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POLITICAL HISTORY OF PARTHIA
Behistun. It shows him charging the foe with leveled spear, while overhead hovers a winged Victory crowning the king with a wreath. The accompanying inscription reads ΓΩΤΑΡΣΗϹ ΓΕΟΠΟΘΡΟϹ, "Gotarzes, son of Gew."[1]
In 51 Gotarzes either died of some disease[2] or fell the victim of a plot.[3] He was succeeded by a certain Vonones (II), who was king of Media.[4] Vonones must have reigned but a few months; the empire then passed to his son or brother Vologases I.[5]
About a.d. 52[6] Pharasmanes of Iberia sent his
- ↑ Herzfeld, Am Tor, pp. 40 ff. and Pls. XXI–XXIII. Probably, as C. Hopkins in M. I. Rostovtzeff and P. V. C. Bauer, The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Second Season, 1928–29 (New Haven, 1931), p. 93, suggests, the dedicatory inscription to Zeus Soter dated a.d. 50/51, found at Dura, should be referred to this civil war.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. xii. 14. 7.
- ↑ Cf. McDowell, Coins from Seleucia, p. 191, who finds a coin of Gotarzes dated three months after the first of those struck by Vologases. This find strongly supports Josephus Ant. xx. 74, who says that Gotarzes was the victim of a plot.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. xii. 14. 7. Josephus does not mention Vonones; but Tacitus cannot be discredited on the basis of the abbreviated account of the Jewish historian, who may well have deliberately omitted the name of Vonones because of his unimportance. No coins can be assigned to him.
- ↑ Son, Tac. loc. cit.; brother, Josephus loc. cit. The date a.d. 54 for the close of the reign of Vonones, proposed by Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans p. 128 and n. 2, is too late.
- ↑ The whole chronological question from 51 to 63 is very complex; see the editions of Tacitus by L. Nipperday and H. Furneaux; E. Egli, "Feldzüge in Armenien von 41–63 n. Chr.," in Max Büdinger, Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte (Leipzig, 1868), pp. 267–362; H. Schiller, Geschichte des römischen Kaiserreichs unter der Regierung des Nero (Berlin, 1872), pp. 91–205; Mommsen, Prov. Rom. Emp., II, 50 ff.;
