In the midst of the civil wars, which became more serious after the death of Eucratides, Mithridates of Parthia began to extend his dominions at the expense of Bactria: even in the life-time of Eucratides he succeeded in annexing two satrapies. Another account makes Mithridates rule as far as India, and declares him to have obtained without war the old kingdom of Porus, or the rule over all nations between the Indus and the Hydaspes. The two accounts are reconciled by Chinese records, which tell that, about 161 B.C., the nomad people Sse broke into the valley of the Cophen and founded a kingdom in the very place of the Parthian conquests in India, which must therefore have been ephemeral. This fact has its importance, as illustrating the way in which the internal wars of the east Iranian Greeks helped to prepare the ground for the Scythian invasion. After this success in the east Mithridates turned his attention to the west, where the chances of success were not less inviting. Demetrius had at length fallen before a coalition of the neighbouring sovereigns, powerfully supported by the Romans through their instrument, the exile Heraclides. A pretender, Alexander, in 145 B.C., was utterly defeated by Ptolemy, and slain in his flight by an Arab chieftain. Demetrius (II) Nicator, however, soon made himself bitterly hated, and five years of fighting drove him out of the greater part of Syria.
MEDIA AND BABYLONIA CONQUERED
Such was the state of the empire when war broke out between Media and Parthia, which was finally decided in favour of the latter. The short-lived independence of Media was soon cut short by Mithridates, who did not lose the opportunity afforded by the civil wars of Syria in 147 B.C. Babylonia followed the fate of Media; and the whole province, with its capital Seleucia, fell into the hands of the Parthians. Thus the East was finally lost to the Macedonians.
The change of rule was not well received by the new subjects of Parthia, least of all by the Greeks and Macedonians of the upper provinces, who sent embassy after embassy to Demetrius. In 140 B.C. he marched into Mesopotamia, and thence by Babylon to the upper provinces. He was well received by the natives, and even the small native states made common cause with him against the proud barbarians, whose neighbourhood they felt to be oppressive. He was joined by the Persians and Elymæans, and the Bactrians helped him by a diversion, appearing now for the first time as an independent people. At first things went well, and the Parthians were defeated in several battles, but in Media in 139 B.C. Demetrius was surprised by the lieutenant of Mithridates during negotiations for peace; his forces were annihilated, and he himself was taken prisoner and dragged in chains through the provinces that had joined his cause. The Parthian king received his captive with favour and assigned him a residence and suitable establishment in Hyrcania. He even gave him his daughter Rhodogune, and promised to restore him to his kingdom, but this plan was interrupted by death.
[138 B.C.]
Mithridates’ latest campaign was against the king of Elymais; the rich temples yielding him a booty of ten thousand talents (£2,258,000 or $11,290,000). The country was brought under Parthia, but continued to have its own kings. The coins make it likely that Mithridates simply set up a new dynasty, a branch of his own house. Mithridates died at a good old age in 138 B.C., or a little later. His memory was reverenced almost equally with that of the founder of his house, but his real glory was much greater, for it was he who made Parthia a great power. He is praised as a just and humane ruler, who, having become lord of all the lands from the Indian Caucasus to the Euphrates, introduced among the Parthians the best institutions of each country, and so became the legislator of his nation.
PARTHIAN “KINGDOMS”
The divisions of the empire which he founded can be sketched by the aid of an excerpt from the itinerary of Isidore of Charax (at the beginning of the Christian era) and from Pliny. The empire was divided into the upper and lower kingdoms, separated by the Caspian Gates. The lower kingdoms were seven: (1) Mesopotamia and Babylonia, (2) Apolloniatis, (3) Chalonitis, (4) Carina, (5) Cambadene, (6) Upper Media, (7) Lower or Rhagian Media. The upper kingdoms were eleven: (8) Choarene, (9) Comisene, (10) Hyrcania, (11) Astauene, (12) Parthyene, (13) Apauarcticene, (14) Margiana, a part of Bactria, (15) Aria, (16) the country of the Anauans, (17) Zarangiana, and (18) Arachosia, now called “White India.” The eighteen Parthian kingdoms thus correspond to six old satrapies. The Parthians gave much less attention to the west than did their predecessors, and they still left Mesopotamia as the only great satrapy. We note also that they cared little for reaching the sea, which they can have touched only for a little way at the mouth of the Euphrates; and even here they allowed the petty Characene quite to outstrip them in competing for the great sea trade.
As compared with the older Macedonian Empire, the Parthian realm lacked the east Iranian satrapies, Bactria with Sogdiana, and the Paropanisadæ, and also the three Indian ones, which, with Parætacene, or as it was afterwards called Sacastane, remained under the Bactrian Greeks and their successors. In the north they lacked Lesser Media, which had long been an independent state, and in the south they lacked Susiana, which now belonged to Elymais, and the satrapies of Persis and Carmania, which the Persians held along with the western part of Gedrosia. In the extreme west they lacked Arebelitis proper, which formed a small kingdom under the name of Adiabene, first mentioned in 69 B.C. The kingdom of Mannus of Orrha in northern Mesopotamia, which according to Isidore reached a good way south of Edessa, seems also to have been independent, and, like Adiabene, probably existed before the Parthian time.
From these small kingdoms the Parthians asked only an acknowledgment of vassalship. When Parthia was vigorous the vassalship was real, but when Parthia was torn by factions it became a mere name. The relation was always loose, and the political power of Parthia was therefore never comparable to the later power of the Sassanians. Arsaces Tiridates and his successors called themselves “great king.” Mithridates, as overlord of the minor kingships, first bore the title “great king of kings.” The title seems to have been conferred, not assumed in mere boastfulness.
The nobility had great influence in all things, and especially in the nomination of the king, who, however, was always an Arsacid. Next to the king stood the senate of probuli, from whom all generals and lieutenant-governors were chosen. They were called the king’s kin, and were no doubt the old Parnian martial nobility. A second senate was composed of the magians and wise men, and by these two senates the king was nominated. The Parthians were, in fact, very pious, conscientious in observing even the most troublesome precepts in Zoroastrianism as to the disposal of dead bodies, which were exposed to birds of prey and dogs, the bare bones alone being buried. When the Parthian prince Tiridates visited Nero he journeyed overland that he might not be forced to defile the sea when he spat, and his spiritual advisers the magians travelled with him. The magians were not, indeed, so all-powerful as under the Sassanians, but it is quite a mistake to think that the Parthians were but lukewarm Zoroastrians.
SCYTHIAN CONQUEST OF BACTRIA
[177-130 B.C.]
The complete annihilation of the Macedonian Empire in Iran was closely followed by the destruction of Greek independence in eastern Iran. The last mention of independent Bactria is in 140 B.C.; no king of Bactria and Sogdiana is known from coins after the parricide Heliocles. Classical writers give only two laconic accounts of the catastrophe. Strabo says that the nomadic peoples of the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacaraucæ, dwellers in the land of the Sacæ, beyond the Jaxartes, opposite to the Sacæ and Sogdians, came and took Bactria from the Greeks. Trogus names the Scythian peoples Saraucæ and Asiani. Fortunately the lively interest taken by the Chinese in the movements of the nomads of central Asia enables us to fill up this meagre notice from the report of the Chinese agent in Bactria in 128 B.C., as recorded a little later by the oldest Chinese historian, and from other notices collected by the Chinese after the opening of the regular caravan route with the West, about 115 B.C., and embodied in their second oldest history.