Mithradates undoubtedly did recover much lost ground, for, as we have seen, he regained Babylonia and probably a number of provinces to the east.[1] In far-off Delos at the shrine of Asclepius a dedicatory inscription of about 110 b.c. commemorates a "king of kings," Arsaces the Great, who to judge from the title must be Mithradates.[2] Fragments of other records of about the same period, written in Greek, have been found in Babylonia.[3] Another campaign of Mithradates was against Artavasdes of Armenia, as a result of which Tigranes, the eldest son of the Armenian
- ↑ Justin xlii. 2. 4–5 states that he added many peoples to the empire. Perhaps the Bactrian conquests, taken from the Scyths according to Strabo xi. 9. 2, should be placed in his reign.
- ↑ OGIS, I, No. 430; S. Reinach, "Fouilles de Délos," Bull. de correspondance hellénique, VII (1883), 349–53; A. von Sallet, "Beiträge zur antiken Münzkunde: Arsaciden-Inschrift von Delos," Zeitschrift für Numismatik, XII (1885), 372–75.
- ↑ Bernard Haussoullier, "Inscriptions grecques de Babylone," Klio, IX (1909), 353, a stone dated 121/20 b.c., and 352 f., a tablet dated 110/9 or 111/10 b.c.; cf. M. I. Rostovtzeff and C. B. Welles, "A Parchment Contract of Loan from Dura-Europus on the Euphrates," Yale Classical Studies, II (1931), 40 f. See also Woldemar Schileico, "Ein babylonischer Weihtext in griechischer Schrift," Archiv für Orientforschung, V (1928–29), 11–13.
of Merv by 115 b.c. and suggests that this reconquest was due to a hypothetical "king of the campaign coins," a joint ruler controlling the eastern provinces. As Wroth, Parthia, pp. xxxi–xxxii, had already pointed out, these coins cannot on numismatic grounds be assigned to Mithradates II but must be later. A study of a large hoard of Mithradates II strongly confirms this view; see Newell, "Coinage of Parthia" (in Survey of Persian Art, in press). McDowell, Coins from Seleucia, p. 211, suggests that the "campaign coins" might plausibly be assigned to Mithradates' successor, Sinatruces, who struck them to celebrate his early victories as he advanced from exile among the "Scythians"; cf. p. 52.
