Parthian Empire

Legacy

Parthia was Rome's great eastern rival for three centuries and kept Silk Road trade flowing; the Parthian shot, a backward arrow fired while retreating, survives as an English expression.

Timeline of Parthian Empire

1. 247 BCE
   Arsaces I begins the Arsacid era

   Arsaces I was chief of the Parni, a nomadic Iranian people of the Dahae confederation on the steppes north-east of Iran. Around this time the Seleucid governor of Parthia, Andragoras, rebelled against his king, and the Parni went on to conquer the province, probably overthrowing Andragoras in about 238 BCE. The Arsacid kings later counted their era from 247 BCE, although historians disagree about what actually happened that year. From this small base in north-east Iran grew an empire that would rule from the Euphrates to Afghanistan for almost five centuries.

2. 148 BCE
   Mithridates I conquers Media

   For decades the Parthians held only north-eastern Iran, but Mithridates I (c. 171–132 BCE), whom one historian compares to Cyrus the Great, turned the kingdom into an empire. After seizing two provinces from the Greco-Bactrian kingdom to the east, he turned on the Seleucids, whose hold on Media had just been shaken by the rebellion of Timarchus. In 148 or 147 BCE he invaded Media and occupied its capital, Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). Parthia now held the western Iranian plateau and the road down to Mesopotamia, and Ecbatana became the kings' summer residence.

3. 141 BCE
   Mithridates I takes Seleucia and Mesopotamia

   With Media secured, Mithridates I pushed down into Babylonia, the rich lowland heart of the Seleucid east. By 141 BCE he was minting coins at Seleucia on the Tigris, the great Greek city of Mesopotamia, and held an official investiture ceremony there. His forces then subdued Elymais and Characene and occupied Susa, and a Seleucid counter-attack ended with King Demetrius II taken prisoner. Parthian authority now ran from Mesopotamia as far east as the Indus, and Ctesiphon, across the river from Seleucia, would later become the royal capital.

4. 129 BCE
   Phraates II defeats and kills the Seleucid Antiochus VII at Ecbatana

   The Seleucid king Antiochus VII set out in 130 BCE to win back Mesopotamia, defeating a Parthian general on the Great Zab and occupying Babylonia and Susa. He demanded that Phraates II give up everything except Parthia itself and pay heavy tribute. But his army wintered in Media and exhausted the countryside, and in spring 129 BCE the Medes revolted; the main Parthian army then attacked and killed Antiochus at the Battle of Ecbatana. It was the last great Seleucid attempt to recover the east: Mesopotamia remained Parthian, and the Seleucid kingdom shrank back to Syria.

5. 124 BCE
   Mithridates II begins a reign of expansion; Armenia forced to submit

   Victory over the Seleucids was followed by disaster in the east, where Saka nomads, pushed west by the Yuezhi, killed Phraates II and, according to Justin, his successor Artabanus I. Mithridates II (c. 124–91 BCE) restored the empire: he recovered lands lost to the Saka, made the kings of Characene his vassals and occupied Dura-Europos on the Euphrates in 113 BCE. In 97 BCE his forces deposed Artavasdes I of Armenia and took the young prince Tigranes hostage. Parthian power now reached from the Euphrates to Afghanistan, and a Parthian envoy met Rome's Sulla on the Euphrates.

6. 53 BCE
   Surena destroys Crassus's Roman army at Carrhae

   Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of Rome's three ruling triumvirs and now governor of Syria, invaded Mesopotamia in 53 BCE. Near Carrhae (modern Harran in Turkey), his seven legions met the Parthian general Surena, whose army was entirely mounted: about 1,000 armoured cataphracts and 9,000 horse archers, kept supplied with arrows by a camel train. Though outnumbered roughly four to one, the Parthians shot the Roman infantry to pieces; some 20,000 Romans died, about 10,000 were captured, and Crassus was killed at a parley. It was one of Rome's worst defeats, and it fixed Parthia's reputation as Rome's equal in the east.

7. 40 BCE
   Parthian forces overrun most of the Levant (40–39 BCE)

   After Carrhae the Parthians tried to seize Rome's eastern provinces, and Rome's civil wars gave them their chance. In 40–39 BCE the crown prince Pacorus I, joined by the renegade Roman general Quintus Labienus, overran Syria; Labienus pushed into Anatolia while Pacorus took every city on the Levantine coast as far south as Ptolemais (Acre) except Tyre. In Judea they made their ally Antigonus king, and Herod fled. For a short time Parthian power reached the Mediterranean, until Mark Antony's general Ventidius drove them back, killing Pacorus at Mount Gindarus in 38 BCE.

8. 36 BCE
   Mark Antony invades Parthia and suffers heavy losses

   Phraates IV had secured the Parthian throne by killing or exiling his brothers, and one of them, Monaeses, persuaded Mark Antony to invade. In 36 BCE Antony led a huge army, put at 90,000–100,000 men with his allies, through Armenia into Media Atropatene (north-west Iran) and besieged its capital. Parthian cavalry destroyed his slow siege train, the Armenian king abandoned him, and the siege failed. On the long retreat, harassed all the way, Antony lost tens of thousands of men, though the ancient accounts disagree widely on the numbers. Parthia's territory remained intact.

9. 116
   Trajan captures Ctesiphon

   Rome and Parthia had long competed to control Armenia, and when the Parthian king Osroes I installed his own candidate there without consulting Rome, Emperor Trajan went to war. In 114 CE he made Armenia a Roman province, and in 115 he invaded Mesopotamia, meeting little resistance because Osroes was fighting a civil war in the east. In 116 Trajan marched down the Euphrates, took Dura-Europos, Seleucia and the capital Ctesiphon, and reached the Persian Gulf. Never again would the Roman Empire advance so far east, and for a moment Parthia's western heartland was in Roman hands.

10. 117
    Trajan withdraws; the Euphrates frontier is restored

    Trajan's conquests proved fragile. While he was in the south, the cities of Babylonia rose against their Roman garrisons, and on his way north he failed to take the desert fortress of Hatra. In 117 CE he withdrew from Mesopotamia, intending to return the next year, but he died suddenly in August. His successor Hadrian, short of troops, chose not to hold Mesopotamia and confirmed the Euphrates as the frontier. Parthia regained its lowland heartland, though the war had shown how exposed Ctesiphon was to Roman armies marching down the rivers.

11. 164
    Avidius Cassius invades; Seleucia and Ctesiphon burned

    In 161 CE the Parthian king Vologases IV invaded Armenia and Syria, starting a new war with Rome. The co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus struck back: one army invaded Armenia in 163, and in 164 (some accounts say 165) the general Avidius Cassius led another down into Mesopotamia. The Romans captured Seleucia and Ctesiphon and burned them to the ground, but a deadly epidemic, possibly smallpox, broke out among the soldiers and forced them to retreat. Rome kept Dura-Europos on the middle Euphrates, and Parthia's great Mesopotamian cities lay in ruins.

12. 197
    Septimius Severus captures Seleucia and Ctesiphon

    Septimius Severus had just won Rome's civil war, and Parthia and its vassals had backed his rival Pescennius Niger. In 197 CE, during the reign of Vologases V, Severus crossed the Euphrates and, like Trajan, marched his army down the river to capture Seleucia and sack Ctesiphon, probably late in 197 or early in 198. He took the title Parthicus Maximus but, again like Trajan, failed to take Hatra after two long sieges. Rome annexed the northern half of Mesopotamia, pushing its frontier deeper into former Parthian lands.

13. 212
    Artabanus IV rebels against Vologases VI: civil war

    Around 212–213 CE, a few years after Vologases VI succeeded his father, his brother Artabanus IV rebelled and took most of the empire, including Media and Susa, while Vologases kept a small realm around Seleucia. The Roman emperor Caracalla exploited the split, invading Mesopotamia and sacking the Parthian royal tombs at Arbela. Artabanus fought the Romans off at Nisibis in 217, and Rome paid a large indemnity for peace. But the long civil war drained Arsacid strength just as a new power was rising in Persis in the south-west.

14. 224
    Ardashir I defeats and kills Artabanus IV at Hormozdgan

    In Persis (modern Fars), the local prince Ardashir I of the Sasanian family had begun conquering neighbouring regions such as Kerman in defiance of Arsacid rule. When Artabanus IV finally marched against him, the two armies met at Hormozdgan, a site still not located, on 28 April 224 CE; Artabanus was defeated and killed. Ardashir took the title King of Kings, and his Sasanian Empire replaced the Parthians across Iran and Mesopotamia, although Vologases VI held out at Seleucia until about 228. Almost five centuries of Arsacid rule had ended.

Periods and reigns

• Arsaces I 247–211 BCE
• Arsaces II to Phraates I 211–171 BCE
• Mithridates I 171–132 BCE
• Mithridates II 124–91 BCE
• Phraates III 71–58 BCE
• Orodes II 57–38 BCE
• Phraates IV 38–2 BCE
• Vologases I 51–77
• Artabanus IV 213–224

Rulers

• Arsaces I c. 247 – 217 BCE

  Founder of the Arsacid dynasty

• Mithridates I c. 165 – 132 BCE

  Conquered Media and Mesopotamia

• Mithridates II c. 124 – 91 BCE

  Brought the empire to its height

• Orodes II c. 57 – 37 BCE

  His army destroyed Crassus at Carrhae

• Vologases I c. 51 – 78 CE

  Won Armenia for his brother after war with Rome

• Artabanus IV c. 213 – 224 CE

  Last king, overthrown by Ardashir

Realms on the map

• Parthian Empire 239 BCE – 224 CE

Chapters

• The world in 200 BCE: Rome and Han Rise
• The world in 100 BCE: The Silk Road Opens
• The world in 1 BCE: The Augustan World
• The world in 100: Trajan's Rome, Han China
• The world in 200: Han China Crumbles