutarch is likely to have been right to blame Crassus for his dilatoriness in spending the late summer of 54 B.C. in occupying and garrisoning the cities of Mesopotamia, and thereafter returning to spend the winter in Syria. The historian stresses that he ought to have gone forward, and strengthened himself with the accession of Babylon and Seleucia, 'cities constantly at enmity with the Parthians' — an observation that manifestly implies that Mithridates was still keeping up the fight. Again, when the emissaries of Orodes reproached him for his aggression, the retort of Crassus that he would give his reply in Seleucia could well have reflected his expectation that he would find a favourable situation there. The sources quote the reply of the eldest Parthian ambassador, who held out his palm and said, 'Hair will grow here before you see Seleucia.'"
Page 50-51: QUOTE: "In contrast with the doomed and pitiful figure of Crassus, the sketch which survives of the Parthian general Surenas is a vivid and spirited one. The name under which he appears in the classical sources was apparently no more than his hereditary title, that of sūrēn, which continues to appear in the record of Iranian history far into Sasanian times."
Page 51: Presently, Surena (which Bivar calls Surenas), the greatest general of Parthian history, is only known through Greek and Roman historical sources, with no direct evidence from Iranian sources. Thus, his personal name remains a mystery, although Bivar describes his association with the mythological figure of Rostam (which Bivar calls "Rustam").
Page 51-52: Plutarch's account of Surena is notable:

For Surenas was no ordinary person; but in fortune, family and honour the first after the king; and in point of courage and capacity, as well as size and beauty, superior to the Parthians of his time. If he went only on an excursion into the country, he had a thousand camels to carry his baggage, and two hundred carriages for his concubines. He was attended by a thousand heavy-armed horse, and many more of the light-armed rode before him. Indeed his vassals and slaves made up a body of cavalry little less than ten thousand. He had the hereditary privilege in his family of putting the diadem upon the king's head, when he was crowned. When Orodes was driven from the throne, he restored him; and it was he who conquered for him the great city of Seleucia, being the first to scale the wall, and beating off the enemy with his own hand. Though he was not then thirty years old, his discernment was strong, and his counsel esteemed the best.

Page 52-55: Here Bivar provides a very long and interesting account of the Battle of Carrhae. The main points I will highlight:
- Plutarch provides the most reliable account of the two opposing armies. The force under Crassus consisted of seven Roman legions (which Tarn estimates had roughly 28,000 infantrymen), 4,000 cavalry (about a fourth of which were native tribesmen of Gaul borrowed from Julius Caesar), and QUOTE: "a similar number of light-armed infantry." The force under Surena consisted of a 1,000 cataphracts (fully-armed lancers) acting as his bodyguard, 9,000 horse archers, and a baggage train of 1,000 camels used to transport a continuous supply of arrows to the archers.
- Although outnumbered, the Parthians had the significant advantage of the heavy compound bow, which, unlike the lighter bows used in Europe, could tear through Roman legionary armor. The constant supply of arrows also meant that the Parthians could endlessly assault the Roman lines without exhaustion. Also, the Roman javelin—which Bivar does not clarify as either the pilum or lancea—would have been ineffective when used against the long-range targets of the Parthian horsemen.
- Instead of marching through the Armenian mountains as King Artavasdes II of Armenia advised, or even along the river to Babylonia as Gaius Cassius Longinus suggested, Crassus marched straight into the desert of the Mesopotamian plain upon the advice of an Arab guide, identified by Plutarch as Ariamnes, but most likely a King Acbar of Edessa, and most likely a secret ally of Surena. In the heat of June, the month the battle took place, this decision was disastrous.
- Surena first charged at the Romans with his cataphracts, but upon seeing that this was to the Roman advantage, he pulled back and let the archers fire at them. This was devastating to the Romans, so Crassus had his son Publius Licinius Crassus (son of triumvir) (who Bivar calls young Crassus) create a diversion by charging straight into the Parthian army. This effectively separated him from the main force, he was surrounded, killed, and his head stuck onto the end of a spear for the main Roman force nearby to view.
- When night came, Crassus retired with his disorganized force back to the city of Carrhae (modern Harran) under cover of darkness. After reaching the city, he realized that he lacked supplies to withstand a long siege against Surena. Therefore, on the second night he decided to flee into the Armenian hills using a guide named Andromachus, who was secretly loyal to Parthia and led Crassus far from the safety of the hills by morning. The questor Cassius Longinus feared Andromachus' intentions, and so rode back separately to Carrhae with 500 cavalry (who eventually escaped to Syria). When the main Parthian force approached Crassus, Surena offered a parley, which Crassus accepted and mounted a horse to ride to the Parthian camp to sign a treaty. However, his junior officer Octavian suspected a trap, grabbed the bridle of Crassus' horse, and a fight ensued which left Crassus and his men dead, the rest surrendering, some able to flee.
- All in all, the Roman loss was said to be 20,000 dead and 10,000 captured, the prisoners sent far away to Margiana.
Page 55-56: Bivar writes that this event won for Parthia the unquestionable recognition as an equal power with Rome. It also established the Euphrates as the border between the two realms. While Surena's faced the Romans at Carrhae, Orodes II of Parthia led the main Parthian force comprising the bulk of their infantry into the Kingdom of Armenia, which persuaded King Artavasdes II of Armenia to abandon Rome as an ally and accept the terms of the Parthian king. The alliance was sealed with Artavasdes' sister being married off to Pacorus I of Parthia, the heir to the Parthian throne.
Page 56: QUOTE: "Thus was confirmed the long and close connection between the Arsacid dynasty and the kingdom of Armenia, which remained the last stronghold of the Arsacids even after the rise of the Sasanians in Iran. While the two courts, all connoisseurs of Greek literature, were diverting themselves by watching a performance of the Bacchae of Euripides, the commander Silaces brought in the news of the victory, and laid the head of Crassus at Orodes' feet. The gruesome trophy was taken up by the producer of the play, who took it on to the stage and exhibited it to the company in place of the head of Pentheus, which is carried by the heroine in the tragedy."
Page 56: In 51 BC, Pacorus I of Parthia and his commander Osaces invaded Syria, raiding as far as the suburbs of Antioch before being ambushed by Gaius Cassius Longinus, the Roman governor of the region. In the onslaught, Osaces was mortally wounded and the Parthians withdrew. The Parthian court upheld relations with Pompey during his war with Julius Caesar. QUOTE: "After his defeat and death, a force under Pacorus came to the aid of the Pompeian general Q. Cecilius Bassus, who was besieged at Apamea in the Orontes valley by the Caesarian forces. They were successful in raising the siege, but did not remain."
Page 56-57: Julius Caesar planned to invade Parthia but his plans were cut short when he was assassinated in 44 BC. The Parthians lent some cavalry to the assassins of Julius Caesar at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, which was a Caesarian party victory.
Page 57: QUOTE: "Quintus Labienus, an officer of Brutus and Cassius, had been sent to Parthia for reinforcements, to aid the republican cause. When after the defeat he learned that republican supporters had been condemned under the proscriptions, he joined the Parthians; and in 40 B.C. a Parthian army, under the command of the Parthian prince Pacorus and of Labienus, invaded Syria. Apamea was quickly taken, and there the invading force divided. Labienus turned north to penetrate far into Asia Minor. At the same time Pacorus, who had already gained a high reputation in the Near East both for his military talent and for justice and moderation, turned south along the coast through Syria, while his general Barzapharnes led another force further inland. All the cities along the coast, as far to the southward as Ptolemais (Acre), admitted the Parthians, with the single exception of Tyre. In Judaea the leader of the pro-Parthian party was Antigonus, nephew of the High Priest Hyrcanus. The latter was in turn under the control of two Roman supporters, the Idumaeans Phasael and Herod. Antigonus sent a large subsidy to the Parthian prince, in return for military help to gain control of the province. The combined Jewish and Parthian force defeated their opponents and advanced on Jerusalem. When Hyrcanus and Phasael were persuaded to go down and negotiate with Barzapharnes they were taken into custody. Herod, hearing of their arrest, fled to his impregnable stronghold of Masada near the Dead Sea. Thus Antigonus was installed as king of Judaea, while the two prisoners were carried away to Parthia. For a moment, the whole of the Roman East seemed to be either in Parthian hands, or on the point of capture. Ye though connections between the Jews of Judaea and the Parthian empire, more especially through the Jews of Babylonia, were long to remain an important political factor, the conclusion of the second Roman civil war was soon to bring about a revival of Roman strength in Asia."
Page 57-58: QUOTE: "Antony, at that time the most powerful of the Roman generals, had already sent Publius Ventidius into Anatolia to oppose Labienus. Soon Labienus was driven back into Syria, and though his Parthian allies came to his support, they were caught at a disadvantage in the hill country by Ventidius and heavily defeated. When Labienus tried to escape his men were ambushed and himself taken prisoner soon afterward and put to death. At the Amanus Gates between Cilicia and Syria, the Parthian officer Pharnapates, after a fierce fight, was defeated and slain with most of his men. Late in 39 B.C., the Parthian crown prince Pacorus withdrew from Syria, and Ventidius was occupied in trying to reduce the cities that still remained pro-Parthian, but though he approached Jerusalem, did not attack it."
Page 58: QUOTE: "In the following spring, 38 B.C., Pacorus reassembled his forces and once more invaded Syria. The legions of Ventidius were still in winter quarters in Cappadocia, but the Roman general circulated misleading rumours about his plans, and thus delayed the Parthian advance. Finally the two armies met near Gindarus, to the north-east of Antioch. The Roman camp was situated on high ground, but the Parthians, believing the Roman forces to be weak, attempted to rush the camp. They were repelled with heavy losses, and though the Greek an Roman historians differ as to the exact course of the battle, Pacorus with his bodyguard was trapped and killed, and the remaining Parthians were dispersed, and driven back across the Euphrates. Pacorus had been a prince of outstanding merit and reputation. A successor-designate to the Parthian throne, he had even been permitted to make sparse issues of coins bearing his youthful portrait. His death was not only a bitter blow to his father Orodes; by throwing open once more the question of the Parthian succession, it introduced a new source of dissension into the affairs of the kingdom. Orodes selected next as his heir Phraates (IV), who assumed effective power in 39/8 B.C. Soon afterwards, the aged king died, according to the historian Dio Cassius of grief at his favourite son's death, or of old age. Plutarch prefers a lurid tale ascribing to Phraates IV the murder of his father. The new king was, at any rate, obliged to secure his succession—by putting to death his brothers and driving into exile numbers of their supporters and other opponents of his rule. One of these, Monaeses, who had gained a military reputation during the recent war, took refuge with Antony in Syria, and encouraged him to undertake a campaign against Parthia. Meanwhile, Antony had reconquered Jerusalem, and executed the Parthian nominee Antigonus, so that Herod now ascended the throne of Judaea."

Mark Antony in Azarbaijan

Page 58-59: Bivar speculates that the principle source for the history of Mark Antony's invasion of Parthia in 36 BC was the writings of Quintus Dellius, an officer who participated in the campaign. The main histories focusing on this event were written by Plutarch and Cassius Dio, with other minor accounts provided by Marcus Velleius Paterculus and Florus (QUOTE: "deriving probably from the lost book CXXX of Livy"). The figures for Antony's army are enormous, estimated at between thirteen and sixteen Roman legions comprising 60,000 men, not counting the 10,000 Iberian and Celtic cavalry and 30,000 allies from Asian states. After Antony marched to Carana (what is now probably modern Erzurum), Artavasdes II of Armenia, recently an ally of Parthia, now decided to aid the Roman effort by lending Antony 6,000 armored cavalry and 7,000 infantry. Marching south of the Armenian capital Artaxata, Antony headed for Atropatene. The bulk of his forces pressed ahead of a slower moving force of two legions led by Oppius Statianus far in the rear, which guarded the 80-ft battering ram. Their final destination would be the capital of Atropatene, called Phraata or Praaspa (whose geographical location is uncertain), where the local king Artavasdes I of Media Atropatene resided with a large garrison.
Page 59: In Mark Antony's rear, the main Parthian army led personally by Phraates IV of Parthia ambushed and destroyed the detached force of Oppius Statianus as well as the siege engines needed for taking walled settlements. Antony reversed course to try and reinforce Statianus, but found nothing but 10,000 dead Romans in a field. To make matters worse, Artavasdes II of Armenia, with his valuable cavalry, abandoned Antony after this disaster.
Page 60-63: Here Bivar describes Antony's agonizing journey back to Armenia, his forces being harassed by Parthian horse archers most of the way back.
Page 63-64: Here Bivar explains the controversy over where Phraata or Praaspa is located. The historian Sir Henry Rawlinson wrote an article in 1840 arguing that Takht-e Soleymān was the lost ancient site, but others have since discounted this view, arguing that the logistics and descriptions of Antony's campaign did not match with the area. Also, archaeological excavation has not yielded any substantial evidence that the site was prominent during Parthian times, although a large fire temple was built there during the later Sasanian period.
Page 64: Plutarch writes that, once Antony reached safety in Armenia, he had lost 20,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. It is said another 8,000 perished in the long winter march from Armenia back to Roman-controlled Syria.
Page 64-65: After Phraates IV of Parthia had a heated dispute with his ally Artavasdes I of Media Atropatene, the latter sent message to Mark Antony seeking an alliance. Seeking to fulfill this, Antony marched another army into Armenia in 34 BC under the pretense of marrying Artavasdes II of Armenia's daughter to his son Alexander Helios. Instead, Antony ambushed Artavasdes and led him back to Egypt in chains where he was eventually executed. He also drove Artavasdes son Artaxes out of Armenia and into exile in Parthia, while he garrisoned Armenia. In 33 BC Antony again visited Armenia to negotiate an alliance with Artavasdes I of Media Atropatene against Octavian and Parthia. However, a Parthian army as well as Artaxes threatened Antony in Armenia, and with pressing matters elsewhere, he was forced to abandon it. Parthia then had Armenia under its control.
Page 65: QUOTE: "The death of Antony in Egypt after his defeat at Actium in 31 B.C. left Octavian, soon to be known as the emperor Augustus, undisputed master of the Roman world. He was in a strong position to achieve an amicable relationship with Phraates, since Antony had been their common enemy. To this factor may be added the new ruler's diplomatic skill, and the fortunate accident which gave him a bargaining counter. The Parthian king returned victorious to his capital, but by his haughtiness aroused the anger of the populace, and was driven into exile by a sudden rising. He visited more than one of the neighbouring states, but it was finally from certain Scythians that he obtained the reinforcements to reclaim his throne. During his enforced absence, a certain Tiridates, perhaps the general mentioned in a Greek poem from Susa, seized power during 30/29 B.C. When the Scythians approached, Tiridates fled with his supporters to Augustus, taking with him as hostage the youngest of Phraates' sons, who had somehow been kidnapped from his guards."
Page 66: QUOTE: "Envoys from Phraates soon arrived to demand the return of his son, and the surrender of the rebel. Augustus then diplomatically accepted the first demand, but refused either to return Tiridates, or on the other hand to support his pretensions to the Parthian throne. However, it seems that Tiridates soon found his way across the Parthian frontier for another attempt, and he struck tetradrachms again in Seleucia, bearing the exceptional epithet Philorhomaios 'Friend of the Romans' in May 26 B.C. It is apparently to the period of this episode that we should refer to the cryptic notice in Isidore of Charax concerning a treasury of Phraates on an island in the Euphrates below Dura, and of the Arsacid having put to death his concubines (not explicitly at the same spot, as some commentators assume), seemingly to avoid their capture by the pretender. Coins show none the less that Phraates was back in power during August 26 B.C., but Tiridates made a final appearance in March 25 B.C. before he finally disappears from the historical record."

The "Roman Peace" and its consequences

Page 66-67: The Romans were upset over Crassus and Mark Antony's failed campaigns, so Augustus needed a symbolic victory over Parthia. In 20 BC, Augustus and Phraates IV of Parthia reached a diplomatic agreement where the young Parthian prince held hostage in Rome would be returned in exchange for the Roman standards and prisoners of war lost at the Battle of Carrhae. The event was hailed with the minting of new coins, but moreover it, QUOTE: "gave enormous propaganda benefit, and could be represented as a redressing of the military balance so disastrously upset by the previous costly failures." ENDQUOTE. The Parthians viewed the return of the Roman standards as "trifling return" for their prince. Thus a temporary peace and diplomatic accord existed between Rome and Parthia during the early Pax Romana.
Page 67: QUOTE: "If indeed Phraates IV is rightly to be identified with the Arsaces of the second Avroman parchment, and its date 291 to be referred to the Seleucid era, in 21/20 B.C., notwithstanding the harem tragedy recorded by Isidore, four of the Arsacid's queens were living, Olenieire, Cleopatra, Baseirta and Bistheibanaps. This fact did not deter Augustus from pursuing his Parthian policy by the gentler method of bestowing upon Phraates an Italian slave-girl of unusual accomplishments, known as Thea Musa. Whether the gesture was explicitly by way of compensation for the Arsacid's previous losses is a matter for conjecture, but Musa quickly became the favourite of the fierce old king, and before long gave birth to a son known as Phraataces (the diminutive form of the king's own name), or by other authorities designated as Phraates (V). The infant prince was soon regarded as a candidate for the succession, and Musa, who now as acknowledged queen achieved a position of great influence at the court, persuaded the king to send his older children to Rome, and thus leave the way clear for her son. As Phraates may well have perceived, the arrangement was advantageous from another viewpoint. For if Phraataces with the help of his mother was to inherit the throne, his half-brothers would be safer if they resided outside his jurisdiction. Having therefore called to a conference Marcus Titius, the Roman governor of Syria, the king handed over to him his four sons, Seraspadanes, Rhodaspes, Phraates and Vonones, together with the wives of the two last, and their four sons. All these princes were maintained by Augustus at Rome in princely style, and in due course Vonones was to make a bid for the succession. They are mentioned in several Latin inscriptions, and their presence is reported with pride by Augustus in the Res Gestae."
Page 68: QUOTE: "In 2 B.C., when the aged Phraates IV was no doubt already ailing, Musa is reported to have had him taken off by poison, thus smoothing the succession of her son Phraataces. Subsequently Josephus reports that the mother became the consort of the son, an event which some authorities regard the coin of A.D. 2 (bearing the two portraits) as confirming. It is not clear whether this alliance, if such it was, should be regarded as an early instance of Zoroastrian kin-marriage; but the assumption is contradicted by the fact that the historian ascribed the subsequent Parthian rebellion against the new king partly to their detestation of such incest. The new king was driven from the throne in A.D. 4, and himself fled to Roman Syria, where he did not long survive."
Page 68-69: QUOTE: "This upheaval constituted the prelude to a long period of dynastic conflict in the Parthian kingdom. A prince called Orodes (III) was called to the throne; but his violent disposition, no exception in these troubled times, led to his being cut down by the nobles at a banquet, or in another version, on a hunting party. Envoys were then sent to Rome to ask for the release of one of the hostages to occupy the throne, and Vonones was selected. However, the patronizing Roman propaganda on the theme Rex Parthis datus 'a king assigned to the Parthians' seems to have aroused the anger of the Parthians, who once more rebelled, and set up against Vonones a certain Artabanus, who had formerly been king of Atropatene, and who now advanced towards Ctesiphon, the capital. Vonones opposed him near the entrance to the Zagros passes, and at their first encounter won a victory, which gave rise to the famous, but premature, coin-issue inscribed ΒΑΣΙΛΕΣ ΟΝΏΝΗΣ ΝΙΚΗΣΑΣ ΑΡΤΑΒΑΝΟΝ 'King Vonones victorious over Artabanus'. However, in the second encounter Artabanus (III) [SIC! Should be Artabanus II] gained the upper hand, and while his rival took shelter in Seleucia, advanced to be proclaimed as king at Ctesiphon in A.D. 12. Vonones then escaped to Armenia, where he manoeuvred [sic] to secure the throne, but in A.D. 15/16 the Romans deced that he was an unsafe nominee, both owing to the hostility of Artabanus, and because of his own irresolution; so the unhappy prince was obliged to take sanctuary with Creticus Silanus, governor of Syria, by whom he was granted shelter and royal honours."
Page 69: QUOTE: "In A.D. 14 the Roman emperor Augustus died, and was succeeded by his adopted son, Tiberius, who sent the young Germanicus to settle affairs in Armenia and on the Parthian frontier. To reduce the possibility of provocation to Artabanus, Vonones was removed to Pompeiopolis (Soli) in Cilicia. He escaped by bribing his guard, and tried to flee to Georgia, but was arrested on the river Pyramus (Ceyhan), and run through by his guilty custodian, who hoped thus to efface the evidence of his own complicity."
Page 69: QUOTE: "The death of Vonones was followed by that of Germanicus, and during the period A.D. 19-23 tranquility prevailed on the Euphrates frontier. Artabanus remained firmly in control of the Parthian kingdom, and his famous rescript in Greek to the municipality of Susa, dated Arsacid Era 268/December A.D. 21, was to remain the last known inscription of its type. To the same period belongs the narrative given by Josephus of a signal disaster that befell the Jewish population in Babylonia. It provides an instructive commentary on the extent of local autonomy that prevailed in the Parthian kingdom at this time. The city of Nearda, because of its secure position in a bend of the Euphrates, was selected by the community of the Exile as the repository of their traditional offerings of two drachmae a head for the Temple at Jerusalem. It happened that two Jewish youths of that town, Asinaeus and Anilaeus, apprenticed to a weaver, being maltreated by their master took weapons and fled to the swamps at the 'Parting of the Rivers'."
Page 69-71: Bivar goes into a lengthy commentary about the uncertain location of the ancient city of Nearda, or Nehardē'ā, but most estimates place it close to modern Fallujah.
Page 71: QUOTE: "We return now to the two apprentices of Nehardē'ā, who quickly gathered a following of youths as impoverished as themselves, and began to earn a substantial living through brigandage. The satrap of Babylonia led against them a force of cavalry, intending to surprise them on the Sabbath. The outlaws, however, were forewarned by the neighing of the horses, and putting aside their religious scruples, defended themselves resolutely, and defeated the Parthians with great slaughter. At this point the king Artabanus intervened personally, and summoned the brothers to court under safe conduct. When first Anilaeus, and then Asinaeus, had been prevailed on to attend, he conferred on them the governorship of their territory — though much to the chagrin of his Parthian commander-in-chief Abdagases. That the king had political reasons for this unexpected decision is evident enough. In the province of Babylonia at this time not only were many Parthian nobles disaffected, but at the same time the 'Syrians' and the Hellenists were at loggerheads, and moreover the city of Seleucia was on the brink of open rebellion against the Parthian government, which in fact broke out some years later in A.D. 35-6 as we shall see. At the same time, the pretender Tiridates, with Roman support, was planning an attempt upon the Parthian throne. In such a dangerous situation, it is easy to see that the king would have welcomed the establishment of a new military force, committed to neither of the leading factions, and attached, if only by his toleration, directly to the ruler himself."
Page 71-72: QUOTE: "For fifteen years, as Josephus relates, the brothers governed their province successfully and firmly. Only when Anilaeus was tempted by guilty passion did their position decline. A certain Parthian general in the area had a wife of surpassing beauty, whose fame spread far and wide. The former apprentice was determined to win her for himself, and this he could only achieve by making a sudden attack upon the husband, killing him in battle, and carrying off his widow. He quickly made her his wife, but the lady took advantage of this enhanced status to resume her ancestral worship of images, some of which she had contrived to bring away with her into her captivity. Such unorthodoxy aroused bitter complaints from the followers of the brothers, who protested to Asinaeus about this marriage to a gentile, so violently indeed that one of the party who spoke too freely was even put to death. Asinaeus in fact took no action against his brother, but the wife of Anilaeus, perceiving the danger that was to be anticipated from the discontent of their followers, put poison in the food of Asinaeus, so leaving her husband as the sole leader of the band."
Page 72: QUOTE: "Anilaeus next began to ravage the property of a leading Parthian, by name Mithridates, a member of the high nobility, and a son-in-law of Artabanus the king. The aggrieved nobleman naturally sallied out with his cavalry to chastise the raiders, but Anilaeus surprised them in a night attack on the Parthian camp, and not only dispersed the Parthians but captured Mithridates himself. For fear of reprisals against the Jewish community at Babylon, Anilaeus finally decided that Mithridates should be released. However, enraged by his humiliation, Mithridates returned to the attack with greatly enlarged forces, and on the second occasion heavily defeated the Jewish forces, whose losses were estimated by Josephus at tens of thousands. Though Anilaeus and his bodyguard made good their escape to the marshes, and built up their force by recruiting runaways and outlaws, the new recruits could not compare in efficiency with those who had fallen, and he was eventually surprised by the Babylonians and put to death."
Page 72-73: QUOTE: "The anecdote of the two brothers had a direct bearing on the subsequent revolt of Seleucia against the Parthian rulers. For now that military support was removed, the Babylonians began to harass the Jewish settlements in the Euphrates region. The inhabitants, lacking means of defence, decamped to the city of Seleucia and settled there. However, that city itself in A.D. 35-6 broke into open rebellion against the Parthian empire; and within three years a state of social tension became obvious even within the walls. Initially hostility had prevailed between the Greek community and the local Aramaeans. The Jews at first allied themselves with the latter party, which thus became the stronger; but later the Greeks contrived to reach an understanding with the Aramaeans, and the two factions combined to make a surprise attack on the Jews. No fewer than fifty thousand of the latter are reported to have been massacred, and the survivors expelled from the city. Some fled to the adjoining royal residence of Ctesiphon, while others from the surrounding districts made good their escape to the cities of Nehardē'ā and Nisibis. Despite its wealth of colourful detail there are several obscurities in the narrative; it is not clear what became of the Jewish refugees who retired to Ctesiphon, and why the fugitives who returned to Nehardē'ā felt themselves secure there, while previously they had preferred to evacuate that site to settle at Seleucia."
Page 73: QUOTE: "Having thus traced the fortunes of the populous Jewish community in the growing disorder that prevailed at this time in Parthian Babylonia, we must return to consider the history of the kings. In A.D. 35 the Roman emperor Tiberius, egged on by secret emissaries of the Parthian nobility, in particular a certain Sinnaces, undermined the Parthian position in Armenia by effecting a reconciliation between Pharasmanes, king of Iberia, and his brother Mithridates. The former was then induced to place his brother on the Armenian throne. The Arsacid incumbent, known only as Arsaces, was assassinated, and when Artabanus sent his son Orodes to restore the situation he was defeated by the numerous Iberian infantry force, supported by Sarmatian cavalry from beyond the Caucasus."
Page 73: QUOTE: "Artabanus brought up his entire army to repair the setback, but Vitellius, Roman governor of Syria, massed his troops against the frontier of Mesopotamia, thus creating a diversion. At the same time, the Romans played on the disloyalty of certain prominent Parthian nobles. Sinnaces, a leading malcontent, urged others to revolt, and soon even the determined Artabanus found he had no recourse but to withdraw to 'Scythia', east of the Caspian Sea, and to retire to the life of a private citizen, until a change in his fortunes might enable him to return with help of his Hyrcanian and Carmanian allies."
Page 73-74: QUOTE: "When the throne was thus standing vacant, Vitellius seized the chance to ferry across the Euphrates the exiled Parthian prince Tiridates. Several Parthian nobles offered their services to the pretender, including Ornospades, himself a former exile, the treacherous Sinnaces, and a certain Abdagaeses who handed over the treasure and the regalia, and whose behaviour suggests he may have been identical with the resentful general of the episode of Anilaeus (above, p. 72). Yet the Parthian spirit would not long endure a Roman protectorate, and though Seleucia received the pretender, two important satraps, Phraates and Hiero, refused to attend the coronation; instead, they sent to Artabanus in Hyrcania. Still in the tattered costume of a hunter, and holding his bow, the veteran king put himself at the head of the anti-Roman party, and soon found himself in the vicinity of Seleucia at the head of a large army. Tiridates, dismayed, took the fatal decision to retire west of the Tigris into Mesopotamia. His retreat assumed the appearance of a rout, and he soon fled back across the Euphrates into Syria."
Page 74: QUOTE: "Tiberius now instructed his governor to come to terms with Artabanus. The two met, each accompanied by a bodyguard, on the bridge of the Euphrates, and were entertained to a banquet by Herod the tetrarch. Dio Cassius, however, places this episode after the death of Tiberius and under Caligula, a dating which the silence of Tacitus may be held to confirm. The terms of the treaty are not known in detail, but an essential Roman demand was that a son of the Parthian king should be sent to Rome as a surety for the maintenance of peace, and the hostage in this case was the prince Darius. When the treaty was agreed, Vitellius returned to Antioch, and Artabanus to Babylon. There is perhaps no need to follow Debevoise here in assuming that Josephus' use here of the word 'Babylon' is actually a reference to Seleucia, capital city of Babylonia. For this metropolis was still in open revolt, and some of its factions secretly in touch with Rome, so as to make even the established Parthian royal residence at Ctesiphon an inconvenient centre for the ruler when the routes to the threatened Euphrates frontier, and the Tigris bridges, might so easily be blocked by a hostile force. In such circumstances, it is not difficult to accept that Artabanus had temporarily established his court at Babylon, just as did his successor Vardanes a few years later, according to the testimony of the biographer Philostratus."
Page 74-75: Bivar relates an event in 37 AD where Artabanus II of Parthia is again forced to flee into exile, this time to Adiabene, after an assassination plot against him was revealed. At the time, the semi-independent kingdom of Adiabene was ruled by Izates bar Monobaz, a convert to Judaism, who helped restore Artabanus to the Parthian throne when he persuaded the royal nominee Prince Cinnamus to abdicate in favor of Artabanus.
Page 75: QUOTE: "In A.D. 38, the long reign of Artabanus came to an end, and he bequeathed the kingdom to his son Vardanes. Another son, Gotarzes, is reported at first to have seized the throne, but when he put to death the third brother, Artabanus, with his wife and child, there was a general outcry, which resulted in an invitation being sent to Vardanes. The latter, possibly to some extent forewarned, surprised the usurper by covering the distance of three hundred miles in only two days, a feat which is not to be dismissed as impossible, and was acclaimed by the governors of the adjoining provinces. Only the Seleucians rejected the succession of Vardanes, who promptly laid siege to the city; but Gotarzes returned to the attack with reinforcements from the Hyrcanians and Dahae, and forced Vardanes to withdraw, on the evidence of Tacitus, to 'the plains of Bactria'. This detail is surprising, since it is difficult to see by what route Vardanes could have reached Bactria, if Hyrcania and the land of the Dahae were under the control of his rival."
Page 76: QUOTE: "Upheavals followed in Armenia, for Claudius had released the Iberian Mithridates, for some time held in detention at Rome, and he now began to reoccupy the country with Roman assistance. At the same time, a battle was pending between Verdanes and Gotarzes. However, when the latter revealed to the former a plot of the popular party against both the rival Arsacids, the two contenders came to an agreement, under which Vardanes was to retain the throne, and Gotarzes to retire to Hyrcania. Vardanes was next able to secure the capitulation of Seleucia, the city having been in revolt for seven years."
Page 76: QUOTE: "An interesting sidelight is provided on the reign of Vardanes by the journey across Babylonia at this time of the itinerant Greek philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana. Confidence in the reliability of this account is strengthened by the fact that its later description of the Indo-Parthian city of Taxila was substantially confirmed by excavation. The tale of the journey across Babylonia conveys a certain tone of credulity, but is avowedly based on the diary of the philosopher's companion, the simpleton Damis. Its details are, however, convincing enough. Vardanes had been reigning for two years and two months when the travellers found him residing at Babylon, and the episodes of palace life, and a lavish horse-sacrifice, sound wholly in character."
Page 76: QUOTE: "At this time Vardanes undertook a tour of his provinces, and tried to persuade his vassal Izates of Adiabene to take military action against the Roman interests in Armenia. This Izates was unwilling to do, since five of his sons were then in Roman territory, whereat Vardanes even threatened war with Adiabene. Gotarzes meanwhile rose once more in revolt against his brother, who advanced and defeated him on the river Erindes, a stream on the boundary of Media and Hyrcania. Vardanes pressed on to conquer all the provinces as far as the boundary of Aria, and erected a monument to commemorate his triumphs; but was finally murdered during a hunting expedition, his death taking place towards the end of A.D. 45. Gotarzes (II) was now the strongest candidate for the throne, but before long, complaints of his ruthlessness were once more circulating, and a faction of Parthian nobles sent secret appeals to the Roman emperor to provide another king."
Page 76-78: In 49 AD, Roman emperor Claudius had the Parthian prince Meherdates sent to Parthian territory to assert his claim on the Parthian throne. Meherdates allied himself with Carenes, Parthian governor of Mesopotamia, Abgar, governor of Edessa, and Izates, ruler Adiabene. However, Abgar and Izates were secretly in league with Gotarzes II of Parthia, and when Meherdates marched towards Gotarzes' army, Izates and then Abgar abandoned him. Carenes' forces were destroyed and as Meherdates attempted to flee, he was betrayed by one of his father's vassals, captured, and sent to Gotarzes. The latter allowed Meherdates to live, but he cut his ears off QUOTE: "to disqualify him from the throne, and publicly reviling him as a Roman puppet."

Continuation of conflict with Rome over Armenia

Page 79: QUOTE: "In A.D. 51, apparently the year after his victory, Gotarzes II died, either of disease, or as the result of a conspiracy. He was succeeded by Vonones, then reigning in Media, of whom history records 'nothing either good or bad', and who disappeared within a few months. The son of the last then acceded to the throne, under the designation of Vologeses I. The son of a Greek inmate of the harem, his rise to the throne was assisted by his two brothers. The elder, Pacorus, he installed as sub-king in Atropatene; for the younger, Tiridates, he sought to obtain the throne of Armenia, which was at this time under the control of Rhadamistus, son of the Iberian king Pharasmenes. Rhadamistus had invaded the country and captured the stronghold of Goneaea, putting to death there the Roman nominee Mithridates (who was in fact his uncle) together with the wife and children of the latter. Gorneae is the now well-known archaeological site of Garni, in Soviet Armenia, situated twenty-seven kilometers east of Erevan, in the confluence of two rivers. The monuments include the city-wall, a remarkable temple and a palace, together with a Greek inscription of the already mentioned Tiridates, who eventually became king of Armenia, and indeed one of its most famous and successful rulers on the Arsacid side."
Page 79-80: QUOTE: "The uncontrolled aggression of Rhadamistus, in which Pollio, the Roman commander of Mithridates' garrison had actually connived, reflected most unfavourably on the Roman authorities and policy. The moment was ripe for Vologeses of Parthia to invade the country on behalf of Tiridates, and his cavalry promptly drove out the Iberian forces of Rhadamistus. The capitals of Artaxata and Tigranocerta were quickly seized, but the onset of a bitter winter, lack of supplies, and the outbreak of an epidemic forced the Parthians to withdraw in their turn. Rhadamistus returned, treating his subjects even more harshly than he had previously; and before long they were in open rebellion and laid siege to his palace. Soon his only recourse was to escape, with his wife, both on horseback. The queen, Zenobia by name, happened to be pregnant, and was not long able to withstand the rigours of the flight. Unable to continue, she begged her husband to end her life rather than abandon her to the rebels; and when no entreaties prevailed on her to go further, Rhadamistus in desperation stabbed her with his Median dagger, flung her body into the Araxes, and made his escape to his father's palace at Mtskheta. Zenobia, however, was neither dead nor fatally injured. The current washed her up in a placid backwater, where shepherds found her breathing, and manifestly alive. They bound up her wound, applied such simple remedies as they possessed, and eventually, guessing her royal origin, sent her to the Parthian contender Tiridates, who shortly afterwards re-established his power in the country. He received the unfortunate queen kindly, and provided for her in a manner appropriate to her rank."
Page 80-81: Bivar explains that Roman historical sources were chiefly concerned with military campaigns when describing Parthia, with only small glimpses into Parthian life, culture, and important individuals. From this point forward, the Romans would only gain temporary moments of control over the Kingdom of Armenia, as the Arsacid Dynasty of Armenia, a line of kings related to the Parthian royal house, would firmly rule the country. While Rome continued to undermine Parthian influence by occasionally providing nominees to the Armenian throne, Parthian power did not wane until a smallpox epidemic of 165 AD. They were eventually overthrown by the Sassanid Empire, which was much more centralized and posed a greater threat to Rome than Parthia ever did. The Arsacid line, however, continued to live on in the kings of Armenia.
Page 81: QUOTE: "In A.D. 54 Nero succeeded Claudius as emperor at Rome. News of the Parthian reoccupation of Armenia caused dismay, and the eastern legions were ordered into a state of readiness. For the moment, however, the rebellion against the Parthian king Vologeses I of a son, Vardanes, caused the Parthians to withdraw again from Armenia, and led to a lull in developments. A seasoned general, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, was transferred from Germany to take command of the Roman forces on the Armenian frontier. Both Corbulo and the Roman legate of Syria sent messages to Vologeses urging him to keep the peace, and asking for the provision of the usual hostages. These Vologeses provided without reluctance, perhaps, as Tacitus suggests, as a means of removing suspected rebels from the country. For the moment, a political vacuum prevailed in Armenia. Vologeses would not allow his brother to give up the kingdom, and Corbulo felt it his duty to restore the Roman empire to the boundaries won by Lucullus and by Pompey. The allegiance of the Armenians was divided. Invitations were sent to both armies, Roman and Parthian, but the rule of Parthia was on the whole preferred, on account of the similarity of customs, and more lenient domination."
Page 81-82: QUOTE: "Corbulo was a stern old disciplinarian of the traditional school. His rigorous training had a salutary effect on the eastern legions enervated by decades of peacetime conditions. He caused them to spend the winter in tents no the Anatolian plateau, thus seasoning the troops, though many lost limbs by frost-bite. Deserters were at once punished with death, a practice found in the aggregate to reduce losses. Tiridates, supported by his brother Vologeses, now sent flying columns to raid Roman supporters in Armenia far and wide. Corbulo retaliated with similar tactics against the Parthian adherents, and encouraged such Roman allies as King Antiochus of Commagene, Pharasmenes of Iberia, and the Moschi tribesmen to raid outlying regions of Armenia. Tiridates proposed negotiations, but Corbulo knew that because of a revolt in Hyrcania. Vologeses had been obliged to withdraw his forces and leave Tiridates unsupported. Mention must here be made of the broader political implications of references to Hyrcania which appear in the narrative of Tacitus. In Central Asia by this time, A.D. 59, the empire of the Kushāns was rising to a position of great strength. Within a year or two they were to invade the Punjab and occupy Taxila. To the west there is little doubt that Kushān control extended at least as far as Marv. It is surprising that in the historical literature of the earlier Roman empire, the kingdom of the Kushāns is never specifically named. Occasional references in Latin texts to the 'Bactrians' may at times relate to the movements of the Kushāns, but only in the vaguest terms. The only extant writer of the classical world to make specific mention of the Kushāns was Bardesanes of Edessa, the genuineness of whose information on eastern topics is attested by his giving the first description of the people of Gīlān, on the Caspian coast; amongst whom, as any recent traveller knows, the bulk of the agricultural work is undertaken by the women. Modern historical knowledge of the strength of the Kushān empire, and its close proximity to Hyrcania, shows how powerful would have been the threat to which Vologeses reacted, and which resulted in the way being opened for Corbulo's invasion of Armenia."
Page 82-83: QUOTE: "The Roman force is thought to have advanced eastwards from the vicinity of present-day Erzurum. A suggested conference, which was to be held in the presence of both armies, proved abortive; but Tiridates was not able to interfere with Roman supplies being brought up from the Black Sea coast. The outlying Armenian castles were attacked and stormed, the most important of these being the stronghold of Volandum. No quarter was given to the survivors of the garrison, and the civilian inhabitants were deported and sold as slaves. Thence the large Roman force marched down to the valley of the Araxes, its left flank resting on the foothills, and drove off the unsupported cavalry force of Tiridates. The capital city of Artaxata had to open its gates, but though the lives of the citizens were therefore spared, the walls were levelled and the entire city burnt to the ground. From Artaxata, Corbulo marched back apparently round the eastern shore of Lake Van to deal with Tigranocerta. The citizens of Armenia's southern capital reckoned discretion the better part of valour, and opened their gates to receive the Roman army, who spent the winter of A.D. 59 in the city. The success of Corbulo's campaign had been greatly assisted by the fact that the Parthians were occupied in their Hyrcanian war. Hyrcanian ambassadors had reached Corbulo, apparently at Artaxata, to point out the services they were rendering the Roman cause. He had sent them on to Rome to conclude an alliance with the emperor; but when they returned, he did not allow them to travel eastwards across the Euphrates, for fear of being intercepted by Parthian patrols; instead he sent them with an escort to the shores of the Red Sea, 'to reach their home by avoiding Parthian territory'. Interpretations of this striking phrase have been various, but there is little doubt that the opinion of Rawlinson is the most satisfactory: the envoys would have returned by sea via India, since only thus could they have avoided Parthian controls. That it was possible to reach Hyrcania by so huge a detour resulted from the expansion of the Kushān empire at this time. The Hyrcanians in question will either have been Kushān allies, or the terms used by Tacitus in fact referred to a Kushān force that was operating on the soil of Hyrcania."
Page 83-85: QUOTE: "After the removal of Corbulo to Tigranocerta, Tiridates I of Armenia returned to northern Armenia from Atropatene. In the spring, probably of A.D. 60, the Roman force marched out once more to drive him back. Intransigent districts were ravaged with fire and sword, and Nero resolved to place Tigranes, a Cappadocian prince, upon the throne. He was installed at Tigranocerta with a strong Roman escort: one thousand legionaries, three allied regiments and two squadrons of cavalry. Soon the new ruler had gained so much confidence that he began to raid the boundaries of Adiabene. Monobazus, sub-king of that region at the time, appealed to Vologeses, and once more the Parthian royal army, under the command of a certain Monaeses, swept into Armenia and besieged Tigranocerta. The city, however, was strongly held, and Corbulo had sent in two legions to strengthen the defenders. After several unsuccessful attempts at escalade [sic], in which the contingents from Adiabene sustained heavy losses, the Parthian force began to lose heart. Corbulo now sent to the king an officer with a message of protest, threatening to invade Parthian territory of the siege was not raised. Even more decisive, at this moment, was the descent of a large swarm of locusts. By devouring all the pasture required by the Parthian cavalry, they put Monaeses in a danger from which he as only extricated when Vologeses, thirty (Roman) miles away at Nisibis, expressed a wish to send an embassy to the Roman emperor, and ordered his forces to withdraw. Though this may have been partly a diplomatic manoeuvre, it seems true that a genuine wish for settlement of the Armenian deadlock was gaining ground on both sides. To Corbulo came orders to withdraw his troops from Armenia to Syria; then, when the Parthian ambassadors returned unsuccessful, a new Roman general, Caesinius Paetus, arrived to take over the Armenian command. He was to place Armenia under direct Roman rule. As a general, however, he was in no way the equal of Corbulo, and it was not long before he found himself in difficulties. His troops were concentrated at Rhandeia, in the valley of the Murād Sū eastwards of the present Elazig. His wife and son, with a detached cohort, were left for safety nearby at Arsamosata. His attempt to block the Taurus passes against Vologeses was a failure, and his advance guard having been scattered, the remainder of his men were besieged in their legionary camp. Soon the Romans were in difficult straits. An appeal for help was sent to Corbulo in Syria, but while he was still three marches away, Paetus came to terms with Vologeses, agreeing to evacuate Armenia and abandon his camp, on condition that he was allowed to retreat unhindered to Cappadocia. The Romans even undertook to construct a bridge across the River Arsanias (Murād Sū) for the benefit of the advancing Parthians, before their departure. Their retreat by forced marches to the Euphrates, where they met the relieving army of Corbulo, is depicted as a humiliating rout. It had also been agreed that Vologeses should again be permitted to send emissaries to Nero, who arrived at the same time as evasive dispatches from Paetus. The ambassadors lauded the moderation of Vologeses, and proposed that Tiridates should come to Rome to receive from Nero's hands the diadem of Armenia, a duty from which he was only deterred by his religious obligations as a Magian priest. The delegation were dismissed with gifts, but without a decision, and Nero determined to renew the war under Corbulo's command. Four legions were concentrated at Melitene (Malatiya) with all their auxiliaries, and Corbulo pressed eastwards, reopening the route used by Lucullus. He drove out of their strongholds the Armenian barons or megistanae known as hostile to the Romans. The Parthians were none the less disinclined to push matters to extremes, and sent letters requesting negotiations. To these Corbulo replied in conciliatory terms, and eventually there was an impressive meeting of the two armies, hostages were exchanged, and Corbulo held a meeting with Tiridates. The latter stressed that he had suffered no defeat, yet he was ready to go to Rome and receive the diadem of Armenia from the hands of Nero. Tiridates observed with interest the routines and ceremonies of the Roman army; and after a visit to his brothers Vologeses and Pacorus at Ecbatana, and after assurances that he would be received in Roman territory with the honours accorded to a consul, retaining his sword and being received in state by the provincial governors, he was ready to set out on the elaborate overland journey to Rome that his priestly scruples were said to demand. He paid homage to Nero at Naples, and re-enacted the ceremony publicly at Rome. There he was declared king of Armenia, and invested with the diadem, before departing, this time partly by sea to Dyrrachium, to return to Artaxata. Thus after a ding-dong battle for control of the region, Armenia was finally settled as a juridical condominium, with an Arsacid ruler who received his investiture from the Roman emperor. None the less, in practical terms, the Parthian influence in the region was now overwhelming. Thus with Tiridates I the Arsacids were established in Armenia, and the Roman military demonstrations availed only to hasten the outcome that they were designed to avert."
Page 85: Bivar notes with interest the magi-priest status of Tiridates I of Armenia, an Arsacid family member, and digresses here for a bit to talk about Zoroastrianism. He asserts that passages in the Vendidad and Denkard can be interpreted to say that Vologeses I of Parthia was responsible for having Zoroastrian scriptures written down which eventually became the Avesta. He includes, however, that scholarly consensus is more inclined to believe that only an orally-transmitted Avesta existed in Parthian times.
Page 85-86: Vologeses I of Parthia is also known to have founded a new city in Babylonia, known by various names, such as Vologesias, Vologesocerta, and Valashabad. It was situated along the Royal Canal just south of Seleucia. This would diminish the influence of the latter following several rebellions there against Parthian rule. Vologeses also had drachma coins minted with both Greek text and Pahlavi script expressing the Parthian language. This, along with supporting Zoroastrian literature and the magi priests are seen as a move away from Hellenism.
Page 86: QUOTE: "It was part of the achievements of Vologeses that the stable peace between the two empires after A.D. 64 resulted in a death of information on Parthia from western sources. Apart from routine diplomatic exchanges, only an invasion of Parthian territory by the Alans of south Russia, themselves an Iranian people, in A.D. 72 or soon after, attracted the attention of the historians."

Trajan's Parthian War and its aftermath

Page 86-87: QUOTE: "Vologeses I remained upon the Parthian throne until A.D. 79, the year of the last known tetradrachm. Yet already in A.D. 78, a rival, Pacorus II, was issuing dated coins from the mint of Seleucia, and must have been contending with him for possession of the mint-city. In A.D. 80-1 another pretender, Artabanus IV [SIC! Wiki states that he is Artabanus III of Parthia, although Artabanus IV of Parthia and Artabanus V of Parthia describe the same person at Wiki], briefly issued coins at the mint, but by A.D. 83 Pacorus was again the only ruler attested. Such indications of internal conflict in the Arsacid kingdom suggest conditions which could once more have tempted the Roman emperors to launch a campaign against their traditional adversary. Vespasian (A.D. 70-9), as Roman commander in Judaea before his accession, had maintained amicable, or at least neutral, relations with Vologeses I. Domitian (81-96) apparently dreamed of a great expedition in the East, but it was the soldier emperor Trajan (A.D. 98-117) who developed a practical plan, and put it into effect. In Parthia, the coinage of Pacorus came to an end in A.D. 96/7. A second Vologeses appears on the coinage of A.D. 105/6 [SIC Wiki states that he is Vologases III of Parthia, not the second], and was soon contesting the throne with one Osroes, the brother or brother-in-law of Pacorus. As usual the immediate cause of friction with Rome arose from the situation in Armenia. Osroes deposed a certain Tiridates from the Armenian throne, and put in place a certain Axidares, the son of Pacorus II. The decision was taken without consultation with Rome, and may thus have provided the casus belli. After the conclusion of the Dacian war, on 27 October 113, Trajan set sail for the east. An embassy from Osroes met the emperor at Athens, expressing their master's desire for peace, and informing him that Axidares had now been deposed from the Armenian throne, and requesting his replacement by his brother Parthamasiris. However, Trajan rejected the request, and indeed the presents brought by the embassy."
Page 88: In 114 AD, Parthamasiris visited Trajan at Elegia (near Erzerum) to mimic the royal ceremony of Tiridates I of Armenia but Trajan refused to place the royal diadem on his head. Instead, Trajan let him withdraw only to have him be hunted down by Roman cavalry and killed. The Kingdom of Armenia was then made into a Roman province.
Page 88: Trajan invaded northern Mesopotamia in 115 AD. His success was aided by the Parthian civil war between Osroes I of Parthia based in Babylonia and his rival Vologases III of Parthia based in Iran. There is also evidence (i.e. minted coins of Seleucia dated 114/115 AD) that Pacorus II of Parthia was still alive and briefly a contender to the throne at this time.
Page 88-89: After little resistance, mostly staged by King Meharaspes of Adiabene, Trajan retired from his so-far successful campaign to Antioch, where he spent the winter and survived an earthquake in December 115 AD.
Page 89-90: In 116 AD, Trajan departed from Antioch and marched along the Euphrates, capturing Dura-Europos, which had never before fallen into Roman hands. They then marched on Ctesiphon, which surrendered without a fight. Osroes I of Parthia, however, had escaped before Trajan's forces arrived. A Roman fleet of fifty ships sailed down the Tigris towards Characene, persuading its king Attambelos to submit and pay tribute to Trajan. Trajan marched all the way to the Persian Gulf where he watched ships set sail to India.
Page 90-91: As Trajan returned to Babylonia, the settlements there began to revolt against the Roman garrisons. Meanwhile, Nisibis and Edessa were captured by Lusius Quietus. Roman forces also took Seleucia for the first time, but burned it to the ground instead of occupying it. Osroes' brother Meherdotes led the Parthian counterattack along the middle Euphrates, but was killed in action. His son Sanatruces succeeded him in command. However, Osroes' son Parthamaspates of Parthia, who was sent to aid Sanatruces, decided to side with Trajan and captured his cousin, killing him. Trajan then invested Parthamaspates with the royal diadem at Ctesiphon. Roman coins were minted to celebrate this event with the inscription "REX PARTHIS DATUS."
Page 91: QUOTE: "In A.D. 117 Trajan at last retreated from Babylonia, following the third of the possible routes northwards, the central route of the Wadi Thartar, which passes the caravan city of Hatra. The fortified, circular city in the heart of the desert had been a pivot of Parthian military resistance. Its mixed populations, Iranian, Arab, and Arameaean, were united in devotion to the Arsacid cause. Trajan laid siege to the fortifications, but the barrenness of the surrounding country, the terrible heat and the maddening swarms of flies all added to the hardships of the Roman soldiers. Even when a breach had been made in the walls, several determined attacks failed, and the Roman army was forced to withdraw to their own frontier. By the autumn of A.D. 117 the Romans had not only withdrawn completely from Babylonia, they had even evacuated their troops once more from Dura-Europos. Meanwhile, the health of the emperor Trajan was failing. He had set out on his return to Italy, but died in August at Selinus in Cilicia. His successor, Hadrian, wisely decided to revert to the traditional frontier on the Euphrates."
Page 91-92: QUOTE: "The successful defence of Hatra against the Romans inaugurated a period of great prosperity for that city. Excavations conducted over a number of years by the Iraq government have revealed a remarkable wealth of temples, sculptures and inscriptions within the walls. Some of the leading personages bear Iranian, Aramaic or even Arab names. That the Parthian influence is strong is made clear by the splendid Parthian costumes of many of the statues, consisting of the typical shirt (qamīs) and trousers represented as made from richly ornamented materials. The dates of several of the finest sculptures are grouped between Seleucid 444/132 and Seleucid 449/137, and some make mention of a king named Sanatruk (Sinatruces), whom Debevoise sought to link but inconclusively, with the Parthian general who led resistance to the Romans. However, the king of Hatra is more likely to have been a namesake than a descendant of Trajan's Parthian opponent."

The last century of Arsacid rule

Page 92-93: Parthamaspates of Parthia, the turncoat Parthian prince invested by Trajan at Ctesiphon, was overthrown by the Parthians and he fled to Roman territory, where he was made the ruler of Osroene (province of Edessa). Osroes I of Parthia continued to wage civil war against Vologases III of Parthia, the rival claimant to the throne. Roman emperor Hadrian married his daughter to Osroes in 128 or 129 AD, but the latter's coins were no longer issued after this year. Vologases soon fought a new contender to the throne, Mithridates IV of Parthia. Stability was brought to Parthia with the long subsequent reign of Vologases IV of Parthia, from May 148 to March 192 AD.
Page 93: QUOTE: "Throughout the reign of Antoninus Pius at Rome, peace prevailed on the Euphrates frontier. Only with the accession of Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 161 did the threat of hostilities return. According to the western sources, Vologeses launched the first offensive soon after the new ruler's accession. A Roman army was destroyed at Elegia in Armenia under Severianus, and Parthian forces poured across the Euphrates into Syria, after retaking Edessa. The Romans reacted by concentrating eight legions in Syria under Lucius Verus, the colleague of the emperor. Two expeditionary forces were mustered; the first, under Statius Priscus, swept into Armenia in A.D. 163 and apparently placed on Sohaemus on the throne. In the following year, the second force, under Avidius Cassius, invaded Mesopotamia. Dura-Europos was recaptured, and henceforth remained in Roman hands. An armistice followed, and the Romans marched on to Seleucia, where they were received peacefully. Before long, however, a dispute arose, and in December A.D. 165 the legions stormed and burnt the city. Ctesiphon was also captured, and the palace of Vologeses destroyed."
Page 93-94: QUOTE: "The inactivity of the Parthians appears to have been partly due to a terrible epidemic of smallpox. The disease, at this time apparently unknown in the west, had been raging for more than a decade in the Kushān territories of India. As a result of the great stimulus that the peace and prosperity of the Antonines had given to world trade, the scourge had spread along the trade routes to southern Arabia, to China, and of course also to Babylonia. During the sack of Seleucia, one of the Roman soldiers contracted the infection. Soon the epidemic was raging amongst the susceptible western soldiery, and the whole invading army was forced to retreat in confusion. The survivors carried the virus with them into the Roman empire, and so began the 'Great Pestilence' that was studied by the physician Galen of Pergamum. Over a quarter of the urban population in some parts of the Roman empire perished, and there is much justification for the historians who believe that this disaster was the greatest single cause of the decline of Roman civilization. Later Roman campaigns against Edessa and Nisibis were accompanied by the added terror of the epidemic. However, as a consequence of the expeditions of A.D. 165 and 166, the Roman frontier was fixed on the line of the Jabal Sinjār, of the Chaboras (Khabur), and of Dura-Europos."
Page 94: QUOTE: "In September A.D. 191 Vologeses IV was replaced by a rival, currently numbered Vologeses V. In the Roman empire a contest for the throne was won by Septimius Severus, who followed his success with a campaign in northern Mesopotamia. Though diverted in A.D. 196 by the rebellion in Gaul of Clodius Albinus, he returned in A.D. 197, and performed the now traditional march down the Euphrates to Seleucia and Babylon. Ctesiphon, which was defended, was once more captured and sacked. In December A.D. 198 he assumed the title Parthicus Maximus; he then retreated, like Trajan, by way of Hatra, which was once more besieged without avail."
Page 94-95: In 207 or 208 AD Vologases V of Parthia was succeeded by Vologases VI of Parthia, who by 211 AD had to contend with the new Roman emperor Caracalla for Parthia's western territories. Caracalla's forces deposed the rulers of Osroene and Armenia, reorganizing those territories into Roman provinces. Meanwhile, Vologases' brother Artabanus IV of Parthia (known as Ardavan in Islamic sources and to modern scholars as Artabanus V in the old Parthian chronology) waged civil war against him in his claim for the throne. Artabanus began his reign in either 212 or 213 AD, and eventually controlled Medes, Mesopotamia, and the region around Susa, although there is no evidence that he ever captured Seleucia.
Page 95: Caracalla demanded that Artabanus IV of Parthia return to him the Armenian prince Tiridates and the runaway philosopher Antiochus. Artabanus complied, but Caracalla, perhaps still seeking a pretext for war, demanded that Artabanus should give one of his daughters in marriage to him. Artabanus again complied, so Caracalla visited the Parthian court. However, when hostilities between the two parties broke out, Artabanus fled to the safety of the nearby mountains and Caracalla, marching on the road from Edessa to Carrhae after ravaging the countryside of Medes, was assassinated during his withdrawal. Macrinus succeeded him in 217 AD while the Parthians recaptured Mesopotamia and defeated a Roman army at Nisibis.
Page 95-96: The Parthian Empire did not fall to the Roman Empire, but rather a native Iranian known as Ardashir I. He was heir to the kingdom of Persis (Fars Province), but when he conquered the surrounding principalities, he directed his hostilities towards his former overlord, the Arsacid King of Kings. The location of the final battle (i.e. the Battle of Hormizdagan) between the Parthians and the new Sassanid Empire took place at an uncertain location, although it is speculated that it played out just northwest of Isfahan. Artabanus IV of Parthia was allegedly slain in the battle against Ardashir, yet Vologases VI of Parthia continued minting tetradrachm coins at Seleucia until 222 or 223 AD. There are a couple curious specimens of coins minted at Seleucia dated to 228 or 229 AD which are identical to Vologases coinage but could also be ascribed to Artabanus IV. Bivar speculates that this perhaps represents a brief counter-revolution at Seleucia against Ardashir I and the new Sassanid Empire.
Page 97: Bivar writes that the Manichaeistic prophet Mani received his first religious revelation in this year (i.e. 228 or 229 AD), and also proclaimed that he was descended from Parthian royalty. Bivar claims that QUOTE: "his syncretic religious doctrine, containing elements of Mandaean belief, Iranian cosmogony, and even echoes of Christianity, may be regarded as a typical reflection of the mixed religious doctrines of the late Arsacid period, which the Zoroastrian orthodoxy of the Sasanians was soon to sweep away. The new creed can in some senses be visualized as a monument to the memory of the vanished dynasty, and it appears that several of the Sasanian kings regarded Mānī as a source of danger to their line. It may thus be admissible to speculate that a connection existed between the abortive Arsacid tradition at Seleucia in A.D. 228/9 and the revelation which descended upon the youthful Mānī at that time. The young prophet may well have been impressed at this desperate attempt to restore the ancient dynasty, and have then resolved to found a worldwide movement which would reassert Arsacid values in the spiritual sphere. Many years were to pass before the new creed was expounded in developed form, but Manichaeism can be seen as one of the last manifestations of Arsacid thought, its tinge of profound pessimism related to that dynasty's loss of power. At the same time, the Manichaean scriptures have preserved to modern times, amongst their rich and varied linguistic heritage, evidence for the vocabulary and pronunciation of the Parthian language. These features are masked in the official Arsacid script by its complex ideographic writing system. In Babylonia, therefore, Manichaeism appears as the last heir of the Parthian tradition, though Armenia too preserved its legacy of Arsacid influence."

Appendix I. Chronological Table of the Arsacid Kings of Parthia

NOTE: This table appears on pages 98-99 after the last section of Bivar's chapter. On page 98, the kings listed belong to the era before Christ (BC), and on page 99 the kings listed belong to the era after Christ (AD).

New Chronology		Old Chronology
Chronological Table of the Arsacid Kings of Parthia
247 BC	Arsacid era begins; Andragoras autonomous as satrap	c. 250 BC	Arsaces I of Parthia
246 BC	Arsaces I of Parthia leads revolt in Parthia	c. 248 BC	Tiridates I of Parthia
238 BC	Arsaces I of Parthia in control of Parthia
217 or 214 BC	Arsaces II of Parthia	211 BC	Artabanus I
c. 191 BC	Phriapatius of Parthia	c. 191 BC	Phriapatius of Parthia
c. 176 BC	Phraates I of Parthia	c. 176 BC	Phraates I of Parthia
c. 171 BC	Mithridates I of Parthia	c. 171 BC	Mithridates I of Parthia
c. 139/138 BC	Phraates II of Parthia	c. 138/137 BC	Phraates II of Parthia
c. 127 BC	Artabanus I of Parthia	c. 128 BC	Artabanus II of Parthia
c. 124/123 BC	Mithridates II of Parthia	c. 123 BC	Mithridates II of Parthia
c. 90 BC	Gotarzes I of Parthia; Orodes I of Parthia	c. 91 BC	Gotarzes I of Parthia
		c. 80 BC	Orodes I of Parthia
78/77 BC	Sanatruces of Parthia	76/77 BC	Sanatruces of Parthia
71/70 BC	Phraates III of Parthia	58/57 BC	Mithridates III of Parthia
58/57 BC	Orodes II of Parthia	c. 57 BC	Orodes II of Parthia
before 53 BC	Mithridates III of Parthia (struck coins at Seleucia)
c. 40 BC	Phraates IV of Parthia	c. 40 BC	Phraates IV of Parthia
c. 39 BC	Death of Pacorus I of Parthia	38 BC	Death of Pacorus I of Parthia
32-30 BC	Invasion by Tiridates I	30-25 BC	Tiridates II of Parthia
27/26 BC	Tiridates I strikes coins at Seleucia
3/2 BC	Phraates V of Parthia	3/2 BC	Phraates V of Parthia
5/6 AD	Orodes III of Parthia	4 AD	Orodes III of Parthia
8/9 AD	Vonones I of Parthia	7/8 AD	Vonones I of Parthia
10/11 AD	Artabanus II of Parthia	12 AD	Artabanus II of Parthia
36 AD	Tiridates II of Parthia	36 AD	Tiridates III of Parthia
37 AD	Cinnamus	37 AD	Cinnamus
39-45 AD	Vardanes I of Parthia	38 AD	Gotarzes II of Parthia
43/44-50/51 AD	Gotarzes II of Parthia	39-47/48 AD	Vardanes I of Parthia
50/51-76/77 AD	Vologases I of Parthia	c. 51 AD	Vonones II of Parthia
55 AD	Vardanes II of Parthia	51/52-79/80 AD	Vologases I of Parthia
77/78-78/79 AD	Vologases II of Parthia
77/78-86/87 AD	Pacorus II of Parthia	78-115/116 AD	Pacorus II of Parthia
79/80-80/81 AD	Artabanus III of Parthia	80-81 AD	Artabanus IV of Parthia
92/93-95/96 AD	Pacorus II of Parthia
104/105-107/108 AD	Vologases III of Parthia	105/106-147 AD	Vologases II
108/109-127/128 AD	Osroes I of Parthia; Parthamaspates of Parthia in 117 AD	109/110-128/129 AD	Osroes I of Parthia; Parthamaspates of Parthia in 117 AD
111/112-146/147 AD	Vologases III of Parthia
c. 130-147 AD	Mithridates IV of Parthia	128/129-147? AD	Mithridates IV of Parthia
147/148-190/191 AD	Vologases IV of Parthia	148-192 AD	Vologases III of Parthia
190/191-207/208 AD	Vologases V of Parthia	191-207/208 AD	Vologases IV of Parthia
207/208-221/222 AD	Vologases VI of Parthia	207/208-222/223 AD	Vologases V of Parthia
c. 213 - c. 224 AD	Artabanus IV of Parthia	c. 213 - c. 224 AD	Artabanus V of Parthia

Parthian Coins (David Sellwood)

Sellwood, David. (1983). "Parthian Coins," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:1), 279-298. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Iranian National History (Ehsan Yarshater)

Yarshater, Ehsan. (1983). "Iranian National History," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:1), 359-480. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 359: According to available evidence, Iranian written histories did not exist until the late Sassanid Empire, although no Iranian history book has survived from pre-Islamic times. These include the Khwaday-Namag, a comprehensive history of Persia from its beginnings until the end of the reign of Khusrau II (A.D. 628), compiled during the reign of the last Sasanian monarch Yazdegerd III (r. 631-651). This book, along with other Sassanid history sources, were translated into Arabic by writers such as Abd-Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 757 AD). These works no longer survive as originals, but many history books written in the early Islamic centuries were based on them.

Iran and China (William Watson)

Watson, William. (1983). "Iran and China," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:1), 537-558. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 537-540: Here Watson goes through the preliminary yet speculative trade and cultural contacts between the Iranian and Chinese cultural spheres before the late 2nd century BC.
Page 540-542: Watson discusses the extensive and groundbreaking exploratory journeys of the Han diplomat Zhang Qian and Han China's opening of relations with Bactria (Daxia), Fergana (Dayuan), and other countries of Central Asia during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (r. 140-87 BC).
Page 541-542: In Chinese sources, the eastern borders of the Parthian Empire extended to the lower Amu Darya and the Aral Sea. It was named Anxi, after the capital Antioch-Merv in Margiana (Margu). Chinese trade caravans reached Parthia in 106 BC, stopping at Bactria along the way.
Page 543-544: After the Han Dynasty captured Karasahr from the Xiongnu in 94 AD and confined their enemies to Outer Mongolia, the renowned commander Ban Chao sent his diplomat Gan Ying on a mission to Daqin, i.e. the Roman Empire, which the Chinese were familiar with as the western terminus of the Silk Road. When Gan Ying entered Parthian territory, he visited the court of the Parthian king at Hecatompylos. There Gan Ying made notes about the urban population and the Parthian military. There is evidence that his Parthian guides deliberately misguided him to Rome, since they did not take him along the Euphrates frontier but instead to the Persian Gulf as if to take a ship and sail around Arabia. QUOTE: "But a terrifying account of the sea voyage to the west so discouraged him that he abandoned his mission altogether. Thus the only official attempt made by the Chinese to enter into relations with the chief enemies of Parthia was frustrated, probably to the relief of the Parthians, who can only have been alarmed by Pan Ch'ao's long run success."
Page 547-551: The main export item sent from Han China to the west through the Parthian Empire was obviously silk, which could be exchanged for a number of resources and goods, such as glasswares from Parthia and Rome.

Cultural Relations Between Parthia and Rome (Otto Kurz)

Kurz, Otto. (1983). "Cultural Relations Between Parthia and Rome," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:1), 559-567. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Cambridge History of Iran, Vol 3, Part 2

Iranian Society and Law (A. Perikhanian)

Perikhanian, A. (1983). "Iranian Society and Law," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 627-680. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Political, Social and Administrative Institutions: Taxes and Trade (V.G. Lukonin)

Lukonin, V.G. (1983). "Political, Social and Administrative Institutions: Taxes and Trade," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 681-746. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 687: Lukonian writes that the accuracy of the line of succession of the first eleven Parthian kings is certified by memorial records found at Nisa, Turkmenistan. These documents provide the exact dates of their reigns (rendered in the Arsacid era) as well as their genealogies and ruling predecessors' names.
Page 687-689: The names listed in the Nisa documents are Iranian, many of them used by orthodox Zoroastrian followers.
Page 689: As to the power and authority of the Arsacid kings over their dominions, Strabo (XI.9.3) provides a useful account: QUOTE: "According to Poseidonius, the supreme council...of the Parthians consists of two groups: one that of the [king's] kinsmen and the other that of wise men and magi, from both of which groups the kings were appointed."
Page 689: This statement by Strabo about the appointment of kings is taken by some scholars as evidence that nomadic Parni clan traditions were retained by the Arsacid ruling family. Lukonian says this statement may also belong to the Hellenistic stereotype of nomadic ruling establishments.
Page 697: The Arsacid royal house, which followed a patrilineal line of succession, claimed descent from Artaxerxes II of Persia, thus linking their legitimacy with the earlier Achaemenid Empire.
Page 699: After listing the various categories of nobility and of the grandees at the later Sasanian court, Lukonin turns to the Parthians, QUOTE: "All these terms go back to the time of the Achaemenians, but in specifically Parthian written documents they are hardly to be found at all, which is undoubtedly due to the extreme paucity of material for this period. Pompeius Trogus, describing the customs of the Parthians, writes: 'nearest to the royal authority [to the king?] is the caste of the highest [ordo praepositorum], from which they obtain their commanders in war and rulers in peacetime.'"
Page 700: Lukonin speculates that since the terms and titles for the hierarchical nobility of the Sasanian court were already written in the very earliest Sasanian inscriptions under Ardashir I, QUOTE: "we may suppose that these categories of nobles and his hierarchy of titles existed also at the court of the Parthian King of Kings."
Page 700-701: Lukonin now discusses the three-rank hierarchy of the Sasanian nobility who formed the Sasanian king's council. The first rank was štldl'n (=MLK'), meaning literally "ruling a kingdom" or "king", since it was these types of nobles who ruled small kingdoms and provinces (šahrs) of the Sassanid Empire. More importantly, Lukonin states that they derived from the "semi-independent dynasties" under the authority of the previous Parthian Empire. These local rulers could also be members of the Arsacid (and later Sasanian) royal clan who were given the authority to rule various šahrs as vice-regents.
Page 701: QUOTE: "In the 1st century AD, independent kingdoms, subordinate to a slight degree tot he central government (sometimes only by tradition) existed in Iberia, Armenia, Atropatene, Gordyene, Adiabene, Edessa, Hatra, Mesene, Elymais, Persis, and, perhaps, Hyrcania. The rulers of these kingdoms sometimes struck their own coins (often bearing very high-sounding titles), and they carried on independent policies, now supporting the interests of Iran and now those of Rome. The process of the break-up of the Parthian realm into separate independent kingdoms went forward like an avalanche, leading to the situation at the beginning of the 3rd century which the Kārnāmāg describes as '240 independent states'. The warlike efforts of the first Sasanian monarchs, Ardashīr I and Shāpūr I, which are described in early medieval Arabic writings and early Sasanian inscriptions, show that they had practically to conquer the whole of Iran."
Page 701-702: QUOTE: "Under Shāpūr I the only local dynasts of the Parthian period who are mentioned as belonging to his court are the kings of Carmania, of Adiabene and of Iberia. The other states had by that time already been conquered by the Sasanians, the local rulers removed and their places taken by the sons of the King of Kings: Narseh, who ruled a newly-formed shahr (the boundaries hitherto existing between the kingdoms of Marv, Abarshahr and Sakastān having been abolished) which was called 'Sakastān, Tūristān and Hind up to the shore of the sea' (skst'n twrst'n W bndy 'D YM dnby); Hormizd-Ardashir, who received Armenia as his appanage (dstkrty); Shāpūr, who was appointed king of recently conquered Mesene; and Bahrām, who ruled Gīlān. The title MLK' (štld'ly) was kept, but now it signified something different: the vice-regent of a shahr was the representative of the central government. This was, of course, not an innovation by the Sasanians; from the fragmentary Parthian material we know that at the court of the Parthian king the practice existed of assigning large areas to be ruled on the king's behalf by members of the Arsacid clan. In this case a high degree of centralization was achieved, but possible conflicts with the central power were carried on to a higher plane, the viceregents of important kingdoms waging a struggle for the throne of all Iran. An example is provided by the circumstances in which Artabanus III came to power in Iran, having previously been viceregent of Hyrcania, or, for the early Sasanian period, the seizure of the throne of Iran by Narseh, who previously had ruled Armenia with the title of 'great king'. What, however, had been exceptional in the Parthian period became the rule in that of the Sasanians."
Page 702-703: The nobility of the lower, second rank were the BR BYT', who were QUOTE: "not direct descendants of the King of Kings (and still less, heirs to the throne), but persons of both sexes who were close to the royal clan and constituted the highest category of nobility, i.e. the kings, perhaps also children of forms of marriage 'without full rights', such as marriage with a person in wardship, or collateral marriage."
Page 703-704: The next level of nobility, the third rank, were the wclk'n (Middle Persian: RB'n), or the "grandees, magnates", who were QUOTE: "the heads of noble clans, semi-independent rulers of small provinces, and persons who were in state service. In this respect, as already mentioned, the categories of the early Sasanian (and, consequently, of the late Parthian) nobility were similar to the Armenian, as reflected in the so-called Gāh-nāmags. Probably those who were considered first among the 'magnates' in late Parthian and early Sasanian times were the most noble clans of Varāz, Sūren and Kāren and the rulers (Parth. hwtwy) of Andigān. It is in this order that these magnates are mentioned in the court lists of Ardashīr I and Shāpūr I in the ŠKZ inscription. These 'peers' (to use Herzfeld's expression) follow in the Gāh-nāmag lists of nobles immediately after the members of the ranks called štld'ly and BR BYT'. They are preceded only by the bythš...and ḥz'lwpt ...At the court of Ardashïr I, immediately after these peers, and at the courts of Shāpūr I and Narseh there is mentioned 'sppt (M. Pers.), 'sppty (Parth.) 'the commander of the cavalry'. Earlier too, in the Nisā archive several documents of the Parthian period mention the 'commander-in-chief of the horse' (mzn 'sppty): this title may have been borne by a member of the Sūren family. It has so far remained unclear whether sp'hpty (Parth.) is a title ('military commander') or the name of a noble family."
Page 704: After describing the greatest noble clans of the Sasanian period, Lukonin writes: QUOTE: "In sources of the Parthian period only two of these clans are mentioned — the Sūrens and the Kārens. One of the Sūrens, who defeated Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae, is splendidly described by Plutarch: according to Plutarch, Sūren was first among the Parthian nobility and it was his family's privilege to crown the king of the Arsacid dynasty. Another member of this family, also close to the King of Kings, is mentioned by Tacitus. As for the Kärens, one of then [sic] was the leader of the Parthian forces which supported Mithridates in his struggle against Gotarzes II."
Page 704-705: QUOTE: "However, all the other clans mentioned in the early Sasanian inscriptions undoubtedly held leading positions under the late Parthian kings...Already at the court of Ardashīr I the Sūrens, Kārens, Varāzes and Andigāns held positions of great honour, ousting the representatives of the noble clans of Persis."

Geographical and Administrative Divisions: Settlements and Economy (Christopher Brunner)

Brunner, Christopher. (1983). "Geographical and Administrative Divisions: Settlements and Economy," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 747-777. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Time-Reckoning (E. Bickerman)

Bickerman, E. (1983). "Time-Reckoning," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 778-791. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Iranian Festivals (Mary Boyce)

Boyce, Mary. (1983). "Iranian Festivals," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 791-815. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Development of Religious Thought (Carsten Colpe)

Colpe, Carsten. (1983). "Development of Religious Thought," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 819-865. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 823: During the Hellenistic period, Greeks considered their own gods to be the exact same deities as the Iranian gods, only under different names from a different language. Thus Ahura Mazda was made a Zeus, Angra Mainyu as Hades, Mithra as Apollo, Hermes as Shamash, Anahita as Hera, Hercules as Verethragna, etc.
Page 844: In Parthian art, the Arsacid dynasty is QUOTE: "shown as being closely connected with the gods, and indeed the kings are themselves represented as gods in an Iranian style which has adopted some of the ancient forms of Achaemenian sculpture. If any conclusion is to be drawn from the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is that the cult of the rulers predominated."

Zoroastrian Religion (J. Duchesne-Guillemin)

Duchesne-Guillemin, J. (1983). "Zoroastrian Religion," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 866-908. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 866-867: The Greek deities were adopted wholesale throughout the Asiatic lands conquered by Alexander the Great and ruled by the Hellenistic kingdoms. Duchesne-Guillemin (and Schlumberger) labels this as the first phase of Graeco-Iranian history, complemented and accompanied by artistic phases. A little later on, the Iranian gods were blended with the Greek ones in what is known as the second phase.
Page 867: In what is perhaps an early move away from Hellenism, Mithridates I of Parthia minted coins at Ecbatana showing Arsaces I of Parthia replacing the image of the Greek god Apollo sitting on an omphalos. In later coinage the omphalos is replaced altogether with a throne chair.
Page 867: QUOTE: "When did the third phase begin, in which the Iranian religion eventually reaffirmed itself? According to the Dēnkart 'Vlakhsh the Arsacid commanded that a memorandum be sent to the provinces (instructing them) to preserve, in the state in which they had been found in (each) province, whatever of the Avesta and Zand had come to light and was genuine, and also any teaching deriving from it which, although now scattered owing to the chaos and disruption which Alexander had brought in his wake and the pillage and looting of the Macedonians in the kingdom of Iran, either survived in writing or was preserved in an authoritative oral tradition'. Which Vologeses was concerned? We do not know. The fire-altar is seen on a coin of Vologeses IV, the last but one of the dynasty. But already Vologeses I (51-8) had Parthian (Aramaic) characters engraved on his coins, on which the Greek legend is almost illegible."
Page 867-868: There are hints that Zoroastrianism was recognized by the Arsacids even earlier than this at Nisa, Turkmenistan, despite the overwhelming presence of Greek art and culture. Duchesne-Guillemin asserts this because we know that the priests were called magi and the Babylonian calendar (with adapted names of the ancient Iranian calendar of the Achaemenid Empire) was utilized instead of the ancient Macedonian calendar used by the Seleucid Empire.
Page 868: Ostraca documents found at Nisa, Turkmenistan prove that Zoroastrian names for the months and days of the year were adopted by the 1st century BC.
Page 872-873: Like the Seleucid rulers before them, there are a few pieces of evidence that the Arsacids considered themselves gods. These include an investiture relief of the last ruler Artabanus IV of Parthia, two known Parthian rulers calling themselves gods on their coinage, and the Greeks' unofficial title for Phraates IV of Parthia being "god almighty".

Jews in Iran (J. Neusner)

Neusner, J. (1983). "Jews in Iran," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 909-923. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 912-913: Not much to glean from this chapter, although on these pages Neusner does mention something interesting: the Jews and the Silk Road. Apparently the Jews were very instrumental in the silk trade from China, to Parthia, to Rome. We even know various names of such Jewish government high officials in Palestine (under Rome) and Babylonia (under Parthia) who were big in the silk trade during Roman/Parthian times. Silk poured into Babylon from the Far East where it was woven and manufactured into clothing for Romans living in Palestine and Syria. The Parthian government which monitored the silk trade worked with the Jewish community and relied on them.
Page 913: Like the Jews of Seleucid times who took on Greek names and became high officials, so too did some Jews adopt Parthian names and serve the Arsacid court as high officials.

Christians in Iran (J.P. Asmussen)

Asmussen, J.P. (1983). "Christians in Iran," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 924-948. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 924-925: Christianity was introduced into Parthian territories, with some twenty bishops stationed here and there by the beginning of the 3rd century AD, but there were none located at the main centers of Nisibis, Seleucia, or Ctesiphon.
Page 925-928: However, Asmussen provides several examples of Christians throughout the Parthian Empire after the 2nd century AD, even at Nisibis and especially at Edessa.
Page 928; 933-934: Whereas the Arsacids had a policy of toleration for local religions which did not adhere to the teachings of Zoroaster, the Sassanid Empire made Zoroastrianism a state religion and at times came to odds with and persecuted minorities such as Jews and Christians. On page 933, Asmussen writes that after Ardashir I established the new dynasty: QUOTE: "A veil of obscurity was purposely drawn over the Iranian, but non-Persian, Arsacids, and unfortunately also over their eirenic policies towards people of another religion. On several occasions, both Christians and Jews were to feel the consequences of a harsh internal policy."

Buddhism Among Iranian Peoples (R.E. Emmerick)

Emmerick, R.E. (1983). "Buddhism Among Iranian Peoples," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 949-964. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 957: There is only very little evidence that Buddhism, a dominant religion in the Kushan Empire, spread into Iran proper.

Manichaeism and Its Iranian Background (G. Widengren)

Widengren, G. (1983). "Manichaeism and Its Iranian Background," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 965-990. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Parthian Art (Daniel Schlumberger)

Schlumberger, Daniel. (1983). "Parthian Art," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 1027-1054. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 1027-1030: Imperial art of the Achaemenid Empire borrowed choice elements of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Anatolian, and Asiatic-Greek art to create a universal art, which Schlumberger calls the "art of arts" after the phrase "king of kings". Parthian art, on the other hand, could be said to belong largely to the same Hellenistic tradition of art found in Alexander's empire, the Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. With the founding of the Sassanid Empire (lasting fro 225-642 AD), a new national art emerges which can be viewed as distinctly Iranian.
Page 1030: QUOTE: "By their fabric, their types and their style, the first Arsacid coinages continue the Seleucid pattern with at most a few adaptations, the main one being that the most frequent met of reverse types, the Seleucid Apollo, seated on the omphalos and holding an arrow, becomes a Parthian warrior (the king?), holding his bow. As early as the end of the 2nd century B.C., a growing tendency to schematize the different types is noticeable. The outlines become rougher, the features plainer, the Greek letters in the legends become less sharp, or grow thicker. Nevertheless, until the very end of the dynasty, Parthian coinage preserves both its Greek reverse types and its legends in Greek, though legends in Parthian may be added in the 2nd century A.D. on certain kinds of coins. Thus Parthian coinages remain to the end in the line of their Greek origin. Only they become stereotyped, and their Greek legends become faulty; they are 'barbarized' Greek coins."
Page 1037-1040: Nisa, Turkmenistan, the main residence of the early Arsacid court, contains some of the best-known and most well-preserved architectural monuments of the Parthian era. Column capitals of the Ionic order of Greek architecture were used, as well as acanthus leaves and terracotta statues dressed in Greek clothing. However, the Achaemenid architectural tradition is also represented here with stepped battlements and stone bases with a heavy torus on top of a square plinth.
Page 1040-1041: The ivory-carved rhyton drinking vessel is a common item excavated from Nisa. It was well-known in Achaemenid Oriental art, but those of Nisa have Greek-style and Greek-themed carved reliefs. Much like the early Parthian coinage, the art of Nisa provides us with QUOTE: "samples of Greek art as it flourished at the court of non-Greek princes."
Page 1041: The Parthians also created royal rock-carvings with reliefs of human scenes, most notably the investiture of new monarchs. An example of the latter is the depiction of four noblemen paying homage to Mithridates II of Parthia in a rock-sculpture at Behistun.
Page 1042-1043: Fragments of freestanding Parthian sculptures exist in various sites. For example, from Susa comes the marble head of what is believed to be a queen with a turreted crown [NOTE: At Wikipedia, this is most likely the image in the article for Musa of Parthia, which Schlumberger does not speculate here]. Another well-known statue fragment from Susa is a limestone head of a bearded man. A full-sized and well-preserved bronze statue of a Parthian king or grandee, excavated at Shami near Malamir, Iran in 1934, among the ruins of what is most likely a temple.
Page 1043: At Tang-i Sarvak, rock sculptures from the 2nd century AD show kings engaged in various activities, such as one worshiping a sacred stone, another lounging while holding a diadem, a king being invested by a deity, as well as a king slaying a lion while riding a horse. This is also the place with the rock sculpture of the cataphract battle on horseback between two horsemen.
Page 1044: The ruins of a Parthian palace exist at Sistan, although there are some Sasanian additions. Carved stucco and mural paintings located there are considered by scholars such as Herzfeld (1928) and others to belong to the Parthian period.
Page 1045-1046: In summary of this survey, the confirmed remaining Arsacid architecture is scanty in total amount, with Nisa, Turkmenistan providing most of the existing structures of whose function and purpose is still debated. There is no discernible Parthian architecture left in Persia proper (despite earlier Achaemenid monuments still standing), and no Parthian buildings still stand in Susa. The rock-sculpture terraces were impressive, but they did not boast great structures but instead were meant for open ceremonies. Parthian art is best known in the west by the full-size bronze statue of Shami and the two carved heads from Susa. There are only a handful of wall paintings which can be dated to the Parthian era, and very little of the minor arts have survived except for portraiture on coinage.
Page 1048: Schlumberger covers his ass here by stressing that the views expressed about Parthian art, mainly its Greek influence, are merely suggestions and not full conclusions, given the scanty amount of evidence and limited modern knowledge about art in this period.
Page 1049: However, Schlumberger does note that a number of novelties and innovations were made in the Parthian period belonging to the region of Mesopotamia around the 1st century AD. This includes the iwan, or audience hall, which had terraces carried by arches, or the barrel vault as seen at Hatra. The Achaemenids utilized barrel vaults for minor structures and underground chambers, but it was the Parthians who for the first time used it cover significantly larger rooms and structures. For example, at Hatra the span for the barrel-vaulted iwan in some cases stretches 15 m (50 ft). Other Parthian novelties include non-Greek proportions for facades of buildings and use of sculptured stucco panels as well as the use of "frontality" in painting and relief sculpture, instead of just profile views for such portraiture.
Page 1050: However, in regards to frontality or "showing full face" as Schlumberger describes it, he stresses that this type of depiction is QUOTE: "as old as Mesopotamian art itself. By this kind of frontal representation, the quality of 'living presence', normally embodied in statues, is being introduced into relief and painting. But, let it be stressed, these figures remain but a very small group of well-defined exceptions, the rule being, from the earliest beginnings of eastern art, for figures to be shown in strict profile. And this rule remains unchanged throughout the history of the ancient east, down to the end of the Achaemenid period."
Page 1050: Schlumberger, speaking on behalf of all scholarship or scholarly consensus on this matter, states that the origin of unique "Parthian art" belongs to Parthian Mesopotamia during the latter half of the Parthian Empire (i.e. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries BC), the most notable sites being Hatra, Dura-Europos, and Palmyra. The art historian M. Rostovtzeff (in his article "Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art" in YCS, 1935, pp. 155-304) claimed that the essential components of this unique and distinctive Parthian art were frontality, spirituality, heiratism, linearity, and verism.
Page 1051: QUOTE: "It was for Greek art to teach freedom to the east in these matters: Greek art where figures are shown in every attitude, face-view, side-view, even back-view, and in every kind of intermediate posture. 'Parthian frontality', as we are now accustomed to call it, deeply differs both from ancient Near Eastern and from Greek frontality, though it is, no doubt, an offspring of the latter. For both in Oriental art and in Greek art, frontality was an exceptional treatment: in Oriental art it was a treatment strictly reserved for a small number of traditional characters of cult and myth; in Greek art it was an option resorted to only for definite reasons, when demanded by the subject, and, on the whole, seldom made use of. With Parthian art, on the contrary, frontality becomes the normal treatment of the figure. For the Parthians frontality is really nothing but the habit of showing, in relief and in painting, all figures full-face, even at the expense (as it seems to us moderns) of clearness and intelligibility. So systematic is this use that it amounts to a complete banishment de facto of the side-view and of all intermediate attitudes. This singular state of things seems to have become established in the course of the 1st century A.D. In Mesopotamia we observe it at Hatra. In inner Syria, the art of which is inseparable from that of Mesopotamia, we observe it at Dura-Europos and Palmyra, represented by hundreds of monuments. At Bīsutūn — now to turn to Iran proper — Parthian frontality does not yet appear on the rock-relief of Gotarzes, about the middle of the 1st century A.D., but the relief of the man offering incense (unfortunately undated) is a good instance of it. With the later rock reliefs it is the rule, the most notable instances being the reliefs at Tang-i Sarvak."
Page 1051: QUOTE: "Such is, in outline, the world of 'Parthian art', as M. Rostovtzeff first called it, that is of the art of an original genre which developed in the last two centuries of the Arsacid dynasty. Its heart was at Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital."

Scenes from the Book of Esther from the Dura-Europos synagogue, dated 245 AD; notice the total "Parthian frontality" of these figures.

Page 1052-1053: Schlumberger states that Parthian art was suppressed by Sasanian art as a consequence of the political change. In places like Dura-Europos, which fell into Roman hands, Parthian art was better preserved, such as fine examples of Parthian wall paintings at the Dura-Europos synagogue. Of the image seen on the right, Schlumberger calls this painting and others like it at the synagogue QUOTE: "by far the most important document surviving of late 'Parthian art'" ENDQUOTE and they QUOTE: "are dated to about A.D. 245. Thus they are about twenty years later than this change, and contemporary with the oldest Sasanian rock-reliefs in Fārs, that is with the oldest documents of the new art of Persia."
Page 1053: In sum, for about a century after the conquests of Alexander the Great, the art of Iranian countries was predominantly Greek with some traces of Achaemenid influence. With the collapse and decline of Hellenistic-Greek regimes in Asia by the 2nd century BC, a new "Graeco-Iranian" art began as a fusion of two traditions, an art which flourished and found full expression under the Iranian courts of Persia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. To the west in Mesopotamia, the "Graeco-Iranian" art developed into a new art by the 1st century AD, the distinctive "Parthian art" which was characterized by architecture and unique "Parthian frontality" in portraiture. QUOTE: "It ends with the deep and sudden change, both political and cultural, brought about by the advent of the Sasanians."

Parthian Writings and Literature (Mary Boyce)

Boyce, Mary. (1983). "Parthian Writings and Literature," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 1151-1165. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 1151: QUOTE: "No Parthian literature survives from the Parthian period in its original form. The only works of any length which exist in the Parthian language were composed under Sasanian rule. For the literature of older times we are dependent on Middle Persian redactions, or even on Persian and Georgian versions of these, to give at second or third remove some impression of the nature and scope of what has been lost."
Page 1151-1152: QUOTE: "One reason for the scale of the loss is presumably that Parthian literature, both religious and secular, was oral, composed and transmitted without the use of books. The Parthians had, however, their own distinctive system of writing, attested from the beginning of the 1st century B.C., a development evidently of the chancellery script of the Achaemenians. This script was in origin Aramaic, and had been used under the Achaemenians to write Imperial Aramaic, the administrative language of their empire. Under the less firmly unified rule of the Seleucids and Parthians a number of regional forms of this script developed, of which five have been identified, namely that of the Parthians themselves...All these regional scripts show the same development, namely that they were used to write, not Imperial Aramaic, but instead the various local Iranian languages, with a number of fossilized Aramaic words serving as ideograms. This development took place slowly, with a gradual use of more and more Iranian words, so that Aramaic with Iranian elements imperceptibly changed into Iranian with Aramaic ones. This change perhaps originated in the Parthian chancellery, and was imitated regionally, each area developing independently not only a characteristic style of writing, but also a distinctive stock of Aramaic words used ideographically. There evolved also gradually, for greater clarity, a general use of Iranian inflections with these ideograms, to indicate their syntactic function. This system developed fully only in Pahlavī, which had a longer history than any of the other scripts."
Page 1152: The Middle Persian languages written in these ideographic scripts would have necessitated some skill and profession, so that most written works were created by learned scribes. The oldest examples of Parthian writing using this system were excavated at Nisa, Turkmenistan, where (as of 1983) over 3,000 ostraca have been found. These deal mainly with practical matters, such as delivery of wine and food products, inventories, and registers. The Nisa writings also provide the earliest known use of the Zoroastrian calendar, in some instances providing day and month names, and in rarer cases state the Zoroastrian year reckoned with the Arsacid era. QUOTE: "The ostraca belong to a period from c. 100 to 29 B.C., and most, it seems, to between 77 and 66 B.C. The Iranian element in the vocabulary was still small at this stage."
Page 1152-1153: The next known use of Parthian language with its distinctive script belongs to the village of Avroman in southwest Iran. In a sealed jar with two older documents (i.e. 88/87 and 22/21 BC) written in the Greek language on parchment is another parchment document written in the Parthian language and script, dated to the middle of the 1st century AD. It deals with the sale of property (i.e. half a vineyard), listing the date and witnesses' names.
Page 1153: It was not until the reign of Vologases I of Parthia (51-8 AD) that the Parthian script appeared on minted drachma coins, the Greek alphabet still being the primary script. In this case, only his name was written in Parthian. For Vologases IV of Parthia (r. 148-192 AD) a longer inscription in Parthian was given on his copper coins, stating "Arsaces Vologases, king of kings." The vassal kingdom of Elymais issued large tetradrachms in Aramaic, but the smaller copper coins bore Parthian script.
Page 1154: After providing a few more examples of Parthian writings, such as a business letter with formulas for greeting that can be traced back to Achaemenid greetings of the 5th century BC, Boyce notes the incredible scarcity of surviving works written in Parthian. She states that works were also written in the Greek language, which QUOTE: "a number of Parthian scribes mastered...but the two systems evidently existed side by side with little effect on one another (except in some minor technical points)."
Page 1154-1155: Written Greek literature was known and respected by the Arsacids, but there is no evidence that it influenced Parthian literature, which was oral. The secular Parthian literature was preserved by minstrel-poets, who sang verses with the complement of music.
Page 1156-1157: A prime example of Parthian oral literature translated in Sasanian and early Islamic times but still retaining the Middle Persian language would be the cycle of epic tales involving the mythological Kayanian dynasty.
Page 1158-1159: The romantic tale of Vis and Rāmin is also dated to the Parthian period, perhaps the 1st century AD. In addition to being a classic love story, it also provides a glimpse into the religious acceptance of Zoroastrianism at the time, portrayed as QUOTE: "a natural part of the fabric of life."

Sources of Parthian and Sasanian History (G. Widengren)

Widengren, G. (1983). "Sources of Parthian and Sasanian History," in The Cambridge History of Iran (Vol 3:2), 1261-1283. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, and Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20092-X.

Page 1261: QUOTE: "It is a well-known fact that Parthian history is extremely difficult to handle in a satisfactory way. This is chiefly due to the character of our sources. In no other period of Iranian history do we find such a lack of indigenous historical texts. Contemporary records from the Parthian empire are scarce and later oriental historians had only a very dim notion of this period."
Page 1261: QUOTE: "As to the classical sources we regret above all the loss of the Parthian histories written by Arrian and Apollodorus of Artemita as well as the fact that the universal history written by Pompeius Trogus has survived only in the rather poor epitome compiled by Justin. Of all this rich material only fragments are left."

Remains

Page 1261: QUOTE: "Remains can be divided into non-textual and textual. The non-textual remains comprise first of all the countryside itself, with its ruins of buildings and fortifications, bridges and canals, as well as archaeological finds. For the reconstruction of history these remains are highly valuable from several points of view. Topographical studies have often been neglected in political history, and even more in the history of war-techniques. Such investigations must of course be combined with the study of place-names. For Parthian history we may refer to the researches of Minorsky concerning the Roman campaigns in Artropatene. His investigations are important also for the Sasanian period."
Page 1261-1262: QUOTE: "The non-textual remains supplement and correct on many points the information obtained from the texts. They make history concrete and alive, because they show us how people, especially in the higher classes, and above all among kings and rulers, lived in those distant days. They also enable us far better than any texts to analyse fortification systems, general architecture, as well as cult-centres and temples, housing and clothing, weapons and armour. They demonstrate ad oculos the commercial relations and the cultural influences that generally followed merchants and travellers. Excellent illustrations of this fact are furnished by the excavations carried out in the Parthian frontier fortress of Dura-Europos, and in the desert fortress of Hatra, both in the western part of the Parthian empire. From the eastern parts we have the equally splendid results achieved at Kūh-i Khwāja, Surkh Kotal and Taxila."
Page 1262: QUOTE: "Coins with their legends constitute the transition from non-textual to textual remains. The Parthian coins are of the utmost value for establishing the correct sequence or rulers and for giving us a reliable basis of chronology."
Page 1262: QUOTE: "The textual remains include inscriptions, parchments, papyri, and ostraca in a number of languages and scripts. As to inscriptions, monuments going back to the Parthian Great Kings have as yet been found only in one case, the king Gōtarz. Of local dynasts, satraps, and city communities we have more remains, some of considerable importance. They include inscriptions in Greek from the satrap Gotarzes, who was later to become a Parthian ruler, and two inscriptions from Susa, one of them to be connected with the Parthian ruler Artabān III (properly II). In Aramaic we have first of all the inscriptions of the local dynast of Elymais from Tang-i Sarvak, then a memorial inscription (with a Greek version) in honour of a Georgian princess, mentioning the high administrative title bitaxš, and several inscriptions from Hatra, Assur and Dura. Investigation of the real linguistic character of the Georgian inscription has shewn [sic] that it is in reality written in Parthian, the Aramaic forms and words being used as ideograms. We have from the very last years of the empire an interesting inscription in the Parthian language, left by the satrap of Susa."
Page 1262-1263: QUOTE: "Outside the Parthian empire, but of great importance for the cultural and religious aspects of Parthian times we have the inscriptions left by the Iranian kings of Commagene, now far better known than before. From Edessa and its dependencies we possess some early inscriptions in Syriac, here and there yielding a detail of importance to Parthian history."
Page 1263: QUOTE: "Of parchments and papyri Dura has presented us with a rich collection, of which the so-called Dura-parchment is extremely valuable, because it provides us with a juridical document and also gives us some insight into Parthian administrative practice. This document is written in Edessene Syriac. Documents form Avroman, written partly in Greek and partly in Parthian, are important chiefly in respect of financial affairs. Of much greater importance are about two thousand ostraca brought to light at Nisā, a Parthian administrative centre. These give us some knowledge of the administration, and especially taxation, in the eastern part of the Parthian empire. They tell us of two categories of land: uzbar and patbāzik. The Parthian word for 'taxes' or 'customs' seems to have been bāz, for in the 'Parthian stations' of Isidore of Charax (para. 6) we find the expression ... (bāzigrabān) for 'customs post'. These documents like the inscription from Armazi in Georgia, mentioned above, present the same linguistic problems, viz. whether the use of Aramaic is genuine or only serves as a base of ideographic writing in Middle Parthian. The syntax of many phrases, unacceptable in Aramaic, however, should leave no doubt that the underlying language is Parthian."
Page 1263: QUOTE: "A special problem arises from the confrontation of remains and traditions. In the Nisā documents the terms marzbān, xšatrap, and dizpat signify the governor of a province or a district: the marzbāns were in charge of the most important and largest provinces, then came the xšatraps, and finally the dizpats, who governed smaller districts. This threefold division corresponds perfectly to the Seleucid divisions of satrapy, eparchy, and hyparchy. Comparison with the parchment P. Dura 20 (A.D. 121), line 2, establishes that the hyparchy was the smallest administrative unit also in the Parthian empire, at least in its western parts."

Traditions

Page 1264: QUOTE: "These traditions are found in texts of various languages and epochs. They may be classified as primary and secondary, though the border line is not always easily drawn."

Primary sources

Greek

Fragments of Apollodorus. Fragments of Arrian. Polybius x.28-31 (as well as single passages here and there). Page 1264: QUOTE: "The 'Parthian Stations' of Isidore of Charax must be an extract from an official Parthian survey; dating from the region of Augustus, it gives us an idea of the extent of the Parthian empire and is one of our most valuable sources.

Latin

Page 1264: QUOTE: "Cicero in some of his letters written when he was a provincial governor of Cilicia (ad Atticum V, VI; ad familiares XV) illustrates the situation in the adjacent Roman provinces after the Roman defeat at Carrhae. Sallust (Historiae IV fragment 69 M) gives information about Lucullus's dealings with the Parthians."

Syriac

Page 1264: QUOTE: "The 'Song of the Pearl' and other parts of the apocryphal Acts of Thomas inform us about the extent and the feudal organization of the early Parthian kingdom before the conquest of Babylonia and illustrate some social conditions in the eastern kingdom of Gundofarr. The 'Chronicle of Arbela' (its older parts) will be discussed in section II below."
Page 1264: QUOTE: "The Abgar Legend of Edessa, extant in the 'Doctrine of Addai', gives information about Parthian influence in Edessa and Osrhoene. The Edessene Chronicle is important for the early history of Osrhoene."

Jewish

Page 1265: QUOTE: "I Maccabees 14.1-3; Maccabees 1.13-16."

Babylonian

Page 1265: QUOTE: "Cuneiform astronomical tablets and colophons are essential for establishing Parthian chronology. Other such tablets exist and their publication is in preparation."

Chinese

Page 1265: QUOTE: "Han shu (chapter 96) and Shih-chi (chapter 123) are essentials for our knowledge about the events that led up to the great Saka immigration in eastern Iran."

Secondary sources

Greek and Latin

Page 1265: QUOTE: "Justin gives a compendious extract from Pompeius Trogus, whose prologues are more or less intact. This is our basic historical source for the Parthian period up to and including the reign of Augustus. Unfortunately it shows gaps and does not relate to events after 9 B.C. Being only an epitome many of its passages must be elucidated in the light of other sources. Its great defect is that it often neglects chronology and therefore confuses the chain of events. The gaps in its account are often irritating, but it is generally considered reliable."
Page 1265: QUOTE: "Strabo (XI.508-17; 522, 524-25, 532; XVI.743-5, 748-9) is very valuable, but as in the case of other Greek sources it is often difficult to place his notices in a correct chronological order."
Page 1265: QUOTE: "Diodorus Siculus (XXXIII.18; XXXIV 15-19, 21) is useful for comparison with other material, but the value of each passage depends upon the sources used by the author; his figures are sometimes fantastic."
Page 1265: QUOTE: "Plutarch (Lives: Crassus; Sulla; Pompey, 36, 38-39; Lucullus, 21, 28, 30, 36; Antony, 37) provides much important, detailed information concerning the period when these Roman generals had to deal with both the Parthians and the Iranians of Asia Minor; his information in general is reliable."
Page 1266: QUOTE: "Dio Cassius (XXXVI., 3, 45, 51; XXXVII.5-7; XL.12-30; and various passages dealing with the wars between Rome and Parthia) is one of our most important sources, to be constantly consulted, but at the same time checked against other good sources. Some information is confused and enigmatic."
Page 1266: QUOTE: "Appian (Syriaca 51, 67-8; Mithradatica 104-6; Bellum Civile 11.65-6, 201) is chiefly interested in the wars of Rome in Asia Minor and Armenia and is only of indirect importance for Parthian history."
Page 1266: QUOTE: "Josephus (Antiquitas XIII.184-6, 250-3, 344, 371, 384-6; XIV.98, 103, 105-19; Bellum 1.175-9; VII.244-51) is an extremely valuable source as far as he goes, giving some special information about Adiabene and Jewish-Parthian relations."
Page 1266: QUOTE: "Pliny (Naturalis Historia VI.44-52, 111-16, 121-2, 134-41, 145-6) is chiefly of value for historical geography and administrative division. Julius Africanus (Cestorum fragmenta, ed. J.-R. [sic] Viellefond, Paris, 1970, 1.20, pp. 182-5) has a notice about Bardesanes which gives a concrete picture of the court of Edessa."
Page 1266: QUOTE: "Herodian (III.i.2; iv.8-9; IV.X.4; VI.V.4-5) is of value for the later period of Parthian history and gives some notices concerning military institutions, which are, however, not always reliable."

Armenian

Page 1266-1267: Here Brosius lists some Armenian sources such as those of Agathangelos, Moses of Chorene, P'awstos Biwzandaci, Ghazar Parpetsi, and Yeghishe (Elise Vardapet).
Page 1267: QUOTE: "All the Armenian sources are important for our knowledge of social and religious affairs and political and military institutions, and therefore cannot be ignored; but for the events of the Parthian period they are of very little value."

Islamic

Page 1267: QUOTE: "These sources possess historical value chiefly from their narration of the downfall of the Parthian empire and the establishment of the Sasanian dynasty; here they are essential."

Chinese

Page 1267: QUOTE: "Annals of the Former Han, chapter 96 and parts of 61."
Page 1267: QUOTE: "Annals of the later Han, chapter 118."
Page 1267: QUOTE: "These two sources are valuable for the same reason as indicated above for the other Chinese text-material."

Iranian

Page 1267: Brosius mentions two sources here: the Yadegar-e Zariran (spelled here as the Ayātkar ī Zarēran) and Drakht-i Asurig (spelled here as the Draxt ī Asūrīg).
Page 1267: QUOTE: "Both texts are extant only in Sasanian recensions. They have very little value for political or military history, but are valuable for the history of literary tradition during this period. The Ayātkar ī Zarēran was originally a small epic poem, written in Parthian, based upon Avestan traditions."
Page 1267: QUOTE: "In view of the deplorable scarcity of original and authentic Iranian documents we can only infer the older layers of tradition from the extant later material. A good example is Minorsky's reconstruction of the Parthian background of Gurgānī's romantic epic Vīs u Rāmīn, written between A.D. 1040 and 1054."
Page 1268: QUOTE: "Further data about social structure, administrative divisions and political institutions are recovered from Armenian texts and Parthian loanwords in Armenian, especially if we compare these sources with texts of a later period, still reflecting the Parthian structure of Armenian society. Thus we can infer from Armenian sources the institutions of 'fosterer' (Armenian dayeak; M. Pers. dāyak), not only for Sasanian times but even for the Parthian period. It is attested also in Syriac sources, such as the 'Song of the Pearl' and the Acts of Martyrs."