In the army which Phraates led eastward against the Sacae were Greek troops, made prisoners during the war with Antiochus. The Parthian is said to have treated these Greeks with great cruelty. Phraates perhaps counted on the fact that they were facing unknown foes far from their homeland and would therefore be fighting for their lives; but when in the battle which eventually resulted between the Parthians and the Sacae the Greeks saw their captors hard pressed, they at once deserted to the enemy. The tide was turned against the Parthians, and in the massacre which ensued, about 128 b.c.,[1] Phraates perished.
Artabanus II, son of Priapatius and uncle of Phraates,[2] inherited the problem of the Sacae, to whom he may have paid tribute.[3] With the invaders in possession of the larger part of his kingdom, Artabanus was soon forced to arms. In an offensive movement somewhere in the region of Bactria against the "Tochari," perhaps the Yüeh-chi of the Chinese records,[4] he received a wound in the forearm, possibly from a poisoned weapon, which almost im-
- ↑ Justin xlii. 1; McDowell, Coins from Seleucia, p. 183.
- ↑ Justin xlii. 2. 1.
- ↑ Joan. Antioch. fr. 66 (FHG IV, 561).
- ↑ Tarn, "Sel.-Parth. Studies," pp. 106–11 and 115–16, believes the Yüeh-chi are historically improbable in this particular case and suggests the Pasiani, whose name might have been miscopied as Asiani, for which the name Tochari would then have been substituted, in the text of Justin xlii. 2. 2. H. W. Bailey, "Ttaugara," Bull. School of Or. Studies, VIII (1935–37), 912, denies that ārśi = Asii.
