The Historians' History of the World 08

The first Arsaces must have existed, for he appears as deified on the reverse of his brother’s drachmæ, but he was not king of Parthia. Nay, we have authentic record that even in the epoch-year 248-247 B.C., the year of the accession of Tiridates, Parthia was still under the Seleucids. These contradictions are solved by a notice of Isidore of Charax, which names a city Asaak, not in Parthia but northwest of it, in the neighbouring Astauene, where Arsaces was proclaimed king and where an everlasting fire was kept burning. This, therefore, was the first seat of the monarchy, and Pherecles was presumably satrap of Astauene, not eparch of Parthia.

[241-238 B.C.]

The times were not favourable for the reduction of the rebels. When Antiochus II died, the horrors that accompanied the succession of his son Seleucus (II) Callinicus (246-226 B.C.) gave the king of Egypt the pretext for a war, in which he overran almost the whole lands of the Seleucids as far as Bactria. Meantime a civil war was raging between Seleucus and his brother Antiochus Hierax, whom the Galatians supported, and at the great battle of Ancyra in 242 or 241 B.C. Seleucus was totally defeated and thought to be slain. At this news Arsaces Tiridates, whom the genuine tradition still represents as a brave robber-chief, broke into Parthia at the head of the Parnians, slew the Macedonian eparch Andragoras, and took possession of the province. These Parnian Dahæ, in consequence of eternal dissensions, had migrated at a remote date to Hyrcania and the desert adjoining the Caspian. Here, and in great measure even after they conquered Parthia, they retained the peculiarities of Scythian nomads.

PARTHIAN CUSTOMS

The common tradition connects the migration with the conquests of the Scythian king Iandysus, a contemporary of Sesostris [Ramses II]. It adds that Parthian means “fugitive” or “exile” (Zend, peretu). But the name Parthava is found on the inscriptions of Darius long before the immigration of the Parnians. The Parthian language is described as a sort of compound between Median and Scythian; and, since the name of the Dahæ and those of their tribes show that they belong to the nomads of Iranian kin, who in antiquity were widely spread from the Jaxartes as far as the steppes of south Russia, we must conclude that the mixed language arose by the action and reaction of two Iranian dialects, that of the Parthians and that of their masters. Their nomad costume the Parnians in Parthia gradually gave up for the Median dress, but they kept their old war-dress, the characteristic scale-armour completely covering man and horse. The founder of the empire appears on coins in this dress, with the addition of a short mantle; and so again does Mithridates II. The hands and feet alone are unprotected by mail; shoes with laces, and a conical helmet with flaps to protect the neck and ears, complete the costume.

The conquerors of Parthia continued to be a nation of cavalry; to walk on foot was a shame for a free man; the national weapon was the bow, and their way of fighting was to make a series of attacks, separated by a simulated flight, in which the rider discharged his shafts backwards. Many habits of the life they had led in the desert were retained, and the Parthian rulers never lost connection with the nomad tribes on their frontiers, among whom several Arsacids found temporary refuge. Gradually, of course, the rulers were assimilated to their subjects; the habitual faithlessness and other qualities ascribed to the Parthians by the Romans are such as are common to all Iranians. The origin of the Parthian power naturally produced a rigid aristocratic system: a few freemen governed a vast population of bondsmen; manumission was forbidden, or rather was impossible, since social condition was fixed by descent; the ten thousand horsemen who followed Surenas into battle were all his serfs or slaves, and of the fifty thousand cavalry who fought against Antony only four hundred were freemen.

BACTRIA AND PARTHIA CONSOLIDATE

[238-206 B.C.]