after they entered the Iranian plateau. Their customs give us more extensive and more certain information, but nothing beyond what we already know from classical writers. Love of the hunt and of hard drinking, extensive use of the bow, especially as a weapon on horseback, are all suggestive of the nomadic or seminomadic life of the steppe country.
Early historians paid little attention to the Parthians; when the western world came into contact with them their story had been much obscured by time. They were reported to have been a division of the Parni, who in turn were one of a group of tribes known to the Greeks as the Dahae.[1] We first meet them on the banks of the Ochus (Tejend) River, although this was probably not their original homeland.[2] These people would not be known as Parthians until they moved southward into the Persian province of Parthava, an event which took place sometime before 250 b.c. Achaemenian and early Greek references to the "Parthians" refer, therefore, to earlier inhabitants of Parthava, not to the Parthians with whom we are dealing.[3]
That as early as the seventh century b.c. the As-
- ↑ Strabo xi. 7. 1 and 9. 2–3, followed by Edwyn R. Bevan, The House of Seleucus (London, 1902), I, 284, and Percy M. Sykes, A History of Persia (2d ed.; London, 1921), I, 307. Cf. George Rawlinson, The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy (London, 1873), pp. 17 and 42 f.
- ↑ Strabo xi. 9. 2; Apollodorus Parthica in Strabo xi. 7. 3; Justin xli. 1; Arrian Parthica fr. 1 in Photius 58.
- ↑ E. Herzfeld, "Sakastan," AMI IV (1932), 36; William Montgomery McGovern, Early Empires of Central Asia (in press).
