In brief. The Parthian (Arsacid) dynasty followed the conquests of Alexander and the Seleucid kingdom. It controlled Iran and Mesopotamia and was Rome's chief rival in the east until the Sasanians replaced it.
Few empires are as hard to see as the Parthian one. It lasted for nearly five hundred years, yet almost none of its own writing has survived. What we know comes from coins, inscriptions, archaeology and the accounts of Greek and Roman writers, many of them hostile.
From the north-east to an empire
The dynasty is named for Arsaces, a leader of the Parni, a people of the north-east of Iran, in the middle of the 3rd century BCE. It began as a local power in the Seleucid kingdom, the Hellenistic state left by Alexander’s generals. Under Mithridates I in the 2nd century BCE, the Parthians took Mesopotamia and extended their rule to the Tigris, and Ctesiphon became a royal city.
Rome’s rival
By the 1st century BCE the Parthians were Rome’s main neighbour in the east. At Carrhae in 53 BCE, a Roman army under Crassus was destroyed by Parthian horse archers and heavily armoured cavalry. Rome and Parthia then fought, bargained and shared a border along the Euphrates for generations, with crises over the control of Armenia.
The Roman defeat at Carrhae is well attested by Greek and Roman writers, who describe the effectiveness of mounted archers.
A looser state
The Parthian kings ruled through a looser system than the Achaemenids. Noble families, vassal kings and cities kept much power, and royal succession was often contested. Their coins show Greek lettering and Greek-style portraits for a long time, followed by a growing use of Parthian script, which suggests a court that was comfortable in more than one culture.
The old picture of Parthia as a weak and fragmented state mostly comes from Roman writers. Its survival for five centuries against Rome suggests a flexible and resilient system.
The end
In the early 3rd century CE, Ardashir, a ruler from Fars, rebelled against the last Parthian king and defeated him in 224 CE. He founded the Sasanian dynasty, which presented itself as a restoration of an older Persian order. That is the next chapter.
Notes and sources
- Josef Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD (I.B. Tauris, 1996).
- Ehsan Yarshater (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
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