CHAPTER VIII.
Accession of Artabanus II. Position of Parthia. Growing pressure upon her, and general advance towards the south, of the Saka or Scyths. Causes and extent of the movement. Character and principal tribes of the Saka. Scythic war of Artabanus. His death.
The successor of Phraates was his uncle, Artabanus, a son of Priapatius. It is probable that the late king had either left no son, or none of sufficient age to be a fit occupant of the throne at a season of difficulty. The “Megistanes,” therefore, elected Artabanus in his nephew’s place, a man of mature age, and, probably, of some experience in war. The situation of Parthia, despite her recent triumph over the Syro-Macedonians, was critical; and it was of the greatest importance that the sceptre should be committed to one who would bring to the discharge of his office those qualities of wisdom, promptness, and vigor, which a crisis demands.
The difficulty of the situation was two-fold. In the first place, there was an immediate danger to be escaped. The combined Greeks and Scythians, who had defeated the Parthian army and slain the monarch, might have been expected to push their advantage to the utmost, and seek to establish themselves as conquerors in the country which lay apparently at their mercy. At any rate, the siege and sack of some of the chief towns was a probable contingency, if permanent occupation of the territory did not suit the views of the confederates. The new monarch had to rid Parthia of her invaders at as little cost as possible, before he could allow himself to turn his attention to any other matter whatsoever. Nor did this, under the circumstances, appear to be an easy task. The flower of the Parthian troops had been destroyed in the late battle, and it was not easy to replace them by another native army. The subject-nations were at no time to be depended upon when Parthia was reduced to straits, and at the present conjecture some of the most important were in a condition bordering upon rebellion. Himerus, the viceroy left by Phraates in Babylonia, had first driven the Babylonians and Seleucians to desperation by his tyranny, and then plunged into a war with the people of Mesene, which must have made it difficult for him to send Artabanus any contingent. Fortunately for the Parthians, the folly or moderation of their enemies rendered any great effort on their part unnecessary. The Greeks, content with having revenged themselves, gave the new monarch no trouble at all: the Scythians were satisfied with plundering and wasting the open country, after which they returned quietly to their homes. Artabanus found himself quit of the immediate danger which had threatened him almost without exertion of his own, and could now bend his thoughts to the position of his country generally, and the proper policy to pursue under the circumstances.
For there was a second and more formidable danger impending over the State—a danger not casual and temporary like the one just escaped, but arising out of a condition of things in neighboring regions which had come about slowly, and which promised to be permanent. To give the reader the means of estimating this danger aright, it will be necessary to take a somewhat wide view of the state of affairs on the northern and north-eastern frontiers of Parthia for some time previously to the accession of Artabanus, to trace out the causes which were at work, producing important changes in these regions, and to indicate the results which threatened, and those which were accomplished. The opportunity will also serve for giving such an account of the chief races which here bordered the empire as will show the nature of the peril to which Parthia was exposed at this period.
In the wide plains of Northern Asia, extending from the Arctic Ocean to the Thian Chan mountains and the Jaxartes, there had been nurtured from a remote antiquity a nomadic population, at no time very numerous in proportion to the area over which it was spread, but liable on occasions to accumulate, owing to a combination of circumstances, in this or that portion of the region occupied, and at such times causing trouble to its neighbors. From about the close of the third century B.C. symptoms of such an accumulation had begun to display themselves in the tract immediately north of the Jaxartes, and the inhabitants of the countries south of that river had suffered from a succession of raids and inroads, which were not regarded as dangerous, but which gave constant annoyance. Crossing the great desert of Kharesm by forced marches, some of the hordes invaded the green valleys of Hyrcania and Parthia, and carried desolation over those fair and flourishing districts. About the same time other tribes entered the Bactrian territory and caused alarm to the Greek kingdom recently established in that province. It appears that the Parthian monarchs, unable to save their country from incursions, consented to pay a sort of black-mail to their invaders, by allowing them the use of their pasture grounds at certain fixed times—probably during some months of each year. The Bactrian princes had to pay a heavier penalty. Province after province of their kingdom was swallowed up by the northern hordes, who gradually occupied Sogdiana, or the tract between the lower Jaxartes and the lower Oxus, whence they proceeded to make inroads into Bactria itself. The rich land on the Polytimetus, or Ak Su, the river of Samarkand, and even the highlands between the upper Jaxartes and upper Oxus, were permanently occupied by the invaders; and if the Bactrians had not compensated themselves for their losses by acquisitions of territory in Afghanistan and India, they would soon have had no kingdom left. The hordes were always increasing in strength through the influx of fresh immigrants, and in lieu of Bactria a power now stood arrayed on the north-eastern frontier of the Parthians, which was reasonably regarded with the most serious alarm and suspicion.
The origin of the state of things here described is to be sought, according to the best authorities, in certain movements which took place about B.C. 200, in a remote region of inner Asia. At that time a Turanian people called the Yue-chi were expelled from their territory on the west of Chen-si by the Hiong-nu, whom some identified with the Huns. The Yue-chi separated into two bands; the smaller descended southwards into Thibet; the larger passed westwards, and after a hard struggle dispossessed a people called ‘Su’ of the plains west of the river of Hi. These latter advanced to Ferghana and the Jaxartes; and the Yue-chi not long afterwards retreating from the Usiun, another nomadic race, passed the ‘Su’ on the north and occupied the tracts between the Oxus and the Caspian. The Su were thus in the vicinity of the Bactrian Greeks; the Yue-chi in the neighborhood of the Parthians. On the particulars of this account, which come from the Chinese historians, we cannot perhaps altogether depend; but there is no reason to doubt the main fact, attested by a writer who visited the Yue-chi in B.C. 139, that they had migrated about the period mentioned from the interior of Asia, and had established themselves sixty years later in the Caspian region. Such a movement would necessarily have thrown the entire previous population of those parts into commotion, and would probably have precipitated them upon their neighbors. It accounts satisfactorily for the pressure of the northern hordes at this period on the Parthians, Bactrians, and even the Indians; and it completely explains the crisis in Parthian history, which we have now reached, and the necessity which lay upon the nation of meeting and, if possible, overcoming, an entirely new danger.
In fact, one of those occasions of peril had arisen, to which in ancient times the civilized world was always liable from an outburst of northern barbarism. Whether the peril has altogether passed away or not we need not here inquire; but certainly in the old world there was always a chance that civilization, art, refinement, luxury, might suddenly and almost without warning be swept away by an overwhelming influx of savage hordes from the unpolished North. From the reign of Oyaxares, when the evil first showed itself, the danger was patent to all wise and far-seeing governors both in Europe and Asia, and was from time to time guarded against. The expeditions of Cyrus against the Massagetse, of Darius Hystaspis against the European Scyths, of Alexander against the Getee, of Trajan and Probus across the Danube, were designed to check and intimidate the northern nations, to break their power, and diminish the likelihood of their taking the offensive. It was now more than four centuries since in this part of Asia any such effort had been made; and the northern barbarians might naturally have ceased to fear the arms and discipline of the South. Moreover the circumstances of the time scarcely left them a choice. Pressed on continually more and more by the newly-arrived Su and Yue-chi, the old inhabitants of the Transoxianian regions were under the necessity of seeking new settlements, and could only attempt to find them in the quarter towards which they were driven by the new-comers. Strengthened, probably, by daring spirits from among their conquerors themselves they crossed the rivers and the deserts by which they had been hitherto confined, and advancing against the Parthians, Bactrians, and Arians, threatened to carry all before them. We have seen how successful they were against the Bactrians. In Ariana, they passed the mountains, and, proceeding southwards, occupied the tract below the great lake wherein the Helmend terminates, which took from them the name of Saeastane (“land of the Saka,” or Scyths)—a name still to be traced in the modern “Seistan.” Further to the east they effected a lodgment in Kabul, and another in the the southern portion of the Indus valley, which for a time bore the name of Indo-Scythia. They even crossed the Indus and attempted to penetrate into the interior of India, but here they were met and repulsed by a native monarch, about the year B.C. 56.
The people engaged in this great movement are called, in a general way, by the classical writers, Sacse, or Scythse—i.e. Scyths. They consisted of a number of tribes, similar for the most part in language, habits, and mode of life, and allied more or less closely to the other nomadic races of Central and Northern Asia. Of these tribes the principal were the Massagetse (“great Jits, or Jats”), who occupied the country on both sides of the lower course of the Oxus; the Dahse, who bordered the Caspian above Hyrcania, and extended thence to the latitude of Herat; the Tochari, who settled in the mountains between the upper Jaxartes and the upper Oxus, where they gave name to the tract known as Tokhar-estan; the Asii, or Asiani, who were closely connected with the Tochari, and the Sakarauli (Saracucse?), who are found connected with both the Tochari and the Asiani. Some of these tribes contained within them further sub-divisions; e.g. the Dahse, who comprised the Parni (or Apariii), the Pissuri, and the Xanthii; and the Massagetse, who included among them Chorasmii, Attasii, and others.
The general character of the barbarism in which these various races were involved may be best learnt from the description given of one of them, the Massagetae, with but few differences, by Herodotus and Strabo. According to this description, the Massagetse were nomads, who moved about in wagons or carts, accompanied by their flocks and herds, on whose milk they chiefly sustained themselves. Each man had only one wife, but all the wives were held in common. They were good riders and excellent archers, but fought both on horseback and on foot, and used, besides their bows and arrows, lances, knives, and battle-axes. They had little or no iron, but made their spear and arrow-heads, and their other weapons, of bronze. They had also bronze breast-plates; but otherwise the metal with which they adorned and protected their own persons, and the heads of their horses, was gold. To a certain extent they were cannibals. It was their custom not to let the aged among them die a natural death, but, when life seemed approaching its natural term, to offer them up in sacrifice,—and then boil the flesh and feast on it. This mode of ending life was regarded as the best and most honorable; such as died of disease were not eaten but buried, and their friends bewailed their misfortune.
It may be added to this that we have sufficient reason to believe that the Massagetse and the other nomads of these parts regarded the use of poisoned arrows as legitimate in warfare, and employed the venom of serpents, and the corrupted blood of man, to make the wounds which they inflicted more deadly.
Thus, what was threatened was not merely the conquest of one race by another cognate to it, like that of the Medes by the Persians, or of the Greeks by Rome, but the obliteration of such art, civilization, and refinement as Western Asia had attained to in course of ages by the successive efforts of Babylonians, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and Greeks—the spread over some of the fairest regions of the earth of a low type of savagery—a type which in religion went no further than the worship of the sun; in art knew but the easier forms of metallurgy and the construction of carts; in manners and customs, included cannibalism, the use of poisoned weapons, and a relation between the sexes destructive alike of all delicacy and of all family affection. The Parthians were, no doubt, rude and coarse in their character as compared with the Persians; but they had been civilized to a certain extent by three centuries of subjection to the Persians and the Greco-Macedonians before they rose to power; they affected Persian manners; they patronized Greek art, they appreciated the advantages of having in their midst a number of Greek states. Had the Massagetse and their kindred tribes of Sakas, Tochari, Dahse, Yue-chi, and Su, which now menaced the Parthian power, succeeded in sweeping it away, the general declension of all which is lovely or excellent in human life would have been marked. Scythicism would have overspread Western Asia. No doubt the conquerors would have learned something from those whom they subjected; but it cannot be supposed that they would have learned much. The change would have been like that which passed over the Empire of the West, when Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, Heruli, depopulated its fairest provinces and laid its civilization in the dust. The East would have been barbarized; the gains of centuries would have been lost; the work of Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, and other great benefactors of Asiatic humanity, have been undone; Western Asia would have sunk back into a condition not very much above that from which it was raised two thousand years earlier by the primitive Chaldaeans and the Assyrians.
Artabanus II., the Parthian monarch who succeeded Phraates II., appears to have appreciated aright the perils of his position. He was not content, when the particular body of barbarians which had defeated and slain his predecessor, having ravaged Parthia Proper, returned home, to fold his arms and wait until he was again attacked. According to the brief, but expressive words of Justin, he assumed the aggressive, and invaded the country of the Tochari, one of the most powerful of the Scythic tribes, which was now settled in a portion of the region that had, till lately, belonged to the Bactrian kingdom. Artabanus evidently felt that what was needed was to roll back the flood of invasion which had advanced so near to the sacred home of his nation; that the barbarians required to be taught a lesson; that they must at least be made to understand that Parthia was to be respected; or that, if this could not be done, the fate of the Empire was sealed. He therefore, with a gallantry and boldness that we cannot sufficiently admire—a boldness that seemed like rashness, but was in reality prudence—without calculating too closely the immediate chances of battle, led his troops against one of the most forward of the advancing tribes. But fortune, unhappily, was adverse. How the battle was progressing we are not told; but it appears that in the thick of an engagement Artabanus received a wound in the forearm, from the effects of which he died almost immediately. The death of the leader decides in the East, almost to a certainty, the issue of a contest. We cannot doubt that the Parthians, having lost their monarch, were repulsed; that the expedition failed; and that the situation of affairs became once more at least as threatening as it had been before Artabanus made his attempt. Two Parthian monarchs had now fallen within the space of a few years in combat with the aggressive Scyths—two Parthian armies had suffered defeat. Was this to be always so? If it was, then Parthia had only to make up her mind to fall, and, like the great Roman, to let it be her care that she should fall grandly and with dignity.
CHAPTER IX.
Accession of Mithridates II. Termination of the Scythic Wars. Commencement of the struggle with Armenia. Previous history of Armenia. Result of the first Armenian War. First contact of Rome with Parthia. Attitude of Rome towards the East at this time. Second Armenian War. Death of Mithridates.
On the death of Artabanus II., about B.C. 124, his son, Mithridates II., was proclaimed king. Of this monarch, whose achievements (according to Justin) procured him the epithet of “the Great,” the accounts which have come down to us are extremely scanty and unsatisfactory. Justin, who is our principal informant on the subject of the early Parthian history, has unfortunately confounded him with the third monarch of the name, who ascended the throne more than sixty years later, and has left us only the slightest and most meagre outline of his actions. The other classical writers, only to a very small extent, supplement Justin’s narrative; and the result is that of a reign which was one of the most important in the early Parthian series, the historical inquirer at the present day can form but a most incomplete conception.
It appears, however, from the account of Justin, and from such other notices as have reached us of the condition of things at this time in the regions lying east of the Caspian, that Mithridates was entirely successful where his father and his cousin had signally failed. He gained a number of victories over the Scythic hordes; and effectually checked their direct progress towards the south, throwing them thereby upon the east and the south-east. Danger to Parthia from the Scyths seems after his reign to have passed away. They found a vent for their superabundant population in Seistan, Afghanistan, and India, and ceased to have any hopes of making an impression on the Arsacid kingdom. Mithridates, it is probable, even took territory from them. The acquisition of parts of Bactria by the Parthians from the Scyths, which is attested by Strabo, belongs, in all likelihood, to his reign; and the extension of the Parthian dominion to Seistan may well date from the same period. Justin tells us that he added many nations to the Parthian Empire. The statements made of the extent of Parthia on the side of Syria in the time of Mithridates the First render it impossible for us to discover these nations in the west: we are, therefore, compelled to regard them as consisting of races on the eastern frontier, who could at this period only be outlying tribes of the recent Scythic immigration.
The victories of Mithridates in the East encouraged him to turn his arms in the opposite direction, and to make an attack on the important country of Armenia, which bordered his north-western frontier. Armenia was at the time under the government of a certain Ortoadistus, who seems to have been the predecessor, and was perhaps the father, of the great Tigranes. Ortoadistus ruled the tract called by the Romans “Armenia Magna,” which extended from the Euphrates on the west to the mouth of the Araxes on the east, and from the valley of the Kur northwards to Mount Niphates and the head streams of the Tigris towards the south. The people over which he ruled was one of the oldest in Asia and had on many occasions shown itself impatient of a conqueror. Justin, on reaching this point in his work, observes that he could not feel himself justified if, when his subject brought before him so mighty a kingdom, he did not enter at some length on its previous history. The modern historian would be even less excusable than Justin if he omitted such a review, since, while he has less right to assume a knowledge of early Armenian history on the part of his readers, he has greater means of gratifying their curiosity, owing to the recent discovery of sources of information unknown to the ancients.
Armenia first comes before us in Genesis, where it is mentioned as the country on whose mountains the ark rested. A recollection of it was thenceforth retained in the semi-mythic traditions of the Babylonians. According to some, the Egyptian monarchs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties carried their arms into its remote valleys, and exacted tribute from the petty chiefs who then ruled there. At any rate, it is certain that from about the ninth century B.C. it was well known to the Assyrians, who were engaged from that time till about B.C. 640 in almost constant wars with its inhabitants. At this period three principal races inhabited the country—the Nairi, who were spread from the mountains west of Lake Van along both sides of the Tigris to Bir on the Euphrates, and even further; the Urarda (Alarodii, or people of Ararat), who dwelt north and east of the Nairi, on the upper Euphrates, about the lake of Van, and probably on the Araxes; and the Minni, whose country lay south-east of the Urarda, in the Urumiyeh basin and the adjoining parts of Zagros. Of these three races, the Urarda were the most powerful, and it was with them that the Assyrians waged their most bloody wars. The capital city of the Urarda was Van, on the eastern shores of the lake; and here it was that their kings set up the most remarkable of their inscriptions. Six monarchs, who apparently all belong to one dynasty, left inscriptions in this locality commemorative of their military expeditions or of their offerings to the gods. The later names of the series can be identified with those of kings who contended with Assyrian monarchs belonging to the last, or Sargonid dynasty; and hence we are entitled approximately to fix the series to the seventh and eighth centuries before our era. The Urarda must at this time have exercised a dominion over almost the whole of the region to which the name of Armenia commonly attaches. They were worthy antagonists of the Assyrians, and, though occasionally worsted in fight, maintained their independence, at any rate, till the time of Asshur-bani-pal (about B.C. 640), when the last king of the Van series, whose name is read as Bilat-duri, succumbed to the Assyrian power, and consented to pay a tribute for his dominions.
There is reason to believe that between the time when we obtain this view of the primitive Armenian peoples and that at which we next have any exact knowledge of the condition of the country—the time of the Persian monarchy—a great revolution had taken place in the region. The Nairi, Urarda, and Minni were Turanian, or, at any rate, non-Arian, races. Their congeners in Western Asia were the early Babylonians and the Susianians, not the Medes, the Persians, or the Phrygians. But by the time of Herodotus the Arian character of the Armenians had become established. Their close connection with the Phrygians was recognized. They had changed their national appellation; for while in the Assyrian period the terms Nairi and Urarda had preponderated, under the Persians they had come to be called Armenians and their country Armenia. The personal names of individuals in the country, both men and women, had acquired a decidedly Arian cast. Everything seems to indicate that a strange people had immigrated into the land, bringing with them a new language, new manners and customs, and a new religious system. From what quarter they had come, whether from Phrygia as Herodotus and Stephen believed, or, as we should gather from their language and religion, from Media, is perhaps doubtful; but it seems certain that from one quarter or another Armenia had been Arianized; the old Turanian character had passed away from it; immigrants had nocked in, and a new people had been formed—the real Armenian of later times, and indeed of the present day—by the admixture of ruling Arian tribes with a primitive Turanian population, the descendants of the old inhabitants.
The new race, thus formed, though perhaps not less brave and warlike than the old, was less bent on maintaining its independence. Moses of Chorene, the Armenian historian, admits that from the time of the Median preponderance in Western Asia the Armenians held under them a subject position. That such was their position under the Persians is abundantly evident;25 and, so far as appears, there was only one occasion during the entire Achaemenian period (B.C. 559 to B.C. 331) when they exhibited any impatience of the Persian yoke, or made any attempt to free themselves from it. In the early portion of the reign of Darius Hystaspis they took part in a revolt raised by a Mede called Phraortes, and were not reduced to obedience without some difficulty. But from henceforth their fidelity to the Achaemenian Kings was unbroken; they paid their tribute (apparently) without reluctance, and furnished contingents of troops to the Persian armies when called upon. After Arbela they submitted without a struggle to Alexander; and when in the division of his dominions, which followed upon the battle of Ipsus, they fell naturally to Seleucus, they acquiesced in the arrangement. It was not until Antiochus the Great suffered his great defeat at the hands of the Romans (B.C. 190) that Armenia bestirred itself, and, after probably four and a half centuries of subjection, became once more an independent power. Even then the movement seems to have originated rather in the ambition of a chief than in a desire for liberty on the part of the people. Artaxias had been governor of the Greater Armenia under Antiochus, and seized the opportunity afforded by the battle of Magnesia to change his title of satrap into that of sovereign. No war followed. Antiochus was too much weakened by his reverses to make any attempt to reduce Artaxias or recover Armenia; and the nation obtained autonomy without having to undergo the usual ordeal of a bloody struggle. When at the expiration of five-and-twenty years Epiphanes, the son of Antiochus the Great, determined on an effort to reconquer the lost province, no very stubborn resistance was offered to him. Artaxias was defeated and made prisoner in the very first year of the war (B.C. 165), and Armenia seems to have passed again under the sway of the Seleucidae.
It would seem that matters remained in this state for the space of about fifteen or sixteen years. When, however, Mithridates I. (Arsaces VI.), about B.C. 150, had overrun the eastern provinces of Syria, and made himself master in succession of Media, Elymais, and Babylonia, the revolutionary movement excited by his successes reached Armenia, and the standard of independence was once more raised in that country. According to the Armenian historians, an Arsacid prince, Wagharshag or Valarsaces, was established as sovereign by the influence of the Parthian monarch, but was allowed to rule independently. A reign of twenty-two years is assigned to this prince, whose kingdom is declared to have reached from the Caucasus to Nisibis, and from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. He was succeeded by his son, Arshag (Arsaces), who reigned thirteen years, and was, like his father, active and warlike, contending chiefly with the people of Pontus. At his death the crown descended to his son, Ardashes, who is probably the Ortoadistus of Justin.
Such were the antecedents of Armenia when Mithridates II., having given an effectual check to the progress of the Scythians in the east, determined to direct his arms towards the west, and to attack the dominions of his relative, the third of the Armenian Arsacidse. Of the circumstances of this war, and its results, we have scarcely any knowledge. Justin, who alone distinctly mentions it, gives us no details. A notice, however, in Strabo, which must refer to about this time, is thought to indicate with sufficient clearness the result of the struggle, which seems to have been unfavorable to the Armenians. Strabo says that Tigranes, before his accession to the throne, was for a time a hostage among the Parthians. As hostages are only given by the vanquished party, we may assume that Ortoadistus (Ardashes) found himself unable to offer an effectual resistance to the Parthian king, and consented after a while to a disadvantageous peace, for his observance of which hostages were required by the victor.
It cannot have been more than a few years after the termination of this war, which must have taken place towards the close of the second, or soon after the beginning of the first century, that Parthia was for the first time brought into contact with Rome.
The Great Republic, which after her complete victory over Antiochus III., B.C. 190, had declined to take possession of a single foot of ground in Asia, regarding the general state of affairs as not then ripe for an advance of Terminus in that quarter, had now for some time seen reason to alter its policy, and to aim at adding to its European an extensive Asiatic dominion. Macedonia and Greece having been absorbed, and Carthage destroyed (B.C. 148-146), the conditions of the political problem seemed to be so far changed as to render a further advance towards the east a safe measure; and accordingly, when it was seen that the line of the kings of Pergamus was coming to an end, the Senate set on foot intrigues which had for their object the devolution upon Rome of the sovereignty belonging to those monarchs. By clever management the third Attalus was induced, in repayment of his father’s obligations to the Romans, to bequeath his entire dominions as a legacy to the Republic. In vain did his illegitimate half-brother, Aristonicus, dispute the validity of so extraordinary a testament; the Romans, aided by Mithridates IV., then monarch of Pontus, easily triumphed over such resistance as this unfortunate prince could offer, and having ceded to their ally the portion of Phrygia which had belonged to the Pergamene kingdom, entered on the possession of the remainder. Having thus become an Asiatic power, the Great Republic was of necessity mixed up henceforth with the various movements and struggles which agitated Western Asia, and was naturally led to strengthen its position among the Asiatic kingdoms by such alliances as seemed at each conjuncture best fitted for its interests.
Hitherto no occasion had arisen for any direct dealings between Rome and Parthia. Their respective territories were still separated by considerable tracts, which were in the occupation of the Syrians, the Cappadocians, and the Armenians. Their interests had neither clashed, nor as yet sufficiently united them to give rise to any diplomatic intercourse. But the progress of the two Empires in opposite directions was continually bringing them nearer to each other; and events had now reached a point at which the Empires began to have (or seem to have) such a community of interests as led naturally to an exchange of communications. A great power had been recently developed in these parts. In the rapid way so common in the East. Mithridates V., of Pontus, the son and successor of Rome’s ally, had, between B.C. 112 and B.C. 93, built up an Empire of vast extent, numerous population, and almost inexhaustible resources. He had established his authority over Armenia Minor, Colchis, the entire east coast of the Black Sea, the Chersonesus Taurica, or kingdom of the Bosporus, and even over the whole tract lying west of the Chersonese as far as the mouth of the Tyras, or Dniester. Nor had these gains contented him. He had obtained half of Paphlagonia by an iniquitous compact with Nicomedes, King of Bithynia; he had occupied Galatia; and he was engaged in attempts to bring Cappadocia under his influence. In this last-named project he was assisted by the Armenians, with whose king, Tigranes, he had (about B.C. 96) formed a close alliance, at the same time giving him his daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage. Rome, though she had not yet determined on war with Mithridates, was resolved to thwart his Cappadocian projects, and in B.C. 92 sent Sulla into Asia with orders to put down the puppet whom Mithridates and Tigranes were establishing, and to replace upon the Cappadocian throne a certain Ariobarzanes, whom they had driven from his kingdom. In the execution of this commission, Sulla was brought into hostile collision with the Armenians, whom he defeated with great slaughter, and drove from Cappadocia together with their puppet king. Thus, not only did the growing power of Mithridates of Pontus, by inspiring Rome and Parthia with a common fear, tend to draw them together, but the course of events had actually given them a common enemy in Tigranes of Armenia, who was equally obnoxious to both.
For Tigranes, who, during the time that he was a hostage in Parthia, had contracted engagements towards the Parthian monarch which involved a cession of territory, and who in consequence of his promises had been aided by the Parthians in seating himself on his father’s throne though he made the cession required of him in the first instance had soon afterwards repented of his good faith, had gone to war with his benefactors, recovered the ceded territory, and laid waste a considerable tract of country lying within the admitted limits of the Parthian kingdom. These proceedings had, of course, alienated Mithridates II.; and we may with much probability ascribe to them the step, which he now took, of sending an ambassador to Sulla. Orobazus, the individual selected, was charged to propose an alliance offensive and defensive between the two countries. Sulla received the overture favorably, but probably considered that it transcended his powers to conclude a treaty; and thus nothing more was effected by the embassy than the establishment of a good understanding between the two States.
Soon after this Tigranes appears to have renewed his attacks upon Parthia, which in the interval between B.C. 92 and B.C. 83 he greatly humbled, depriving it of the whole of Upper Mesopotamia, at this time called Gordyene, and under rule of one of the Parthian tributary kings. Of the details of this war we have no account; and it is even uncertain whether it fell within the reign of Mithridates II. or no. The unfortunate mistake of Justin, whereby he confounded this monarch with Mithridates III., has thrown this portion of the Parthian history into confusion, and has made even the successor of Mithridates II. uncertain.
Mithridates II. probably died about B.C. 89, after a reign which must have exceeded thirty-five years. His great successes against the Scythians in the earlier portion of his reign were to some extent counterbalanced by his losses to Tigranes in his old age; but on the whole he must be regarded as one of the more vigorous and successful of the Parthian monarchs, and as combining courage with prudence. It is to his credit that he saw the advantage of establishing friendly relations with Rome at a time when an ordinary Oriental monarch might have despised the distant Republic, and have thought it beneath his dignity to make overtures to so strange and anomalous a power. Whether he definitely foresaw the part which Rome was about to play in the East, we may doubt; but at any rate he must have had a prevision that the part would not be trifling or insignificant. Of the private character of Mithridates we have no sufficient materials to judge. If it be true that he put his envoy, Orobazus, to death on account of his having allowed Sulla to assume a position at their conference derogatory to the dignity of the Parthian State, we must pronounce him a harsh master; but the tale, which rests wholly on the weak authority of the gossip-loving Plutarch, is perhaps scarcely to be accepted.
CHAPTER X.
Dark period of Parthian History. Doubtful succession of the Monarchs. Accession of Sanatrceces, ab. B.C. 76. Position of Parthia during the Mithridatic Wars. Accession of Phraates III. His relations with Pompey. His death. Civil War between his two sons, Mithridates and Orodes. Death of Mithridates.
The successor of Mithridates II. is unknown. It has been argued, indeed, that the reigns of the known monarchs of this period would not be unduly long if we regarded them as strictly consecutive, and placed no blank between the death of Mithridates II. and the accession of the next Arsaces whose name has come down to us. Sanatrodoeces, it has been said, may have been, and may, therefore, well be regarded as, the successor of Mithridates. But the words of the epitomizer of Trogus, placed at the head of this chapter, forbid the acceptance of this theory. The epitomizer would not have spoken of “many kings” as intervening between Mithridates II. and Orodes, if the number had been only three. The expression implies, at least, four or five monarchs; and thus we have no choice but to suppose that the succession of the kings is here imperfect, and that at least one or two reigns were interposed between those of the second Mithridates and of the monarch known as Sanatroeces, Sinatroces, or Sintricus.
A casual notice of a Parthian monarch in a late writer may supply the gap, either wholly or in part. Lucian speaks of a certain Mnasciras as a Parthian king, who died at the advanced age of ninety-six. As there is no other place in the Parthian history at which the succession is doubtful, and as no such name as Mnascris occurs elsewhere in the list, it seems necessary, unless we reject Lucian’s authority altogether, to insert this monarch here. We cannot say, however, how long he reigned, or ascribe to him any particular actions; nor can we say definitely what king he either succeeded or preceded. It is possible that his reign covered the entire interval between Mithridates II. and Sanatroeces; it is possible, on the other hand, that he had successors and predecessors, whose names have altogether perished.
The expression used by the epitomizer of Trogus, and a few words dropped by Plutarch, render it probable that about this time there were contentions between various members of the Arsacid family which issued in actual civil war. Such contentions are a marked feature of the later history; and, according to Plutarch, they commenced at this period. We may suspect, from the great age of two of the monarchs chosen, that the Arsacid stock was now very limited in number, that it offered no candidates for the throne whose claims were indisputable, and that consequently at each vacancy there was a division of opinion among the “Megistanes,” which led to the claimants making appeal, if the election went against them, to the arbitrament of arms.
The dark time of Parthian history is terminated by the accession—probably in B.C. 76—of the king above mentioned as known by the three names of Sanatroeces, Sinatroces, and Sintricus. The form, Sanatroeces, which appears upon the Paithian coins, is on that account to be preferred. The king so called had reached when elected the advanced age of eighty. It may be suspected that he was a son of the sixth Arsaces (Mithridates I.), and consequently a brother of Phraates II. He had, perhaps, been made prisoner by that Scythians in the course of the disastrous war waged by that monarch, and had been retained in captivity for above fifty years. At any rate, he appears to have been indebted to the Scythians in some measure for the crown which he acquired so tardily, his enjoyment of it having been secured by the help of a contingent of troops furnished to him by the Scythian tribe of the Sacauracae.
The position of the Empire at the time of his accession was one of considerable difficulty. Parthia, during the period of her civil contentions, had lost much ground in the west, having been deprived by Tigranes of at least two important provinces. At the same time she had been witness of the tremendous struggle between Rome and Pontus which commenced in B.C. 88, was still continuing, and still far from decided, when Sanatroeces came to the throne. An octogenarian monarch was unfit to engage in strife, and if Sanatroeces, notwithstanding this drawback, had been ambitious of military distinction, it would have been difficult for him to determine into which scale the interests of his country required that he should cast the weight of his sword. On the one hand, Parthia had evidently much to fear from the military force and the covetous disposition of Tigranes, king of Armenia, the son-in-law of Mithridates, and at this time his chosen alley. Tigranes had hitherto been continually increasing in strength. By the defeat of Artanes, king of Sophene, or Armenia Minor, he had made himself master of Armenia in its widest extent; by his wars with Parthia herself he had acquired Gordyene, or Northern Mesopotamia, and Adiabene, or the entire rich tract east of the middle Tigris (including Assyria Proper and Arbelitis), as far, at any rate, as the course of the lower Zab; by means which are not stated he had brought under subjection the king of the important country of Media Artropatene, independent since the time of Alexander. Invited into Syria, about B.C. 83, by the wretched inhabitants, wearied with the perpetual civil wars between the princes of the house of the Seleucidae, he had found no difficulty in establishing himself as king over Cilicia, Syria, and most of Phoenicia. About B.C. 80 he had determined on building himself a new capital in the province of Gordyene, a capital of a vast size, provided with all the luxuries required by an Oriental court, and fortified with walls which recalled the glories of the ancient cities of the Assyrians. The position of this huge town on the very borders of the Parthian kingdom, in a province which had till very recently been Parthian, could be no otherwise understood that as a standing menace to Parthia itself, the proclamation of an intention to extend the Armenian dominion southwards, and to absorb at any rate all the rich and fertile country between Gordyene and the sea. Thus threatened by Armenia, it was impossible for Sanatroeces cordially to embrace the side of Mithridates, with which Armenia and its king were so closely allied; it was impossible for him even to wish that the two allies should be free to work their will on the Asiatic continent unchecked by the power which alone had for the last twelve years obstructed their ambitious projects.
On the other hand, there was already among the Asiatic princes generally a deep distrust of Rome—a fear that in the new people, which had crept so quietly into Asia, was to be found a power more permanently formidable than the Macedonians, a power which would make up for want of brilliancy and dash by a dogged perseverance in its aims, and a stealthy, crafty policy, sure in the end to achieve great and striking results. The acceptance of the kingdom of Attalus had not, perhaps, alarmed any one; but the seizure of Phrygia during the minority of Mithridates, without so much as a pretext, and the practice, soon afterwards established, of setting up puppet kings, bound to do the bidding of their Roman allies, had raised suspicions; the ease with which Mithridates notwithstanding his great power and long preparation, had been vanquished in the first war (B.C. 88-84) had aroused fears; and Sanatroeces could not but misdoubt the advisability of lending aid to the Romans, and so helping them to obtain a still firmer hold on Western Asia. Accordingly we find that when the final war broke out, in B.C. 74, his inclination was, in the first instance, to stand wholly aloof, and when that became impossible, then to temporize. To the application for assistance made by Mithridates in B.C. 72 a direct negative was returned; and it was not until, in B.C. 69, the war had approached his own frontier, and both parties made the most earnest appeals to him for aid, that he departed from the line of pure abstention, and had recourse to the expedient of amusing, both sides with promises, while he helped neither. According to Plutarch, this line of procedure offended Lucullus, and had nearly induced him to defer the final struggle with Mithridates and Tigranes, and turn his arms against Parthia. But the prolonged resistance of Nisibis, and the successes of Mithridates in Pontus, diverted the danger; and the war rolling northwards, Parthia was not yet driven to take a side, but was enabled to maintain her neutral position for some years longer.
Meanwhile the aged Sanatroeces died, and was succeeded by his son, Phraates III. This prince followed at first his father’s example, and abstained from mixing himself up in the Mithridatic war; but in B.C. 66, being courted by both sides, and promised the restoration of the provinces lost to Tigranes, he made alliance with Pompey, and undertook, while the latter pressed the war against Mithridates, to find occupation for the Armenian monarch in his own land. This engagement he executed with fidelity. It had happened that the eldest living son of Tigranes, a prince bearing the same name as his father, having raised a rebellion in Armenia and been defeated, had taken refuge in Parthia with Phraates. Phraates determined to take advantage of this circumstance. The young Tigranes was supported by a party among his countrymen who wished to see a youthful monarch upon the throne; and Phraates therefore considered that he would best discharge his obligations to the Romans by fomenting this family quarrel, and lending a moderate support to the younger Tigranes against his father. He marched an army into Armenia in the interest of the young prince, overran the open country, and advanced on Artaxata, the capital. Tigranes, the king, fled at his approach, and betook himself to the neighboring mountains. Artaxata was invested; but as the siege promised to be long, the Parthian monarch after a time withdrew, leaving the pretender with as many troops as he thought necessary to press the siege to a successful issue. The result, however, disappointed his expectations. Scarcely was Phraates gone, when the old king fell upon his son, defeated him, and drove him beyond his borders. He was forced, however, soon afterwards, to submit to Pompey, who, while the civil war was raging in Armenia, had defeated Mithridates and driven him to take refuge in the Tauric Chersonese.
Phraates, now, naturally expected the due reward of his services, according to the stipulations of his agreement with Pompey. But that general was either dissatisfied with the mode in which the Parthian had discharged his obligations, or disinclined to strengthen the power which he saw to be the only one in these parts capable of disputing with Rome the headship of Asia. He could scarcely prevent, and he does not seem to have tried to prevent, the recovery of Adiabene by the Parthians; but the nearer province of Gordyene to which they had an equal claim, he would by no means consent to their occupying. At first he destined it for the younger Tigranes. When the prince offended him, he made it over to Ariobarzanes, the Cappadocian monarch. That arrangement not taking effect, and the tract being disputed between Phraates and the elder Tigranes, he sent his legate, Afranius, to drive the Parthians out of the country, and delivered it over into the hands of the Armenians. At the same time he insulted the Parthian monarch by refusing him his generally recognized title of “King of Kings.” He thus entirely alienated his late ally, who remonstrated against the injustice with which he was treated, and was only deterred from declaring war by the wholesome fear which he entertained of the Roman arms.
Pompey, on his side, no doubt took the question into consideration whether or no he should declare the Parthian prince a Roman enemy, and proceed to direct against him the available forces of the Empire. He had purposely made him hostile, and compelled him to take steps which might have furnished a plausible casus belli. But, on the whole, he found that he was not prepared to venture on the encounter. The war had not been formally committed to him; and if he did not prosper in it, he dreaded the accusations of his enemies at Rome. He had seen, moreover, with his own eyes; that the Parthians were an enemy far from despicable, and his knowledge of campaigning told him that success against them was not certain. He feared to risk the loss of all the glory which he had obtained by grasping greedily at more, and preferred enjoying the fruits of the good luck which had hitherto attended him to tempting fortune on a new field. He therefore determined that he would not allow himself to be provoked into hostilities by the reproaches, the dictatorial words, or even the daring acts of the Parthian King. When Phraates demanded his lost provinces he replied, that the question of borders was one which lay, not between Parthia and Rome, but between Parthia and Armenia. When he laid it down that the Euphrates properly bounded the Roman territory, and charged Pompey not to cross it, the latter said he would keep to the just bounds, whatever they were. When Tigranes complained that after having been received into the Roman alliance he was still attacked by the Parthian armies, the reply of Pompey was that he was willing to appoint arbitrators who should decide all the disputes between the two nations. The moderation and caution of these answers proved contagious. The monarchs addressed resolved to compose their differences, or at any rate to defer the settlement of them to a more convenient time. They accepted Pompey’s proposal of an arbitration; and in a short time an arrangement was effected by which relations of amity were re-established between the two countries.
It would seem that not very long after the conclusion of this peace and the retirement of Pompey from Asia (B.C. 62), Phraates lost his life. He was assassinated by his two sons, Mithridates and Orodes; for what cause we are not told. Mithridates, the elder of the two, succeeded him (about B.C. 60); and, as all fear of the Romans had now passed away in consequence of their apparently peaceful attitude, he returned soon after his accession to the policy of his namesake, Mithridates II., and resumed the struggle with Armenia from which his father had desisted. The object of the war was probably the recovery of the lost province of Gordyene, which, having been delivered to the elder Tigranes by Pompey, had remained in the occupation of the Armenians. Mithridates seems to have succeeded in his enterprise. When we next obtain a distinct view of the boundary line which divides Parthia from her neighbors towards the north and the north-west, which is within five years of the probable date of Mithridates’s accession, we find Gordyene once more a Parthian province. As the later years of this intermediate lustre are a time of civil strife, during which territorial gains can scarcely have been made, we are compelled to refer the conquest to about B.C. 39-57. But in this case it must have been due to Mithridates III., whose reign is fixed with much probability to the years B.C. 60-56.
The credit which Mithridates had acquired by his conduct of the Armenian war he lost soon afterwards by the severity of his home administration. There is reason to believe that he drove his brother, Orodes, into banishment. At any rate, he ruled so harshly and cruelly that within a few years of his accession the Parthian nobles deposed him, and, recalling Orodes from his place of exile, set him up as king in his brother’s room. Mithridates was, it would seem, at first allowed to govern Media as a subject monarch; but after a while his brother grew jealous of him, and deprived him of this dignity. Unwilling to acquiesce in his disgrace, Mithridates fled to the Romans, and being favorably received by Gabinius, then proconsul of Syria, endeavored to obtain his aid against his countrymen. Gabinius, who was at once weak and ambitious, lent a ready ear to his entreaties, and was upon the point of conducting an expedition into Parthia, when he received a still more tempting invitation from another quarter. Ptolemy Auletes, expelled from Egypt by his rebellious subjects, asked his aid, and having recommendations from Pompey, and a fair sum of ready money to disburse, found little difficulty in persuading the Syrian proconsul to relinquish his Parthian plans and march the force at his disposal into Egypt. Mithridates, upon this, withdrew from Syria, and re-entering the Parthian territory, commenced a civil war against his brother, finding numerous partisans, especially in the region about Babylon. It may be suspected that Seleucia, the second city in the Empire, embraced his cause. Babylon, into which he had thrown himself, sustained a long siege on his behalf, and only yielded when compelled by famine. Mithridates might again have become a fugitive; but he was weary of the disappointments and hardships which are the ordinary lot of a pretender, and preferred to cast himself on the mercy and affection of his brother. Accordingly he surrendered himself unconditionally to Orodes; but this prince, professing to place the claims of patriotism above those of relationship, caused the traitor who had sought aid from Rome to be instantly executed. Thus perished Mithridates III. after a reign which cannot have exceeded five years, in the winter of B.C. 56, or the early spring of B.C. 55. Orodes, on his death, was accepted as king by the whole nation.