Persia from the Earliest Period by W.S.W. Vaux

Author:W.S.W. Vaux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

CHAPTER V

ARRACIDAE – ARSAKES I – TRIRIDATES I – ARTABANUS – MITHRADATES I – PHRAATES II – SCYTHIAN INVASION – MITHRADATES II – PROGRESS OF THE ROMANS – ORODES – CRASSUS – POMPEY – ANTONY – TIRIDATES, SON OF VOLOGASES – TRAJANUS – AVIDIUS CASSIUS – SEVERUS – ARTABANUS – BATTLE OF NISIBIS

As already stated, with the death of Darius ends for more than five centuries the rule of native Persian sovereigns over more, perhaps, than the small province of Persis: I shall, therefore, now give some account of the Arsacidae, whose vigorous rule fills up the intervening period.

It was in the reign of Antiochus Theos, the third of the Seleucidae or Greek rulers of Syria and Mesopotamia and about B.C. 250, that Askh or Arsaces slew the viceroy of Parthia, and spreading to the winds the sacred banner of the Darafsh-i-Kawdni (or Blacksmith’s apron), which his uncle had saved, after the overthrow of Arbela, marched on Rhages (Rhey), at the same time inviting the other chieftains of his people to join with him in a revolt against the Greek kings of Syria.

Oriental writers claim Askh, though on no reliable grounds, as a descendant of the ancient kings of Persia; but it is more probable that his revolt was mainly due to the success of a similar uprising against the Seleucidae a few years earlier, on the part of the Bactrian Diodotus, showing, as this did, the then weakened hold of the ruling family over their more distant provinces. The two revolts, however, differed essentially in their character; the one being of Greek against Greek, and under a Greek leader, the other “of an Asiatic race of a savage and rude type,” against a more civilized and effeminate population. Besides this, there had been for years a tendency on the part of the Parthian tribes to separate themselves from the Persians, a tendency fostered, doubtless, in no small degree by the ancient enmity between the Magians and Zoroastrians. It was, in fact, the old story over again. As the Achaemenidae, when they were strong, had tried to stamp out Magism, so the Magians retorted whenever they had the chance. The spring had indeed, been pressed flat, yet had not lost its elasticity; and the fall of Darius Codomannus probably aroused new hopes for the down-trodden Magians, the more so that the Seleucid Greeks, “cared for none of these things.” We must not, however, lay too much stress on the religious side of the question; no reformation such as that by the Achaemenian Darius or the Sassanian Ardashir, was dreamt of; indeed, the actual faith of the Parthians was lax and all-embracing, a mixture of Scythic dogmas, Greek practices, and Semitic ideas while the hostility of the ruling families was rather anti-Persian than anything else. Thus we find the Parthians setting up the statues of Greek divinities and adopting Greek as the usual language of their coins and affecting the titles of Phil-Hellenes, even when most hostile to the Greeks.

A revolt

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