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3. The Parthian Empire (176 BCE – 224 CE) By 200 BCE, the Seleucid Empire had begun to fray around the edges. Bactria had broken away by 255 BCE and Parthia in 247 BCE. Arsaces led the Parni tribe to invade Parthia shortly after. The Selucids intervened and re-took nominal control, but by the time of Phraates I in 176 BCE Parthia was entirely independent and had begun its own conquests. Parthians and the Parni spoke different Iranian languages, but Parthian was chosen as the official language of the Empire. Parthian was very similar to Middle Persian, as spoken in the Persian homeland in southwestern Iran. It was written with an Aramaic script for ceremonial purposes, but more generally using the Greek script. 1 Phraates’ brother and successor Mithridates I (r. c. 171– 138 BCE) greatly expanded the Parthian domains both to the east (Bactria), south and west (Seleucid Empire), founding the Parthian Empire. The Seleucids were weakened during this period by succession disputes and for example the Maccabean revolt in Judea from 167 to 160 BCE. Continuing struggles with the Parthians is one reason why the Seleucids allowed Judean autonomy after the revolt. The original Parthian capital was at Nisa. By the time of Mithridates, the capital was at Hecatompylos. He used the old Selucid capital Seleucia on the Tigris and established a new capital at Ctesiphon across the river. Ecbatana became the summer capital, and Nisa was rebuilt as Mithradatkert ("fortress of Mithradates"), where the tombs of the Arsacid kings were. 2 The Parthian empire was much less centralized than that of either the Acheminds or Selucids, being developed from the structure of a confederation of tribes. There were a number of subordinate kingdoms with considerable autonomy, in particular Pars, the source of the succeeding empire. War with the Seleucids continued off and on up until the first Century BCE, and with the Romans from then until the early second century CE, when the Parthians were overthrown by revolt of the Persians led by Ardashir I, establishing the Sasanian Empire, but of course the wars continued. Mesopotamia and Armenia were the scene of repeated conquest and re-conquest during these centuries. The Selucid kings Demetrius II Nicator was captured by the Parthians in 140 BCE, and his brother and successor Antiochus VII Euergetes, nicknamed Sidetes, was killed in 139 BCE. This last defeat put the Seleucids on the ropes, and they were finished by the Armenians, allies of Rome, in the first third of the first century BCE. In 63 BCE, Pompey made the remaining Selucid territory the Roman province of Syria. 3 4 Around this time Mithridates II (the Great) came to the throne of Parthia, reorganized the Empire, regained the eastern and western satrapies which had been lost by his predecessor, then in the early first Century BCE conquered Adiabene, Gordyene and Osrhoene, vassal states of the Armenian Empire. Rome had been advancing in Asia Minor, so the Parthians first encountered them about 96 BCE, negotiating a boundary at the Euphrates between their respective spheres of influence. Later, having consolidated their holdings in Western Asia, the Romans took on the Parthians. The Roman Triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus invaded with a large army which was defeated and he killed in 53 BCE. This severe defeat upset the balance of power in Rome, which had kept Crassus, Caesar and Pompey together, ultimately leading to Caesar’s assumption of autocratic power. Although the Romans continued to expand in Anatolia and the Levant, a Parthian invasion in 40 BCE conquered most of the Levant except Tyre, including Judea, putting an end to then Roman client Hasmonean rule over Judea. The Parthians were expelled in 37 BCE. Herod the Great was made the Roman subordinate king, establishing the Herodian dynasty. Rome regained the whole area later in the decade, under the ultimate command of Marc Antony. 5 Part of the reason why the centuries-long conflict between Rome and Parthia was inconclusive was that the two empires were similar in size and resources, and also that they had very different military tactics. The Romans relied on heavy infantry and siege engines, while the Parthians used horse-mounted bowmen. The Parthian bowmen were superior to the Roman infantry on the plains of Mesopotamia, while the Roman infantry was superior to the Parthian cavalry in the hilly country towards the Mediterranean. Also, the Romans had a state-supported standing army which could be put in the field for long periods, while the Parthian army was a temporary alliance of armies of subordinate kings and other local rulers, which limited their ability to pursue long foreign campaigns. 6 7 8 The Parthian Empire had been largely carved out of the Seleucid Empire, so there was a strong Greek cultural presence and many largely Greek cities, including Seleucis. Rather than suppress the Greeks, the Parthians left them largely to themselves, in conformance to their generally tolerant policies. In particular, the silk trade, largely in Greek hands, was an important source of wealth for the Empire. The Parthian Language was written in Greek script until the middle of the first Century CE, and Greek script continued to be used off and on until the end of the dynasty. 9 Coin of Mithirades I (171 – 138 BCE) Coin of Mithridates II (123 – 88 BCE) Coin of Vologases IV (147 – 191 CE) Note that all the coins are inscribed using Greek script, and in fact the inscriptions are in Greek. 10 Mithirades II’s extension of the Empire coincided with the expansion of the Han Empire in China to the boundary of Bactria. A Chinese delegation visited Parthia in 120 BCE, and in 119 BCE the Silk Road was officially opened. (The Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) was contemporaneous with the Parthian Empire.) One of the cultural products of the Parthian empire is Rabbinic Judaism. The Roman genocide in Judea in 132 CE and the effects of the Kitos war (115 – 117CE) meant that the Jewish settlements in Babylonia became the main centres of Jewish scholarship. The loss of the Temple in Jerusalem required the re-formulation of the religion, resulting in the Babylonian Talmud, begun under the Parthians and completed under their successors, the Sasanians. The tolerant policy of the Parthians allowed Christianity to become established. The tradition is that St. Thaddeus the Disciple (as distinguished from Thaddeus the Apostle) established a community in Edessa, at that time in Roman Syria, which spread through Mesopotamia and ultimately as far as Bactria. Several of the Eastern Rite Churches consider Thaddeus (Addai) as their founder. 11 St. Thaddeus (Addai) 10th Century Icon from St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai. 12 They also allowed the Mandaeans to settle in what is now southern Iraq. The Mandaeans are an ethnic group with a distinctive religion related to Judaism. They appear to have originated in the southern Levant, possibly as one of the peoples conquered by the Hasmoneans around Judea, and moved to Parthian territory possibly under pressure from Jewish Zealots in the First Century CE. Their religion is Gnostic, in that only the priests and a few lay persons have full knowledge. The Mandaeans revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist, but reject Abraham, Moses and Jesus of Nazareth. The group has persisted to the present, with 50,000 or so adherents, who were uprooted during the 2003 Iraq War. Vologases IV (147 – 191 CE) is thought to be the king who began the process of collecting, codifying and standardizing the texts of the Zoroastrian religion, which process, continued under the Sasanids, resulted in modern Zoroastrianism. 13 Mithraism was a mystery religion widespread in the Roman Empire, especially in the army, from the first to the fourth century CE. Mithras is a form of “Mithra” the name of an old Persian god. It is related to Zoroastrianism, though the religion seems to be an adaptation by a Roman of a surviving pre-Zoroastrian cult encountered in Parthia. Mithras is associated with Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun), an ancient Roman god. There are many surviving mithraeums found all over the Roman Empire. They are always underground, often in cellars. Some were converted into churches. Reconstruction of a mithraeum with a mosaic depicting the grades of initiation. 14 Mithras Killing a Bull, the central image of Mithrasm 15 Parthian Architecture The single trait most characteristic of Parthian architecture is the use of an ayvān as a rectangular, vaulted hall with one end open where it faces a courtyard. It is thought that the nomadic origins of the Parthians is the reason for this distinctive architectural feature, and the Iranian origin of the term. The most important fact in the debate is that at Seleucia-on-Tigris in the late first century A.D. it can be demonstrated that house plans changed from having a hall with a pair of columns set in the opening on the side of the court (distyle in antis) to that of a barrel-vaulted ayvān as the building’s most important roofed structure, indicating the practical application of a previously wellknown constructional technique—the barrel vault of brick—to a portion of the building where Greek style was no longer an important aspect. Barrel vaults of brick had been built as much as a millennium and a half earlier (at Susa, for example), but it was the application of the vaulted ayvān to the main units of a building in the late Parthian period which gave Iranian architecture such a regal reception hall through emphasis 16 on the height of the room and the longitudinal axis. The ground-plan change was negligible, but the visual aspect as vaults replaced columns and beams was revolutionary. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/architecture-ii Hatra Hatra, near Mosul, founded during Selucid times, became the capital of an Arab kingdom subordinate (most of the time) to Parthia. It is considered to be the best surviving example of Parthian architecture, but is claimed to having been recently destroyed by ISIS. 17 Wall surfaces also include architectural members reduced to decorative features to break up flat surfaces. The component parts are often derived from western architectural vocabularies—columns, capitals, cornices, etc.—but the combination of the different elements into façade compositions, particularly “blind arcades,” is a distinctive feature of Parthian architecture. Blind arcading—the treatment of a façade without any connection to the building layout behind—is yet again a feature that was transferred via Sasanian architecture to the Islamic architecture of Iran. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/architecture-ii Ctesiphon Ruin (Actually Late Sasanian) 18 Parthian Art For the period from the 3rd century B.C.E. to about the middle of the 3rd century C.E., the region extending from the Syrian desert through Iran and into Central Asia forms an artistic unit with certain definable characteristics: frontality, rigidity, great interest in representing details, especially the elaborately decorated “Parthian dress” and jewelry worn throughout the region, and conceptually, an intellectual rather than a visual approach to the depiction of figures and costumes. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/art-in-iran-iv-parthian Parthian Warriors (their trousers indicate that they were horsemen) 19 Compare the portrait of Darius 20 21