Neharda.[1] They set up a robber kingdom in northern Babylonia, defeated the Parthian satrap, and thus brought themselves to the attention of the Great King. Artabanus handled the situation in a manner much used by present-day mandataries: he sent for the brothers and placed them in formal control of the region which they had ruled as robber barons. This arrangement served admirably for fifteen years, until the death of the brothers just before the revolt of Seleucia.[2] As a consequence of this military inactivity we have little information for the period;[3] one exception is a letter which Artabanus wrote in December, a.d. 21, to the magistrates and the city of Susa, the only royal document of the Arsacid period which has come down to us. The purport of the letter, which was later graven on the stone base of a statue, was to validate a contested city election.[4]
- ↑ Arrian Parthica xi, Νάαρδα; see also PW, art. "Νἀαρδα." This city lay on the Euphrates not far from Sippar and near the mouth of the Nahr Malka.
- ↑ This chronology is not exact, but it seems to fit the evidence. If the six-year period mentioned by Josephus Ant. xviii. 373 represents, as it seems to do, the duration of the revolt of Seleucia, which began in a.d. 35 (see p. 164), then subtraction of the fifteen peaceful years (Josephus Ant. xviii. 339) gives a.d. 20 for the beginning of the brothers' activities.
- ↑ Artabanus ceased coining money long before the end of his reign. McDowell, Coins from Seleucia, p. 188, reports his last known coin as dated a.d. 27/28 but adds with a query coins from 29/30 and 30/31.
- ↑ F. Cumont, "Une lettre du roi Artaban III," CR, 1932, pp. 238–60; M. Rostovtzeff, "L'Hellénisme en Mésopotamie," Scientia, LIII (1933), 120 f.; C. Bradford Welles, Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period (New Haven, 1934), pp. 299–306. As to Welles, op. cit., p. 302, note that
