Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/616

PERSIA [GR.ECO-PARTHIAN 250-220. who slew the false Sinerdis, wo detect the inventions of a period when the Arsacids had entered on the inheritance of the Achsemenians, and imitated the order of their court. The seven conspirators are the heads of the seven leading noble houses to whom, beyond doubt, the Karen, the Suren, and the Aspahapet belonged. 1 And further, genuine tradi tion does not know the first Arsaces as king of Parthia at all, and as late as 105 B.C. the Parthians themselves reckoned the year (autumn) 248/247 as the first of their empire. 2 But 248 is the year in which Arsaces I. is said to have been killed, after a reign of two years, and succeeded by his brother, who, like all subsequent kings of the line, took the throne-name of Arsaces. The first Arsaces must have existed, for he appears as deified on the reverse of his brother s drachmae, but he was not king of Parthia. Nay, we have authentic record that even in the epoch -year 248/247, the year of the accession of Tiridates, Parthia was still under the Seleucids. These contradictions are solved by a notice of Isidore of Charax (Geog. Gr. ^fin., i. 251), which names a city Asaak, not in Parthia, but north-west from 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 mon archy, and Pherecles was presumably satrap of Astauene, not eparch of Parthia. The times were not favourable for the reduction of the rebels. When Antiochus II. died, the horrors that accom- Seleucus panied the succession of his son Seleucus II. Callinicus (246-226) 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, for whom the Galatians held, and at the great battle of Ancyra in 242 or 241 Seleucus was totally defeated and thought to be Arsaces slain. At this news Arsaces Tiridates, whom the genuine Tiridates tradition still represents as a brave robber-chief, broke into " . . Parthia at the head of his Parnians, slew the Macedonian eparch Andragoras, and took possession of the province/ These Parnian Dahae were a branch of the Dahaa who lived beyond the Sir Darya and the Sea of Aral (the Tanais and Maeotis of Strabo, xi. p. 515, and Curt., vi. 2, 13, 14), and were called Xandians or Parnians ; but, in consequence of internal dissensions, they had migrated at a remote date to Hyrcania and the desert adjoining the Caspian. 4 Here, and in great measure even after they conquered Parthia, they retained the peculiarities of Scythian nomads. The Parthian language is described as a sort of compound between Median and Scythian ; and, since the name of the Dahae and those of their tribes (Strabo, xi. p. 511) show- that they belonged 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. 5 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, com- 1 Moses of Chorene (ii. 28) knows only these three lines besides the Arsacids. Other Armenian historians, however (Langlois, i. 109, 199), know four lines of Arsacids which may have taken the place of lost families. 2 See the cuneiform tablet in G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 389, which agrees with Euseb. , C kron., p. 299 (Aucher). 3 Justin, xli. 4, 2. What is said of Andragoras in xii. 4, 12, rests on a slip of the memory. 4 The common tradition connects the migration with the conquests of the Scythian king landysus, a contemporary of Sesostris. It adds that Parthian means "fugitive" or "exile" (Zend, pZrgtu). But the name Parthava is found on the inscriptions of Darius long before the immigration of the Parnians. 5 An idea of the difference between the two may be got from the fragments of Kharezmian, preserved by Buruni. pletely 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 Mithradates 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. 6 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 connexion 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 10,000 horsemen who followed Surenas into battle were all his serfs or slaves, and of the 50,000 cavalry who fought against Antony only 400 were freemen. Arsaces Tiridates soon added Hyrcania to his realm and raised a great host to maintain himself against Seleucus, but still more against a nearer enemy, Diodotus of Bactria. On the death of the latter, however, the common interests of the Parthians and Bactrians as against the Seleucids brought about an alliance between Arsaces Tiridates and Diodotus II. With much ado, Seleucus had got the better of his foreign and intestine foes and kept his king dom together, and in 238 or a little later, having made peace with Egypt and silenced his brother, he marched from Babylon into the upper satrapies. Tiridates at first retired and took shelter with the nomadic Apasiacie, but he advanced again and gained a victory, which the Par thians continued to commemorate as the birthday of their independence. Seleucus was unable to avenge his defeat, being presently called back by the rebellion stirred up by his aunt Stratonice at Antioch. This gave the great Hellenic kingdom in Bactria and the small native state in Parthia time to consolidate themselves. Tiridates used the respite to strengthen his army, to fortify towns and castles, and to found the city of Dara or Dareium in the smiling landscape of Abevard. Tiridates, who on his coins appears first merely as Arsaces, then as King Arsaces, and finally as "great king " (probably in imitation of Antiochus Magnus), reigned thirty -seven years, dying in 211/10. His nation ever held his memory in almost divine honour. Seleucus III. Soter (226-223) died early, and was followed by Antiochus III. Magnus (223-187), who in his An brother s lifetime had ruled from Babylon over the upper oc ^ satrapies. Molon, governor of Media, supported by his brother Alexander in Persis, rose against him in 222 and assumed the diadem. 7 The great resources of his province, which followed him devotedly, enabled Molon to take the offensive and even to occupy Seleucia after a decisive battle with the royal general Xenoetas. Babylonia, the Erythraean district, all Susiana except the fortress of Susa, Parapotamia as far as Europus, and Mesopotamia as far as Dura were successively reduced. But the young king soon turned the fortunes of the war. Crossing the Tigris in person, he 6 Mithradates I. was the first to adopt the robes of a Persian great king. 7 The coins of "King Molon" show that his rebellion has nothing to do with the King Antiochus of C. I. G., 4458. The latter, appearing in a list of deified kings arranged in the order of their deification or death, is the eldest son of Antiochus III., who died in 193.