The Arsacid Empire, in T. Daryaee, King of the Seven Climes A History of the Ancient Iran World (3000 BC – 651 CE), Jordan Center for Persian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, 2017, pp. 125-153

KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES A History of the Ancient Iranian World (3000 BCE - 651 CE) Ancient Iran Series | Vol. IV King of the Seven Climes: A History of the Ancient Iranian World (3000 BCE - 651 CE) Edited by Touraj Daryaee © Touraj Daryaee 2017 Touraj Daryaee is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 Cover and Layout: Kourosh Beigpour | ISBN: 978-0-692-86440-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the pulishers. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including his condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES A History of the Ancient Iranian World (3000 BCE - 651 CE) Edited by Touraj Daryaee 2017 The publication of this book was made possible through a generous gift by the Razi Family Foundation Table of Contents Introduction 1 Map 5 Kamyar Abdi The Kingdom of Elām 7 Hilary Gopnik The Median Confederacy 39 Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones The Achaemenid Empire 63 Omar Coloru Seleucid Iran 105 Leonardo Gregoratti The Arsacid Empire 125 Touraj Daryaee and Khodadad Rezakhani The Sasanian Empire 155 Khodadad Rezakhani From the Kushans to the Western Turks 199 Contributors 227 THE ARSACID EMPIRE Leonardo Gregoratti T he Arsacid Dynasty was the name of the ruling household of the Parthian Empire (247 BC - AD 224), a state also referred to by modern scholars as the Arsacid Empire, from the name of its royal family. It was a major political actor, which ruled over a large portion of southwestern Asia. By the end of the second century BC, at the time of its maximal extension, the Parthian rule stretched from the Euphrates (Strabo, XVI, 1.28) to northwestern India (Plin, N.H., VI, 137), including Mesopotamia, Iran, and all the territories lying between the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the south, and the Caspian Sea, Caucasus and the river Amu Darya, the ancient Oxus, to the north (Plin, N.H., VI, 112). The Arsacid rule was established, a few decades after Alexander’s death, in the satrapy of Parthia, one of the remotest provinces of the Seleucid kingdom, and lasted for almost five centuries until the rise of the Sasanians. Sources The Greek and Latin literary sources from Roman writers provide the largest amount of information concerning the political and military organization and the society of the Parthian empire (Hackl, Jacobs and Weber, 2010). The narration of Rome’s political confrontation with the “barbarians” beyond the Euphrates occupies significant portions of the works of historians like Tacitus, Cassius Dio and Plutarch, among others. What is known about the history of the Parthian kingdom and its administrative structure is mainly based on the incomplete and largely stereotyped accounts drawn up by Roman and Greek writers, whose interest in the Arsacids was restricted to the provinces of this vast domain lying closer to the Roman borders and to the historical episodes more closely connected with Rome’s policy. It has recently been demonstrated (Lerouge 2008) that much of the information available from western writers is deeply influenced by an artificial idea, conceived and shared in the Roman empire, regarding the Parthians. In Roman imagination, the Arsacids were considered a mixture of elements that ancient Greek authors had in the past attributed to the Scythian people or Achaemenid Persians. More unbiased, but scarce, information can be found in the reports of Chinese travelers The Arsacid Empire 126 (Posch, 1998), the eastern neighbors of Parthia, in Talmudic treatises concerning Jewish communities of the empire (Neusner, 1984) and in late Armenian sources (Kettenhofen, 1998). Parthian and Aramaic inscriptions can shed light on local realities of the empire, for instance, the epigraphic texts from Hatra (Aggoula, 1991) and Osrohene in northern Mesopotamia or the administrative documents from Nisa, the early Arsacid capital in the northeastern part of the empire. Cuneiform documents from Babylonia (Sachs and Hunger, 1996) and later Syriac religious and historical texts can provide useful evidence for shedding light on the history of the Empire. The coins issued by Parthian rulers as well as those minted by their client kings remain one of the most important sources of information (Alram, 1998). Normally, the issues have the portrait of the Great King on the obverse. On the reverse is a stylized figure sitting on a throne sometimes wielding a bow representing Arsaces the founder of the dynasty. In the legend the sovereigns adopt the crown name of Arsaces along with the royal titles of their Seleucid predecessors; thus the attributions of most of the coins to specific kings are based on their portraits and on the variations in their appearance. Proper names are used only in case of coexistence of two pretenders to the throne (Sellwood, 1980). Only with Vologases I does the king’s name in Aramaic begin to appear. The dates follow the Seleucid reckoning. Most of the issues are silver drachms or tetradrachms; important mints were at Seleucia and Ecbatana. Some vassal kings had the right to have their own coinage. The most important issues are those of the kings of Characene, Elymais and Persis. It seems probable that the rulers of Hatra and Adiabene were also entitled to strike their own coins for some time (Walker, 1958; Milik, 1961; Slocum, 1977). Furthermore, until the middle of the first century AD, the Greek metropolis of Selucia on the Tigris, along with the royal coins, also minted its own municipal coinage. These coins are of various types in accordance with the choices of the magistrates in charge of the city mint. During the rule of Artabanus II, a representation of the Great King enters among the types of city coinage for the first time (Le Rider, 1999, Gregoratti 2012a). An increasing amount of data are also provided by archaeological excavations in Iran, Iraq and Turkmenistan. In the northeast of the empire, the capital city of Nisa has been extensively excavated. It consists of two separate fortified areas: a large settlement (New Nisa) and the royal citadel (Old Nisa, Mithradatkert), which probably played the role of ideological centre for the Arsacid dynasty. The monumental “Square House” and the “Round Hall” prove the influence of both Hellenistic and Central Asiatic architecture on the first Arsacid capital (Invernizzi, 1998). Many of the most ancient cities of Mesopotamia seem to have enjoyed a period of prosperity under Arsacid rule. In Babylonia the Mesopotamian temples continued their existence along with Greek institutions. Similar scenarios seem to take place at Ninive and Assur, probably belonging to the kingdom of Adiabene (Reade, 1998; Hauser, 2011). Uruk was also an important centre as well as Nippur, where an imposing fortress was built (firstsecond century AD; Keall, 1975). One of the most important sites of central Mesopotamia was Seleucia on the Tigris, the largest, richest and most populous city outside Roman borders. Here a minority constituted by Greek leading-classes ruled over the local population despite a continuous influence from nearby Ctesiphon, seat of the Great King (Strab., XVI, 127 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES 2. 5; Tac., Ann., VI, 42). The Polish scholar Josef Wolski (Wolski, 1993) deigned to distinguish in Parthian history a sequence of different evolutionary stages involving the social and administrative organization of the empire. According to him, a so-called “formation” phase was followed by a period when the kingdom was shaken by a sequence of changes which radically altered the nature of the relationship between the king and the nobility. Origins In the middle of the third century BC, the Parni, a tribe belonging to the confederation of the Dahi, a central Asian semi-nomadic people who lived along the Ochus River (now Tejen), moved southwards into the Seleucid satrapy of Parthia (Strabo, XI, 9.2). Soon its leader, Arsaces, defeated Andragoras, the Greek governor of Parthia, who had already made himself autonomous from the Seleucid authority, taking control of the whole region and choosing the year 247 BC as the first year of the Arsacid Era. According to another version, the Parthians were a Scythian tribe that moved and settled south in more ancient times, during Assyrian and Median domination. They remained obscure under the following Persian and Macedonian rule, until they managed to become strong enough to rebel against the Greek governors. Other accounts portray Arsaces as a man of uncertain origins leading a tribe of marauders (Pomp. Trogus/ Justin, 41. 4. 6-8), as a refugee from Bactriana (Strabo, XI, 9.3), as a young Achaemenid prince, a descendant of Artaxerses (Arr., Parth., frgm., 1, Ross), or, along with all Arsacids, as a descendant of Andragoras, the Macedonian governor of Parthia, appointed directly by Alexander (Pomp. Trogus/ Justin, 12. 4. 2). It seems evident that apart from Strabo’s, most of the other versions concerning the origins of the Parthians and their ruling dynasty are an expression of the Arsacid royal ideology and aimed at legitimating their own rule. The purpose was to present the Parthians as an indigenous population in the attempt to push their Central Asiatic origins into the background. On the other hand, the Arsacid household is described as detached from the Parthian people and strongly connected with the Persian authority that preceded Macedonian conquest or with Alexander’s rule. The Arsacid represented a mere continuation of the ancient dynasties that ruled western Asia. The reason why the year 247 BC was chosen as the first year of the Arsacid era and therefore used along with the more traditional and popular Seleucid one in some documents is unclear. It probably indicated the moment when the satrapy of Parthia became independent of Seleucid rule. The Seleucid kings achieved some military successes against the Parthians in the last decades of the third century BC. They were unable to recover all of the lost territories on the northeastern frontier of the kingdom, but they obtained a formal submission from the Parthian king, Arsaces II. The latter was appointed basileus after acknowledging the superiority of Antiochus III the Great. After the defeat of Magnesia (190 BC), the Seleucids ceased to constitute a threat to Parthian independence. Expansion With the weakening of the Seleucids, the Arsacid king Mithridates I of Parthia (r. 171-138 The Arsacid Empire 128 BC) was able to spread his control over large territories of Western Asia. Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and the metropolis of Seleucia on the Tigris were conquered in 141 BC, along with the small kingdoms of Elymais and Characene, on the Persian Gulf, whose monarchs submitted themselves to the Great King. Besides Hecatompylos, the first capital, several other residences were established at Mithradatkert (Nisa), Ecbatana, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon while the centre of gravity of the whole empire was quickly moving westwards (Dąbrowa, 2011). The last attempt of Antiochus VII Sidetes to form an anti-Parthian coalition and regain the lost satrapies came to an abrupt end in 129 BC, when the Seleucid king, after some relevant military successes, was defeated and killed in battle. It was a fate similar to that shared by the great Kings Phraates II (r. 138-128 BC) and Artabanus I (r. 128-124 BC) when fighting the Scythian tribes (Saka) which had invaded Parthia’s northeastern border (Olbrycht, 1998). Mithridates I of Parthia (r. 124-90 BC) triumphed over the nomadic tribes and recovered the lost satrapies. In 121 BC, the Chinese Han emperor Wu sent a delegation to the Parthian court with the purpose of opening official trade relations with the Arsacids along the Silk Road. From that time on, silk, pearls, spices, and iron began to travel across the Parthian empire to reach the Roman market, while the Chinese purchased perfumes, fruits, exotic animals, and Roman glassware from the Parthians. The Confrontation with Rome and the Crisis The Arsacids maintained their neutrality during the wars that Mithridates IV, king of Pontus and his ally Tiridates of Armenia fought against the Romans. During an informal meeting between the Roman commander Sulla and Orobazos (Great King Mithridates II’s envoy), the river Euphrates was chosen as the boundary between Parthia and Rome (Plut. Sull., 5. 4-5). After the death of Mithridates II, Parthia gradually entered a period of political crisis caused by the frequent struggles between brothers to gain the throne. In 58 BC Phraates III was assassinated by his two sons, Orodes II and Mithridates III, who soon found themselves at odds, both aiming at the throne of Parthia. According to Cassius Dio (Cass. Dio, XXXIX, 56. 2), the weaker of the two princes, Mithridates, besieged in Seleucia, asked for help, probably offering the submission of the portion of Parthia under his control to the Romans in exchange for the help he needed to gain the throne. But the Roman governor of Syria, who was already marching with his legions towards the Euphrates to rescue the prince, could not exploit the opportunity because of unexpected troubles in Egypt. It was probably the concrete possibility to reduce the whole Parthian empire to a state that was socius et amicus populi Romani, and not only -- as contemporary and more recent sources tend to tell us (Cic., De Finibus, III, 75; Vell. Pat., II, 46. 2; App. Bell. Civ., II, 18; Plut., Crass., 15-16; Cass. Dio, XL, 12. 1; Floro, XIII, 4. 10) -- the mere desire for glory and wealth, that convinced the triumvir M. Licinius Crassus to launch his ill-fated invasion of Mesopotamia. A few months later Crassus crossed the Euphrates with a large army seeking to reach Seleucia as soon as possible by the most direct route, along the Euphrates. There Mithridates 129 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES was still opposing his brother with a strenuous resistance, as his coin emissions seem to suggest (54 BC) (Plut., Crass., 20). Forced to delay by the behaviour of Abgar, king of Osrhoene, who was probably in charge of buying time for Orodes, Crassus reached Carrhae in northern Mesopotamia only in the spring of 53 BC. Here in the steppe around the city, the Parthian general Surena, the chief of the noble family of the same name, managed to inflict one of the most devastating defeats the Romans suffered in the East. More than 20,000 Romans lost their lives and about 10,000 prisoners were taken. Only a small contingent of 10,000 men was able to cross the Euphrates and reach Roman Syria (Plut., Crass., 31). Crassus was not among them. He met his death after the battle when fighting burst out during a meeting. Taking advantage of that strategic victory, the Parthians twice invaded Roman lands, in 51 BC (Cic., Ad familiares 8.5-10; 15.1-4; Ad Atticum 5.18; 5.20-21; 6.1-8; 7.2) and a decade later in 41 BC, when a large-scale invasion led by Q. Labienus, a Roman general who had fought for the caesaricides Brutus and Cassius, and for Pacorus, the young Parthian prince and heir to the throne. Exploiting the internal Roman trouble that followed Caesar’s assassination, Labienus and Pacorus invaded the whole of Syria and part of Anatolia and gained control of Judea. Both died in the failed invasion attempt when their contingents were defeated by Antony’s man Ventidius Bassus (39-38 BC). The loss of Pacorus, heir prince of Parthia, increased the political crisis at the Arsacid court. Towards the middle of the first century BC, Parthia entered a condition of social and institutional instability. The king’s leadership had been in fact overruled. Monarchs were maintained with the sole intent to provide a formal legitimacy for power gained by one or the other among the aristocratic groups. Parthia was torn by competition between the main noble factions interested in weakening the crown to enlarge their power, thus enhancing their independence from the king. During the “expansion” period, the nobility offered firm and undisputed political support to the king, who found himself in the condition to exert power without restrictions. The noblemen’s collaboration was rewarded by granting them the ownership of large portions of conquered land. Noble families thus began gradually to build their own power on the large estates that they had received from the king. The king granted the noble chiefs large and fertile portions of land as fief. In return the noble landlords were obliged to give military support to royal political enterprises and wartime undertakings. General Surena’s army, which defeated Crassus, was an aristocratic army, led by noblemen and mustered in the lands owned by the most powerful noble houses. These armies gradually assumed the characteristics of private militias of the noble houses, whose engagement at the king’s side was influenced mainly by the political plans of their patrician commanders (Wolski, 1993). Several years of political detente between the two superpowers struggling for supremacy in western Asia followed the failed attempt made by Antony to invade Media and to take the city of Praaspa (34-33 BC). In 20 BC, Octavian Augustus, at the time already acknowledged as princeps in Rome, decided to settle the situation in the East by diplomatic means. The Parthian Great King Phraates IV (r. 37- 2 BC) consented to return the legionary standards and the prisoners taken at Carrhae in order to reach an agreement with Rome, perceived as the natural ally by the opponents of royal authority. On that occasion, or immediately The Arsacid Empire 130 thereafter, Augustus gifted to Phraates IV an Italic slave girl named Musa, intended to enrich the number of royal concubines (Flav. Joseph., Ant. Jud., XVIII, 38-43) Musa actively did her best to increase her power and influence within the royal palace and upon the king himself. The Great King, struck by her charm and beauty, elevated her to the rank of queen once she gave birth to a child. The monarch then sent his elder sons to Rome as hostages, choosing her as main queen, the mother of the only heir to the throne (Aug., Res Gestae, 32; Strabo, XVI,1. 28). The murder of the Great King opened the way to the crowning of her son, Phraataces (Phraates V, 2 BC- AD 4), a weak sovereign more subject to his mother’s authority than his father was; as a result, she finally got the power she desired. In AD 2, she married her son, with whom (according to Flavius Josephus) she had a relationship, thus elevating herself to the rank of both Queen consort and Queen mother before being driven out by aristocratic opposition. After some years of anarchy and internal strife during which Rome tried to impose its own candidates, chosen among the Arsacids living in Rome, onto the Parthian throne, Artabanus II came to power (r. AD 12- 38/41). The first concern of the new Great King was to exploit new sources of income in order to grant the Crown a certain level of economical power and thereby counteract the overwhelming influence of the aristocracy. Artabanus conceived and tried to build a new system of controlling the territory, based on a close relation with local political subjects like the Greek cities’ leading classes, the vassal dynasties, and the Jewish communities. The aim of this more direct system of administering territories, alternative to the traditional hierarchical one, was to exclude the interference and the mediation by state officers of aristocratic origins. Artabanus II was the first to perceive the importance of finding new alliances to regain independence from the nobility (Gregoratti, 2015). Artabanus tried to strengthen his influence on the autonomous Greek cities of the Parthian empire. He put into action a series of political initiatives aimed at gaining indirect control over Seleucia and its trade activity by favouring his supporters in the leading classes and moving large numbers of Jews, supporters of the crown, into the city. An example of his policy towards the Greek cities is provided by the famous letter of Artabanus to the city of Susa. The king writes in Greek to the city council to advocate the case of one of his supporters there who was about to be appointed treasurer before the time prescribed by the city laws (Zambelli, 1963). This policy, successful as it seems to be with the minor Greek cities, finally provoked the upheaval of the Seleucians, who managed to free the city from royal control for seven years (Tac., Ann., XI, 9) until the reign of Vardanes. Artabanus sought an allegiance with the Jewish communities of Mesopotamia, Nisibis, and Nahardea, as is shown by the episode of the two Jewish brothers Asinaeus and Anilaeus, who revolted against the local Parthian aristocrats and satraps and became outlaws. Artabanus invited them to his court and, despite the opinion of his noble councillors and generals, offered them hegemony over Babylonia, which enabled them to act as king’s governors and to rule the region for fifteen years (Flav. Joseph., Ant. Jud., XVIII, 310-79; Brizzi, 1995). A Roman military offensive in Armenia, along with the attempt of one of the Arsacids living in Rome, to gain the throne with the support of the nobility against the Great King threatened Artabanus’s rule (AD 35). Defeated in the west he was forced to seek refuge in 131 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES the eastern satrapies. According to Tacitus, Artabanus, abandoned by nobles and courtesans, and together only with his bodyguard formed by mercenary raiders, “hurriedly fled to the remote districts adjoining Scythia; where he hoped that his marriage connections with the Hyrcanians and Carmanians would find him allies” (Tac., Ann., VI, 36). In the forests of Hyrcania, southeast of the Caspian Sea, he remained wandering in rags and providing food for himself with his bow. Artabanus went to the eastern satrapies looking for military support among the nomadic chiefs and the Hyrcanian aristocracy. He presented himself as a nomadic hunter imitating the “Scythian” Arsaces, the illustrious founder of the dynasty. He played the role of the nomadic warrior, able to survive in the wilderness far away from court leisure, relying only on his archery skills. The bow, the traditional weapon of Arsacid kings, which Arsaces wields on all Parthian coins, had in fact an important symbolic and propagandistic value. Soon after that, at the head of an army of Sacae and Dahae, he was able to regain the throne (Gregoratti, 2013a). In his last years of reign, Artabanus became arrogant and ambitious towards Rome. He became confident enough, according to Tacitus, to “insist on the ancient boundaries of Persia and Macedonia, and intimate, with a vainglorious threat, that he meant to seize the country possessed by Cyrus and afterwards by Alexander” (Tac., Ann., VI, 31). This passage is often quoted by modern scholars in order to demonstrate the fact that the Arsacids were aware of the powerful Persian empire of the Achaemenids that preceded Alexander’s conquest and that they considered themselves their legitimate successors. Moreover, Artabanus seems to put also Alexander and the Seleucids among the ancestors whose territorial possessions he aims to regain. It must nonetheless be noted that the whole passage is characterized by a hyperbolic tone employed by the Roman historian to demonstrate the arrogance of Artabanus, which eventually brought him to insult the old emperor Tiberius. Reading it as an explanation of Arsacid ideology would probably take the interpretation of the text too far. After Artabanus’s death, the empire was again torn by internal strife for the throne. Two pretenders, Gotarzes II and Vardanes I, rulers in the east and in the west, confronted one another for supremacy. Vardanes was able to defeat his rival by conducting a swift military campaign straight into the core of his rival’s power, the eastern satrapies, but fell victim to a conspiracy of the aristocratic opposition during a hunting party. Gotarzes’s cruel rule lasted until AD 49/50. The period of Renewal and the final Collapse The successive rulers, Vologases I (r. AD 51- 77/78) and his son Pacorus II (r. AD 77/78 – 105/110) followed the plan traced by Artabanus. They detected a possible solution in the highly remunerative long-distance trade, which connected both by land and sea, East Asia and India with the Mediterranean coast, and passed through many of the most important Parthian cities. To apprehend this traffic and establish an efficient system for collecting taxes on exotic goods could have provided these kings with the financial sources they needed. They tried to entertain new political and institutional relationships with all the local subjects who were in the condition to exert control over long distance trade. Pacorus in particular also established intensive diplomatic relations with the Chinese Han court after a Chinese The Arsacid Empire 132 envoy, Gan Ying, had attempted without success to cross the Parthian kingdom and reach the Roman territories by land in AD 97 (Hou Hanshu, c. 88. 2918; Gregoratti, 2012b). Vologases I, son of Vonones II of Media, associated the throne with his two brothers, monarchs in Armenia and Media Atropatene, and thereby conferred stability to the top of the state structure and consolidated the whole empire (Tac., Ann., XV, 2). This political solution enabled Parthia to successfully face a military confrontation with Rome for the rule of the kingdom of Armenia that Vologases had assigned to his brother Tiridates (AD 54-66) (Dąbrowa 1983). The first major conflict began with the usurpation of the Armenian throne by Rhadamistus, the son of the king of Caucasian Iberia. Vologases interpreted the event as a violation of the previous accords between the two superpowers and felt free to invade the kingdom and claim the throne for his household. The war was unavoidable and Gn. Domitius Corbulo, a general who has already demonstrated his skills in Germania, was appointed by the young emperor Nero to lead the military operations (Tac., Ann., XII, 8). After some years of preparation often interrupted by diplomatic activity and by the unexpected revolt of the filius Vardanis, the Roman general was able to invade Armenia, take control of the major cities of Artaxata and Tigranocerta, drive away Tiridates, son of Vologases I and Arsacid king of Armenia, and install an allied king on the throne (AD 58-59) (Chaumont, 1976). Tiridates, deprived of his kingdom, a vital element in the new state structure conceived by his father and Monobazos, and the loyal Arsacid client king of Adiabene, whose kingdom was now exposed to the raiding parties of the enemy, protested in front of the whole Parthian court, accusing the Great King of not doing enough to protect his servants (Tac., Ann., XV, 1). The accusation was serious and threatened to ruin the trust between the Great King and his subjects, destroying the entire structure of government conceived by Vologases. The Great King was thus forced by circumstances to react. Having experienced Corbulo’s extraordinary military skills, the cunning monarch managed to draw into a trap the newly appointed and arrogant governor of Cappadocia, L. Caesennius Paetus. Paetus’s army was forced to surrender at Rhandeia in AD 62. Following the Parthian victory, Tiridates was allowed to be king of Armenia, but forced to travel as far as Rome to obtain the crown from Nero’s hands during a spectacular public ceremony (Tac., Ann., XV. 31-32; Cass. Dio, LXIII, 1-7). Such a solution to the Armenian problem, conceived by Gn. Domitius Corbulo, commander in chief of the Roman forces in the East, assured a long period of peace and prosperity for Parthia, interrupted only by the incursion of the Alan tribes in AD 72, which ravaged Armenia and Media, probably crossing the Caucasus range (Flav. Joseph., Bell. Jud., VII, 244-251). After half a century, the appointment of Parthamasiris to the Armenian throne by the Arsacids without Roman approval (AD 113-114), which was considered a violation of the Armenian peace treaty, acted as justification for the major invasion of Parthia, begun by the emperor Trajan. Roman legions quickly marched on Armenia in AD 114. At Elegeia (Cass. Dio, LXVII, 17-20), Trajan deposed Parthamasiris and announced the creation of the Roman province of Armenia. With the support of Abgar of Edessa and other minor north 133 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Mesopotamian lords, in 115-116 imperial legions marched deep into Parthian territory with the purpose of also reducing Mesopotamia and the eastern bank of the Tigris to provinces of Rome (Guey, 1937; Lepper, 1948). Again Roman forces took advantage of the fact that the Arsacid empire was torn by internal strife between two candidates for the throne, Osroes and Vologases II. They took Seleucia on the Tigris and Ctesiphon, the seat of the Arsacid court, before being forced to withdraw to Syria by a major upheaval of the Babylonian population and the Mesopotamian Jewish communities, which allowed the Parthians to organize a successful counteroffensive (114-117 AD). Despite the switching of sides of many Parthian vassal kingdoms -- including that of Attambelos of Characene, who welcomed the Roman emperor, allowing him to reach the shores of the Persian Gulf -- no firm occupation of Parthian territory could be assured. The idea that the network of different political subjects that constituted the structure of the Parthian state would collapse once Mesopotamia (the capital city and the centre of Arsacid policy and economy of that vast empire) had fallen into Roman hands proved wrong. The composite nature of the Parthian rule and the bond that each of its many elements had established with the Great King, or better with the royal Arsacid house, explains the extraordinary capacity of Parthia to resist the hardest blows. Paradoxically, the most evident cause of weakness, the existence of two candidates to the throne, Osroes ruling Mesopotamia and Vologases ruling the East, constituted a key element in the emergency situation. Even if most of the satrapies in the west were lost and many western vassal kings deserted or were defeated, in the eastern satrapies, the ruling system that supported Vologases III remained intact as well as its conspicuous resources that could be used to regain lost ground. A few years after the withdrawal of Trajan’s legions, Vologases gained control of the whole empire, tightening the relationship between the crown and local kings through military occupation or by appointing a member of the Arsacid royal house to the throne. In AD 147/148, with the ascendance of Vologases III, a new branch of the Arsacid family took power. As the first member of a new dynasty, Vologases’s first concern was to affirm the control on the lesser kingdom that was becoming more and more important within the empire. In the kingdom of the Characene king Meredates, a son of the former Great King Pacorus II and the brother of Vologases’s predecessor, was deposed through military intervention and replaced by Orabzes, probably a relative of the new Great King (AD 151). These events are attested in the famous bilingual inscription found on the statue of Heracles from Seleucia on the Tigris (Bernard, 1990). Having consolidated the kingdom, Vologases launched an attack west of the Euphrates, which eventually resulted in a disastrous defeat at the hands of the emperor Lucius Verus’s generals (AD 161-169), who were again able to reach and burn the Parthian capital (Luc., Quomodo). Following the successful invasion of the Roman legions, the town of Dura Europos fell into Roman hands. A small foundation of the Seleucids on the western bank of the Euphrates in the middle of a district rich in fertile lands, the town was conquered by the Arsacids in the second half of the second century BC, constituting for almost three centuries the only Parthian possession west of the Euphrates. During the period of Arsacid rule, as seen in Seleucia and Susa, the town was led by a family who claimed to descend from the first Greek colons and held the most important magistracies belonging to the The Arsacid Empire 134 Greek municipal organization, which was maintained. During that period the town grew significantly: imposing walls were built, as well as temples, a main square, and an orthogonal street system. The settlement managed to attract an important community of Palmyrene merchants already in the early phase of Palmyra’s economic expansion, and that group seemed to play an important role in the town’s society until its conquest by the Sasanians. Rediscovered in the 1920s after being abandoned for almost seventeen centuries, the site of Dura Europos has been renamed the “Pompeii of the East” for the extraordinary richness of its archaeological findings. The materials relative to the Parthian phase are in no way comparable to those belonging to the following Roman one; nonetheless the inscriptions, coins and papyri were fundamental in shedding light on the municipal life of the small Greek town at the western periphery of the Arsacid empire (Arnaud, 1986; Millar, 1998 add Gregoratti, 2016). For the third time in the second century, Parthian Mesopotamia was invaded by Roman legions in AD 197. The military impact of the most powerful empire of the ancient world began to take its toll, irremediably weakening the structure of the Arsacid kingdom. The importance and the autonomy of the local dynasties increased exponentially. Around AD 208, a first major rebellion against the Arsacid rule was quashed with great effort. The last Roman offensive, launched by the emperor Caracalla, which reached as far as Arbil and the territories beyond the Tigris, ended abruptly with the assassination of the emperor (AD 217). The newly acclaimed emperor, Macrinus, sought peace by paying two hundred million denarii to Parthia. This victory was not enough to restore the largely compromised internal situation of a kingdom on the verge of disintegration. Ardashir I, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty, belonged to the local aristocracy of Persis, one of the southern client kingdoms of the Arsacid empire. Gaining the loyalty of the other local rulers, he was able to quickly extend his power far beyond Persis. In the end he became powerful enough to face the Great King Artabanus V, defeating his army and killing him at the battle of Hormozdgan (AD 224). That event marked the end of the Arsacid empire even though Artabanus’s brother, Vologases V, continued to mint coins in Seleucia until AD 227/228, and an Arsacid dynasty continued to rule the kingdom of Armenia until late antiquity. The new conquerors were partly responsible for the scarcity of local sources concerning the Parthian period. In the propaganda of the winners and new dynasts, the centuries during which the Arsacids, the Ashkānīs, were Great Kings were depicted in a very negative way. Considered the heirs of Alexander, they were weak rulers of the country, allowing the emergence of many local “petty kings” who threw the state into chaos and anarchy. Later historians speak of an “age of darkness” during which “demons and beasts assuming human shape were free to wander through the country, a time in which there was no religion or education but only corruption and disaster” (Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīḫ, I, pp. 704-707; 710-711, 823; Tansar Letter (§ 39). Structure of the Empire The figure of the king played a fundamental role in the power structure of the Arsacid empire; as descendant of the founder and leader of the state he was the maximal Parthian 135 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES authority. Nonetheless, many times in the history of the Parthian empire, the royal institution came under discussion by noble leaders or various pretenders and usurpers. Even on these occasions, the real element of continuity appeared to be the royal household. No pretender without a blood connection to the royal clan could have any chance of being accepted as the Great King by the many noble families (Strab., XVI, 1. 28). In other words every pretender to the throne who wished to have success had to be able to demonstrate his blood connection with Arsaces, the founder of the dynasty. From there he would have derived his legitimacy. Furthermore, some ceramic documents from Nisa suggest that a sort of “cult of the ancestors” existed or that at least the memory of the first Arsacid kings was kept in high esteem. Due to the nature of the Parthian state itself, its history and evolution, the Arsacid king amalgamated characteristics of Oriental/Persian Kings, nomadic tribal leaders, and Hellenistic sovereigns. Most probably a complex protocol regulated the royal ceremonies of investiture during which the Great King and his subjects reaffirmed the bond of allegiance that existed between them. Very little information in this regard is provided by the sources; we have the scenes of investiture in the reliefs of Elymais (Vanden Berghe and Schippmann, 1985), probably the investiture speech made by Tiridates, crowned in Rome (Cass. Dio, LXIII, 5), certainly the prestigious role reserved for the chief of the house of Surene as the only one allowed to put the crown on the head of the new Great King (Tac., Ann., VI, 42.4), and also the royal insignia that the king of Adiabene was allowed to show (Flav. Ioseph., Ant. Iud., XX, 54-69). These are all elements belonging to an intricate complex of power-sharing, power legitimization, and bonds of loyalty about which very little is known. As a general rule, the older prince would gain access to the throne after his father’s death. In some cases, the elder son was allowed to co-rule at the side of his elderly parent. The experience of Queen Musa and the occurrence of many cases of strife between brothers to gain the throne prove that this was not a strict rule. A Great King could change his mind or the right to the throne of the elder son could be put into discussion by members of the royal family or by the aristocratic groups. According to Roman and Greek chroniclers, the Arsacid monarchs were cruel and despotic. Posidonius informs us about the ruthless treatment reserved for the “companions” of the king during official banquets (Lerouge, 2013). The respect subjects showed depended on the fear the Great Kings were capable of instilling (Pomp. Trogus/Justin, XLI, 3. 9). Other topoi regarding Parthian kings concerned their polygamy (often associated with an excessive sexual appetite [Pomp. Trogus/Justin, XLI, 3. 1; Plut. Crass., 21, 7]) and intrigues at court between members of the ruling dynasty, which were closely connected with the supposed traditional political instability of all oriental kingdoms and of the Parthian kingdom as well. Roman historians faced a difficult task having to provide the Western public with a representation of the only people daring to challenge Rome’s supremacy over the whole known world. They found that the best solution was to provide a moral representation of the Parthians using the same stereotypes which the Greeks had conceived and handed down with regard to their enemies. A series of familiar ethnographic topoi were picked up and amalgamated in order to create a new artificial model for the Parthian people. Nonetheless, such a model proved useful in describing to the Romans this exotic people, The Arsacid Empire 136 capable of building a kingdom which, unlike all the others, Rome was not immediately able to subjugate, a kingdom which forced the greatest empire of that time to compromise. In general, the Roman explanation for the condition of political crisis in Parthia was ascribed to the very nature of the “barbarians.” In the absence of a real historical investigation, the temporary weakness of the Arsacids was seen as a natural consequence of their whimsical and inconstant nature. The Parthians were seen to be politically unstable, because they were unfaithful, treacherous, and unable to consolidate a kingdom always on the brink to collapse. According to the Romans, the reality could not be different: the Parthian kingdom was weak because the nature of its monarchs and subjects was weak (Gregoratti, 2012c). Pompeius Trogus (Pomp. Trogus/Justin, XLI, 2. 2) speaks of a “probulorum ordo,” a group of councillors, dignitaries, and high officers among whom generals were chosen in time of war and magistrates in time of peace. Some scholars postulated the existence of a royal senate in charge of supporting the Great King’s ruling activity (Strab., IX, 9. 3 quoting Posidonius of Apamea). Nothing seems to attest to the existence of such a political organ. Most probably, an aristocratic social group existed which expressed most of the high magistracies and played the role of a royal council, providing advice to the king and supporting his government activity. Greek and Roman writers, using familiar terms taken from the western political organization, thus offered the terms synedrion or senatus in an attempt to explain to their readers a particularity of the Parthian court. Nonetheless a group of dignitaries, religious figures, and men close to the king or relatives to him seem to maintain a reference role in the periods of political instability. The ostraka from Nisa help to shed light on Parthian administration (Lukonin, 1983). A series of officers’ titles, whose exact duties and competences remain unclear, appears in the documents. There were satraps, governors of the provinces described by Isidoros of Charax in his Parthian Stations (Kramer. 2003), along with the marzbān, marquis, probably at the head of border districts, the dizpat, fortress commander, probably in charge of lesser districts, and chief of the cavalry. Other titles like batēsa and hargapet seem to be widespread over the whole Parthian cultural area and beyond. This, along with other Iranic cultural elements, like Iranic loanwords and personal names, which can be found outside the Parthian proper territory, for example, Armenia, north Mesopotamia, and Caucasus, suggested to Albert de Jong the idea of what he called the “Parthian Commonwealth,” a geopolitical region that shared common elements of Iranic culture, thanks to a certain influence of Parthian authority (De Jong, 2013). During the so called “expansion period,” the Parthian kingdom was involved in a forceful expansive policy against the Seleucids. The situation required a strong royal authority supported by noble houses in its military effort. The collaboration of the aristocratic families was rewarded by granting them large estates in the conquered lands, including their populations and resources, which the conquerors exploited and considered their own private property. Moreover, king’s governors were normally chosen among the noble houses who had most of the land in a satrapy, thus promoting the creation of autonomous territorial properties outside royal control. By conquering new lands, the Arsacid kings were able to obtain enough money to preserve their own independence from the aristocracy, in particular, in the context of the army. In this way, such an income made possible the recruitment of 137 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES large numbers of central Asian tribesmen as mercenaries. Gradually these mercenaries became the only way the king had at disposal to exert control over the nobility and to raise an army quickly without recurring to the aristocracy. By the end of Mithridates II’s reign (about 88 BC), such a balanced situation began to change. New conquests occurred more and more rarely. In a kingdom like Parthia, so largely dependent on territorial acquisitions, this radically-changed circumstance along with the significant loss of income for the royal house made plain the enormous imbalance in the relative availability of money, and therefore of real power, between the king and the nobles. At the same time, the Arsacid candidates fighting each other for the throne saw themselves more and more often forced to rely almost entirely on aristocratic military power. The absolute control over large sectors of Parthian territory -- and more specifically the power they exerted on local populations -- constituted the basis of noble families’ military strength. Aristocratic members fought side by side with the monarch, leading into the battlefield huge personal armies rallied by recruiting soldiers among the subject populations living on their lands. Equipped and trained at their lords’ expenses, these units constituted the backbone of a typical Parthian army. The feudal armies, conceived originally as the main expression of a landlord’s loyalty towards the Crown and a substantial help for the king to maintain his dominant position, gradually assumed the characteristics of private militias, whose engagement at the king’s side was influenced mainly by the political plans of their patrician commanders. The situation could have been significantly different if only the monarch had been able to maintain that condition of economical autonomy that enabled his predecessors of the second century BC to hire mercenary contingents in large numbers. Employing mercenary armies would have allowed the monarch to preserve his independence, but in order to do this, large sums of money were needed. The first concern of Artabanus II, once ascended to the throne in AD 12, was to find new financial sources in order to increase the economic relevance of the Crown in contrast to the power of the aristocracy. He detected a possible solution in the highly remunerative long-distance trade that connected, both by land and sea, East Asia and India with the Mediterranean coast, and passed through many of the most important Parthian cities. The composition of the Parthian army has been the subject of discussion over the years. Pompeius Trogus (Pomp. Trogus/ Justin, XLI, 2. 5) refers to the troops recruited by the noble families among the populations living on their properties as servi, slaves. According to Wolski, western sources should not be taken literally (Wolski, 1983). By using words well known to their readers, the chroniclers attempted to explain a social phenomenon peculiar to Iranic society. The people living in the territory of a nobleman who retained “feudal” rights to that land obtained from the Great King were bound to a relationship of dependence towards their lord similar to that between the King and his vassals. Such a relationship implied a series of duties and services for the local lord such as serving in the nobleman’s militia. Pompeius, speaking of some four hundred freemen and fifty thousand servi, contributed to spreading the conviction that the Parthian army was constituted mainly by slaves. But the contradiction in Pompeius becomes evident when, continuing with the subdivision between servi and freemen, he maintains that only The Arsacid Empire 138 the freemen were allowed to ride horses (Pomp. Trogus/ Justin, XLI, 3. 4). Traditionally, the Parthian army was a mounted one, as seen in the description of the battle of Carrhae, where mounted archers were supposed to weaken the Roman units, forcing them to regroup to provide an ideal target for the smashing charge of mounted spearmen in full armor. Therefore the majority of the troops were trained in horse-riding. It is evident that the generic term used by Pompeius included different categories of men in service. Plutarch, in fact describing Surena’s army, introduces different types of servi, who outnumbered the freemen by nine times: douloi, pelátai, and oikétoi (Plut., Crass. 21 and 27). These represented different levels of dependent people corresponding to different services. It seems clear that the relations of dependence between lords and populations cannot be all assimilated with the traditional concept of slavery and were instead more similar to the institution of serfdom peculiar to high medieval Europe. Slavery as traditionally intended in the Classical world existed of course, but was limited to Mesopotamia and the regions where the presence of a Greek population was more relevant. Since its very beginning, the Parthian empire was characterised by a strongly decentralised and composite nature. Extremely different realities coexisted within its vast borders. A structure of territorial government existed, organized through satrapies and similar to those of the Seleucid and Achaemenid empires. In the territories ruled by royal satraps, Jewish communities (Nehardea, Babylonia), Greek poleis (Susa, Seleucia on the Tigris), and aristocratic households (Surene, Karene) exerted some kind of local power. The Arsacid monarchs used to confer some of their royal prerogatives on local groups of power which were strongly rooted in the territory in order to assure the control of the most important districts. In the land formally submitted to the Great King’s authority there were also local dynasties, endowed with an independent political life and administrative organization (Plin, N.H., VI, 112). These “client” kings were influenced in their activity, as were the provincial governors, by the oath of allegiance they took in favor of the Parthian king. These subordinated kingdoms included Armenia, Media Atropatene, Gordyene, Adiabene, Hatra, Osrhoene, Characene, Elymais, Persis, and, for a short period, Hyrcania and the Indo-Parthian states. The kingdom of Armenia, ruled for many decades by the Artaxiads, became one of the leading vassal states after the appointment to the throne of Tiridates, brother of Vologases I. The Arsacid dynasty of Armenia lasted much longer than the main branch and fiercely opposed the Sasanians for a long time after the fall of the Parthian empire, until the fourth century AD (Kettenhofen, 1998). The other kingdom that constituted the restricted leading council of Parthia according to Vologases I’s reorganization was that of Media Atropatenes, the seat of a local dynasty since the fourth century BC. Starting from the first century AD and the reign of Great King Artabanus II, the kingdom was ruled by a branch of the Arsacid royal house (Schottky, 1991). The kingdom of Adiabene, west of the Tigris, is famous for the conversion to Judaism of its powerful king Izates II, as reported by Flavius Josephus (Flav. Joseph., Ant. Jud., XX, 17-68; Bereshit Rabbah, XLVI, 10). It played a major role in Parthian policy during the reign of Artabanus II. The queen mother, Helena, established direct contacts with the community 139 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES of Jerusalem, where she built palaces and a royal tomb (Marciak, 2015). The city of Hatra in northern Mesopotamia flourished during the second century AD and was an important religious and commercial centre. Its impressive archaeological remains include several monumental religious buildings and an imposing wall curtain. It resisted the assaults of the Roman legions three times, under Trajan and Septimus Severus, and was finally conquered by the Sasanian army of Shapur I in AD 241. Hatra was a relevant religious and commercial centre, its lords, mary’, ruled over most of the settlements and routes of North Mesopotamia (Altaweel and Hauser, 2004). The numerous inscriptions describe a wealthy society where religion and royal authority play a fundamental role. The local royal administration was probably as complex as the Arsacid one: many court officers are mentioned including a rbyt’ dy ‘rb , that is to say a “Steward of Arab,” probably a royal officer in charge of maintaining a good relationship with the nomads living in the city territory (H 223, 224 and 364). Surprisingly, the inscriptions make no reference to the Arsacid royal authority even though we know from Roman sources that the later kings of Hatra were loyal servants of the Great King until his fall. This fact constitutes the most striking example of the territorial autonomy the Arsacid vassal king enjoyed (Gregoratti, 2013b). In northern Mesopotamia the kingdom of Osrhoene existed on the Euphrates border, with its capital, Edessa. Its rulers, the Abgarids, established their lordship a few years before the Arsacid conquest. As already mentioned, their capital city was Edessa. They pledged allegiance to the new rulers and later obtained the title of kings. Osrhoene’s geographical position, immediately east of Seleucia Zeugma, the most important crossing-point on the Euphrates on the main penetration route into Parthian land, rendered the Abgarid state one of the primary targets of any Roman military enterprise. Placed in the middle of two empires normally at odds, Edessa kings adopted an ambiguous policy, of which the role played by Abgar II in Crassus’s affair is only the most resounding example. King Abgar II played a key role in delaying the military expedition of Crassus. Secretly a loyal servant to the Great King, he pretended to join Crassus’s party in order to gain his confidence. He exploited the influence gained on the republican commander to draw him into the trap of Carrhae. In a plain land poor of water and suitable for Parthian war tactics, at the right moment he revealed his true face, openly taking the field at his lord’s side (Cass. Dio, XXXVII, 5. 5; XL, 20-23; Plut., Crass., 20-22). The Abgarids switched sides again in front of Trajan’s legions. After L. Verus’s campaign, they were included among the Roman client kings (Luther, 1999). At Sumatar Harabesi, a site 50 kilometers southeast of Edessa on the Tektek mountains, a series of inscriptions makes explicit reference to the Edessene court and administration as well as to a commander of ‘rb, that is to say, the governor of “Arabia.” He was probably a royal officer in charge of guarding the kingdom’s eastern frontiers, endowed with an authority similar to that of the “Steward of Arab,” later serving under the Hatreene kings (Healey, 2009, 228-234). The small kingdom of Characene was founded on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf in the second century BC, following the disintegration of Seleucid rule. Its capital and most important city was Spasinou Charax, named after Hyspaosines, a Seleucid governor, self-proclaimed king, and founder of the local dynasty. Its harbor cities and capital played an important role in the long-distance trade connecting Mesopotamia with India (Schuol The Arsacid Empire 140 2000, Gregoratti 2011). When the Arsacids managed to subjugate Mesopotamia, Hyspaosines had already been able to exert effective control over the sea routes connecting Mesopotamia with the Gulf, as attested by a Greek inscription from Bahrein (Gathier, Lombard and Al-Sindi, 2002, 223-226). Later Characene rulers managed to establish control over the stations along the sea route, Bahrein Island, Kharg Island and Ed- Dur, influencing the rise of more complex societies on the northern coast of the Arabian peninsula. Such commercial traffic could represent a chance for huge income. This spoke against a direct occupation of Characene by the Parthians and Apodakos, Hyspaosines’s son and successor, who was acknowledged as king of Characene. He maintained his father’s throne as a vassal monarch of the Parthian Great King, bound to him by an oath of allegiance with the right to mint his own coins. Attambelos VII, king in Characene since AD 113/4, offered his submission to the Roman emperor Trajan, who with an army and a fleet was approaching Mesene (Cass. Dio, LXVIII, 28. 3 - 29. 1). The failure of the invasion and Trajan’s death meant Attambelos’s political ruin and the ruin of the Characene local dynasty as well. The Parthians solved the Characenian problem once and for all by putting on the throne a member of the Arsacid dynasty and putting an end to the Hyspaosinid line of succession. From Palmyrene inscriptions, we see the role played by the kingdom, and in particular by the Palmyrene trade colonies that its monarchs hosted in the commercial network of the Syrian city.. Remarkably a Palmyrene inscription reveals that Yarhai, son of Nebuzabad, a citizen of Palmyra, thus a subject of the Roman empire and certainly a pre-eminent figure within the circle of merchants operating in the Mesenian capital city (Spasinou Charax), managed to hold an office in the new king’s administration as governor of the district of Tylos, that is to say, the present-day island of Bahrain (Starcky, 1949, X, 38). The kingdom of Elymais, ruled by the local dynasty of the Kamnaskirids, is another subject that entered the political scene before the Arsacid conquest of western Asia. Originated by the settlement of the mountain populations of southwest Iran, the kingdom managed to gain control of Babylon for a while in the middle of the second century BC. Forced to submit to the Arsacids, the Elymaeans annexed the Greek city of Susa in the first century AD. A few decades later, the Great King put an end to the local dynasty, probably substituting it with an Arsacid one. The new dynasts remained loyal to the Parthians until the fall of the empire (Dąbrowa, 1998). The role of the kings of Persis in southern Iran is much less clear. Located at the core territories of the Achaemenid empire, the kingdom of Persis always maintained a strong cultural and political identity under Greek and Parthian rule. The Arsacids surely exerted a certain influence on the local dynasty (the Fratarakā); in fact the protagonists of the Sasanian rebellion did not come from among the highest rank of its ruling class, but from its lesser local lords (Wiesehöfer, 1998). Some modern scholars also list the Indo-Parthian state among the Arsacid vassal kingdoms. This kingdom was established and ruled by Gondophares and his successors close to the Parthian eastern frontier during or slightly before the first century AD. It included parts of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India and is considered somehow connected with the Parthian noble house of Surena (Boperachchi 1998). 141 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Their high degree of autonomy allowed the vassal kings to develop an individual policy concerning both the international situation and the exploitation of territorial sources and the trade possibilities their lands offered. Throughout Arsacid history, these minor political entities tried to take advantage of the periodic weakness of the central authority to loosen the control the Great King was able to exert over their government activity and to increase their level of autonomy. For the Parthian sovereign, a loyal vassal king constituted a valuable ally for resolving international and internal problems. The local proficiencies of such monarchs assured the exploitation of territorial resources and potential in areas where the often limited capacities of the central authority were not able to intervene or effectively respond to needs. The autonomy achieved by the vassal kings put them in a position where they could rule undisturbed in obedience to political and economic obligations towards their lord. The authority of the legitimate descendant of Arsaces was acknowledged as superior by the “client” kings. The history of the relations between the Parthian king and his royal servants can be explained as the attempt to strike a balance between autonomy, whose benefits for both the local courts and the central power were evident, and the dangerous centrifugal forces originating in the peripheral areas of the empire. 143 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Figure. 1. The letter of Artabanus II/III to the city of Susa Figure. 2. Khong-e Azhdar Relief The Arsacid Empire Figure. 3. Parthian soldier 144 145 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Figure. 4. Funerary relief from Palmyra with Aramaic inscription The Arsacid Empire Figure. 5. Silver drachm of Arsaces I Figure. 6. Silver tetradrachm of Mithridates I Figure. 7. Silver drachms of Mithridates II 146 147 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Figure. 8. Pharates IV/Queen Musa Figure. 9. Aratabanus II Figure. 10. Artabanus III The Arsacid Empire Figure. 13. The relief of Herakles near Kermanshah Figure. 14. Aerial overview of Old Nisa 148 149 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Figure. 15. Possible head-bust of Queen Musa The Arsacid Empire Figure. 16. Parthian silver rhyton 150 151 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Bibliography Aggoula B. 1991. Inventaire des inscriptions hatréennes, Paris Alram M. 1998. Stand und Aufgaben der arsakidischen Numismatik, in J. Wiesehöfer, Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse, Stuttgart, pp. 365-387 Altaweel M.R. and Hauser S.R. 2004. 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Les relations de Justin et Plutarque sur les esclavages et la population dépendante dans l’empire parthe, «Iranica Antiqua», 18, pp. 145-157 Wolski, J. 1993. L’Empire des Arsacides, Leuven Zambelli M. 1963. La lettera di Artabano III alla città di Susa, «RFIC», 91, pp. 153-169 227 KING OF THE SEVEN CLIMES Contributors (in alphabetical order) Kamyar Abdi Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies, UC Irvine, USA 7 Omar Coloru Archéologie et Sciences de l’Antiquité, Nanterre FRANCE 105 Touraj Daryaee Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies, UC Irvine, USA 155 Hilary Gopnik Department Middle Eastern & South Asian Studies, Emory University, USA Leonardo Gregoratti Department of Classics & Ancient History, Durham University, UK Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Department of Ancient History, Cardiff University, Wales, U.K. Khodadad Rezakhani Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, Princeton University, USA 39 125 63 155, 199