Parthian Empire

• 1. Introduction

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  The Parthian Empire lasted from 247 BC to 224 AD, spanning nearly five centuries and stretching at its greatest reach from the Euphrates river in what is now central-eastern Turkey all the way to present-day Afghanistan and western Pakistan. It sat at the very center of the ancient world's most profitable highway. Rome lay to the west, China to the east, and the Parthians sat in between, taxing the caravans that carried silk, pearls, spices, and fine leather between the two superpowers. Yet despite this commanding position, Parthian history is among the least documented of any major empire. Their own records are almost entirely lost. What survives are coins, pottery shards, a handful of parchments, and the accounts written by their enemies. How did a nomadic tribal chieftain build a realm that humiliated Rome? How did an empire absorb Greek, Persian, and Babylonian culture and hold all of it together for nearly half a millennium? And why, when the end came, did it come not from Rome but from one of their own provincial rulers?

• 2. The Parni Gamble

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  Arsaces I was chieftain of the Parni, an ancient Central Asian tribe of Iranian peoples and one of several nomadic groups within the larger confederation known as the Dahae. The Parni most likely spoke an eastern Iranian language, which set them apart from the population of Parthia itself, a northeastern province that used a northwestern Iranian tongue. When Arsaces led his people into Parthia, they were outsiders seizing territory from a distracted empire. The Seleucid ruler of the day, a satrap named Andragoras, had himself rebelled against his overlords. Arsaces moved into the resulting power vacuum. Why the Arsacid court later chose 247 BC as the official founding year of their dynasty is genuinely disputed. The scholar A. D. H. Bivar concludes that this was the year the Seleucids lost control of Parthia to Andragoras. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, by contrast, argues it was simply the year Arsaces became chief of the Parni tribe. Other scholars place the actual conquest of Parthia and expulsion of Seleucid authorities as late as 238 BC. The exact sequence of early rulers is equally murky. Bivar and Homa Katouzian hold that Arsaces I was immediately succeeded by his brother Tiridates I; Curtis and Maria Brosius argue the first successor was Arsaces II, with the date of that succession itself disputed between 211 BC and 217 BC. Bivar bluntly states that 138 BC is "the first precisely established regnal date of Parthian history." After conquering the region, the Parni adopted Parthian as their official court language. They ended up speaking it alongside Middle Persian, Aramaic, Greek, Babylonian, Sogdian, and other tongues across the multilingual territories they would accumulate. Their early survival depended on opportunism: they strengthened their hold by taking advantage of the Third Syrian War between the Seleucids and Ptolemy III Euergetes, which ran from 246 to 241 BC. A Seleucid counter-campaign under Antiochus III, launched around 210 or 209 BC, forced Arsaces II to submit and accept the title of king in exchange for recognizing Antiochus as his superior. The arrangement held only as long as the Seleucids had the strength to enforce it, and that strength was rapidly draining away as Rome pressed in from the west. The Seleucid defeat at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC ended their ability to meddle in Parthian affairs, and the door to expansion swung open.

• 3. The Conquests of Mithridates I

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  Phraates I, who preceded Mithridates I on the Parthian throne, expanded control past the Gates of Alexander and occupied Apamea Ragiana, though the locations of both sites remain unknown. What Mithridates I accomplished between roughly 171 and 132 BC dwarfed everything that came before. Homa Katouzian compares him to Cyrus the Great, who died in 530 BC as founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Mithridates first moved against the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, seizing two of its eparchies while it was under the rule of Eucratides I. Then he turned toward the Seleucid heartland. He invaded Media and occupied Ecbatana in 148 or 147 BC, a region that had already been destabilized by a Seleucid suppression of a local rebellion. The conquest of Babylonia in Mesopotamia followed. By 141 BC, Mithridates had coins minted at Seleucia and held a formal investiture ceremony there. Parthian authority extended as far east as the Indus River. Mithridates I established royal residences at Seleucia, Ecbatana, Ctesiphon, and his newly founded city of Mithradatkert, also known as Nisa, where the tombs of the Arsacid kings were built and maintained. Ecbatana became the main summertime residence for Arsacid royalty. Ctesiphon, on the Tigris south of Baghdad, may not have officially become the capital until the reign of Gotarzes I, who ruled from roughly 90 to 80 BC. The Seleucids attempted a major counter-invasion under Antiochus VII Sidetes, who launched his campaign in 130 BC. The Parthian general Indates was defeated along the Great Zab, and Antiochus briefly reconquered Babylonia. But by spring 129 BC, the Medes had revolted against Antiochus, whose army had exhausted the countryside during winter. The main Parthian force swept in and killed Antiochus at the Battle of Ecbatana. His body was returned to Syria in a silver coffin; his son Seleucus was taken as a Parthian hostage. On the eastern front, nomadic Saka tribes displaced by the Xiongnu pushed into Parthia's northeastern borders, killing Phraates II in battle and then Artabanus I as well. It was left to Mithridates II, reigning from roughly 124 to 91 BC, to recover those lands and stabilize the east.

• 4. The Silk Road in Practice

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  Following the diplomatic ventures of Zhang Qian into Central Asia during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, who ruled from 141 to 87 BC, the Han Empire sent a delegation to the court of Mithridates II in 121 BC. The embassy opened official trade relations with Parthia through the Silk Road but failed to achieve a military alliance against the Xiongnu. Silk was the most prized commodity. The Parthian Empire was enriched by taxing the caravans that carried it westward to Roman markets. Pearls ranked among the most valued Chinese imports, while the Chinese purchased Parthian spices, perfumes, and fruits. Exotic animals traveled the route as diplomatic gifts: in 87 AD, Pacorus II of Parthia sent lions and Persian gazelles to Emperor Zhang of Han, who ruled from 75 to 88 AD. Roman merchants purchasing goods through Parthia received iron from India, spices, and fine leather. Caravans also carried West Asian and sometimes Roman luxury glassware eastward into China. The merchants of Sogdia, speakers of an eastern Iranian language, served as the primary middlemen of this trade. The Parthians were not neutral facilitators. In 97 AD, the Chinese general Ban Chao sent his emissary Gan Ying on a mission to reach Rome. Gan visited the court of Pacorus II at Hecatompylos before heading west. He traveled as far as the Persian Gulf, where Parthian authorities convinced him that the only way to reach Rome was by an exhausting sea voyage around the Arabian Peninsula. Gan Ying turned back. The scholar William Watson speculates the Parthians would have been relieved by the failure of any direct contact between China and Rome. A Chinese record does note that what may have been a party of Roman merchants reached the Han capital Luoyang by way of Jiaozhi, in northern Vietnam, in 166 AD, during the concurrent reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Emperor Huan of Han.

• 5. Rome's Most Costly Mistake

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  Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of Rome's ruling triumvirs and proconsul of Syria, invaded Parthia in 53 BC. He did so in belated support of a Parthian pretender and, by most accounts, in search of personal military glory. As his army marched toward Carrhae, the modern Turkish city of Harran, Orodes II invaded Armenia to cut off the Roman ally Artavasdes II of Armenia. Orodes then persuaded Artavasdes into a marriage alliance, joining the crown prince Pacorus I to Artavasdes' sister. Crassus was left without his Armenian flank. The Parthian commander sent against him was known only as Surena, after his noble clan's family name. Surena's force numbered around 1,000 cataphracts armed with lances and 9,000 horse archers. It was outnumbered roughly four to one by Crassus' army of seven Roman legions plus auxiliaries. Surena solved this problem through logistics. A baggage train of about 1,000 camels kept the horse archers continuously supplied with arrows. The archers employed the Parthian shot: feigning retreat to draw the enemy forward, then turning and shooting at the exposed Romans. On the flat plain, with heavy composite bows, this devastated the Roman infantry. Some 20,000 Romans were killed, approximately 10,000 were captured, and roughly another 10,000 escaped westward. Crassus fled into the Armenian countryside. He accepted a parley offered by Surena but was killed when one of his own junior officers, suspecting a trap, tried to stop him from riding into the Parthian camp. Surena traveled roughly 700 km back to Seleucia, where the victory was celebrated. Orodes II then had Surena executed, fearing his ambitions. The following decade, Parthia's crown prince Pacorus I raided Syria as far as Antioch before being repulsed. In 40 BC, Quintus Labienus joined forces with Pacorus I and invaded Syria; the combined force subdued all Mediterranean coastal settlements as far south as modern Acre, Israel, with the lone exception of Tyre. Rome eventually recovered through the campaigns of Publius Ventidius Bassus. Pacorus I was killed at the Battle of Mount Gindarus in 38 BC. The return of the legionary standards captured at Carrhae did not come until 20 BC, through diplomatic negotiation under Augustus, who displayed them as a political trophy and had them commemorated on coinage, in temple construction, and even in the breastplate sculpted on his statue Augustus of Prima Porta.

• 6. Government and Military Structure

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  Compared with the Achaemenid Empire that preceded it, the Parthian government was notably decentralized. An indigenous source reveals that territories were organized with a threefold provincial hierarchy: the marzbān, xšatrap, and dizpat, paralleling the Seleucid division of satrapy, eparchy, and hyparchy. Beneath this framework sat several subordinate semi-autonomous kingdoms, including Caucasian Iberia, Armenia, Atropatene, Gordyene, Adiabene, Edessa, Hatra, Mesene, Elymais, and Persis. These rulers governed their own territories and minted their own coinage distinct from the imperial mint. The King of Kings headed the structure and was usually succeeded by his first-born son. He maintained polygamous relations, and records indicate that Arsacid kings, like the Ptolemies of Egypt, married nieces and perhaps even half-sisters. Strabo, in his Geographica, preserved a claim by the philosopher Poseidonius that the Council of Parthia consisted of noble kinsmen and magi, the two groups from which kings were appointed. Of the great noble Parthian families recorded at the start of the Sasanian period, only two are explicitly named in earlier Parthian documents: the House of Suren and the House of Karen. The historian Plutarch noted that members of the Suren family held the privilege of crowning each new Arsacid King of Kings at coronation. The Parthian Empire had no standing army. A permanent armed guard of nobles, serfs, and mercenaries protected the king, but this royal retinue was small. The main striking force was the cataphract, heavy cavalry with both rider and horse encased in mailed armor, equipped with a kontos lance. Cataphracts were drawn from the aristocratic class, who demanded local autonomy in return for their service. The light cavalry was recruited from commoners and acted as horse archers, wearing simple tunics and trousers. They used composite bows and executed the Parthian shot from horseback. The largest army the Parthians appear to have raised was 50,000 strong. The Parthians also employed war elephants on rare occasions; Tacitus and Cassius Dio record Vologases I using one war elephant during the Roman-Parthian War of 58-63 AD.

• 7. Art, Architecture, and Identity

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  At the early Parthian capital of Mithradatkert, also called Nisa, in modern Turkmenistan, large caches of pottery ostraca have been found. They record the sale and storage of items like wine. Marble statues and carved ivory rhyton vessels from the same site show unmistakable Greek influence, yet the Round Hall of Nisa formed a circle and vault inside a square space, different from any Hellenistic palace. Parthian art developed across three geo-historical phases: first at Parthia proper, then across the Iranian plateau, then in Parthian Mesopotamia. Common motifs across all phases included royal hunting expeditions and the investiture of Arsacid kings. A signature feature of Parthian architecture was the iwan, an audience hall supported by arches or barrel vaults and open on one side. Although the iwan was known in smaller and subterranean structures during the Achaemenid period, the Parthians were the first to build them on a monumental scale. The earliest Parthian iwans are found at Seleucia, built in the early 1st century AD. The largest examples at Hatra have a span of 15 m. The most distinctive quality of Parthian portraiture was what scholars now call Parthian frontality. The art historian Daniel Schlumberger described it as a complete departure from both Oriental and Greek traditions: in those traditions, frontality was exceptional or reserved for cult figures. For Parthian art, frontality became the normal treatment. Every figure in relief and in painting faced the viewer directly, to the point of systematically eliminating the side view entirely. Schlumberger placed this shift as becoming established during the course of the 1st century AD. Even after the Roman occupation of Dura-Europos in 165 AD, Parthian frontality continued to flourish there, visible in the early 3rd-century AD wall murals of the Dura-Europos synagogue and the city's Mithraeum. The Arsacid court expressed its dual identity through clothing and coinage. Arsaces I was depicted on his coins in apparel similar to Achaemenid satraps. By the mid-1st century BC, the standard Parthian riding outfit, exemplified by a bronze statue found at Shami in Elymais, had become widespread: a V-shaped jacket, loose-folded trousers held by garters, and bobbed, coiffed hair. Mithridates I's coins show him first in the traditional soft cap, then later wearing the royal Hellenistic diadem. Mithridates II was the first to appear wearing the Parthian tiara, embroidered with pearls and jewels, a headdress later adopted by Sasanian monarchs.

• 8. Decline and the Sasanian Succession

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  The Roman emperor Trajan invaded Mesopotamia in 115 AD, capturing Dura-Europos, Ctesiphon, Seleucia, and even watching ships depart to India from the Persian Gulf near Characene. He captured the Persian city of Susa in the last months of 116 AD. When local Babylonian settlements revolted against Roman garrisons, he was forced to retreat in 117 AD. He attempted an unsuccessful siege of Hatra on his way out. Trajan died suddenly in August 117 AD before he could renew the attack. His successor Hadrian, who ruled from 117 to 138 AD, reaffirmed the Euphrates as the border and chose not to pursue Mesopotamia further given Rome's then limited military resources. The Roman-Parthian War of 161-166 AD, launched when Vologases IV invaded Armenia and Syria, ended with Roman forces burning Seleucia and Ctesiphon to the ground. The Roman soldiers then contracted a deadly disease, possibly smallpox, that soon ravaged the Roman world, forcing their withdrawal. Septimius Severus captured Seleucia and Ctesiphon again in 197 AD and again failed to take Hatra on the way back. Around 212 AD, soon after Vologases VI took the Parthian throne, his brother Artabanus IV rebelled and gained control over a greater part of the empire. This internal split left the empire fatally weakened. Ardashir I, the local Iranian ruler of Persis from the city of Istakhr in modern Fars province, began subjugating neighboring territories in open defiance of Arsacid rule. He confronted Artabanus IV at the Battle of Hormozdgan on the 28th of April 224 AD, possibly at a site near Isfahan, defeating and killing him. With that battle the Arsacid Empire ended and the Sasanian Empire began. There is evidence that Vologases VI continued to mint coins at Seleucia as late as 228 AD. The Arsacid line did not disappear entirely. Branches of the family retained power in Armenia, Caucasian Iberia, and Caucasian Albania for generations after the Sasanian conquest. The Islamic sources that later described Parthian dynastic history used three distinct branch names in Arabic and Persian, and later textual corruptions and translations collapsed these into a single name, obscuring the complexity of what the Arsacid family had actually been.