CHAPTER III
.
THE SARMATAE AND PARTHIANS
I. Sarmatian origins and external history. Origin of the Sarmatae .
The Aorsi and Alani . The Alani and Bosporus
II. Sarmatian society, warfare and art . Sarmatian trade and
warfare . The archaeological evidence . Sarmatian art . The‘animal style’
III. Parthia: foreign policy . Augustus and Parthia . The
Julio-Claudians and Parthia . Trajan and Hadrian and Parthia . The Antonines
and Parthia . The failure of Rome . The Parthians and the North-west . The
Parthians and the South-east
IV. Parthia: constitution and administration . Vassal kings . Satrapies
. The cities of the Parthian empire Nobles and feudatories . The Parthian army
V. Parthia: economic and social conditions . Economic life .
Foreign trade . Contacts with China
VI. Parthia: religion, literature, art
CHAPTER IV
FLAVIAN WARS AND FRONTIERS
By Ronald Syme, M.A.
Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford
L The Army
. . . . . . . . . .131
The re-organization of the Ariny . - . . . .132
The policy oi’the Flavian emperors . . * . .135
The sword and the spade . . . . . . .136
CHAPTER III
THE SARMATAE AND PARTHIANS
I.
SARMATIAN ORIGINS AND EXTERNAL HISTORY
FOR centuries the Sarmatae together with the Scythians ruled over the
steppes of South Russia and thus affected the life of the Hellenistic world.
For centuries, later, they were the dangerous and dreaded enemies of the Roman
Empire. They shared with their allies, the Germans, and with their cousins, the
Parthians, the reputation of being a match for the Romans in war and of never
having been conquered by them. On the contrary, in the time of the late Roman
Empire, they took their part in its conquest by the barbarians.
The name Sarmatae first appears in our literary tradition at the end of
the fourth century BC in Pseudo-Scylax and Eudoxus of Cnidus in the form
Syrmatae. Pseudo-Scylax regards them as different from the Sauromatae of
earlier historians and geographers. The same name—slightly changed to
Sarmatae—is used by Polybius and the sources of Strabo, as a special designation
for a group of tribes not identical with the Sauromatae of Herodotus. But this
distinction between the ancient Sauromatae and the new Sarmatae never took firm
root. Most of the Greek and Latin authors of the late Hellenistic and Imperial
periods used the two names interchangeably and applied freely to the Sarmatae
of their own times what Hecataeus, Herodotus and other early authors had to say
of the Sauromatae. This confusion is explained by the fact that the two names
were probably only different spellings of the same Iranian name—perhaps
Saurumax, as well as by the history of the classical Sauromatae and the post-classical
Sarmatae.
According to the Iranian tradition the Sauromatae were a half-Iranian
people, akin to the Scythians, who lived in the sixth to the fourth centuries BC
beyond the Don and on the shores of the Sea of Azov. One of their main
characteristics, and one which impressed the Greeks, was the important part
played by women in their social and political life—they were called ‘ruled by women’.
Since, this feature is common in the life of the Anatolians and foreign to the
Iranians—both to the Scythians of Herodotus and later the Sarmatians of Hellenistic
and Roman times—it is very probable that the Sarmatians were a mixture of
Iranian and Macotian tribes, and that some of them adopted the peculiar social
and political structure of the Maeotians, their so-called gynaecracy.
Archaeological evidence proves that the regions between the Don and the Volga
and between the Volga and the river Ural were inhabited by a group of Scythian
tribes from the seventh to the third century BC. Some of them—those nearest to
the. Don and the Sea of Azov—show in their culture, as reflected in their tombs
(the necropolis of Elizavetovskaia), foreign non-Scythian anil nonGreek
elements together with a strong Greek influence. There is no doubt—though we
have no trustworthy tradition to prove it— that Sauromatian tribes often
crossed the Don and engaged in war with their nominal overlords, the Scythians,
who formed a strong State from the seventh to the third century BC between the
Don and the Dnieper and farther south in the Crimea, and on the Kuban. Traces
of these Eastern Scythians have been found in graves of the Scythian period in
the region of the Dnieper.
One of the most important and probably most Hellenized Scytho-Maeotian
tribes were the Jazamatac or Jaxarnatae, whose queen was Tirgatao, the romantic
heroine of a semi-historical Scythian novel. They figure in older geographers
like Hecataeus and in writers dependent on them, but in the Hellenistic,
period, they disappear from the tradition almost completely. On the other hand,
Polybius’ mentions the Sarmatians with their king, Gatalas, as an important
State, somewhere north of the Crimea, and Polyacnus reports another story of a
queen-Amazon—this time of the Sarmatians-—Amage. A little later, the Hellenistic
sources of Strabo speak of a powerful tribe, the lazyges, the vanguard of the
Sarmatians, whose original home, according to the sources of Ammianus
Marcellinus, was the region near the Sea of Azov. Eater writers inform us that
they steadily advanced toward the west and before the middle of the first
century a.d. passed through the regions occupied by the Bastarnac and the
Dacians and occupied the plains between the Danube and the 'Theiss, where they
continued to reside for centuries as neighbours of the Roman Empire. Some of
their graves in this new home, few of which have been explored, have contents,
such as funeral chariots, which are foreign to the Sarmatian graves in South
Russia, and suggest rather the habits of the Pontic Scythians. It is possible,
therefore, that the Iazyges are to be identified with the Jazamatae and a
reconstruction of their history may be attempted. Sometime before 179 BC the
Jazamatae were driven out of their native country near the Sea of Azov and then
conquered a part of the steppes between the Don and the Dnieper. While there,
they played an active part, especially in the life of the Scythian Empire. Then
they advanced again to the west, and since they were part of the Sauromatae of
the early tradition they were the first to receive the name of Sarmatae.
This advance at the end of the second century b.c. was probably caused
by the appearance in South Russia of Iranian tribes who moved westwards in
great numbers, and were given the same general name Sarmatae. The tradition
used by Strabo names two groups of these tribes, one in the west, another in
the east, in the steppes of the northern Caucasus. The former group is
mentioned by Artemidorus of Ephesus and Posidonius in their diathesis (distribution) of peoples on the north-west shore of the Black Sea, and by the
historians of Mithridates; the latter appears in the tradition which is
connected with Pompey’s conquest of the East. In the first group the leading
part is played by the Roxolani. This powerful tribe steadily advanced on the
heels of the Iazyges and finally occupied the regions north of them. Still
later, they probably drove the Iazyges out from their former home between the
Don and the Dnieper. While there, they took an active part in the Mithridatic
wars in the Crimea. The second group consisted mainly of two tribes—the Aorsi
and the Siracians, the latter living close to the Kuban valley in the
south-eastern part of the North Caucasian steppes, the former more to the north
and west, near the Don and the Sea of Azov. Strabo mentions them twice4, both
times in connection with each other. They played an important part in the
history of Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, as his faithful and strong
allies, the Aorsi being by far the stronger. Both tribes appear again in the
reign of Claudius, now as enemies of each other. The Siracians are still found
in these parts in AD. 193, but the Aorsi are not mentioned in any trustworthy
historical or geographical source after the first century. In their stead the
Alani appear as the leading Sarmatian tribe.
The provenance of the Aorsi and Alani is known. The Chinese Annals (or History) of the Former Han, in describing the western countries,
mention to the north of Sogdiana an important tribe with the name An-ts’ai or
Yen-ts’ai. Since the time of Chang Ch’ien at least, the Yen-ts’ai lived near
the Aral Sea. The Annals describe them as a strong nomadic tribe
(100,000 archers), subject to Sogdiana (K’ang-chti). The northern Chinese silk
route ran through their country. The same description with some unimportant changes
and additions is repeated by the Annals af the later Han, with the new
fact, that in this period the ‘Kingdom of Yen-ts’ai changed its name to that of
A-lani.’ This statement is confirmed by the record of the Wei with the addition
that at the time of this record (third century AD.) the Yen-ts’ai who ‘formerly
were dependent from time to time to a certain extent upon K’ang-chti are no
longer dependent upon them.’ It is generally agreed that the Aorsi of the
western sources are the Yen-ts’ai of the Chinese Annals, and that some
time after AD. 25 a new tribe got the upper hand of them and gave their own
name of Alani to the whole confederacy of nomads which they controlled. It is
no accident that the name ‘Aorsi’ disappears from western sources in the second
half of the first century AD. while that of ‘Alani’ takes its place (perhaps as
early as Ad. 35). It is, therefore, very probable that the great movement of
peoples of the second half of the second century BC, which so greatly changed
the life of the East, pushed to the west a group of nomadic tribes (perhaps
related to the Yueh-chih). These tribes were very little known to the Chinese,
since they spread north and west of the Aral Sea. But they formed apparently a
powerful nomadic State which extended far into Siberia on the north and reached
the steppes of South Russia in the late second century BC: one of the tribes,
the Roxolani, occupied the steppes between the Don and the Dnieper, while
others, under the name Aorsi, held the regions beyond the Don.
The Siracians belonged to a different stock who maintained their
independence against both the Aorsi and the Alani. Tribes of their name are
found in Hyrcania and a part of Armenia near a group of Sacae. It is, indeed,
probable that they were a branch of the Sacae who pushed on to the steppes
north of the Caucasus at the time of their great migration. They may, then,
have appeared there at the same time as the Aorsi from the north. Some of them
(? the Aspurgiani) penetrated the Kuban valley and played an important part in
the history of the Bosporan kingdom from the reign of Augustus onwards.
In the first two centuries AD. the Alani sought to expand south and
west, in the South at the expense of Parthia and the Roman province of
Cappadocia (AD. 35, 72-3, 134-5). It may also have been their pressure that
thrust the Roxolani on the Iazyges, so that both these became repeatedly
dangerous to Rome on the Danube, as has been described elsewhere. It was
probably about the end of Tiberius’ reign that the Iazyges passed through the
country of the Dacians and occupied the area between the Theiss and the Danube.
The Roxolani remained in the east, a potential danger to the Empire the more
if, as c. AD. 62, they joined forces with the Dacians and the Bastarnae at the
mouth of the Danube. The inscription set up to Plautius Silvanus, the general
who checked this movement, suggests that yet more powerful and dangerous
tribes, of whom the Romans knew little, stood behind these peoples. Again and
again both Iazyges and Roxolani appeared on the military horizon of Rome before,
in 179/80, Marcus Aurelius earned the title of Sarmaticus that was to be borne
by many later emperors. In the third century the Roxolani seem to have been
absorbed into the coalition formed by the Goths and the Alani, while the
Iazyges remained a separate people and were active in the struggle on the
Danube frontier under the late Empire.
In the first and second centuries the Romans did not come into direct
contact with the most powerful of the Sarmatians, the Aorsi and Alani, except
for a moment in AD. 49, when they allied themselves with the King of the Aorsi
to facilitate their support of a Roman candidate to the throne of Bosporus. On
the other hand, these Sarmatians of the North Caucasian steppes and of the Don
evoked the vigilance of Rome, for they, with the Scythians of the Crimea, were
the most dangerous enemies of the Bosporan kingdom, the client-state that
served Rome’s interests in the far north-east.
No wars between the Alani and the Bosporan kingdom are mentioned in the
many inscriptions which celebrate the military achievements of the Bosporan
kings of the first and second centuries AD. The Scythians were apparently more
aggressive, for wars against them were frequent, and in order to save Chersonesus
the Romans were forced to occupy it with troops, to strengthen its
fortifications and to build against the Scythians a regular limes across the
Crimea, comparable to a similar fortified line built across their own peninsula
by the Bosporan kings. Against the piracy of the Scythians both the Bosporan
kings and Rome kept a flotilla on the Black Sea. The lack of any direct mention
of wars between Bosporus and the Alani may, however, be an accident. In the
reign of Antoninus Pius the Alani were restless and probably threatened the
Bosporan kingdom. In AD. 193 we hear of a war of Sauromates II against the
Siracians, who may have, been at that time vassals of the Alani, and we know,
both from coins and inscriptions, that Tanai's on the Don and the Creek cities
of the Taman peninsula were repeatedly fortified by the Bosporan king, at least
from the days of Domitian. This may be combined with the mention in two
inscriptions of a regular service of interpreters of the Bosporan kingdom, who
were in charge of diplomatic, relations between Bosporus and the Alani—an
important official of Bosporus has the title ‘Chief interpreter of the Alani’.
And yet the Alani never made real efforts to become masters of the Creek cities
of the Black Sea. In their attitude toward them they were very tolerant and
very liberal. This attitude is certainly to be explained, not only by the
support which the Romans gave to the Bosporus, but also by the desire of the
Alani to have in the Greek cities trustworthy commercial agents for their trade
with the West and to use them as centres of supply for the products of Greek
industry, of which some of them were very fond.
Friendly relations between the Alani and the Bosporan kingdom and Olbia,
which was at times under the control of the Bosporan kings, are also attested
by the peaceful penetration of Sarmatians into the Greek cities of Bosporus,
which led to the gradual iranization of the Bosporan kingdom. Hundreds of residents
in these Greek cities now bear Sarmatian names, and all of them wear Sarmatian
dress and use Sarmatian weapons. Last but not least, the ruling dynasty of
Bosporus itself assumes an ever more Iranian aspect. Along with Thracian
dynastic names appears a new name—Sauromates, which may reflect the fact that
many subjects of the Bosporan king were Sarmatian. The figure of the king on
horseback, adoring the supreme god, as it appears on the coins of Bosporus in
the second century AD., is almost exactly the same as the figure of the king on
contemporary Parthian and Graeco-Sacian coins. In the third century the grave
of a Bosporan king or noble was not much different from that of an Alan of the
same rank. So strong a sarmatization would be impossible, were not relations
between the Alani and the Bosporus both constant and friendly.
With the third century the situation changed. The Alani, who maintained
constant relations with the Germanic tribes that were gradually occupying the
valley of the Dnieper, became merged with the Germans, or rather, became a part
of the Gothic-Alanic kingdom of South Russia. Thus they came to be neighbours
of the Romans, and they took part in most of the enterprises of the Goths,
Suebi and Vandals against the Empire. In the south of Russia, Olbia and Tanais
were destroyed, and Panticapaeum became a Gotho-Sarmatian city. Later centuries
were to witness the gradual advance of the Goths, Vandals and Alani to France,
to Spain and finally to Africa.
II.
SARMATIAN SOCIETY, WARFARE AND ART
Very little is known of the organization of Sarmatian political life.
There are kings and barons, the skeptouchoi, and it may be assumed that
the Sarmatians, like all the Iranians, had a kind of monarchical feudal State.
Our sources are unanimous in regarding all the Sarmatian tribes, with the
exception of the Siracians, as nomads leading a pastoral life and breeding
great numbers of cattle. Their small, swift horses were famous in the Roman
world. In a well-known inscription found at Apta on the Durance the Emperor
Hadrian praises and commemorates his ‘Borysthenes Alanus Caesareus Veredus’
that ‘flew’ with him over swamps and hills of Tuscany as he hunted the wild
boar.
There is no doubt that the Sarmatians were Iranians—near relations of
the Scythians. The descendants of the Alani—the Ossetes in the Northern
Caucasus—still speak an Iranian language and most of the non-Greek names in the
Bosporan cities, especially in Tanais in Imperial times, are Iranian. The
Sarmatian aristocracy was probably very rich. Through the empire of the
Aorsi-Alani, which occupied vast regions to the north of the Caspian and Aral
Seas and included the eastern part of the South Russian steppes, there ran an
important caravan road connecting the Greek cities of the Black Sea with China,
witness its description in the Chinese sources and the many Chinese articles,
especially mirrors, which have been found in Sarmatian graves and at
Panticapaeum (fragments of silk stuff's of Chinese workmanship of the second
century AD.). Furthermore, according to Strabo, many Indian and Babylonian
products passed through Media and Armenia across the Caucasus into the regions
occupied by the Aorsi and thence probably to the harbours of the Bosporan
kingdom. Strabo meant probably the important trade-routes, one of which ran
from India through Parthia to the Oxus and from there to the Caspian, the other
from Babylonia along the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Since the Greeks and Romans met the Sarmatians mostly on the field of
battle, their information on the military equipment, strategy and tactics of
the Sarmatae is much more complete than on their religious, social and economic
life, of which we know practically nothing. A combination of the descriptions
of the Sarmatian army given by Strabo, Josephus, Tacitus, Arrian, Pausanias and
Ammianus Marcellinus gives a picture which is very similar to that of the
Parthian, Armenian and Iberian armies given by the same and other writers. The
dominant feature is the prominent part played in the army by a body of heavy
cataphracts with metal helmets, whose chief weapons were long heavy lances and
swords, the bow being subsidiary. 'Phis body of mailed knights mounted on
armoured steeds was made up, according to Tacitus[5], of members of the
Sarmatian aristocracy, while the main body of the army was formed by
light-armed bowmen, protected by leather corselets and leather caps. A like
combination of heavy cavalry in close formation and swarms of nimble archers
existed earlier in the steppes of Russia, at the time of the Scythian domination.
But the new system was then in its beginnings, and the new type of a mailed
phalanx had not yet been created. Who deserves the credit of having used it
first, we do not know. It must have been a people controlling a certain supply
of iron and bronze, which suits both the Aorsi, masters of the Ural mountains,
of the Altai and of the Minussinsk region, and the Parthians, who got their
iron and steel through Merv. It must be noted, however, that the resources of
the Sarmatian tribes in iron were not very large, since Ammianus Marcellinus
describes the Sarmatae as wearing scale-armour, not of iron but of horn. A
specimen of this armour dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens moves
Pausanias to observe how skilfully they made good their deficiency in iron. The
mode of fighting used by the Sarmatians was much the same as that of the
Parthians: the pièce de résistance was the attack of the mailed, mounted
phalanx, prepared and supported by the archers. Duels between the leaders of
Iranian hosts in which the lasso and wrestling played an important part were
common.
The picture given by classical authors is illustrated by many monuments
of Graeco-Roman and Oriental art of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as, for
example, the figures of enemy cataphracts on the column of Trajan and similar
figures on the arch of Galerius at Salonica. It is very probable that the first
are meant to represent the equestrian phalanx of the Roxolani, while the second
are the Sarmatian ‘foederati’ of the army of Galerius in his Persian
expedition (AD. 296). No pictures of Sarmatian warriors appear on the objects
found in their graves. But the Sarmatian military organization had a strong
influence on that of the Bosporan kingdom in the first three centuries AD. Many
grave paintings of this period at Panticapaeum show Panticapaean victories over
their enemies, the Scythians and Taurians of the Crimea. These pictures are
probably copies of parts of the monumental paintings which were dedicated by
the Bosporan kings and their generals to commemorate these victories. The
Panticapaeans are represented either as a mounted phalanx or as single heroes
charging their enemies, alone or at the head of their infantry. They always
wear the complete equipment of a Sarmatian cataphract—long scale-cuirass,
conical scale-helmet, sword and a long, heavy lance, while their enemies are
bare-headed, mounted archers of the Scythian type. The same Sarmatian equipment
appears also on many Panticapaean grave-stelae and on a commemorative monument
from Tanais. Even the Bosporan kings adopted it in the second century AD., as
is shown by their coins, and it appears also on pictures engraved on the rocks
along the Yenisei river, pictures which probably represent the eastern Asiatic
Aorsi-Alani. Finally may be mentioned a gold plaque found in Siberia, which
represents a Sarmatian hunting a wild boar. As he is hunting, not fighting, he
wears the nomadic riding kaftan of leather and not the cuirass and is using the
bow. But his long sword hangs down from the shoulder. The peculiar manner of
wearing this sword which slides on a special porte-épée, appears over
and over again on many monuments of Oriental art, for example in India, and
swords with this porte-épée (mostly of jade) have been found in the Volga
region and at Panticapaeum and in many Chinese and Korean graves of the Han
period. The Yenisei pictures and the Siberian plaque may attest the extension
of Sarmatian domination over large parts of Siberia as far as the Minussinsk
region.
The evidence collected above, which bears on the history and life of the
Sarmatians, is supported and completed by archaeological material. No cities or
other settlements of the Sarmatians have been excavated. The Sarmatians were
nomads and became, sedentary city-dwellers only as emigrants who settled down
in some of the Creek cities or as successors of earlier residents of the
regions which the Sarmatians had conquered, for example, Uspa, the capital of
the Siracians. The archaeological evidence for their life and art must be
derived, therefore, from their graves. Very few of these have been
systematically excavated. A small group in the region of the Ural river, some
cemeteries along the lower Volga and a set of tumulus graves in the Kuban
valley make up the list. The rest of our archaeological evidence comes from
chance finds in various parts of the wide area inhabited by the Sarmatians—graves
in Western Siberia, others in the region of the Don and the onetz and burials
in the region of the Dnieper and further to the west. The Sarmatian graves may
be subdivided in chronological groups—Hellenistic, early Imperial and late
Imperial. Some local peculiarities may also be noted. The most important local
group is that of the early Hellenistic graves of the Taman peninsula of the
Kuban valley, and of the region of the lower Don. The rich graves recently
discovered in the Altai mountains and in Mongolia show the same general
characteristics as the Eastern European and Siberian graves and certainly
belong to the same time and to the same civilization. But whether the
chieftains buried in these graves were Iranian or Mongolian princelings no one
can say.
As regards the archaeological evidence for the nomadic graves of the
Sarmatian period, which cannot here be described in detail, it will suffice to
say that the armour and weapons found in them all coincide with those described
in the literary and archaeological evidence analysed above. We find as
especially typical the sword, the heavy lance and the various types of body-armour,
the scalecuirass, plate, ring or chain mail. The persistence of these makes
these graves, whether the more modest or the more ambitious, a single group
throughout the Hellenistic and early Imperial period, with certain
chronological and local subdivisions. It is to be observed that the same
equipment appears in Parthia, Armenia and Iberia, all Iranian or iranized
countries. It penetrated also into China and India, but never appears there in
the same pure form. Whether it was also used by the Mongolian nomads cannot as
yet be said with confidence.
Archaeological evidence for the Sarmatian burials of the Volga and Kuban
regions, which are identical in almost all details, is especially rich. It may
be useful to quote a reconstruction of the picture of a typical Volga-Sarmatian
tribesman (not a chieftain) derived from the objects found in scores of
contemporary graves of this region. ‘Dressed in a shirt and long trousers,
which were adorned with small beads above and larger ones below, wearing a short
overcoat which was fastened with a safety-pin on the right shoulder and a
leather cap covered with bronze scales, his body protected by scale-armour and
his feet by low, soft shoes, the Volga nomad appeared high on his horse,
holding his small, curved bow. On a strap from his right shoulder, a red
quiver, filled with long, painted arrows, hung down on his left side, while a
sword—long or short—was fastened at his right side. A lance completed his
military equipment.’ This description may be compared with that of an average
Roxolan given by Strabo. The equipment of the chieftain was, of course, more
ambitious and more complicated. The main point, however, is that this is
entirely different from the ancient Iranian equipment of the Scythian warriors
of the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. The typical Scytho-Persian dagger, the
short javelins, thegorylus, the Scythian bow, the triangular arrow-heads, the
Greek helmet—all have disappeared completely and are never found in the
Sarmatian graves.
Another typical feature of the Sarmatian graves is the complete change
in artistic tastes and styles. The Sarmatians no doubt brought their own art
with them from their Oriental home. One of the striking traits of the earlier
eastern Sarmatian graves is the entire absence, of imported Greek objects,
which are so common in Pontic. Scythian graves, an absence which persistedl in
the eastern branches of the Sarmatian stock, for example the Volga Sarmatians.
Not that all the objects which these Sarmatians wore, were homemade; some were
imported, but none from Greece. Persia and China were the countries with which
the eastern Sarmatians were in constant commercial relations. The picture is
different for the western Sarmatians of the Kuban river and the Don, who were
good customers of the Greek cities of the Black Sea. But even in the western
Sarmatian graves the Greek objects arc but a foreign addition to a nomadic
Oriental stock.
So far as imports are concerned, one group of Sarmatian graves appears
in a quite peculiar light. A number of Hellenistic graves of the Taman
peninsula, the Kuban valley and the region of the lower Don have yielded,
alongside the objects typical of the Sarmatian period, a large number of silver
and gold phalerae, which took the place of the earlier Scythian plaques used
for horsetrappings. These phalerae, and jewels found with them, show such similarity,
both in style and subjects, to the earlier products of Graeco-Sacian art, that
it must be assumed that the men who used them belonged to the same group as
that which created the peculiar Graeco-Sacian art which is so closely related
to early Parthian art. These Graeco-Sacian phalerae were apparently imported by
the Siracians into South Russia and spread from there along the north shore of
the Black Sea.
Our information regarding the Sarmatian type of art is scanty. The only
objects of a more or less artistic character that the graves have yielded are
of metal, the local pottery being very coarse and the better grades of pottery
and glass imported. And yet even this scanty supply shows some features which
are interesting in themselves and important from the point of view of the
evolution of art in both East and West. One of these features is the great love
of the Sarmatians for effects of colour: their arms and weapons, their silver
and gold plate, the metal plaques sewn on their garments are regularly adorned
with rows and groups of inset coloured stones. Instead of, or along with them,
a peculiar type of enamel is often used. Polychromy in jewelry and toreutics
was all the fashion of the day in the classical world of the Hellenistic period
in general, and this fashion was inherited by Roman art and is especially
noticeable in the provincial art of the Empire. It reached the Hellenistic
kingdoms both from Egypt and from the Semitic and Iranian East, while the Roman
provinces of central and eastern Europe added to it Celtic features—polychrome
metallurgy was age-old in the Celtic countries—and developed it in their own
way. Sarmatian polychrome jewelry and toreutics has, however, its own cachet and its own development parallel to, and independent of, the evolution of
polychromy in the Near East and in western Europe, and resembles that of the
Parthian kingdom, India and China. A reflection of this eastern development may
be seen in the costumes, jewelry and silver and gold plate of Palmyra. This
eastern branch of polychrome jewelry— one of the peculiar features of it being
enamel cloisonne—came into touch with the western branch, both in Syria and in
South Russia and on the Danube. In the south this style was spread by the
Parthians and the Sassanian Persians, in the north by the Sarmatians. It was
the characteristic style of the North which was in the main responsible for the
gorgeous development of polychrome metallurgy in the period of the Migrations
and in the early Middle Ages, the Sassanian influence being merely subsidiary.
Still more characteristic is another feature of Sarmatian art— its love
for animal forms and its peculiar style of ornamentation which is usually
called the ‘animal style.’ This style had long obtained in central Asia. It
came with the Scythians to South Russia where in the seventh to the fourth
century BC it developed in its own way. To this early Asiatic animal style the
Sarmatian is certainly closely related. Yet it is not a continuation of the
Pontic or Scythian branch of it; it marks a new period in the development of
the original animal style of Asia unaffected by Greek influence, which was so
strong in the later period of the Pontic or Scythian variety. The Sarmatian
animal style is at once vigorous and savage and highly refined and stylized,
though in a way different from the earlier Scythian stylization of the animal
forms. It combines, moreover, the polychrome and the animal style in a most
skilful and, at the same time, ‘barbarous,’ way.
The roost important objects which represent the Sarmatian, i.e.
neo-Asiatic, animal style come partly from Western Siberia, partly from South
Russia (especially the region of the Don). They belong to the adornments of
dresses and to horse-trappings of the great Sarmatian chieftains. On the other
hand, the animal style is but poorly represented in more modest graves, both of
the Kuban and of the Volga region. It was an art of the ruling aristocracy.
Whether or not it was confined to the Iranian aristocracy, it is hard to say. I
n all probability it was the art of the ruling Asiatic families in general,
since it is found so splendidly displayed in princely graves of Mongolia and of
the Altai, which hardly belonged to Iranian tribal chieftains. It may have been
imported into China, where the style was fashionable mostly on the.
borderlands for a time, by the Yuch-chih, but more probably by the Huns, who
for centuries were the nearest neighbours of the Chinese. In Siberia and in
South Russia, however, the neo-Asiatic animal style was certainly patronized by
the great chieftains of the. Aorsi and the Alani, whom Strabo characterizes as
‘wearers of gold’. On the other hand, it never became the mode among the
Parthians or Sassanian Persians.
The development of western European art owes but little to this style.
It certainly influenced the art of the upper Volga and Kama, and some elements
of it perhaps penetrated into early Scandinavian art, which had its own native
animal style. Some features of the late Gotho-Sarmatic polychrome art may be
derived from the neo-Asiatic animal style and may have, penetrated with the
Goths, Alani and Vandals into western Europe. Another source of animal motives
may have been the art of the later Mongolian invaders of western Europe—the
Huns, the Avars, the Bulgars and the Magyars. But, on the whole the animal
style of the Romanesque, Carolingian and Gothic periods must be regarded as
only partly derived from these sources.
III.
PARTIIIA: FOREIGN POLICY
The Parthian Empire, as created by Mithridates II was surrounded by
strong, warlike and ambitious rivals. To the west were Roman provinces and
client-states and the independent Arab tribes of the Syrian desert. On the
north to the west of the Caspian beyond the Armenians, Iberians and Albanians,
who were all more or less under Parthian protectorate or influence, lay the
powerful well-organized, well-armed and warlike Sarmatians, especially the
Alani, who since their settlement in the Northern Caucasus took every
opportunity to invade the Parthian lands through one of the two Caucasian Gates
(Darial and Derbend), while to the east of the Caspian Parthia faced the many
nomadic Iranian tribes known to the Western world under the general name of
Scythians. Farther to the east lay the successors of the Bactrian Greeks, the
growing kingdom of the Yueh-chih and Tokharians, which separated Parthia from
the great Chinese Empire of the later Han, and finally, towards the south-east
and south, the border-lands of India.
Of the struggles of the Parthians against their enemies in the north,
the east and the south comparatively little is known. Where evidence is more
ample is on the relations of Parthia and Rome, and this comes from Roman
sources and represents the Roman point of view. Roman policy towards Parthia is
the topic of other chapters, but at the cost of some repetition, it is worth
while to attempt a reconstruction of the course of Parthian policy in its turn.
When Parthia and Rome first faced each other it was as claimants to the
heritage of the Seleucid monarchy. The prestige won by Pompey in the East was
dimmed by the defeat of Crassus, Caesar’s plans were cut short by his death,
and Antony failed to avenge Crassus. His disastrous retreat, and the Parthian
offensive into Syria that preceded it, convinced Augustus that Parthia was a
serious enemy and inspired the Roman public at large with a lasting fear and
respect for the Parthians. But both Augustus and the Parthian king realized
that, as defeat to either would be fatal, victory would not be without danger
and would lead nowhere.
An expansion of the Roman Empire into Central Asia and India, though not
impossible, meant a complete new orientation of the Roman Empire and its
hellenization and orientalization. This was against the leading political
Western ideas of Augustus. Equally the King Phraates was well aware that it was
idle to dream of the conquest of Syria with the forces and organization of an
Empire whose main task and main strength lay in the East and whose structure
was perforce feudal and half-nomadic. On the other hand a modus vivendi promised good returns both for Parthia and Rome: regular caravan trade
well-organized and well-protected was a source of income for both powers,
inasmuch as it yielded large custom duties to their treasuries and brought prosperity
both to Syria and Mesopotamia. Thus the modus vivendi came into being:
the Euphrates as frontier, the development of the buffer-state of Palmyra as a
centre of Partho-Roman exchange and perhaps a kind of commercial agreement
between Parthia and Rome. The Parthians agreed to satisfy Roman honour by delivering
up the standards and captives of Crassus and Antony, and Augustus in return
ceased to support the pretender Tiridates and insured Parthia against future
pretenders by keeping the dangerous princes of the Arsacid house in Rome. This
understanding, reinforced by a later demonstration of Roman power, was kept and
carried out by Tiberius. Especially successful was the mission of Germanicus,
who probably made Roman influence in Palmyra stronger than before and regulated
Palmyra’s relations to Parthia and Rome. At the same time he entered, perhaps
in the name of Palmyra, into diplomatic, relations with some of those petty
vassal dynasts of Parthia who held the keys to the great caravan roads leading
to Syria and Asia Minor.
However, there remained one question which urgently required regulation,
the question of Armenia. It is unnecessary to point out the strategical
importance of Armenia. An independent Armenia was unacceptable alike to the
Romans and the Parthians, neither of whom had forgotten the power of Tigranes
fifty years before. Armenia in the hands of the Romans meant for Parthia a
constant threat to Mesopotamia and its flourishing caravan cities, and
Mesopotamia was the key to Babylonia: to lose it was equivalent to the
potential surrender of all the western satrapies of Parthia. On the other hand,
Rome was not willing to leave Armenia to the Parthians, since it opened to them
an easy access to the Black Sea, secured for them a supremacy over Iberia and
Albania and thus the command of an important trade-route to the East, connected
the Parthian Empire with the half-Iranian countries of Cappadocia, Pontus and
Commagene, and made possible an alliance between the Parthians and their cousins
the Sarmatians, the great rivals of Rome in the north-east. Thus the Armenian
question became the chief obstacle to a lasting peace between the two Empires
and led repeatedly to wars and diplomatic conflicts.
Augustus and Tiberius insisted upon solving the Armenian problem in the
traditional Roman way, by making Armenia a Roman vassal-state under the rule or
a hellenizea client-king. Phraates accepted this solution and undermined by
this his position in Parthia, since the leading aristocratic clans were
bitterly opposed to it. This led to the elimination of Phraates’ successor Phraataces
and to the downfall of the Arsacids of the Mithridatic line in Parthia. The
short rule of Vonones opened the eyes of the Parthians to the danger of
becoming a hellenizing vassal-kingdom of Rome and led to a national Iranian
reaction which gave the throne to Artabanus, a member of a collateral branch of
the Arsacids connected with the homeland of the Parthians and with Hyrcania and
Atropatene. It is characteristic of Artabanus’ aspirations that he at once
insisted on his own solution of the Armenian problem: the ruler of Armenia must
be a member of the ruling house of Parthia, an Arsacid. Since, however,
Vonones, the former king of Parthia, the rival of Artabanus, who once won a
splendid victory over him, was now the actual king of Armenia, Artabanus, in
order to eliminate this danger and to deprive Vonones of Roman support, was
ready to accept for a while a compromise which was suggested by Germanicus. A
neutral hellenized king ruled again over Armenia. But this compromise was not
lasting. As soon as Artabanus, whose hands were for a while tied up by
important wars in the East, felt free and strong again, he renewed his claim to
rule over Armenia through a member of his house. He failed, however, a second
time and in the same way. Instead of Vonones Tiberius used romanized Arsacids,
first Phraates and then Tiridates, as his tools, and after this diversion
Artabanus was forced again to give up his plan. The interview between Artabanus
and Vitellius was one of the greatest diplomatic victories of Tiberius. Armenia
was in the hands of a prince of the neighbouring Iberian dynasty, vassals of
Rome.
However, no lasting peace could be established on such a basis. The
Armenian question remained acute. It is characteristic of the urgency of this
problem that Vardanes in his short rule was ready to raise it again and it is
very probable that the episode of Meherdates whom Claudius put up as a
pretender was in one way or another connected with similar plans and
aspirations of the Hyrcanian Gotarzes. No wonder, therefore, if Vologases I, in
agreement with his brothers, raised the question again and did not shrink from
long and bloody wars to gain a solution acceptable both to Rome and to Parthia.
The solution, though a compromise, satisfied the vital interests of the
Parthians. The brother of Vologases, Tiridates, became king of Armenia but he
received his crown from the hands of Nero in Rome. Thus a modus vivendi was established for a while and lasted until the end of the Flavian dynasty.
With Trajan the question became acute once more. The origin of the
conflict between Trajan and Pacorus first and Osroes afterwards is unknown. But
it is certain that it involved the question who was to be king of Armenia.
Whether or not the trouble was complicated by an invasion of the Parthians into
Syria is a matter of controversy and does not concern us here. Suffice it to
say that Trajan decided to solve the Armenian problem in his own radical way:
Armenia was to become a Roman province protected by Mesopotamia and Adiabene
occupied by Roman garrisons, and Parthia was to be ruled by a Roman nominee, a
client-king of Rome.
The conquest of Mesopotamia by Trajan and his capture of the royal
capital Ctesiphon produced a tremendous impression on the Parthians and
certainly aroused a strong national reaction: witness the revolt of Mesopotamia
and Adiabene under the leadership of members of the house of the Arsacids while
Trajan was at Ctesiphon. The invasion of Trajan is mentioned as a kind of era
by the chronicle of Arbela1 and as late as AD. 572, according to John of
Ephesus, the Romans reminded the Sassanian Persians of Trajan and emphasized
the fact that statues of him were still standing in Persia and the Persians
were afraid of riding by them.
This national reaction was probably the chief reason why Hadrian
restored the legitimate kings in Parthia and gave Mesopotamia back to them,
controlling Armenia indirectly through vassal-kings. Our scanty information on
the time of I ladrian and Antoninus Pius does not reveal the conditions on
which an understanding between Parthia and Rome was reached. It is not improbable,
however, that in return for restoring the status quo Hadrian received important
concessions. We hear that he did not exact tribute from Mesopotamia, which may
mean that his right to do so was acknowledged, i.e. that the status of
Mesopotamia was not exactly the same as before the war. The appointment of
Parthamaspates as king of Edessa shows that the status of Armenia was to a
certain extent extended to some minor kingdoms of Mesopotamia. This led to
complications, and a new arrangement was achieved in 123 when the former
dynasty was restored. It is also significant that, though King Osroes received
back from Hadrian his daughter whom Trajan had captured, the royal throne was
never sent back to Ctesiphon either by Hadrian or by Antoninus, as Hadrian had
promised. This was probably regarded by the Parthians as a humiliating symbol
of inferiority. The merchants of Palmyra never felt more at home in the great
commercial cities of Parthia than in the times of Hadrian and Antoninus and
statues of Roman emperors may even have stood in the Palmyrene quarter of the
royal Parthian caravan-city of Vologasia. In the time of Hadrian and later, Palmyra
had detachments of her own desert police (mounted archers) in all the important
towns of the Euphrates frontier with Parthia. Doura was one of these and Anath
(Anah) another. A strong Parthia was bound to resent Roman predominance, and
more than once in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus the Roman Empire was
threatened by a war on the eastern frontier.
The break came with Vologases III. Conditions were troubled in the
Parthian Empire in the last years of Osroes and during the rule of Vologases
II. Rival rulers contested the throne of both of them. Vologases III probably
yielded to the pressure of public opinion and decided to put an end to the
conditions created by Trajan’s expedition. It was again the question of Armenia
which led to the war, which started with the appointment of an Armenian king by
Vologases and with two crushing defeats of the Roman governors of Cappadocia
and Syria who tried to save the prestige of Rome in Armenia. The expeditions of
Lucius Verus against Parthia began with the reconquest of Armenia in 163—4,
followed by the occupation of Mesopotamia and an expedition against
Ctesiphon—an exact repetition of Trajan’s campaign.
The results of the three campaigns of Lucius were, however, not decisive.
The war ended in a compromise. Armenia remained a vassal-kingdom garrisoned by
Rome; the most important Mesopotamian cities were also held by Roman forces and
the Euphrates limes (or defence-system) was extended from Sura to points
south of Doura, which last became a strong Roman fortress. But Vologases
remained king atCtesiphon, and it was plain that another war could not be long
delayed.
The next war began in the troubled time after the death of Commodus. The
Parthians never became reconciled to the loss of Mesopotamia, and it was a
revolt in Mesopotamia (Osrhoene and Adiabene) that was the beginning of
Septimius Severus’ operations against Parthia which ended in the capture of
Ctesiphon. This capture, however, was no more than a military demonstration
intended to frighten Parthia and make Mesopotamia safe for Rome, for Severus
never thought of extending the Roman province to include lower Mesopotamia. This
new humiliation exasperated the Iranians and led to the first serious rising of
vassal-kingdoms against the Arsacids. Persia and Media revolted, a fact which
was unknown until the discovery of a local chronicle of Arbela.
The last phase of what was now the question for Rome and Parthia, the
rival claim to Mesopotamia, was a new war that began in 215 under Caracalla,
who sought to profit by the dynastic dissensions of Armenia and of Parthia. But
fortune was not with Rome. Though Caracalla once captured the Armenian king
Tiridates by treachery and once apparently secured his extradition from the
Parthian king Vologases V, a less pliant, rival of Vologases, Artabanus V, took
his place on the, throne of Parthia. The Roman general Theocritus was sent
against Armenia but was defeated. Caracalla invaded Adiabene and part of Media
but was then assassinated, and Artabanus inflicted two defeats on the new
Emperor Macrinus. The Romans were compelled to save their province in
Mesopotamia by paying a heavy indemnity and to see Tiridates king of Armenia
even though, like his namesake of the time of Nero, he received his diadem from
the Emperor.
It was a pitiful end to the efforts of the Roman Empire to reduce the
Parthians to vassaldom. Parthia emerged victorious, and the recapture of
Mesopotamia was a matter of time. Fate decided that it was to be carried out
not by the Arsacids but by the descendants of Sasan the Persian. A new revolt
in Persis led by Ardashir put an end to the rule of the Arsacids in the Iranian
lands and to the life of the last great Arsacid, Artabanus V, AD. 227.
Closely connected with the Armenian and Caucasian problem was the
problem of dealing with the various ‘Sarmatian’ tribes which, probably early in
the first century AD formed a powerful kingdom under the rule of the Alani in
the Northern Caucasus. There are many episodes in Parthian history which were
connected with the existence of this strong nomadic State in the eastern part
of the steppes of South Russia. Thus Vonones, the rival of Artabanus III, tried
to escape from his confinement in Cilicia to the Caucasus and then to ‘consanguineum
sibi regem Scytharum,’ probably one of the Sarmatian kings. Then both Orodes,
son of Artabanus, and Mithridates the Iberian used in their struggle for
Armenia the help of ‘Sarmatian’ chiefs. Again in AD. 75 during the rule of
Vologases I the Alani invaded Media and Armenia. The danger was great, and
Vologases asked Vespasian for help which, however, was refused. Finally there
was a great invasion in AD. 134 which affected Albania, Gordyene, Media and
even Cappadocia and was checked by the joint efforts of the historian Arrian,
the governor of Cappadocia, and King Vologases II. The chronicle of Arbela
gives a dramatic account of the struggle of Vologases and the Alani of which the
hero is the pious satrap of Adiabene, Rakbakt, a convert to Christianity.
The other frontiers of Parthia were, no doubt, of little less importance
than those on the west and north-west, but the tradition that has survived is
almost silent about the wars and diplomatic exchanges of the Arsacids with the
northern ‘Scythians’ and Massagetae, the Bactrian Kushans and the Indian
neighbours of Parthia. We hear incidentally that a Phraates fled to the
Scythians when Tiridates entered Ctesiphon in AD. 362. Those Scythians may be
the Sacae, who at that time became masters of Sacastene (Drangiane) and of a
part of the Punjab. Then under Artabanus III, after his victory over Vonones
and before his clash with Tiberius, we are told of Parthian victories against
his neighbours. What these are we cannot tell. They may be connected with the
great events which happened about this time in Sacastene, the substitution of
the dynasty of Gundofarr, who may have belonged to the powerful Parthian clan
of the Suren, for the former Sacian kings who were already masters of large
parts of the Punjab. After Gundofarr his immediate successors, Orthagnes,
Abdagaeses and Pakores, may have kept the kingdom intact for some time. It is,
however, certain that soon (though how soon is in doubt) the kingdom of
Gundofarr fell to pieces, the Punjab being gradually conquered by the Bactrian
Kushans while the southern parts of it down to Barbarikon and Minnagara on the
Indus were ruled by Parthian satraps, who were busy fighting each other, until
the last remnants of Parthian rule were swept away by the Kushans. In the
description of the West as it was between AD. 25 and 125 which is contained in
the Chinese Annals of the Later Han it is stated that the Kushan king
Kozulokadphiscs, who was the first to create a united kingdom out of the
principalities of the Yueh-chih in Bactria, ‘invaded Parthia and took hold of
the territory of Kao-fu (Kabul).’ The date of this event is disputed, but it
must be later than the reign of Gundofarr.
The Kushan kingdom separated I’arthia from China. But though they had no
common frontier, commercial relations between the two countries were of such
importance to both of them that diplomatic interchanges were frequent and
regular embassies with presents and messages went to and fro, but China learnt
little from them: at least the description of Parthia (An-hsi) in the Annals
of the Later Han is short, vague and almost meaningless.
It is impossible to say how often the peace of the Parthian Empire was
disturbed by foreign invasions of its eastern borders. But it can hardly have been
a rare event in the life of Parthia, and we may conjecture that the Arsacids
had to devote as much attention to the East as they did to the West. For
example, the conflict between Izates, the pious Jewish proselyte of Adiabene,
and Vologases I, as told by Josephus can hardly be historical fact. The sudden
retreat of Vologases after he received the alarming news of an invasion of the
Dahae and Sacae into Parthyene savours of a miracle. The hand of God is seen in
it. Yet the setting of the story must be regarded as probable, so that an invasion
of the northern ‘Scythians’ was a phenomenon familiar to all the readers of
Izates’ history in the Parthian Empire.
Of much concern to the Parthian kings were their relations with the
large nominally vassal kingdoms on the borders of Parthia. One of them was
Sacastene, another Persis. There is no doubt that wars against such stubborn
and powerful vassals happened frequently. The same is true of Hyrcania. We hear
that in AD. 58 a Hyrcanian king sent an embassy to Corbulo and offered his help.
What was the status of Hyrcania later we do not know.
All told, it cannot be denied that the Arsacids were on the whole
successful in their endeavour to defend the integrity and the independence of
their empire. The Sassanians were more successful than their predecessors—their
neighbours were not so strong— but their general policy was exactly the same as
that of the Arsacids.
IV.
PARTHIA: CONSTITUTION AND ADMINISTRATION
The leading feature of the Parthian State in the time of the Roman
Empire was, as before, the feudal character of its empire. It continued to
include the large, nominally vassal, kingdoms of Armenia, Media Atropatene,
Hyrcania, Sacastene and Persis, of which Armenia and Media were ruled by
members of the Arsacid house, the others retaining their own dynasties. These
kingdoms had in all probability the same feudal structure as the other parts of
the Parthian Empire and that empire itself, and this is borne out by later
information about Armenia and Persis. Of these major kingdoms two only, Persis
and Sacastene, struck their own coins. Next in rank came the minor kingdoms. We
have information about some of them, especially Adiabene, Osrhoene, Elymais and
Spasinu Charax, which last may be the same as the kingdom of Mesene, These
vassal-kingdoms might differ in rank. Thus Adiabene, whose king was granted the
rights of a first-class vassal monarch by Artabanus III, of wearing the upright
tiara and using the golden couch, was degraded to the second class by Vologases
I when its king received a second-class insignia—the diadem, ring and sword of
State. Adiabene never coined money, while both Mesene and Elymais had their own
coinage. Strabo and Josephus, drawing upon local sources, enable us to form a
good idea, for example, of the social structure of Adiabene. At the death of a
king his queen, according to Josephus, summons the megistanes (the heads
of the powerful clans), the satraps, and those in charge of the armed forces,
comprising the middle and lower nobility.
Not very much different from the vassal-kingdoms were the satrapies or
provinces of the Parthian Empire which were ruled not by kings but by satraps (marzban or marzipan) who were styled in the Greek version of their title strategoi.
Each satrapy had one or more ruling houses, whose heads were the feudal lords
of many villages and cities. Such were the Suren, who had large estates in
Mesopotamia and perhaps became the ruling dynasty of Sacastene, the Karen of
Media whose lands lay near Nihawand, the Gewpathran (or Geopothroi) of Hyrcania
and the Mihran of Media near Rhagae, who appear also as a ruling house in
Iberia in the third century AD. Naturally enough, since the Parthian army
consisted of retinues of feudal lords, the Parthian kings would appoint the
heads of powerful clans to be governors of their several countries, thus making
the position of a satrap almost a hereditary office. In Mesopotamia, for
instance, most of the governors known to us have names which were probably hereditary
in the clan of the Suren—Monaeses, Abdagaeses, Sinnaces, Silaces. A Monaeses
often appears active in Mesopotamia: it is possible that the Suren who defeated
Crassus had the name of Monaeses, next comes the Monaeses of Antony’s time,
then another Monaeses general of Vologases I in AD. 64 and finally a Monaeses
at Doura in AD. 121. Equally frequent are the names Silaces and Sinnaces (in 88
BC, in 53 BC and in the time of Tiberius and Artabanus) and there is a Sinnaca
near Carrhae. These names appear, too, in the Acts of the Oriental Apostle
Addai. To the same category of feudal lords probably belonged the Parthian
governors and generals with Greek names like Hiero and Demonax of the time of
Artabanus III. Beside the higher nobility stood in each satrapy the middle and
lower nobility, who served in the army as officers and horsemen.
Within the satrapies there were many semi-independent units, ethnical or
urban. Such were the Arab phylarchs of Mesopotamia, who sometimes became
masters of Greek and Oriental cities and assumed the title of kings. The best
known are the kings of the Macedonian colony of Edessa, the Abgars. Of the same
type were Sporaces, the phylarch of Anthemusias and ruler of the city of
Batnae, Mannus the lord of Singara, Manisarus of Gordyene and the kings who
ruled in Hatra, all of the time of Trajan. In the province of Babylonia, beside
Mesene and Chara- cene, there were many petty kingdoms, for instance that of
Hadad-nadin-akh at Tello, and those of Nippur and perhaps Forat. The same may
be said of tyrants in the Greek cities, as Andromachus in Carrhae and
Apollonius at Zenodotium in 53 BC. In this connection the story of the
ephemeral Jewish petty kingdom of Babylonia, the robber kingdom of Asinai and
Anilai, appears as natural and cannot be used as evidence of anarchy marking
the last years of Artabanus’ rule. The formation of a Jewish phylarchy in
Babylonia does not differ very much from the formation of the phylarchy of
Edessa or of Hatra. It is very probable that the successful brothers were
recognized by Artabanus in return for a good round sum, and, like Abgar of
Edessa in the time of Pacorus II, they might have boasted of holding their land
by right of purchase.
The Greek cities of Macedonian origin which were not transformed into
petty monarchies also formed self-governing units within the satrapies. Of
their life and constitution little is known. Of the many cities of this type we
have information about Seleuceia on the Tigris, the greatest and the richest of
them, about Seleuceia on the Eulaeus (Susa) and about Europus (Doura). Babylon,
Uruk and Nineveh probably belonged to the same class. New and important
evidence yielded by excavations is shedding more and more light on Susa and
Doura. It must not be forgotten that when Parthia became the mistress of the
Macedonian cities they were already military settlements with a population of
soldiers who had a good military training and warlike spirit. All of them had
large tracts of land assigned to them, and their residents were most of them
well-to-do landowners who, in fighting the enemies of the Seleucids, were
defending their own homes and their own privileged position. Under Parthia they
retained their military and agricultural character. The Macedonian colonists
remained masters of their own cities and owners of their allotments of land.
Neither Seleuccia on the Eulaeus nor Europus on the Euphrates had Parthian
garrisons, such as those that held other fortresses built by Parthia or of
Oriental origin (e.g. Paliga to the north of Europus and probably the modern
Amka to the south). The Greek cities were defended by their own residents,
usually under Greek commanders. At Doura these belonged to the local
aristocracy, where the offices of strategos and epistates or strategos
genearches (the last probably meaning ethn- arches) seem to have
belonged to one particular family. Strategoi and epistatai are
also found at Babylon and Nineveh and probably at Uruka. Whether they were
appointed by the king or elected by the citizens is unknown; more probably,
like the feudal lords of other cities, they were nominated by the king. One
thing is certain, that they were subordinate to the provincial governors.
Alongside these military presidents there probably existed in all the
Macedonian cities the regular machinery of a Greek city-state, with
magistrates, boule and demos. Bouleutai are attested at
Doura by several inscriptions, as are also agoranomoi, chreophylakes and kerykes. Two recently discovered parchments give a very good picture
of the composition of the ‘royal court ’ at Doura with two or three ‘royal
judges,’ an eisagogeus and a praktor. The judges were probably
appointed by the king but belonged to the local aristocracy. Many of the governors
of the cities and the judges bore court titles, and it is probable that some of
these prominent Macedonians and Greeks were occasionally appointed governors of
provinces and commanders of royal armies. The situation at Susa, the capital of
the province of that name, was
somewhat different, and more like that of Artemita, the capital of the
Chalonitis or of Sittacene. There have been found two new inscriptions, both of
poems, carved in the time of Phraates IV on the base of a statue set up at Susa
by the garrison of the city in honour of Zamaspes, the governor of Susiane.
Zamaspes is praised as the great benefactor of the garrison (akrophylakes),
the man who restored to prosperity the keroi of these soldiers by
irrigation works. It is evident that Zamaspes was the chief commander of the
garrison of Susa and that the garrison consisted of klerouchoi of
Macedonian origin, citizens of the city. This is confirmed by many inscriptions
which speak of the garrison. Part of the garrison are called ‘bodyguards,’
possibly of the governor. Still more interesting is an inscription written on
the base of another statue during the reign of Artabanus III.
The statue was set up in honour
of Hestiaeus, a distinguished citizen of Susa. The text shows that there were
two representatives of the king in the city, one with a Greek, the other with
an Iranian name. Unfortunately their titles are not given: one may be the
governor of the province, the other the commander of the garrison. Next to them
come the magistrates of the city, two archons and a treasurer. The treasurer,
Hestiaeus, is a highly honoured man, bearer of court titles, who was sent twice
as a bassador probably to the king to discuss the affairs of the city. The boule and the demos take an active part in the life of the city. It is an
interesting combination of royal control and self-government.
The feudal structure of the
Parthian Empire was inherited by the Arsacids from the Achaemenids and was
transmitted by them to the Sassanian kings. It is a characteristic feature of the
great Iranian states of Asia, a form of government as widely spread as the
Hellenistic form of centralized monarchy, which last was inherited by the
Hellenistic monarchs from Egypt and Assyria and was ultimately transmitted by
them to the Roman West. In a feudal monarchy there is always much unrest and
insubordination, and strong kings always seek to curb the feudal lords and to
establish a more centralized government. Such attempts were not unknown to the
Arsacid monarchy. Roman sources frequently refer to them, since the Parthian
nobles, when oppressed by the kings, often tried in the first century AD.
to turn the tables by setting up a pretender with the help of Rome. In Rome
these nobles regularly complained of ‘atrocities,’ as in the reigns of Phraates
IV, of Artabanus III and of Gotarzes. The background of these atrocities was
either the struggle of the king with a clan or party which opposed him or a
struggle for a more centralized form of government in general.
Parallel to this struggle with the nobility went a like struggle with
the vassal lords of smaller and larger kingdoms. This may be reflected in the
coinage of the kingdom of Elymais. The coins of the hereditary dynasts of the
Elymais (Kamnaskires) show, in the late first century BC and in the first
century AD., such a deterioration of type that it may reasonably be supposed
that at this time the dynasty had but a shadowy existence. Later, at the end of
the first century, a new dynasty appears with Parthian royal names (Orodes,
Phraates and perhaps Osroes). It may be suggested that in the times of the
Parthian kings Orodes, Phraates and Artabanus the old dynasty of Elymais may
have lost its former importance and that finally the native kings were replaced
by members of the Arsacid family. Coins reflect similar phenomena in the
dynasty which was ruling in Spasinu Charax. After Attambelos III, that is,
after AD. 71—2, there is a gap in the sequence of Characene coins which lasts
until 100—1. About the same time the list of Characene kings used by the source
of the Macrobioi attributed to Lucian gives the name of Artabazus as
restored to his throne by the Parthians. The name is foreign to the Characene
dynasty and does not appear on the coins. It may be suggested that Artabazus
was a Parthian nominee who ruled twice, each time for a short while. Being
practically a Parthian governor he did not strike coins. He may have been
appointed by Vologases I and restored by Pacorus II. After this episode the old
dynasty was restored, probably for a very short time. It gave place later to a
new dynasty with new Semitic names which used Aramaic exclusively on their
coins. The relation in which this dynasty stood to the later Arsacids is not
known.
Slight as is our knowledge of the history of the other lesser kingdoms,
there are indications that intervention by Parthia or by Rome was not rare. In
the time of Vologases I a conflict arose between Adiabene and Parthia which
apparently led to a war, and in a later reign, probably that of Vologases II,
Adiabene became a satrapy instead of a kingdom. So at the time of Trajan the
king of Edessa held his kingdom from Pacorus II by right of purchase, whereas
it seems to have been ruled before by the kings of Adiabene. He went over to
the Romans and probably lost his life in the revolt of 116. Hadrian placed on
the throne Parthamaspates, ruler of Osrhoene, whom Trajan had sought to make
king of Parthia. In 123 the former dynasty of Edessa was restored under
Parthian overlordship only to become vassal to Rome after the expedition of L.
Verus. It retained this status until Edessa was made a Roman provincial city by
Caracalla.
We may finally observe attempts to control parts of the kingdom which
became too strong and too independent in the relations between the Arsacids and
the more considerable Greek cities of their kingdom. Seleuceia on the Tigris
may serve as the best example. We hear that the city was strong enough to
challenge the kings, and indeed rebellions of Seleuceia against the Arsacids
were probably not uncommon. We may connect with them the autonomous coinage of
the city in 88 BC and again in AD. 14—15, the last perhaps connected with the
reform of Seleuceia’s constitution by Artabanus III, whereby power was given to
a group of citizens which formed the boule. This encroachment on the
democratic constitution of the city may have led to the recognition of the
pretender Tiridates in the closing years of Artabanus and to the revolt against
Artabanus which was put down after a long siege by Vardanes in AD. 42—3. The
vicissitudes of this struggle are reflected in the autonomous coins of the city
in 39—40 and 41—2 and the city coins with the portrait of Vardanes and the
figure of the boule.
The forces of this feudal empire continued to consist mainly of the
private armies of the satraps and of the vassal kings, but the nucleus of the
army was certainly the king’s own troops, and a strong body of guards, largely
foreigners, were always at hand in the palace. There were, besides, the
garrisons of the Greek cities, though we never hear that Greeks were mobilized
to form a field army. Sometimes in case of need the army was reinforced by
mercenary units. The Parthian army was an array of horsemen— heavy clibanarii and cataphracts and light sagittarii recruited mostly from the lesser
nobility of small landowners. They often used the lasso as well as the bow,
spear and sword. None the less, the Parthian kings were not blind to the
occasional need of infantry. At times they called up their vassals from the
mountains and formed strong armies of foot-soldiers. Thus according to the
chronicle of Arbela an army of 20,000 foot was concentrated at Ctesiphon when
the Alani invaded Parthia in AD. 134. A new form of cavalry, perhaps borrowed
from the Roman dromedarii was the corps of cataphracts mounted on camels
which was used by Artabanus V against Caracalla. Finally the introduction of
new devices and especially of engines of war into the Parthian army is
plausibly ascribed by Herodian to former Roman soldiers who, as captives or
deserters, were incorporated in one capacity or another into the Parthian army.
In addition, the Macedonian colonists of the Parthian cities had inherited a
good training in the arts of war. The Arsacids were not wild nomads in their
warfare, and if they kept to their army of horse it was because it was a strong
weapon well adapted to the needs of the Empire.
V.
PARTHIA: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
Of the economic and social life of the Parthian Empire we know very
little. It doubtless varied from kingdom to kingdom, from satrapy to satrapy,
from city to city. The most prominent feature is again the feudal structure of
both social and economic life with the great feudatories leading, with the
minor feudal lords holding cities and villages, with small free landowners
cultivating their holdings and with bondmen working for both large and small
landowners. Some estates were owned, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, by the
Magi. The conditions of Mesopotamia may serve as an example. Isidore of Charax
enumerates along the Euphrates a number of stations on the great commercial and
military road. We find here a curious mixture of settlements: Macedonian
colonies of which the best known is Doura-Europus, villages surrounding or
adjacent to Parthian fortresses like Paliga, temples with their territories and
their hereditary priests, smaller and larger villages. The documents found at
Doura show that there were many villages in the territory of this city. The
nucleus of the Greek cities was formed by the Macedonian colonists, well-to-do
landowners, holders of their ancient kleroi which were hereditary in
their families. Side by side with them may have lived Parthian dignitaries
possessing larger or smaller estates and rich Semitic families engaged in trade
and industry, owners of shops in the souks of the city and owners or
leaseholders of parcels of cultivated land. Finally, there were many small
landowners and tenants, and a number of slaves. Their relations to each other
were regulated by laws which in Mesopotamia are Greek in character, perhaps
with an admixture of Babylonian elements. No general regulations by the central
power are noticeable in the few business documents which we possess, most of
them from Doura and Babylonia. In Doura most of them are written in good Greek
but the recent excavations have yielded also documents in Syriac (from Edessa),
Palmyrene and Pahlavi. In Babylonia the cuneiform script still obtains on the
clay tablets as long as they last, while the parchment documents were probably
written in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the time. In Atropatene both
Greek and Pahlavi were used. The general impression is that the central
government did not interfere with local economic, social and legal life.
Whether as in the times of the Seleucids there existed taxes which were imposed
and levied by the central government we do not know. We are equally ignorant
how large were the payments of the various parts of the kingdom to the treasury
of the central government, or how they were organized. It seems in one instance
that the Arsacids were inclined to sell the right of collecting the taxes to
the ruler of a given country or satrapy. It is unfortunate that we are so
poorly informed on one of the most important sources of revenue of the
Arsacids, the customs duties levied from the caravans. Here again the most
probable hypothesis is that the kings used their vassals to collect these dues
and included them in the general tribute of the kingdoms, satrapies and cities.
The wealth of the Arsacids and of the richest vassal-kingdoms and cities
of the Parthian Empire depended largely on the flourishing caravan trade
between Parthia and China and India on one hand and Parthia and the Roman
Empire on the other. It is well known how important was the foreign commerce of
the Roman Empire and how much attention was paid by the Chinese emperors of the
Han dynasty to the development of their foreign trade with the North and the
West. The excavations at Lou- Ian in Chinese Turkestan and the Chinese
historical records give us an excellent picture of it. Both the Chinese and the
Romans were eager to enter into direct relations with each other. But the
Parthian kings and probably the Kushans and the Sogdians were too much
interested in keeping the trade in their own hands toal low Roman merchants and
ambassadors to penetrate into China. On the contrary they tried hard to prevent
any direct relations between the two countries. There are bitter complaints of
them in the Chinese writers. And yet information about the great trade route
and the two Empires of the West and of the East penetrated into the two
countries through Parthian channels. Though the merchants of Palmyra never
penetrated farther than the lowlands of Babylonia enterprising traders,
probably Parthian subjects, tried to establish direct relations between China
and Babylonia and perhaps between China and the Roman Empire. One of these was
Maes Titianus, a Macedonian, who sent an expedition to China and gave the
geographical material which this expedition collected to Marinus of Tyre, the
main source of Ptolemy. Maes was certainly not from Palmyra, where no
Macedonians are known. It is hard to believe that he was a Roman subject, for
if he were, the Parthians would certainly have prevented him, as they prevented
others, from penetrating into China. It is, therefore, probable that he
belonged to one of the Macedonian colonies of the Parthian Empire, a rich
merchant who had commercial relations both with China and the Roman Empire. The
Chinese counterpart and contemporary of Maes was the agent of the general
Pan-Ch’ao, Kan Ying by name, who according to the Annals of the Later Han penetrated as far as Spasinu Charax in his attempt to reach Ta-ch’in (the
Syrian provinces of the Roman Empire and South Arabia) and thus to establish
direct relations between China and the ‘Far West.’ The Parthians frightened him
by describing the horrors of a long sea voyage around Arabia. It was only by
sea that the Romans were able to come into direct contact with China. Sporadic
attempts are attested for AD. 120 and then for AD. 166 when an ‘embassy’ of
Marcus Aurelius is recorded to have visited China.
The great land trade-routes which ran through Parthia connecting China
and India with the West were certainly one of the chief concerns of the
Arsacids. How successful they were in their control of them is shown by the
fact that the Asiatic caravan roads described by Isidore of Charax and Ptolemy,
which ended in Babylonia and from there ran up the Tigris and the Euphrates to
the confines of the Roman Empire, were by far the most important arteries of
commerce at that time, much more important than the Caspian route across the
Caucasus or the steppe route to the north of the Caspian through the Aorsi
(Alani). The Parthian roads rivalled the maritime route from India and Arabia
to Spasinu Charax and Forat in supplying the Roman Empire with a large portion
of its imports from China and India. Even with Egypt Parthia maintained lively
trade connections, as may be seen from the relations between Palmyra and Egypt
and the information which we have on Scythianus and Terebinthus, the
forerunners of Mani in Egypt, and on the rapid spread of Manichaeism in Egypt.
To the caravan trade of Parthia three great cities, namely, Vologasia in
Babylonia, Hatra in Mesopotamia and Palmyra in the Syrian desert owed their
existence, while many other towns, among them Seleuceia, Babylon, Forat and
lesser cities on the Tigris or Euphrates, such as Doura, not to mention
Singara, Nisibis and Edessa, owed to it much of their prosperity. It is
probable that the Arsacids viewed the advance of Seleuceia with an unfriendly
eye and sought to direct the trade from Palmyra to Vologasia and Spasinu Charax.
Here, and at Babylon before Vologasia was founded, were the most important
settlements of Palmyrene merchants. The founding of Vologasia and the almost
contemporary creation of Ctesiphon as the royal residence and military centre
of he Parthian Empire combined to undermine the prestige of Seleuceia.
What slight knowledge we possess of the organization of Parthian trade
is mainly derived from Chinese sources. The traveller Chang Ch’ien declares
that ‘their market folk and merchants travel in carts and boats to the
neighbouring countries perhaps several thousand li distant,’ and this is
repeated in the Annals of the Former Han. These Annals stress the fact
that such countries as Chi-pin (? Sacastene), K’ang-chti (Sogdiana) and Ta-wan
(Ferghana) strove to keep on good terms with China chiefly because of their
trade. To all these alike, including the Parthians, may be applied what is said
of the people of Tawan, that ‘they are clever traders and dispute about the
division of a farthing.’ The discoveries at Lou-Ian, the military post and
caravan station of China in Chinese Turkestan, and at Palmyra, the queen of the
Syrian desert, may be adduced to show how the wise Chinese i. the East and the
shrewd Semites in the West handed on their wares to Sogdian, Bactrian and
Parthian traders, who carried on this commerce by the same methods as those
from whom they thus received it.
VI:
PARTHIA: RELIGION, LITERATURE, ART
The official religion of the Parthian royal house was Mazdaism, at least
since the reign of Vologases I, who made a new edition of the Avesta and had it
provided with a running commentary in Pahlavi. Herein he was true to the great
Iranian traditions of Atropatene, the home of his dynasty, and his brother
Tiridates made clear his adhesion to Mazdaean tenets. In the Iranian Epos both
Vologases (Vistaspa) and Tiridates (Spaniyad) appear as champions of the new
religion against paganism. In all this we may perhaps detect a deliberate
reaction against the syncretistic and Hellenistic tendencies of their
predecessors, especially Phraates IV and Phraataces and the pretenders supported
by Rome. On Parthian coins the titles Theopater and Theos disappear, while that
of Epiphanes, which does not make so explicit a claim to divinity,
persists. Indeed the title Theos, first used by Phraates III, was revived but
once in this period and that for Musa, the mother of Phraataces. The Greek
poems found at Susa go farther in stressing the divine nature of Phraates IV
than would have been acceptable to a good Zoroastrian even from his Greek
subjects. The Parthian kings, it is true, never abandoned such elements of the
official worship of the king as they inherited from the Achaemenids, but it
appears not improbable that the last Arsacids of the old line had pressed this
tendency too far, and that the dynasty from Atropatene marks a reaction to the
older tradition. At the same time, the kings and probably the Magi, of whose
organization in this period hardly anything is known, did not fail in reverence
to their ancestral gods, whom they may have regarded as emanations of the great
Ahura-Mazda. Chief among these was the Sun and Moon, and it is to be noted that
coins of Persis, where the kings were notably orthodox Mazdaeans, show the
symbol of the crescent moon on the royal tiara, as did the coins of the
Sacastene kings and their successors the Kushans.
The religious beliefs of the masses of the people throughout the
Parthian Empire are quite another matter. But evidence is lacking to decide how
large a part of the Iranian population were Mazdaeans or what kind of Mazdaism,
if any, was offered to them by the numerous and powerful Magi, the clergy of
the Empire. Nor is it easy to tell how far Mazdaean and Iranian religion in
general influenced the cults and faith of the non-Iranian subjects of Parthia.
But one thing is certain, the Arsacids were no fanatics and did not seek to
impose their own religion on their subjects. In Assyria, for instance, local
cults persisted, and new temples were built to the ancient gods. The same is
true of Doura, where even the Seleucid dynastic cults continued under Parthian
rule, and of Susa. What we find in these Greek cities is not the introduction
of Iranian cults and the building of fire-temples, but the supplementing of
Greek cults by Semitic even among the inhabitants who still spoke Greek and had
Greek names.
How far Iranian doctrine and practice affected the various Semitic
religions is also a question. At Doura, for instance, where all the temples
found are dedicated to gods with Semitic names, it is probable that a slight
Iranian influence was perceptible, which through a kind of syncretism made it
possible for Iranians to take part in the worship of Semitic gods. The
Babylonian Bel and his acolytes, the gods of the Sun and the Moon, may well
have been in one way or another identified with Ahura-Mazda and the corresponding
Iranian gods of the pre-Zoroastrian Pantheon, one of whom was Mithra. The
tolerance of the Parthian kings extended beyond the ancient worships of the
Empire to proselytizing foreign religions, especially Judaism and Christianity.
In Adia- bene, if we may trust the Jewish tradition, they did not demur when
the ruling dynasty embraced Judaism, and any persecution of the Christians in
the same vassal-state was the work of the local Magi and not of the central
government or its representatives.
Little is known of the intellectual life of the Parthian Empire. The
citizens of the Greek cities kept intact their native language and probably
gave to their children a Greek education or at least an education in Greek.
Many citizens of Seleuceia on the Eulaeus (Susa) must have been fond of Greek
poetry, to judge from the four poems that have been discovered there, and no
doubt they studied the classical poets of Greece in order to be able themselves
to compose. The excellent style of King Artabanus’ letter to the magistrates of
that city shows that the Greek secretaries of the Parthian kings, who were
probably of Mesopotamian origin, were well trained in schools which kept alive
the Seleucid traditions of Greek rhetoric. A like familiarity with the Greek
language and the same degree of education are shown by the much more modest
scribes of Doura, who are found writing a correct Greek style as late as the
second century AD. The same is true for Media Atropatene. Literary and
stylistic interests seem to have been keener in Babylonia than in upper
Mesopotamia. No metrical inscriptions in Greek comparable to those of Susa have
been found at Doura, and most of the non-official inscriptions show that the
population at large—in this unlike the professional scribes —spoke a highly
debased and semitized form of Greek.
The Greeks of the Parthian Empire did not lose their interest in
learning. Apollodorus of Artemita, the late Hellenistic historian of Parthia,
had successors of his own type, men who were born in Parthia but wrote for the
educated people of the GraecoRoman world. Such was Dionysius of Charax, the
geographer, author of a description of the world, who wrote for Augustus a
monograph on Parthia and Arabia. Such was another writer used by the elder
Pliny, Isidore of Charax, whose date and identity are uncertain. We still
possess his Parthian Stations, in which he describes the great military and
caravan route down the Euphrates and across Parthia to India. It is a work
doubtless based on Parthian official itineraries, and we have quotations from
his other writings in Pliny, Athenaeus and the author of the Macrobioi.
The last quotation shows that he gave lists of kings of Parthia, Persis,
Elymais, Spasinu Charax and the Yemen. The list of kings of Charax which goes
down to a time which coincides with the gap in our numismatic evidence between AD.
71/2 and 100/1 may be taken as evidence that Isidore was a contemporary of
Pliny and not to be identified with Dionysius of Charax. Finally a similar work
may have been used by Josephus, perhaps a Parthica written by a hellenized Jew
of Mesopotamia in which special attention was paid to the destinies of the Jews
and of the kings of Adiabene who were converts to Judaism. To the same class of
Mesopotamian educated Greeks belonged Maes Titianus and his agents.
Greek education and Greek learning certainly affected some of the
natives, both Iranians and non-Iranians. The most splendid example is the great
teacher Mani, who certainly had a good Greek, philosophical training. But we
are not entitled to ascribe exclusively to Greek influence the literary
activity of those subjects of the Parthian kings who never received a Greek
education. Thus it is improbable that the acquaintance with Parthian history of
Abel the Teacher, the source of Mesiha-zekha, who wrote about AD. 550 a local
ecclesiastical chronicle of Arbela, was derived from Greek works. It probably
goes back to a Parthian chronicle or annals which embodied the official
tradition of Parthian history. It may be assumed that similar chronicles
existed in most of the vassal-kingdoms and formed with the Parthian annals the
historical substructure of such works as the life of Addai, the apostle of
Adiabene and Osrhoene, and the lists of Arsacid kings which are found in
Dionysius of Tellmahre for Osrhoene and in Mar Abas and Moses of Choarene for
Armenia, as well as those cited in the Macrobioi. It was probably not
Greeks who kept the itineraries of the Parthian kingdom which were used by
Isidore and the agents of Maes Titianus. All these semi-official, semi-literary
records perished when the Sassanians replaced the Arsacids, and yet their
memory survived—for the West in the works of Western historians, for the East
in the epic poetry, whose most glorious heroes are reflections of the Arsacids
and of their vassals.
More or less the same conditions prevailed with Parthian art. As in the
field of religion we must clearly distinguish between the imperial art of the
court and the Iranian art of the Arsacid period in general on the one hand and
the art of the various non-Iranian kingdoms and satrapies of Parthia on the
other. Both the Iranian, and what may be called the provincial, art of the
Parthian Empire are very little known and studied, but an analysis of the
extant monuments shows that the common view of Parthian art as a degeneration
of Greek art is mistaken. A peculiar and original Iranian art, which included a
flourishing imperial art, did exist and shows but very few Greek elements. This
Iranian art exercised a strong influence both on the art of the non-Iranian
parts of the empire and on that of its eastern neighbours, especially China.
What we know of the provincial art of Parthia and its Iranian features is
derived from the many objects found in North India and in Mesopotamia,
especially in Babylonia, at Susa, at Hatra, at Assur and at Doura.
The greatest contribution that the Parthian Empire made to art was in
the field of architecture. The excavations of the Parthian city of Assur and
the study of the Parthian monuments there and at Hatra prove that the so-called liwan-palace with its peculiar plan and stucco decoration which is so
typical for the Sassanian period is of Parthian origin. All the essential parts
of the palace and all the peculiar features of its decoration are brilliantly
exemplified in both cities, and they certainly had a deep influence on
Mesopotamian architecture of the same period as we find it in Babylon and at
Doura. How far back we can trace the development of the liwan-palace in
the pre-Parthian period it is difficult to say. The same is true of another
peculiar form of Iranian architecture—the fire-temple. It is certain that the
Sassanian fire-temples repeat the plan and the system of decoration of earlier
temples of the same type.
It is beyond doubt that both sculpture and painting flourished in
Iranian lands in the Parthian period. Very few monuments are extant, but they
suffice to show that both religious and secular sculpture and painting were
cultivated in the Parthian Empire by Iranian artists. In the field of religious
art may be adduced the religious paintings and sculptures of Doura and the
religious sculptures of Palmyra, especially the recently discovered painted
bas-reliefs of the temple of Bel. They cannot be derived from either Greek or
Assyrian art alone. Indeed, their style and composition show striking
resemblances with those of scattered religious sculptures of the Parthian period
in Iranian lands and of the impressive religious sculptures of Nimrud Dagh of
half-Iranian Commagene in the first century BC, both of which show many purely
Achaemenid features. It may, therefore, be suggested that the religious
paintings and sculptures of Doura and Palmyra are to be regarded as products of
late Iranian art which flourished in both Iranian and Syro-Anatolian regions in
Hellenistic times and was ultimately a direct continuation of the late
Graeco-Persian art of the fifth, fourth and third centuries BC.
The same is true of secular art. The portraits of the kings on the
Parthian coins have always been regarded as products of genuine Greek art. Yet
the style of these portraits is GraecoIranian rather than Greek, as is proved
by a comparison with products of Graeco-Iranian toreutics in South Russia and
with the Graeco-Iranian sculptures of Nimrud Dagh. A glance at the contemporary
coins of the Hellenistic kings will suffice to show how deep is the difference
between them and the coins of the Parthian dynasty. Far more Iranian are
secular sculptures and paintings, most of which illustrate episodes in the
heroic epos of Iran. The bas-relief of Bihistun which represents the duel
between Gotarzes and Meherdates was certainly not the first of its kind and
shows no connection with Greek art. The same type of composition is found in
South Russia in graves of the early Roman period in painting and in many
graffiti and diffinti on the walls of temples and private houses in Doura. The
same is true of another favourite motive of epic art in general—the
hunting-scene—which recurs in this Iranian treatment at Doura, on bas-reliefs
of the Iranian border lands and in South Russia. They must derive, like the
compositions of religious art, from late Achaemenid art, for the same types of
composition and the same style are found on the Graeco-Persian gems. Finally a
third favourite motif of epic art—the banquet scene—is often found on monuments
of the Parthian period, in the bone-carvings of Olbia, the silver cups of
Sacastene, the paintings and sculptures of Palmyra, Babylonia and Doura. This,
too, goes back to the art of the Achaemenid period.
It is not the composition only that is characteristic for the Iranian
art of the Parthian period. The monuments mentioned above show stylistic
peculiarities which set them in a class apart. Some of these are typical of
Oriental art in general; others, however, are peculiar to the Parthian period.
One of these last is the flying gallop, another the strict frontality of the
human figures, next come the elongated proportions of the bodies, a peculiar
schematic treatment of the folds of their dress, a far-reaching neglect of the
study of the human body and a growing linearity in its representation. Some
minor peculiarities like special treatment of eyes, hair, beards and moustaches
are equally typical of Parthian art. But its most striking peculiarity is the
way in which intense spiritual rather than intellectual life is reflected
especially in the eyes. Of this the figures of the priests of the well-known
Conon fresco at Doura give a fine example, but the same trait is found in
almost all the religious sculptures and paintings and in the portraits of this
period both in the Iranian and the non-Iranian parts of the Parthian Empire.
Finally, though the minor arts of the Parthian period are little
studied, here also Parthia created many new forms and devices. The silver plate
of this period presents new and peculiar features both in style and
composition. A new type of plant-ornament takes hold of it, and figure
compositions which show at the beginning strong Greek influences become
gradually more and more iranized and use all the motives of the great secular
art of Parthia: battles and hunting-scenes and banquets. A set of Sacian silver
cups is especially rich and typical in its development. The same is true of the
jewels of the Parthian period, especially of those of heavy silver inset with
coloured stones which characterize both Palmyrene and Gandhara sculpture (both
men and women are represented wearing them) and of which two sets were found in
Doura and some examples at Taxila. They all go back to Greek originals but show
a development and tendencies of their own which lead gradually to the creation
of new types, such as large and massive round and trapezoidal fibulae,
characteristic chains with medallions, amulets and the like. One of the most
striking features of this jewelry is its fondness for polychromy, which seems
to be an ancient peculiarity of Iranian jewelry and may have been borrowed from
Iran by Syria, where it flourished in the late Hellenistic and the Roman
period. Finally, the Mesopotamian countries use a special type of glazed
pottery different both from the contemporary Egyptian and Hellenistic glazed
pottery and from the similar ware of China. Both the forms and ornaments of the
pots and the type of the glaze show that Mesopotamian pottery forms a class in
itself which attained such a rich development later in the Sassanian and Arab
periods. It is worthy of note that glaze was used in the Parthian times not
only for vases but also for various types of coffins. In conclusion it may be
said that most of the types of composition and, in great measure, the style of
Parthian art were inherited and developed by the artists of the Sassanian
period. Sassanian art thus appears, not as a sudden renascence of what was
Achaemenid, but as a natural continuation of the Iranian art of the Parthian
period.
