in power after his marriage to his mother, an act which his subjects did not approve.[1] In a.d. 4[2] he was either killed or driven into Syria, where he died shortly afterward.[3] The nobles called in a prince of the Arsacid family named Orodes (III), whose violent temper and great cruelty made him intolerable. Another insurrection followed, and Orodes was murdered at a festival or while hunting[4] about a.d. 6.[5]
Ambassadors were then dispatched to Rome, whence they were sent to Tiberius, who was probably in Germany.[6] They requested the return of one of the sons of Phraates IV; and Vonones, the eldest, was sent.[7] The Parthians were not long satisfied, for they were irked by the western manners and friends their new sovereign had acquired at Rome.
- ↑ Josephus Ant. xviii. 42 f.
- ↑ Gardner, Parthian Coinage, p. 46; the last coins of Musa and Phraataces are dated Hyperberetaeus, 315 s.e.
- ↑ Cf. Josephus Ant. xviii. 42 f. and Mon. Ancyr. vi (32).
- ↑ Josephus Ant. xviii. 44 f.
- ↑ The only known coin of Orodes, if indeed it is properly assigned, is dated 317 s.e., i.e., a.d. 6/7; see Gardner, Parthian Coinage, p. 46 and Pl. V. 1. No coins were struck in the two years which followed.
- ↑ Suet. Tiberius 16.
- ↑ Mon. Ancyr. vi (33); Tac. Ann. ii. 1–2; Josephus Ant. xviii. 46. This is probably the Vonones mentioned in a poem quoted by Ausonius Epist. xxiii. 6. The poem, sent him by Pontius Paulinus, was based on Suetonius Lives of the Kings, a work now lost.
Phraataces; see F. Cumont, "Inscriptions grecques de Suse," CR, 1931, pp. 238–50.
