The Roman government once more declined the offer of the Parthian king and ordered the continuance of the war. It could not well do otherwise; if the recognition of Tiridates was hazardous before the recommencement of war, and hardly capable of being accepted after the Parthian declaration of war, it now, as a consequence of the capitulation of Rhandeia, appeared directly as its ratification. From Rome the resumption of the struggle against the Parthians was energetically promoted. Paetus was recalled; Corbulo, in whom public opinion, aroused by the disgraceful capitulation, saw only the conqueror of Armenia, and whom even those who knew exactly and judged sharply the state of the matter could not avoid characterising as the ablest general and one uniquely fitted for this war, took up again the governorship of Cappadocia, and at the same time the command over all the troops available for this campaign, who were further reinforced by a seventh legion brought up from Pannonia; accordingly all the governors and princes of the East were directed to comply in military matters with his orders, so that his official authority was nearly equivalent to that which had been assigned to the crown-princes Gaius and Germanicus for their missions to the East. If these measures were intended to bring about a serious reparation of the honour of the Roman arms they missed their aim. How Corbulo looked at the state of affairs, is shown by the very agreement which he made with the Parthian king not long after the disaster of Rhandeia; the latter withdrew the Parthian garrisons from Armenia, the Romans evacuated the fortresses constructed on Mesopotamian territory for the protection of the bridges. For the Roman offensive the Parthian garrisons in Armenia were just as indifferent as the bridges of the Euphrates were important; whereas, if Tiridates was to be recognised as a Roman vassal-king in Armenia, the latter certainly were superfluous and Parthian garrisons in Armenia impossible. In the next spring (63) Corbulo certainly entered upon the offensive enjoined upon him, and led the four best of his legions at Melitene over the Euphrates against the Partho-Armenian main force stationed in the region of Arsamosata. But not much came of the fighting; only some castles of Armenian nobles opposed to Rome were destroyed. On the other hand, this encounter led also to agreement. Corbulo took up the Parthian proposals formerly rejected by his government, and that, as the further course of things showed, in the sense that Armenia became once for all a Parthian appanage for the second son, and the Roman government, at least according to the spirit of the agreement, consented to bestow this crown in future only on an Arsacid. It was only added that Tiridates should oblige himself to take from his head the royal diadem publicly before the eyes of the two armies in Rhandeia, just where the capitulation had been concluded, and to deposit it before the effigy of the emperor, promising not to put it on again until he should have received it from his hand, and that in Rome itself. This was done (63). By this humiliation there was no change in the fact that the Roman general, instead of waging the war intrusted to him, concluded peace on the terms rejected by his government.37 But the statesmen who formerly took the lead had meanwhile died or retired, the personal government of the emperor was installed in their stead, and the solemn act in Rhandeia and the spectacle in prospect of the investiture of the Parthian prince with the crown of Armenia in the capital of the empire failed not to produce their effect on the public, and above all on the emperor in person. The peace was ratified and fulfilled.Tiridates in Rome. In the year 66 the Parthian prince appeared according to promise in Rome, escorted by 3000 Parthian horsemen, bringing as hostages the children of his three brothers as well as those of Monobazus of Adiabene. Falling on his knees he saluted his liege lord seated on the imperial throne in the market-place of the capital, and here the latter in presence of all the people bound the royal chaplet round his brow.

The East under the Flavians.The conduct on both sides, cautious, and we might almost say peaceful, of the last nominally ten years’ war, and its corresponding conclusion by the actual transfer of Armenia to the Parthians, while the susceptibilities of the mightier western empire were spared, bore good fruit. Armenia, under the national dynasty recognised by the Romans, was more dependent on them than formerly under the rulers forced upon the country. A Roman garrison was left at least in the district of Sophene, which most closely bordered on the Euphrates.38 For the re-establishment of Artaxata the permission of the emperor was sought and granted, and the building was helped on by the emperor Nero with money and workmen. Between the two mighty states separated from each other by the Euphrates at no time has an equally good relation subsisted as after the conclusion of the treaty of Rhandeia in the last years of Nero and onward under the three rulers of the Flavian house. Other circumstances contributed to this. The masses of Transcaucasian peoples, perhaps allured by their participation in the last wars, during which they had found their way to Armenia as mercenaries, partly of the Iberians, partly of the Parthians, began then to threaten especially the western Parthian provinces, but at the same time the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. Probably in order to check them, immediately after the Armenian war in the year 63, the annexation was ordained of the so-called kingdom of Pontus, i.e. the south-east corner of the coast of the Black Sea, with the town of Trapezus and the region of the Phasis. The great Oriental expedition, which this emperor was just on the point of beginning when the catastrophe overtook him (68), and for which he already had put the flower of the troops of the West on the march, partly to Egypt, partly along the Danube, was meant no doubt to push forward the imperial frontier in other directions;39 but its proper aim was the passes of the Caucasus above Tiflis, and the Scythian tribes settled on the northern slope, in the first instance the Alani.40 These were just assailing Armenia on the one side and Media on the other. So little was that expedition of Nero directed against the Parthians that it might rather be conceived of as undertaken to help them; overagainst the wild hordes of the north a common defensive action was at any rate indicated for the two civilised states of the West and East. Vologasus indeed declined with equal friendliness the amicable summons of his Roman colleague to visit him, just as his brother had done, at Rome, since he had no liking on his part to appear in the Roman forum as a vassal of the Roman ruler; but he declared himself ready to present himself before the emperor when he should arrive in the East, and the Orientals doubtless, though not the Romans, sincerely mourned for Nero. King Vologasus addressed to the senate officially an entreaty to hold Nero’s memory in honour, and, when a pseudo-Nero subsequently emerged, he met with sympathy above all in the Parthian state.

Arrangements of Vespasian.Nevertheless the Parthian was not so much concerned about the friendship of Nero as about that of the Roman state. Not merely did he refrain from any encroachment during the crises of the four-emperor-year,41 but correctly estimating the probable result of the pending decisive struggle, he offered to Vespasian, when still in Alexandria, 40,000 mounted archers for the conflict with Vitellius, which, of course, was gratefully declined. But above all he submitted without more ado to the arrangements which the new government made for the protection of the east frontier. Vespasian had himself as governor of Judaea become acquainted with the inadequacy of the military resources statedly employed there; and, when he exchanged this governorship for the imperial power, not only was Commagene again converted, after the precedent of Tiberius, from a kingdom into a province, but the number of the standing legions in Roman Asia was raised from four to seven, to which number they had been temporarily brought up for the Parthian and again for the Jewish war. While, further, there had been hitherto in Asia only a single larger military command, that of the governor of Syria, three such posts of high command were now instituted there. Syria, to which Commagene was added, retained as hitherto four legions; the two provinces hitherto occupied only by troops of the second order, Palestine and Cappadocia, were furnished, the first with one, the second with two legions.42 Armenia remained a Roman dependent principality in possession of the Arsacids, but under Vespasian a Roman garrison was stationed beyond the Armenian frontier in the Iberian fortress Harmozika near Tiflis,43 and accordingly at this time Armenia also must have been militarily in the Roman power. All these measures, however little they contained even a threat of war, were pointed against the eastern neighbour. Nevertheless Vologasus was after the fall of Jerusalem the first to offer to the Roman crown-prince his congratulations on the strengthening of the Roman rule in Syria, and he accepted without remonstrance the encampment of the legions in Commagene, Cappadocia, and Lesser Armenia. Nay, he even once more incited Vespasian to that Transcaucasian expedition, and besought the sending of a Roman army against the Alani under the leadership of one of the imperial princes; although Vespasian did not enter into this far-seeing plan, that Roman force can hardly have been sent into the region of Tiflis for any other object than for closing the pass of the Caucasus, and in so far it represented there also the interests of the Parthians. In spite of the strengthening of the military position of Rome on the Euphrates, or even perhaps in consequence of it—for to instil respect into a neighbour is a means of preserving the peace—the state of peace remained essentially undisturbed during the whole rule of the Flavians. If—as cannot be surprising, especially when we consider the constant change of the Parthian dynasts—collisions now and then occurred, and war-clouds even made their appearance, they disappeared again as quickly.44 The emergence of a pseudo-Nero in the last years of Vespasian—he it was who gave the impulse to the Revelation of John—might almost have led to such a collision. The pretender, in reality a certain Terentius Maximus from Asia Minor, but strikingly resembling the poet-emperor in face, voice, and address, found not merely a conflux of adherents in the Roman region of the Euphrates, but also support among the Parthians. Among these at that time, as so often, several rulers seem to have been in conflict with each other, and one of them, Artabanus, because the emperor Titus declared against him, seems to have adopted the cause of the Roman pretender. This, however, had no consequences; on the contrary, soon afterwards the Parthian government delivered up the pretender to the emperor Domitian.45 The commercial intercourse, advantageous for both parties between Syria and the lower Euphrates, where just then king Vologasus called into existence the new emporium Vologasias or Vologasocerta, not far from Ctesiphon, must have contributed its part towards promoting the state of peace.

The Parthian war of Trajan.Things came to a conflict under Trajan. In the earlier years of his government he had made no essential change in eastern affairs, apart from the conversion of the two client-states hitherto subsisting on the border of the Syrian desert—the Nabataean of Petra and the Jewish of Caesarea Paneas—into administrative districts directly Roman (A.D. 106). The relations with the ruler of the Parthian kingdom at that time, king Pacorus, were not the most friendly,46 but it was only under his brother and successor Chosroes that a rupture took place, and that again concerning Armenia. The Parthians were to blame for it. When Trajan bestowed the vacated throne of the Armenian king on Axidares the son of Pacorus, he kept within the limits of his right; but king Chosroes described this personage as incapable of governing, and arbitrarily installed in his stead another son of Pacorus, Parthomasiris, as king.47 The answer to this was the Roman declaration of war. Trajan left the capital towards the end of the year 114,48 to put himself at the head of the Roman troops of the East, which were certainly once more found in the deepest degeneracy, but were reorganised in all haste by the emperor, and reinforced besides by better legions brought up from Pannonia.49

Envoys of the Parthian king met him at Athens; but they had nothing to offer except the information that Parthomasiris was ready to accept Armenia as a Roman fief, and were dismissed. The war began. In the first conflicts on the Euphrates the Romans fared worst;50 but when the old emperor, ready to fight and accustomed to victory, placed himself at the head of the troops in the spring of 115, the Orientals submitted to him almost without resistance. Moreover, among the Parthians civil war once more prevailed, and a pretender, Manisarus, had appeared against Chosroes. From Antioch the emperor marched to the Euphrates and farther northward as far as the most northerly legion-camp Satala in Lesser Armenia, whence he advanced into Armenia and took the direction of Artaxata. On the way Parthomasiris appeared in Elegeia and took the diadem from his head, in the hope of procuring investiture through this humiliation, as Tiridates had once done. But Trajan was resolved to make this vassal-state a province, and to shift the eastern frontier of the empire generally. This he declared to the Parthian prince before the assembled army, and directed him with his suite to quit at once the camp and the kingdom; thereupon a tumult took place, in which the pretender lost his life. Armenia yielded to its fate, and became a Roman governorship. The princes also of the Caucasian tribes, the Albani, the Iberi, farther on toward the Black Sea the Apsilae, the Colchi, the Heniochi, the Lazi, and various others, even those of the trans-Caucasian Sarmatae, were confirmed in the relation of vassalage, or now subjected to it. Trajan thereupon advanced into the territory of the Parthians and occupied Mesopotamia. Here, too, all submitted without a blow; Batnae, Nisibis, Singara came into the power of the Romans; in Edessa the emperor received not merely the subjection of Abgarus, the ruler of the land, but also that of the other dynasts, and, like Armenia, Mesopotamia became a Roman province. Trajan took up once more his winter quarters in Antioch, where a violent earthquake demanded more victims than the campaign of the summer. In the next spring (116) Trajan, the “victor of the Parthians,” as the senate now saluted him, advanced from Nisibis over the Tigris, and occupied, not without encountering resistance at the crossing and subsequently, the district of Adiabene; this became the third new Roman province, named Assyria. The march went onward down the Tigris to Babylonia; Seleucia and Ctesiphon fell into the hands of the Romans, and with them the golden throne of the king and his daughter; Trajan reached even the Persian satrapy of Mesene, and the great mercantile town at the mouth of the Tigris, Charax Spasinu. This region also seems to have been incorporated with the empire in such a way that the new province Mesopotamia embraced the whole region enclosed by the two rivers.

Revolt of Seleucia, and its siege.Full of longing, Trajan is said now to have wished for himself the youth of Alexander, in order to carry from the margin of the Persian Sea his arms into the Indian land of marvels. But he soon learned that he needed them for nearer opponents. The great Parthian empire had hitherto scarcely confronted in earnest his attack, and ofttimes sued in vain for peace. But now on the way back at Babylon news reached the emperor of the revolt of Babylonia and Mesopotamia; while he tarried at the mouth of the Tigris the whole population of these new provinces had risen against him;51 the citizens of Seleucia on the Tigris, of Nisibis, indeed of Edessa itself, put the Roman garrisons to death or chased them away and closed their gates. The emperor saw himself compelled to divide his troops, and to send separate corps against the different seats of the insurrection; one of these legions under Maximus was, with its general, surrounded and cut to pieces in Mesopotamia. Yet the emperor mastered the insurgents, particularly through his general Lusius Quietus, already experienced in the Dacian war, a native sheikh of the Moors. Seleucia and Edessa were besieged and burnt down. Trajan went so far as to declare Parthia a Roman vassal-state, and invested with it at Ctesiphon a partisan of Rome, the Parthian Parthamaspates, although the Roman soldiers had not set foot on more than the western border of the great-kingdom.

Death of Trajan.Then he began his return to Syria by the route along which he had come, detained on the way by a vain attack on the Arabs in Hatra, the residence of the king of the brave tribes of the Mesopotamian desert, whose mighty works of fortification and magnificent buildings are still at the present day imposing in their ruins. He intended to continue the war next year, and so to make the subjection of the Parthians a reality. But the combat in the desert of Hatra, in which the sixty-year-old emperor had bravely fought with the Arab horsemen, was to be his last. He sickened and died on the journey home (8th Aug. 117), without being able to complete his victory and to hold the celebration of it in Rome; it was in keeping with his spirit that even after death the honour of a triumph was accorded to him, and hence he is the only one of the deified Roman emperors who even as god still bears the title of victory.

Trajan’s Oriental policy.Trajan had not sought war with the Parthians, but it had been forced upon him; not he, but Chosroes had broken the agreement as to Armenia, which during the last forty years had been the basis of the state of peace in the region of the Euphrates. If it is intelligible that the Parthians did not acquiesce in it, since the continuing suzerainty of the Romans over Armenia carried in itself the stimulus to revolt, we must on the other hand acknowledge that in the way hitherto followed further steps could not be taken than were taken by Corbulo; the unconditional renunciation of Armenia, and—which was the necessary consequence of it—the recognition of the Parthian state on a footing of full equality, lay indeed beyond the horizon of Roman policy as much as the abolition of slavery and similar ideas that could not be thought of at that time. But if permanent peace could not be attained by this alternative, there was left in the great dilemma of Roman Oriental policy only the other course—the extension of direct Roman rule to the left bank of the Euphrates. Therefore Armenia now became a Roman province, and no less Mesopotamia. This was only in keeping with the nature of the case. The conversion of Armenia from a Roman vassal-state with a Roman garrison into a Roman governorship made not much change externally; the Parthians could only be effectively ejected from Armenia when they lost possession of the neighbouring region; and above all, the Roman rule as well as the Roman provincial constitution found a far more favourable soil in the half-Greek Mesopotamia than in the thoroughly Oriental Armenia. Other considerations fell to be added. The Roman customs-frontier in Syria was badly constituted, and to get the international traffic from the great commercial marts of Syria towards the Euphrates and the Tigris entirely into its power was an essential gain to the Roman state, as indeed Trajan immediately set to work to institute the new customs-dues at the Euphrates and Tigris.52 Even in a military point of view the boundary of the Tigris was easier of defence than the previous frontier-line which ran along the Syrian desert and thence along the Euphrates. The conversion of the region of Adiabene beyond the Tigris into a Roman province, whereby Armenia became an inland one, and the transformation of the Parthian empire itself into a Roman vassal-state were corollaries of the same idea. It is not meant to be denied that in a policy of conquest consistency is a dangerous praise, and that Trajan after his fashion yielded in these enterprises more than was reasonable to the effort after external success, and went beyond the rational goal;53 but wrong is done to him when his demeanour in the East is referred to blind lust of conquest. He did what Caesar would have done had he lived. His policy is but the other side of that of Nero’s statesmen, and the two are as opposite, as they are equally consistent and equally warranted. Posterity has justified more the policy of conquest than that of concession.

Reaction under Hadrian and Pius.For the moment no doubt it was otherwise. The Oriental conquests of Trajan lit up the gloomy evening of the Roman empire like flashes of lightning in the darkness of the night; but, like these, they brought no new morning. His successor found himself compelled to choose between completing the unfinished work of subduing the Parthians or allowing it to drop. The extension of the frontier could not be carried out at all without a considerable increase of the army and of the budget; and the shifting of the centre of gravity to the East, thereby rendered inevitable, was a dubious strengthening of the empire. Hadrian and Pius therefore returned entirely into the paths of the earlier imperial period. Hadrian allowed the Roman vassal-king of Parthia, Parthamaspates, to drop, and portioned him off in another way. He evacuated Assyria and Mesopotamia, and voluntarily gave back these provinces to their earlier ruler. He sent to him as well his captive daughter; the permanent token of the victory won, the golden throne of Ctesiphon, even the pacific Pius refused to deliver up again to the Parthians. Hadrian as well as Pius earnestly endeavoured to live in peace and friendship with their neighbour, and at no time do the commercial relations between the Roman entrepôts on the Syrian east frontier and the mercantile towns on the Euphrates seem to have been more lively than at this epoch.

Armenia a vassal-state.Armenia ceased likewise to be a Roman province, and returned to its former position as a Roman vassal-state and a Parthian appanage of the second son.54 The princes of the Albani, and the Iberians on the Caucasus, and the numerous small dynasts in the south-eastern corner of the Black Sea likewise remained dependent.55 Roman garrisons were stationed not merely on the coast in Apsarus56 and on the Phasis, but, as can be shown, under Commodus in Armenia itself, not far from Artaxata; in a military point of view all these states belonged to the district of the commandant of Cappadocia.57 This supremacy, however, very indefinite in its nature, seems to have been dealt with generally, and in particular by Hadrian,58 in such a way that it appeared more as a right of protection than as subjection proper, and at least the more powerful of these princes did, and left undone, in the main what pleased them. The common interest—which we have formerly brought out—in warding off the wild trans-Caucasian tribes became still more definitely prominent in this epoch, and evidently served as a bond in particular between Romans and Parthians. Towards the end of the reign of Hadrian the Alani, in agreement apparently with the king of Iberia, at that time Pharasmanes II., on whom it primarily devolved to bar the pass of the Caucasus against them, invaded the southern regions, and pillaged not only the territory of the Albanians and Armenians, but also the Parthian province of Media and the Roman province of Cappadocia, though matters did not come to a waging of war in common, but the gold of the ruler then reigning in Parthia, Vologasus III., and the mobilising of the Cappadocian army on the part of the Romans,59 induced the barbarians to return, yet their interests coincided, and the complaint which the Parthians lodged in Rome as to Pharasmanes of Iberia, shows the concert of the two great powers.60

Parthian war under Marcus and Verus.The disturbances of the status quo came again from the Parthian side. The suzerainty of the Romans over Armenia played a part in history similar to that of the German empire over Italy; unsubstantial as it was, it was yet constantly felt as an encroachment, and carried within it the danger of war. Already under Hadrian the conflict was imminent; the emperor succeeded in keeping the peace by a personal interview with the Parthian prince. Under Pius the Parthian invasion of Armenia seemed once more impending; his earnest dissuasive was in the first instance successful. But even this most pacific of all emperors, who had it more at heart to save the life of a burgess than to kill a thousand foes, was obliged in the last period of his reign to prepare himself for the attack and to reinforce the armies of the East. Hardly had he closed his eyes (161), when the long-threatening thunder-cloud discharged itself. By command of Vologasus IV. the Persian general Chosroes61 advanced into Armenia, and placed the Arsacid prince Pacorus on the throne. The governor of Cappadocia Severianus did what was his duty, and led on his part the Roman troops over the Euphrates. At Elegeia, just where a generation before the king Parthomasiris, likewise placed by the Parthians on the Armenian throne, had humbled himself in vain before Trajan, the armies encountered each other; the Roman was not merely beaten but annihilated in a three days’ conflict; the unfortunate general put himself to death, as Varus had formerly done. The victorious Orientals were not content with the occupation of Armenia, but crossed the Euphrates and invaded Syria; the army stationed there was also defeated, and there were fears as to the fidelity of the Syrians. The Roman government had no choice. As the troops of the East showed on this occasion their small capacity for fighting, and were besides weakened and demoralised by the defeat which they had suffered, further legions were despatched to the East from the West, even from the Rhine, and levies were ordered in Italy itself. Lucius Verus, one of the two emperors who shortly before had come to govern, went in person to the East (162) to take up the chief command, and if he, neither warlike nor yet even faithful to his duty, showed himself unequal to the task, and of his deeds in the East hardly anything else is to be told than that he married his niece there and was ridiculed for his theatrical enthusiasm even by the Antiochenes, the governors of Cappadocia and Syria—in the former case first Statius Priscus, then Martius Verus, in the latter Avidius Cassius,62 the best generals of this epoch—managed the cause of Rome better than the wearer of the crown. Once more, before the armies met, the Romans offered peace; willingly would Marcus have avoided the severe war. But Vologasus abruptly rejected the reasonable proposals; and this time the pacific neighbour was also the stronger. Armenia was immediately recovered; already, in the year 163, Priscus took the capital Artaxata, and destroyed it. Not far from it the new capital of the country, Kainepolis, in Armenia Nôr-Khalakh or Valarshapat (Etshmiazin) was built by the Romans and provided with a strong garrison.63 In the succeeding year instead of Pacorus Sohaemus, by descent also an Arsacid, but a Roman subject and Roman senator, was nominated as king of Great Armenia.64 In a legal point of view nothing was changed in Armenia; yet the bonds which joined it to Rome were drawn tighter.

Conflicts in Syria and Mesopotamia.The conflicts in Syria and Mesopotamia were more serious. The line of the Euphrates was obstinately defended by the Parthians; after a keen combat on the right bank at Sura the fortress of Nicephorium (Ragga) on the left was stormed by the Romans. Still more vehemently was the passage at Zeugma contested; but here too victory remained with the Romans in the decisive battle at Europus (Djerabis to the south of Biredjik). They now advanced on their part into Mesopotamia. Edessa was besieged, Dausara not far from it stormed; the Romans appeared before Nisibis; the Parthian general saved himself by swimming over the Tigris. The Romans might from Mesopotamia undertake the march to Babylon. The satraps forsook in part the banners of the defeated great-king; Seleucia, the great capital of the Hellenes on the Euphrates, voluntarily opened its gates to the Romans, but was afterwards burnt down by them, because the burgesses were rightly or wrongly accused of an understanding with the enemy. The Parthian capital, Ctesiphon, was also taken and destroyed; with good reason at the beginning of the year 165 the senate could salute the two rulers as the Parthian grand-victors. In the campaign of this year Cassius even penetrated into Media; but the outbreak of a pestilence, more especially in these regions, decimated the troops and compelled them to return, accelerating perhaps even the conclusion of peace. The result of the war was the cession of the western district of Mesopotamia; the princes of Edessa and of Osrhoene became vassals of Rome, and the town of Carrhae, which had for long Greek leanings, became a free town under Roman protection.65 As regards extent, especially in presence of the complete success of the war, the increase of territory was moderate, but yet of importance, inasmuch as thereby the Romans gained a footing on the left bank of the Euphrates. We may add that the territories occupied were given back to the Parthians and the status quo was restored. On the whole, therefore, the policy of reserve adopted by Hadrian was now abandoned once more, and there was a return to the course of Trajan. This is the more remarkable, as the government of Marcus certainly cannot be reproached with ambition and longing after aggrandisement; what it did it did under compulsion and in modest limits.

Parthian wars under Severus.The emperor Severus pursued the same course further and more decidedly. The year of the three emperors, 193, had led to the war between the legions of the West and those of the East, and with Pescennius Niger the latter had succumbed. The Roman vassal-princes of the East, and as well the ruler of the Parthians, Vologasus V., son of Sanatrucius, had, as was natural, recognised Niger, and even put their troops at his disposal; the latter had at first gratefully declined, and then, when his cause took a turn to the worse, invoked their aid. The other Roman vassals, above all the prince of Armenia, cautiously kept back; only Abgarus, the prince of Edessa, sent the desired contingent. The Parthians promised aid, and it came at least from the nearest districts, from the prince Barsemias of Hatra in the Mesopotamian desert, and from the satrap of the Adiabeni beyond the Tigris. Even after Niger’s death (194) these strangers not merely remained in the Roman Mesopotamia, but even demanded the withdrawal of the Roman garrisons stationed there and the giving back of this territory.66

Province of Mesopotamia.Thereupon Severus advanced into Mesopotamia and took possession of the whole extensive and important region. From Nisibis an expedition was conducted against the Arab prince of Hatra, which, however, did not succeed in taking the fortified town; even beyond the Tigris against the satrap of Adiabene the generals of Severus accomplished nothing of importance.67 But Mesopotamia, i.e. the whole region between the Euphrates and Tigris as far as the Chaboras, became a Roman province, and was occupied with two legions newly created on account of this extension of territory. The principality of Edessa continued to subsist as a Roman fief, but was now no longer border-territory but surrounded by land directly imperial. The considerable and strong city of Nisibis, thenceforth called after the name of the emperor and organised as a Roman colony, became the capital of the new province and seat of the governor. After an important portion of territory had thus been torn from the Parthian kingdom, and armed force had been used against two satraps dependent on it, the great-king made ready with his troops to oppose the Romans. Severus offered peace, and ceded for Mesopotamia a portion of Armenia. But the decision of arms was thereby only postponed. As soon as Severus had started for the West, whither the complication with his co-ruler in Gaul recalled him, the Parthians broke the peace68 and advanced into Mesopotamia; the prince of Osrhoene was driven out, the land was occupied, and the governor, Laetus, one of the most excellent warriors of the time, was besieged in Nisibis. He was in great danger, when Severus once more arrived in the East in the year 198, after Albinus had succumbed. Thereupon the fortune of war turned. The Parthians retreated, and now Severus took the offensive. He advanced into Babylonia, and won Seleucia and Ctesiphon; the Parthian king saved himself with a few horsemen by flight, the crown-treasure became the spoil of the victors, the Parthian capital was abandoned to the pillage of the Roman soldiers, and more than 100,000 captives were brought to the Roman slave market. The Arabians indeed in Hatra defended themselves better than the Parthian state itself; in vain Severus endeavoured in two severe sieges to reduce the desert-stronghold. But in the main the success of the two campaigns of 198 and 199 was complete. By the erection of the province of Mesopotamia and of the great command there, Armenia lost the intermediate position which it hitherto had; it might remain in its previous relations and apart from formal incorporation. The land retained thus its own troops, and the imperial government even paid for these subsequently a contribution from the imperial chest.69

The change of government in the West and in the East.The further development of these relations as neighbours was essentially influenced by the changes which internal order underwent in the two empires. If under the dynasty of Nerva, and not less under Severus, the Parthian state, often torn asunder by civil war and contention for the crown, had been confronted by the relatively stable Roman monarchy as superior, this order of things broke down after Severus’s death, and almost for a century there followed in the western empire mostly wretched and thoroughly ephemeral regents, who in presence of other countries were constantly hesitating between arrogance and weakness. While the scale of the West thus sank that of the East rose. A few years after the death of Severus (211) a revolution took place in Iran, which not merely, like so many earlier crises, overthrew the ruling regent, nor even merely called to the government another dynasty instead of the decayed Arsacids, but, unchaining the national and religious elements for a mightier upward flight, substituted for the bastard civilisation—pervaded by Hellenism—of the Parthian state the state-organisation, faith, manners, and princes of that province which had created the old Persian empire, and, since its transition to the Parthian dynasty, preserved within it as well the tombs of Darius and Xerxes as the germs of the regeneration of the people. The re-establishment of the great-kingdom of the Persians overthrown by Alexander ensued through the emergence of the dynasty of the Sassanids. Let us cast a glance at this new shape of things before we pursue further the course of Romano-Parthian relations in the East.

The Sassanids.It has already been stated that the Parthian dynasty, although it had wrested Iran from Hellenism, was yet regarded by the nation as, so to speak, illegitimate. Artahshatr, or in new Persian Ardashir—so the official biography of the Sassanids reports—came forward to revenge the blood of Dara murdered by Alexander, and to bring back the rule to the legitimate family and re-establish it, such as it had been at the time of his forefathers before the divisional kings. Under this legend lies a good deal of reality. The dynasty which bears the name of Sasan, the grandfather of Ardashir, was no other than the royal dynasty of the Persian province; Ardashir’s father, Papak or Pabek,70 and a long list of his ancestors had, under the supremacy of the Arsacids, swayed the sceptre in this ancestral land of the Iranian nation,71 had resided in Istachr, not far from the old Persepolis, and marked their coins with Iranian language and Iranian writing, and with the sacred emblems of the Persian national faith, while the great-kings had their abode in the half-Greek border-land, and had their coins stamped in the Greek language and after the Greek style. The fundamental organisation of the Iranian state-system—the great-kingdom holding superiority over the divisional kings—was under the two dynasties as little different as that of the empire of the German nation under the Saxon and the Suabian emperors. Only for this reason in that official version the time of the Arsacids is designated as that of the divisional-kings, and Ardashir as the first common head of all Iran after the last Darius, because in the old Persian empire the Persian province stood related alike to the other provinces and to the Parthians, as in the Roman state Italy stood related to the provinces, and the Persian disputed with the Parthian the legitimate title to the great-kingdom connected de jure with his province.72

Extent of the Sassanid kingdom.What was the relation of the Sassanid kingdom to that of the Arsacids in point of extent, is a question to which tradition gives no sufficient answer. The provinces of the west collectively remained subject to the new dynasty after it sat firm in the saddle, and the claims which it set up against the Romans went, as we shall see, far beyond the pretensions of the Arsacids. But how far the rule of the Sassanids reached towards the West, and when it advanced to the Oxus which was subsequently regarded as the legitimate boundary between Iran and Turan, are matters withdrawn from our field of vision.73

The state of the Sassanids.The state-system of Iran did not undergo quite a fundamental transformation in consequence of the coming in of the new dynasty. The official title of the first Sassanid ruler, as it is given uniformly in three languages under the rock-relief of Nakshi-Rustam, “The Mazda-servant God Artaxares, king of kings of the Arians, of divine descent,”74 is substantially that of the Arsacids, except that the Iranian nation, as already in the old native regal title, and the indigenous god are now expressly named. That a dynasty having its home in Persis came in lieu of one originally alien in race and only nationalised, was a work and a victory of national reaction; but the force of circumstances placed various insurmountable barriers in the way of the consequences thence resulting. Persepolis, or, as it is now called, Istachr, becomes again nominally the capital of the empire, and there on the same rock-wall, alongside of the similar monuments of Darius, the remarkable statues and still more remarkable inscriptions just mentioned proclaim the fame of Ardashir and Shapur; but the administration could not well be conducted from this remote locality, and Ctesiphon continued still to be its centre. The new Persian government did not resume the de jure prerogative of the Persians, as it had subsisted under the Achaemenids; while Darius named himself "a Persian son of a Persian, an Arian from Arian stock," Ardashir named himself, as we saw, simply king of the Arians. We do not know whether Persian elements were introduced afresh into the great houses apart from the royal; in any case several of them remained, like the Surên and the Carên; only under the Achaemenids, not under the Sassanids these were exclusively Persian.

Church and priesthood under the Sassanids.Even in a religious point of view no change, strictly so called, set in; but the faith and the priests gained under the Persian great-kings an influence and a power such as they had never possessed under the Parthian. It may well be that the twofold diffusion of foreign worships in the direction of Iran—of Buddhism from the East and of the Jewish-Christian faith from the West—brought by their very hostility a regeneration to the old religion of Mazda. The founder of the new dynasty, Ardashir, was, as is credibly reported, a zealous fire-worshipper, and himself took priestly orders; therefore, it is further said, from that time the order of the Magi became influential and arrogant, while it had hitherto by no means had such honour and such freedom, but on the contrary had not been held in much account by the rulers. “Thenceforth all the Persians honour and revere the priests; public affairs are arranged according to their counsels and oracles; each treaty and each law-dispute undergoes their inspection and their judgment, and nothing appears to the Persian right and legal which has not been confirmed by a priest.” Accordingly we encounter an arrangement of spiritual administration which reminds us of the position of the Pope and the bishops alongside of the Emperor and the princes. Each circle is placed under a chief-Magian (Magupat, lord of Magians, in new Persian Mobedh), and these all in turn under the chiefest of the chief Magians (Mobedhan-Mobedh), the counterpart of “the king of kings,” and now it is he who crowns the king. The consequences of this priestly dominion did not fail to appear: the rigid ritual, the restrictive precepts as to guilt and expiation, science resolving itself into a wild system of oracles and of magic, while belonging from the first to Parsism, in all probability only attained to their full development at this epoch.

The languages of the country under the Sassanids.Traces of the national reaction appear also in the use of the native language and the native customs. The largest Greek city of the Parthian empire, the ancient Seleucia, continued to subsist, but it was thenceforth called not after the name of the Greek marshal, but after that of its new master, Beh, or better, Ardashir. The Greek language hitherto at any rate always in use, although debased and no longer ruling alone, disappears on the emergence of the new dynasty at once from the coins, and only on the inscriptions of the first Sassanids is it still to be met with by the side of, and behind, the language proper of the land. The “Parthian writing,” the Pahlavî, maintains its ground, but alongside of it comes a second little different and indeed, as the coins show, as properly official, probably that used hitherto in the Persian province, so that the oldest monuments of the Sassanids, like those of the Achaemenids, are trilingual, somewhat as in the German middle ages Latin, Saxon, and Franconian were employed side by side. After king Sapor I. († 272) the bilingual usage disappears, and the second mode of writing alone retains its place, inheriting the name Pahlavî. The year of the Seleucids, and the names of the months belonging to it, disappear with the change of dynasty; in their stead come, according to old Persian custom, the years of the rulers and the native Persian names of months.75 Even the old Persian legend is transferred to the new Persia. The still extant “history of Ardashir, son of Papak,” which makes this son of a Persian shepherd arrive at the Median court, perform menial offices there, and then become the deliverer of his people, is nothing but the old tale of Cyrus changed to the new names. Another fable-book of the Indian Parsees is able to tell how king Iskander Rumi, i.e. “Alexander the Roman,” had caused the holy books of Zarathustra to be burnt, and how they were then restored by the pious Ardaviraf when king Ardashir had mounted the throne. Here the Romano-Hellene confronts the Persian; the legend has, as might be expected, forgotten the illegitimate Arsacid.

Government of the Sassanids.In other respects the state of things remained essentially the same. In a military point of view in particular, the armies of the Sassanids were certainly not regular and trained troops, but the levy of men capable of arms, into which with the national movement a new spirit may doubtless have passed, but which afterwards, as before, was based in the main on the cavalry-service of the nobility. The administration too remained as it was; the able ruler took steps with inexorable sternness against the highway-robber as against the exacting official, and, compared at least with the later Arabic and the Turkish rule, the subjects of the Sassanid empire found themselves prosperous and the state-chest full.

The new Persians and the Romans.But the alteration in the position of the new kingdom with reference to the Roman is significant. The Arsacids never felt themselves quite on a level with the Caesars. Often as the two states encountered each other in war and peace as powers equal in weight, and decidedly as the view of two great-powers dominated the Roman East (p. 1), there remained with the Roman power a precedence similar to that which the holy Roman empire of the German nation possessed throughout centuries, very much to its hurt. Acts of subjection, such as the Parthian kings took upon themselves in presence of Tiberius (p. 44) and of Nero (52), without being compelled to them by extreme necessity, cannot be at all conceived of on the Roman side. It cannot be accident that a gold coin was never struck under the government of the Arsacids, and the very first Sassanid ruler practised coining in gold; this is the most palpable sign of sovereignty unrestricted by any duties of a vassal. To the claim of the empire of the Caesars alone to the power of coining money for universal circulation the Arsacids without exception yielded, at least in so far that they themselves refrained generally from coining, and left coinage in silver and copper to the towns or the satraps; the Sassanids again struck gold pieces, as did king Darius. The great-kingdom of the East at length demanded its full right; the world no longer belonged to the Romans alone. The submissiveness of the Orientals and the supremacy of the Occidentals were of the past. Accordingly, in place of the relations between Romans and Parthians, as hitherto, always reverting afresh to peace, there now came for generations embittered hostility.

Parthian war of Severus Antoninus.After having set forth the new state organisation, with which the sinking Rome was soon to contend, we resume the thread of our narrative. Antoninus, son and successor of Severus, not a warrior and statesman like his father, but a dissolute caricature of both, must have had the design—so far as in the case of such personages we can speak of design at all—to bring the East entirely into the Roman power. It was not difficult to place the princes of Osrhoene and of Armenia, after they had been summoned to the imperial court, under arrest, and to declare their fiefs forfeited. But on the arrival of the news a revolt broke out in Armenia. The Arsacid prince Tiridates was proclaimed king, and invoked the protection of the Parthians. Thereupon Antoninus put himself at the head of a large military force, and appeared in the East in the year 216, to put down the Armenians, and in case of need also the Parthians. Tiridates himself at once gave up the cause as lost, although the division sent to Armenia subsequently encountered vehement resistance there; and he fled to the Parthians. The Romans demanded his surrender. The Parthians were not inclined on his account to enter into a war, the more especially as just then the two sons of king Vologasus V., Vologasus VI. and Artabanus, were in bitter feud over the succession to the throne. The former yielded when the Roman demand was imperiously repeated, and delivered up Tiridates. Thereupon the emperor desired from Artabanus, who had meanwhile obtained recognition, the hand of his daughter for the express object of thus obtaining the kingdom by marriage, and of bringing East and West under one rule. The rejection of this wild proposal76 was the signal for war; the Romans declared it, and crossed the Tigris. The Parthians were unprepared; without encountering resistance the Romans burnt down the towns and villages in Adiabene, and ruthlessly destroyed even the old royal tombs at Arbela.77 But Artabanus made the utmost exertions for the next campaign, and put into the field a powerful force in the spring of 217. Antoninus, who had spent the winter in Edessa, was assassinated by his officers just as he was setting out for this second campaign. His successor Macrinus, unconfirmed in the government and held in little repute, at the head, moreover, of an army defective in discipline and tone and shaken by the murder of the emperor, would gladly have rid himself of a war wantonly instigated and assuming very serious proportions. He sent the prisoners back to the Parthian king, and threw the blame of the outrages committed on his predecessor. But Artabanus was not content with this; he demanded compensation for all the devastation committed, and the evacuation of Mesopotamia. Thus matters came to a battle at Nisibis, in which the Romans had the worst. Nevertheless the Parthians, partly because their levy seemed as though it would break up, perhaps also under the influence of Roman money, granted peace (218) on comparatively favourable terms. Rome paid a considerable war compensation (50,000,000 denarii), but retained Mesopotamia. Armenia remained with Tiridates, but the latter took it as in dependency on the Romans. In Osrhoene also the old princely house was reinstated.

King Ardashir.This was the last treaty of peace which the Arsacid dynasty concluded with Rome. Almost immediately afterwards, and perhaps partly in consequence of this bargain, which certainly, as things stood, might be looked upon by the Orientals as an abandonment by their own government of the victories achieved, the insurrection began, which converted the state of the Parthians into a state of the Persians. Its leader, king Ardashir or Artaxares (A.D. 224–241) strove for several years with the adherents of the old dynasty before he attained full success;78 after three great battles, in the last of which king Artabanus fell, he was master in the Parthian empire proper, and could march into the Mesopotamian desert to subdue the Arabs of Hatra and thence to advance against the Roman Mesopotamia. But the brave and independent Arabs defended themselves now against the Persians as formerly against the Roman invasion, in their huge walls with good success; and Artaxares found himself led to operate in the first instance against Media and Armenia, where the Arsacids still maintained themselves, and the sons of Artabanus had found a refuge. It was not till about the year 230 that he turned against the Romans, and not merely declared war against them, but demanded back all the provinces which had formerly belonged to the kingdom of his predecessors, Darius and Xerxes—in other words, the cession of all Asia. To emphasise his threatening words, he led a mighty army over the Euphrates; Mesopotamia was occupied and Nisibis besieged; the enemy’s cavalry appeared in Cappadocia and in Syria.

Severus Alexander.The Roman throne was then occupied by Severus Alexander, a ruler in whom nothing was warlike but the name, and for whom in reality his mother Mamaea conducted the government. Urgent, almost humble proposals of peace on the part of the Roman government remained without effect; nothing was left but the employment of arms. The masses of the Roman army gathered together from all the empire were divided; the left wing took the direction of Armenia and Media, the right that of Mesene at the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris, perhaps in the calculation that they might in the former as in the latter quarter have the support of the adherents of the Arsacids; the main army went to Mesopotamia. The troops were numerous enough, but without discipline and tone; a Roman officer of high position at this time himself testifies that they were pampered and insubordinate, refused to fight, killed their officers, and deserted in crowds. The main force did not get beyond the Euphrates,79 for his mother represented to the emperor that it was not his business to fight for his subjects, but theirs to fight for him. The right wing, assailed in the level country by the Persian main force and abandoned by the emperor, was cut up. Thereupon, when the emperor issued orders to the wing which had pushed forward towards Media to draw back, the latter also suffered severely in the winter retreat through Armenia. If the matter went no further than this sorry return of the great Oriental army to Antioch, if no complete disaster occurred, and even Mesopotamia remained in Roman power, this appears due, not to the merit of the Roman troops or their leaders but to the fact that the Persian levy was weary of the conflict and went home.80 But they went not for long, the more especially as soon after, upon the murder of the last offshoot of the dynasty of Severus, the several army-commanders and the government in Rome began to fight about the occupation of the Roman throne, and consequently were at one in their concern for the affairs of external foes. Under Maximinus (235–238) the Roman Mesopotamia fell into the power of Ardashir, and the Persians once more prepared to cross the Euphrates.81

The Persian war of Gordian.After the internal troubles were in some measure pacified, and Gordian III., almost still a boy, under the protection of the commandant of Rome and soon of his father-in-law Furius Timesitheus, bore undisputed sway in the whole empire, war was solemnly declared against the Persians, and in the year 242 a great Roman army advanced under the personal conduct of the emperor, or rather of his father-in-law, into Mesopotamia. It had complete success; Carrhae was recovered, at Resaina between Carrhae and Nisibis the army of the Persian king Shahpuhr or Sapor (reigning 241–272), who shortly before had followed his father Ardashir, was routed, and in consequence of this victory Nisibis was occupied. All Mesopotamia was reconquered; it was resolved to march back to the Euphrates, and thence down the stream against the enemy’s capital Ctesiphon. Unhappily Timesitheus died, and his successor, Marcus Julius Philippus, a native of Arabia from the Trachonitis, used the opportunity to set aside the young ruler. When the army had accomplished the difficult march through the valley of the Chaboras towards the Euphrates, the soldiers in Circesium, at the confluence of the Chaboras with the Euphrates, did not find—in consequence, it is alleged, of arrangements made by Philippus—the provisions and stores which they had expected, and laid the blame of this on the emperor. Nevertheless the march in the direction of Ctesiphon was begun, but at the very first station, near Zaitha (somewhat below Mejadîn), a number of insurgent guards killed the emperor (in the spring or summer of 244), and proclaimed their commandant, Philippus, as Augustus in his stead. The new ruler did what the soldiers or at least the guardsmen desired, and not merely gave up the intended expedition against Ctesiphon, but led the troops at once back to Italy. He purchased the permission to do so from the conquered enemy by the cession of Mesopotamia and Armenia, and so of the Euphrates frontier. But this conclusion of peace excited such indignation that the emperor did not venture to put it in execution, and allowed the garrisons to remain in the ceded provinces.82 The fact that the Persians, at least provisionally, acquiesced in this, gives the measure of what they were then able to do. It was not the Orientals, but the Goths, the pestilence that raged for fifteen years, and the dissensions of the corps-leaders quarrelling with one another for the crown, that broke the last strength of the empire.

Palmyra.At this point, when the Roman East in its struggle with the Persian is left to its own resources, it will be appropriate to make mention of a remarkable state, which, created by and for the desert-traffic, now for a short time takes up a leading part in political history. The oasis of Palmyra, in the native language Tadmor, lies half-way between Damascus and the Euphrates. It is of importance solely as intermediate station between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean; this significance it was late in acquiring, and early lost again, so that the flourishing time of Palmyra coincides nearly with the period which we are here describing. As to the rise of the town there is an utter absence of tradition.83 It is mentioned first on occasion of the abode of Antonius in Syria in the year 71341 B.C., when he made a vain attempt to possess himself of its riches; the documents found there—the oldest dated Palmyrene inscription is of the year 745 9 B.C.—hardly reach much further back. It is not improbable that its flourishing was connected with the establishment of the Romans in the Syrian coast-region. So long as the Nabataeans and the towns of Osrhoene were not directly Roman, the Romans had an interest in providing another direct communication with the Euphrates, and this thereupon led necessarily by way of Palmyra. Palmyra was not a Roman foundation; Antonius took as the occasion for that predatory expedition the neutrality of the merchants who were the medium of traffic between the two great states, and the Roman horsemen turned back, without having performed their work, before the chain of archers which the Palmyrenes opposed to the attack. But already in the first imperial period the city must have been reckoned as belonging to the empire, because the tax-ordinances of Germanicus and of Corbulo issued for Syria applied also for Palmyra; in an inscription of the year 80 we meet with a Claudian phyle there; from Hadrian’s time the city calls itself Hadriana Palmyra, and in the third century it even designates itself a colony.

Military independence of Palmyra.The subjection of the Palmyrenes to the empire was, however, of a different nature to the ordinary one, and similar in some measure to the client-relation of the dependent kingdoms. Even in Vespasian’s time Palmyra is called an intermediate region between the two great powers, and in every collision between the Romans and Parthians the question was asked, what policy the Palmyrenes would pursue. We must seek the key to its distinctive position in the relations of the frontier and the arrangements made for frontier-protection. The Syrian troops, so far as they were stationed on the Euphrates itself, had their chief position at Zeugma, opposite to Biredjik, at the great passage of the Euphrates. Further down the stream, between the immediately Roman and the Parthian territory was interposed that of Palmyra, which reached to the Euphrates and included the next important place of crossing at Sura opposite to the Mesopotamian town Nicephorium (later Callinicon, now er-Ragga). It is more than probable that the guarding of this important border-fortress as well as the securing of the desert-road between the Euphrates and Palmyra, and also perhaps of a portion of the road from Palmyra to Damascus, was committed to the community of Palmyra, and that it was thus entitled and bound to make the military arrangements necessary for this far from slight task.84 Subsequently doubtless the imperial troops were brought up closer to Palmyra, and one of the Syrian legions was moved to Danava between Palmyra and Damascus, and the Arabian legion to Bostra; after Severus united Mesopotamia with the empire, even here both banks of the Euphrates were in the Roman power, and the Roman territory on the Euphrates ended no longer at Sura but at Circesium, at the confluence of the Chaboras with the Euphrates above Mejadîn. Then Mesopotamia also was strongly occupied with imperial troops. But the Mesopotamian legions lay on the great road in the north near Resaina and Nisibis, and even the Syrian and Arabian troops did not supersede the need for the co-operation of the Palmyrenes. Even the protection of Circesium and of this part of the bank of the Euphrates may have been entrusted to the Palmyrenes. It was not till after the decline of Palmyra, and perhaps in compensation for it, that Circesium85 was made by Diocletian a strong fortress, which thenceforth was here the basis of frontier-defence.

Administrative independence of Palmyra.The traces of this distinctive position of Palmyra are demonstrable also in its institutions. The absence of the emperor’s name on the Palmyrene coins is probably to be explained not from it, but from the fact that the community issued almost nothing but small money. But the treatment of the language speaks clearly. From the rule elsewhere followed almost without exception by the Romans—of allowing in their immediate territory only the use of the two imperial languages—Palmyra was excepted. Here that language, which in the rest of Syria and not less after the exile in Judaea was the usual medium of private intercourse, but was restricted to the latter, maintained its ground in public use, so long as the city existed at all. Essential differences cannot be shown between the Palmyrene Syriac and that of the other regions just named; the proper names, having not seldom an Arabic or Jewish, or even Persian form, show the striking mixture of peoples, and numerous words borrowed from Greek or Latin show the influence of the Occidentals. It becomes subsequently a rule to append to the Syrian text a Greek one, which in a decree of the Palmyrene common-council of the year 137 is placed after the Palmyrene, but afterwards usually precedes it; but mere Greek inscriptions of native Palmyrenes are rare exceptions. Even in votive inscriptions which Palmyrenes set up to their native gods in Rome,86 and in tombs of Palmyrene soldiers that died in Africa or Britain, the Palmyrene rendering is added. So too in Palmyra—while the Roman year was made the basis of dating as in the rest of the empire—the names of the months were not the Macedonian officially received in Roman Syria, but those which were current in it in common intercourse at least among the Jews, and were in use, moreover, among the Aramaean tribes living under Assyrian and subsequently Persian rule.87

Palmyrene magistrates.The municipal organisation was moulded in the main after the pattern of the Greek municipality of the Roman empire; the designations for magistrates and council88 and even those of the colony are in the Palmyrene texts retained for the most part from the imperial languages. But in administration the district retained a greater independence than is elsewhere assigned to urban communities. Alongside of the civic officials we find, at least in the third century, the city of Palmyra with its territory under a separate “headman” of senatorial rank and Roman appointment, but chosen from the family of most repute in the place; Septimius Hairanes, son of Odaenathus, is substantially a prince of the Palmyrenes,89 who was doubtless not otherwise dependent on the legate of Syria than were the client-princes on the neighbouring imperial governors generally. A few years later we meet with his son,90 Septimius Odaenathus, in the like position—indeed even raised in rank—of hereditary prince.91 Similarly, Palmyra formed a customs-district apart, in which the customs were leased on account, not of the state, but of the community.92

Commercial position of Palmyra.The importance of Palmyra depended on the caravan-traffic. The heads of the caravans (συνοδιάρχαι), which went from Palmyra to the great entrepôts on the Euphrates, to Vologasias, the already mentioned Parthian foundation not far from the site of the ancient Babylon, and to Forath or Charax Spasinu, twin towns at its mouth, close on the Persian Gulf, appear in the inscriptions as the most respected city-burgesses,93 and fill not merely the magistracies of their home, but in part also imperial offices; the great traders (ἀρχέμποροι) and the guild of workers in gold and silver testify to the importance of the city for trade and manufactures, and not less is its prosperity attested by the still standing temples of the city and the long colonnades of the city halls, as well as the massy and richly decorated tombs. The climate is little favourable to agriculture—the place lies near to the northern limit of the date palm, and does not derive its Greek name from it—but there are found in the environs the remains of great subterranean aqueducts and huge water-reservoirs artificially constructed of square blocks, with the help of which the ground, now destitute of all vegetation, must once upon a time have artificially developed a rich culture. This riches, this national idiosyncrasy not quite set aside even under Roman rule, and this administrative independence, explain in some measure the part of Palmyra about the middle of the third century in the great crisis, to the presentation of which we now return.

Capture of the emperor Valerian.After the emperor Decius had fallen in the year 251 when fighting against the Goths in Europe, the government of the empire, if at that time there was still an empire and a government at all, left the East entirely to its fate. While the pirates from the Black Sea ravaged the coasts far and wide and even the interior, the Persian king Sapor again assumed the aggressive. While his father had been content with calling himself lord of Iran, he first designated himself—as did the succeeding rulers after his example—the great-king of Iran and non-Iran (p. 83, note), and thereby laid down, as it were, the programme of his policy of conquest. In the year 252 or 253 he occupied Armenia, or it submitted to him voluntarily, beyond doubt carried likewise away by that resuscitation of the old Persian faith and Persian habits; the legitimate king Tiridates sought shelter with the Romans, the other members of the royal house placed themselves under the banners of the Persian.94 After Armenia thus had become Persian, the hosts of the Orientals overran Mesopotamia, Syria, and Cappadocia; they laid waste the level country far and wide, but the inhabitants of the larger towns, first of all the brave Edessenes, repelled the attack of enemies little equipped for besieging. In the West, meanwhile at least, a recognised government had been set up. The emperor Publius Licinius Valerianus, an honest and well-disposed ruler, but not resolute in character or equal to dealing with difficulties, appeared at length in the East and resorted to Antioch. Thence he went to Cappadocia, which the Persian roving hordes evacuated. But the plague decimated his army, and he delayed long to take up the decisive struggle in Mesopotamia. At length he resolved to bring help to the sorely pressed Edessa, and crossed the Euphrates with his forces. There, not far from Edessa, occurred the disaster which had nearly the same significance for the Roman East as the victory of the Goths at the mouth of the Danube and the fall of Decius—the capture of the emperor Valerianus by the Persians (end of 259 or beginning of 260).95 As to the more precise circumstances the accounts are conflicting. According to one version, when he was attempting with a weak band to reach Edessa, he was surrounded and captured by the far superior Persians. According to another, he, although defeated, reached the beleaguered town, but, as he brought no sufficient help and the provisions came to an end only the more rapidly, he dreaded the outbreak of a military insurrection, and therefore delivered himself voluntarily into the hands of the enemy. According to a third, he, reduced to extremities, entered into negotiations with Sapor; when the Persian king declined to treat with envoys, he appeared personally in the enemy’s camp, and was perfidiously made a prisoner.