Comisene, the districts on the verge of the desert; (10) Hyrcania; (11)
Astabene, with the royal town Asaac on the Attruck (see Parthia);
(12) Parthyene with Parthaunisa, where the sepulchres of the kings
were laid, (13) Apavarcticene (now Abiward, with the capital
Kelat), (14) Margiane (Merv); (15) Aria (Herat); (16) Anauon,
the southern portion of Aria; (17) Zarangiane, the country of
the Drangians, on the lake of Hamun; (18) Arachosia, on the
Etymander (Helmand), called by the Parthians “White India,”
extending as far as Alexandropolis (Kandahar), the frontier city
of the Parthian Empire.
On the lower Etymander, the Sacae had established themselves—obviously on the inroad of the Scythian tribes—and after them the country was named Sacastene (now Sejistan, Seistan). Through it lay the route to Kandahar; and for this reason the district is described by Isidore, though it formed no part of the Parthian Empire.
Round these provinces lay a ring of numerous minor states, which as a rule were dependent on the Arsacids. They might, however, partially transfer their allegiance on the rise of a new power (e.g. Tigranes in Armenia) or a Roman invasion. Thus it is not without justice that the Arsacid period is described, in the later Persian and Arabian Vassal States. tradition, as the period of “the kings of the part-kingdoms”—among which the Ashkanians (i.e. the Arsacids, from Ashak, the later pronunciation of the name Arshak = Arsaces) had won the first place. This tradition, however, is nebulous in the extreme; the whole list of kings, which it gives, is totally unhistorical; only the names of one Balash ( = Vologaeses) and of the last Ardewan ( = Artabanus) having been preserved. The period, from the death of Alexander to the Sassanid Ardashir I., is put by the Persian tradition at 266 years; which was afterwards corrected, after Syro-Grecian evidence, to 523 years. The actual number is 548 years (i.e. 323 B.C. to A.D. 226). The statements of the Armenian historians as to this period are also absolutely worthless.
The ten most important of the vassal states were:—
1. The kingdom of Osroene (q.v.) in the north-east of Mesopotamia, with Edessa as capital, founded about 130 B.C. by the chieftain of an Arabian tribe, the Orrhoei, which established itself there.
2. To this must be added the numerous Arabian tribes of the Mesopotamian desert, under their chiefs, among whom one Alchaudonius comes into prominence in the period of Tigranes and Crassus. Their settlement in Mesopotamia was encouraged by Tigranes, according to Plutarch (Luc. 21) and Pliny (vi. 142). In later times the Arabic town Atra in an oasis on the west of the Tigris, governed by its own kings, gained special importance.
3 and 4. To the east of the Tigris lay two kingdoms: Gordyene (or Cordyene), the country of the Carduchians (now Bohtan), a wild, mountainous district south of Armenia; and Adiabene (Hadyab), the ancient Assyria, on either side of the Zab (Lycus).
5. On the farther side of Zagros, adjoining Adiabene on the east, was the kingdom of Atropatene in north Media, now often simply called Media (q.v.).
While the power of Armenia was at its height under Tigranes (86–69 B.C.) all these states owned his rule. After the victories of Pompey, however, the Romans claimed the suzerainty, so that, during the next decades and the expeditions of Crassus and Antony, they oscillated between Rome and Parthia, though their inclination was generally to the latter. For they were all Orientals and, consciously or unconsciously, representatives of a reaction against that Hellenism which had become the heritage of Rome. At the same time the loose organization of the Parthian Empire, afforded them a greater measure of independence than they could hope to enjoy under Roman suzerainty.
6. In the south of Babylonia, in the district of Mesene (the modern Maisan), after the fall of Antiochus Sidetes (129 B.C.), an Arabian prince, Hyspaosines or Spasines (in a cuneiform inscription of 127, on a clay tablet dated after this year, he is called Aspasine) founded a kingdom which existed till the rise of the Sassanian Empire. Its capital was a city (mod. Mohammerah), first founded by Alexander on an artificial, hill by the junction of the Eulaeus (Karun) with the Tigris, and peopled by his veterans. The town, which was originally named Alexandria and then rebuilt by Antiochus I. as Antiochia, was now refortified with dikes by Spasines, and christened Spasinu Charax (“the wall of Spasines”), or simply Charax (Plin. vi. 138 seq.). In the following centuries it was the main mercantile centre on the Tigris estuary.
The kingdom of Mesene, also called Characene, is known to us from occasional references in various authors, especially Lucian (Macrobii, 16), as well as from numerous coins, dated by the Seleucian era, which allow us to frame a fairly complete list of the kings.[1] The Arabian dynasty speedily assimilated itself to the native population; and most of the kings bear Babylonian—in a few cases, Parthian—names. The official language was Greek, till, on the destruction of Seleucia (A.D. 164), it was replaced on the coinage by Aramaic. Another Babylonian dynast must have been Hadadnadinaches (c. 100 B.C.), who built in Tello the fortified palace which has been excavated by de Sarzec.
7. East of the Tigris lay the kingdom of Elymais (Elam), to which belonged Susa and its modern representative Ahwaz, farther down on the Eulaeus. The Elymaeans, who had already offered a repeated resistance to the Seleucids, were subdued by Mithradates I., as we have mentioned above; but they remained a separate state, which often rebelled against the Arsacids (Strabo xvi. 744; cf. Plut. Pomp. 36; Tac. Ann. vi. 50). Of the kings who apparently belonged to a Parthian dynasty, several bearing the name Cammascires are known to us from coins dated 81 and 71 B.C. One of these is designated by Lucian (Macrobii, 16) “king of the Parthians”; while the coinage of another, Orodes, displays Aramaic script (Allotte de la Fuye, Rev. num., 4me série, t. vi. p. 92 sqq., 1902). The kingdom, which is seldom mentioned, survived till Ardashir I. In its neighbourhood Strabo mentions “the minor dynasties of the Sagapenians and Silacenians” (xvi. 745). The Uxians, moreover, with) the Cossaeans and other mountain tribes, maintained their independence exactly as under the later Achaemenids (Strabo xvi. 744; Plin. vi. 133).
8. The district of Persis, also, became independent soon after the time of Antiochus IV., and was ruled by its own kings, who perpetuated the Achaemenian traditions, and on their coins—which bear the Persian language in Aramaic characters, i.e. the so-called Pahlavi—appear as zealous adherents of Zoroastrianism and the Fire-cult (see Persis). They were forced, however, to acknowledge the suzerainty of Parthia, to which they stood in the same position as the Persians of Cyrus and his forefathers to the Median Empire (cf. Strabo xv. 728, 733, 736; Lucian, Macrob. 15). In later times, before the foundation of the Sassanid dominion, Persis was disintegrated into numerous small local states. Even in Carmania we find independent kings, one of whom gave his name to a town Vologesocerta (Balashkert).
9. The east of Iran—Bactria with Sogdiana, Eastern Arachosia and Gedrosia—was never subject to the Arsacids. Here the Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian kingdoms held their own, till, in 139 B.C., the succumbed before the invading Mongolian and Scythian tribes (see Bactria and works quoted there). But in the Indus district the Greek kings held their ground for an appreciably longer period and, for a while, widely extended their power (see Menander of India). Among the kings then following, only known to us from their coins, there appears a dynasty with Iranian and sometimes peculiarly Parthian names which seems to have reigned in the Punjab and Arachosia. Its best-known representative, Gondophares or Hyndopherres, to whom legend makes the apostle Thomas write, reigned over Arachosia and the Indus district about A.D. 20. Further, about A.D. 70, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions that the great commercial town of Minnagar in the Indus Delta was under Parthian kings, “who spent their time in expelling one another.” Here, then, it would seem there existed a Parthian dynasty, which probably went back to the conquests of Mithradates I. (cf. Vincent A. Smith, “The Indo-Parthian Dynasties from about 120 B.C. to A.D. 100,” in the Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenl. Gesellsch. 60, 1906). Naturally, such a dynasty would not long have recognized the suzerainty of the Arsacids. It succumbed to the Indo-Scythian Empire of the Kushana, who had obtained the sovereignty of Bactria as early as about A.D. 50, and thence pressed onward into India. In the period of the Periplus (c. A.D. 70) the Scythians were already settled in the Indus valley (pp. 38, 41, 48), their dominion reaching its zenith under Kanishka (c. A.D. 123–153).
This empire of the Kushana merits special mention here, on account of its peculiar religious attitude, which we may gather from the coins of its kings, particularly those of Kanishka and his successor Huvishka, on which an alphabet adapted from the Greek is employed (cf. Aurel Stein, “Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins,” in The Babylonian and Oriental Record, vol. i., 1887). Kanishka, as is well known, had embraced Buddhism, and many of his coins bear the image and name of Buddha. Iranian divinities, however, predominate on his currency: Mithras (Mihro or Helios); the Moon Mah (also Selene); Athro, the Fire; Orthragno (Verethragna); Pharro = Farna (hvarena), “the majesty of kingship”; Teiro = Tir (Tistrya “the archer”); Nana (Nanaia); and others. Here, then, we have a perfect example of syncretism; as in the Mithras cult in Armenia, Asia Minor, and still further in the Roman Empire. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism have been wedded in the state religion, and, in characteristic Indian fashion, are on the best of terms with one another, precisely as, in the Chinese Empire at the present day, we find the most varied religions, side by side, and on an equal footing.
10. Originally a part of the Turanian steppe belonged to the Arsacids; it was the starting-point of their power. Soon, however, the nomads (Dahae) gained their independence, and, as we have seen, repeatedly attacked and devastated the Parthian Empire in conjunction with the Tocharians and other tribes of Sacae and Scythians. In the subsequent period, again, we shall frequently meet them.
It may appear surprising that the Arsacids made no attempt to incorporate the minor states in the empire and
- ↑ See Saint-Martin, Recherches sur la Mésène et la Characène (1838); Reinaud, Mémoires sur le royaume de la Mésène (1861); E Babelon, “Numism. et chronol. des dynastes de la Characène,” in Journ. internat. d’archéol. numism. vol. i. (1898).
