Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/629

EMPIRE.] PERSIA 601 and that, when some satrapies were in revolt and others threatened it, the great king made a pact with the bandits to keep Babylonia in control in his absence. Yet amidst such constant rebellions Artabamis III., shrewd and energetic, not merely held his own but waged successful foreign wars, set his son Arsaces on the throne of Armenia, and challenged Rome still more directly by raising claims to lordship over the Iranian population of Cappadocia. Through the whole first century of the Roman empire all relations to Farthia turned on the struggle for influence in Armenia, and, much as he loved peace, Tiberius could not suffer this disturbance of the balance of power to pass un noticed. He persuaded Pharasmanes, king of Iberia, to put forward his brother Mithradates as claimant to the Armenian throne. The Iberians, after having procured the assassination of Arsaces, advanced and took Artaxata, the capital ; and, when the Parthians came against them under Orodes, another son of Artabanus, Pharasmanes strengthened himself by opening the Caucasian Gates to the Sarniatians, 1 whose chiefs were easily gained to fight where there was money or booty to be got. A bloody battle ensued ; Orodes was wounded in single combat with Pharasmanes, and his troops fled, believing him to be dead. In 36 Artabanus himself took the field, but a widespread revolt, long prearranged by Tiberius with a Parthian party led by Sinnaces, rose behind him in the name of Tiridates, a grandson of Phraates IV., who had been chosen as pretendant from the Parthian princes at Rome, and Artabanus retired to Hyrcania to resume his old relations with the adjacent nomads. The Roman legate of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, with his legions, led Tiridates into Parthia, where his followers joined him; Mesopo tamia, Apolloniatis, and Chalonitis did homage ; and the Syrian and Jewish population of Selcucia, which hated the party of Artabanus (the oligarchy of the 300 " adi- ganes " drawn from the old Greek families), were grati fied by democratic institutions. In Ctesiphon Tiridates was crowned by Surenas, but without waiting for Phraates and Hiero, satraps of two chief provinces (Upper and Rhagian Media?), who became his enemies for this slight. Nor were they alone in their jealousy of the absolute court -influence of Sinnaces and his father Abdagases. Artabanus was called back and appeared from Hyrcania with an auxiliary force of Dahce and Sacse ; Tiridates re tired to Mesopotamia, where his party was strongest, but his army melted away, and in 36 A.D. he took refuge in Syria. Much as Artabanus hated the Romans, his insecure position at home drove him in 37 to make an accommoda tion on terms favourable to them and send his son Darius as hostage to Tiberius. Indeed, he was again for a short . time an exile with Izates of Adiabene,who, however, effected his restoration and was rewarded by the transference of Nisibis to him from Armenia, which the Parthians had again got in their hands, taking advantage of the foolish policy of Gains Caesar, who had tempted Mithradates of Armenia to Rome and imprisoned him there. Artabanus died soon after his second restoration, probably in 40 A.D., as Josephus (Ant., xviii. 7, 2) still mentions him in 39. Gotarzes In Artabanus s lifetime the second place in the empire and Var- jj a( j k een IQ[ C ]jy one Gotarzes, who appears to have been his colleague in the upper satrapies, and perhaps his lieu tenant in his flight to Adiabene. But there is monumental evidence 2 that he was not, as Josephus says and Tacitus 1 Josephus, Ant., xviii. 4, 4 (according to the MSS. ), says Alans; Z/a i$as is an interpolation. In modern as in ancient times Iberian kings have repeatedly followed the same dangerous policy to increase their strength. The power of the Christian kings of Georgia in the 12th century rested wholly on alliance with the mountain tribes. - On a Greek inscription at Bisutun he is " satrap of satraps and FeoTroflpos" (son of Giiw) ; on a coin he probably appears as Goterzt s, king of the kings of the Areani (east Iranians), son of Ge, kalymenos " implies, Artabanus s son (except by adoption), and so we 21-45 A.D find that the succession first fell to Vardanes, who coined money in September 40. But in 41 Gotarzes appears as king. The cruelties of Gotarzes gave Yardanes an oppor tunity of return ; in two days he rode 345 miles, and taking his rival by surprise forced him to flee, and occupied the lower satrapies, where he coins regularly from July 42 onwards. Vardanes now laid siege to Seleucia, which had been in rebellion since it opened its gates to Tiridates in 36, but was presently called away to meet Gotarzes, who had secured the aid of the Hyrcanians and Dahte. The renewal of civil war enabled the emperor Claudius, with the aid of the Iberians, to drive the Parthian satrap Demonax from Armenia and reseat Mithradates on the throne. 3 Meantime Gotarzes and Vardanes were face to face in the plain of western or Parthian Bactria, but an attempt on the life of the latter having been disclosed by his foe they made peace, and Gotarzes withdrew to Hyr cania, while Vardanes, confirmed in his empire, returned to Seleucia and took it in 43 after a siege of seven years. Seleucia was then a city of vast resources ; in the time of Pliny Seleucia. it reckoned 600,000 souls, and the neighbourhood of Ctesiphon had not ruined it as Selcucia had ruined Babylon. Indeed Strabo (xvi. p. 743) is probably to bo believed when he says that Ctesiphon was founded as the winter residence of the Parthian kings mainly out of consideration for Seleucia, whose merchants would have been incommoded by the quartering on them of the rude hordes of nomads who formed the larger part of the army which surrounded the court. The friendship of the Parthians was necessarily impaired by the long rebellion and the insolence of the Seleucians : in 41 the Syrians and Greeks put aside their own quarrels and united to slaughter the Jews ; the survivors fled to Ctesiphon, and even here the hatred of the Seleucians followed them in despite of the great king. Probably, therefore, it was as a rival to Seleucia that Volagascs (or Vologeses) I. founded a little later Yologesocerta (near Hira) on a site very favourable for commerce. From the middle of the first Christian century Greek influence declined, and Orientalism revived in Parthia. The t3 T pes of the Arsacid drachmae the imperial money grow more and more barbaric from the time of Artabanus III. ; and Pahlavi legends, first found on coins of Yolagases I., become predominant with Mithradates VI., the con temporary of Trajan. Vardanes was deterred from an attempt on Armenia by the threatening attitude of Vibius Marsus, legate of Syria from 42 to 44, and the rest of his reign was fully occupied by internal affairs. In February 45 Gotarzes had renewed his pretensions and struck money, supported by the re bellious nobles, and Vardanes, after defeating him at the Var- passage of the Erindes, 4 pursued him eastwards through danes. the deserts, driving the nomads before him as far as the Sindes (Tejend), which divided the Dahoe from the Arians, and returned boasting " that he had reduced nations who never before had paid tribute to an Arsacid." The glory that was held to surround these exploits on a stage scarcely different from that on which the oldest Parthian history had been enacted is a striking proof of the neglect of the original home of the monarchy under the pressure of "Western affairs ; but that Vardanes was a great king is plain from the high praise of Tacitus and the attention which the greatest of Roman historians bestows on a reign which had no direct relations to Rome. Vardanes, whose last coin is of August 45, was murdered while hunting a victim, we are told, to the hatred produced by his severity to his subjects. But in judging of the charges brought against him and his two predecessors we must remember that the rise of a new dynasty like that of Artabanus is of Artabanus. The last title seems to mean "alter ego" ; it appears miswritten 1avfj,evos in Dio. xl. 12, as applied to Silaces, whom Orodes I. sent against Crassus ; comp. New Persian kaherm&n, " agent." Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius, which contains much that is useful for this period, regards the expulsion of Gotarzes as a restoration of the Arsacids. 3 In the chronology of what follows Longuerue s arrangement has been brilliantly confirmed by the coins. 4 Or Charindas (Ptol., vi. 2, 2), now the Keriiid, which separates Mazandaran from Astarabad. XVIII. 76