The Parthian Empire: Introduction and Historiography

[Music] [Music] long-distance trade and the Parthian Empire reclaiming Parthian agency from an Orientalist historiography by Evan J Jones narrated by DW drafyn abstract the Parthian Empire has long been disregarded in the historiography because of the relative scarcity of primary sources and the lingering effects of Orientalism which hang over the secondary sources that do exist this thesis aims to refute the Orientalist practices that have thus far defined the rise and fall of the Parthian Empire and returned their political and military agency I accomplished this through a study of the Parthian Empire in relation to their control over the Silk Road and other long-distance trade routes with particular effort placed toward linking the periods of success and failure within the Parthian Empire to the status of the long-distance trade routes and who dominated them at the time I found that the periods of Parthian success and dominance in the Near East particularly regarding their relations with the Roman Republic and Empire correlates strongly with their control over the silk and steppe roads as well as the rise and fall of the maritime spice route in conclusion this shows that the political and military history of the Parthian Empire is better understood in terms of their political economic history then some vague Orientalist idea that the Parthian czar destined to collapse simply because they are not Western chapter 1 introduction and historiography in the two twenties Common Era the Arce acid Parthian Empire under siege from within by rebellious Persians collapsed ending a nearly 500 year old Empire that in its heyday had not only resisted and rebuffed the advances of the roman empire but had also presided over the creation of the Silk Road trade route an infrastructural institution that United the Far East and Far West for a thousand years and more the Anglophone historiography surrounding Parthia is not extensive but it forms the backbone of the myriad problems that exist when discussing this Empire in 1873 George Rawlinson wrote of the Parthian Emperor and their assassin Kings as a degenerate people who in their rule had become a feat in their governance of Western Asia not only complicit in the decline and fall of their own empire their incompetence had also allowed the west to conquer not only their territory but that of all the Eastern people who Rawlinson argued looked to the Parthian x' for protection for Rawlinson the very tendency of the Parthians was to degenerate their collapse attributable to a simple orientalist understanding of the ancient world the conclusion for Rawlinson was evident and the answer was simple parthia was doomed to fall as the Achaemenid persians before them and the sasanian persians after them because they were weak and tended toward degeneracy while their Western opponents were strong and capable military actors more than half a century later in 1938 Nielson Debevoise revisited the history of assassin Parthia with his political history of parthia perhaps more even spoken than Rawlinson Debevoise still gives no quarter to the empire he sees as degenerate after the introduction any time the Parthian collapse is mentioned the Empire is described as tottering and decrepit in rapid decay and a senile wreck whose ruler had no more power than tradition or his individual prowess could command suffice to say the Parthian Empire does not fare well in Debevoise accounting Malcolm College built directly on the works of Rawlinson and Debevoise in 1967 with the last published book dedicated entirely to the history of the Parthian Empire in the Parthians College aimed for a more holistic approach to understanding the Parthian Empire focusing less on the political blow-by-blow accounting of events and more on the social religious and economic facets of the Empire however even when branching out the telling of Parthia is grim colleges Parthian Empire had been sadly undermined by generations of dynastic struggles leading to a loss of political stability which allowed for the Roman Empire to invade and wreak havoc upon the struggling Parthians though college did not come right out and say it his conclusion is as clear as Debevoise and Rawlinson before the Parthian Empire was simply not fit to survive in its old age and feeble by its superior Western enemies and doomed to collapse from within such is the state of the Parthian historiography regarding their decline and eventual collapse Parthia an oriental Empire withered under the stress of fighting clearly superior Western foes and fell to Civil War the inevitable fate for such lazy effete oriental empires the political and military lens through which Rawlinson Debevoise and even college saw the Parthian z' provides only this conclusion though this is not necessarily their fault while parts of this thesis will condemn these three authors for their Orientalist tone as is necessary given their continued prominence in the literature much of the socio-political situation in England of the 19th and 20th centuries encouraged the writing of history that characterized the East in ways beneficial to a British Empire added to this that the field of economic history which this thesis draws extensively from is only truly born in the 20th century past the effective writing time of any of these authors and it becomes understandable for their works to read as they do however if one examines the Parthian Empire and the entire Iranian plateau through the economic lens that I will propose a different story emerges between the sixth century before Common Era and the seventh century Common Era four empires dominated Western Asia spreading their territory over Mesopotamia Syria and the Iranian plateau while at times also including parts of Anatolia Egypt Central Asia and the Indus Valley these were the Achaemenid Persian Empire the Greek Seleucid Empire the Parthian Empire this study is focused on and the sustaining Persian Empire these empires that emerged and ruled this region were some of the largest territorial empires to ever exist in their own time and long after as well with the exception of the short-lived Seleucid Empire a territorial offshoot of Alexander the Great's conquests that only exercised power and authority in the region for a century at most peoples emerging from the Persis region and the Central Asian steppe dominated the region of these three empires the Achaemenid Persians were the territorial master holding at one point up to five and a half million square kilometers of land under their Dominion stretching at one point from the Indus Valley to the Danube River in Europe itself they dominated the kingdoms of Egypt Babylonia and Lydia as well as subjugated numerous city-states up and down the coast of Asia Minor for all this success and their lifespan of 220 years the Persians live on in the popular consciousness as oriental despot seeking only to enslave and dominate their neighbors to the west their most famous moments known only in their antagonistic relationship with Greece and Macedonia the last rulers of this region before the Muslim invasions were the sasanian Persians rising in rebellion against the Parthian Zin the 220s Common Era they eventually pushed their territory out to Asia Minor Egypt and the Indus Valley consolidating in large part the holdings of the Achaemenid Persians who they so greatly revered their domination of the region lasted for 415 years ending only with the Muslim conquests of the seventh century Common Era the sasanian x' benefited greatly from the Parthian infrastructure they took over similar to the Seleucid situation with Achaemenid Persia but still advanced their territorial holdings to great effect reducing the scope of the Eastern Roman Empire and eventually pushing them all the way back to Constantinople this success while certainly impressive was built upon the infrastructure that their Parthian predecessors had created and maintained the roads which connected the vast empire and the systems of taxation and trade chief among them without understanding the connection between the Parthian Empire and the sasanian empire it becomes too easy to claim that Parthia fell only to its internal weakness and sasanian Persia rose only because of its strength this mindset only reinforces the Orientalist ideas this thesis argues so strongly against furthermore to argue any aspect of the early sasanian period without bringing the Parthian Zinn for reference and context is to ignore the great similarities we know existed between the two empires it is on the assassin Parthians who expanded from the Central Asian satrapy of parthia dominated the Iranian plateau and eventually collapsed at the rise of the sustain and Persians that this study will focus the semi-nomadic parney people who took over partyi and later adopted its name emerged in the - 40s before Common Era and had by the death of their first ruler our Sassy's the first taken control of the former Seleucid provinces of Parthia and here Kania and entered the historical record their reign lasting from their emergence in the mid 3rd century BCE and continuing to their usurpation by the sasanian z' in 227 Common Era encompasses 474 years more than doubling the reign of the Achaemenid persians and surpassing the duration of their sasanian successors the assassin Parthian Empire in its reign over the region destroyed Seleucid power and established their dominion over Mesopotamia and the western Iranian plateau they challenged the invasion of the Roman Empire and fought them to a standstill in several Wars forcing decades-long peace agreements upon the expansionist Romans during these military campaigns the Parthians also acted to keep the nomadic peoples on their step border contained and pacified the assassin Parthians presided over the opening of one of the greatest trade routes in all of history brokering communication and trade between Han China in the Far East and Rome both Republican and Imperial in the Far West they forced their mortal enemy Rome to pay extravagant amounts of money to them for goods transported and shipped from China and India while handling attempts to unseat their power by potential coalition's between Rome in the West and the Indian and Kushan empires in the East though many Roman senators and later an emperor derided parthia as weak barbarous and politically subservient to Rome the Parthian Empire in truth represented the only imperial threat to Roman dominance in the near East up to and including their collapse in the 220s Common Era the Parthian Empire the longest lasting Iranian Empire up to that point in history challenged on one side by the might of Imperial Rome and on the other by Kushan Indian and even Chinese power projections was and is one of the most successful empires in the entire history of the near and Middle East why then do the histories of Parthia treat the objectively successful Empire so differently in each of the three works I discussed even when other ideas are proposed the majority of text still deals with and traffic's in the inherent implication that the Parthian Empire was doomed to fall simply because of their Orientalist tendencies Deba voise provides hints at a more nuanced explanation of partitas collapse tracing their fall to the steadily increasing powers of the nobility and their feelings of self-importance this idea interesting as it may be is only ever mentioned in the introduction to his political history of parthia and never touched on again leaving little to work with colleges the Parthian z' provides an interesting clue to the decline of the Parthian z' in regards to numismatics showing that later in the Parthian Empire full decadence was now all too apparent in the quality of the coinage being produced in metal and weight to earlier numismatic standards were gone however for as interesting as these clues are college goes no further in analysing their significance and they remain only clues that demonstrate the Empire was in decline and do nothing to elaborate why the Empire was in decline the problem that each of these historians is subject to when discussing assassin parthia is as mentioned before that they wrote during a period where Orientalism the academic practice of shaping the East into a framework by which they are more easily dominated by Western powers to a greater or lesser degree was accepted and acceptable originally conceived in relation to America Britain and France's domination of the Middle East and Muslim countries the practice has its roots as far back as the first written history Herodotus's histories is devoted with some extraordinary engines to exploring how the brave Greeks of the West were able to resist the advances of the perfidious Persians of the East seeking to pillage and enslave all who resisted them this pattern of Orientalist thought is fundamental in the creation of the broader historical narrative of the near and Middle East Orientalism is not just about how Muslims are effeminate weak and unable to govern themselves it is about how the entire orient for all of history has been effeminate weak and unable to govern itself it is for this reason that formulating and arguing a different explanation for the decline and collapse of Parthia is important as of now the best that any Anglophone historian has put forth towards the fall of an empire nearly five centuries in the making is that Parthia was militarily strong and efficacious in the defense of its territory up until the beginning of the second century Common Era after this point they became suddenly unable to defend their territory or exercise their political will as before because it was in their nature to degenerate even when the discussion focuses on those parts of Parthi and history where they reigned triumphant the tone remains Orientalist in nature perhaps best represented by how the kings of Parthia are discussed the strength of Parthia when historians accept such a notion is possible does not come from any particular institution or social idea like the Roman Senate Athenian popular assembly or even the dual kingship of the Spartans rather par Thea's strength derives only from certain individual kings who imbued the entire Empire with their own charismatic rule instead of judging the leadership of parthia in aggregate as we do in such broad strokes for polities like the Roman Republic and the Athenian democracy the kings of parthia are instead judged like a modern historian may describe the leaders of dictatorships taking power and ruling through their charismatic charm leaving their state to collapse directly after their death due to its instability this despite the irrefutable fact that partitas leadership in aggregate guided the empire through nearly 500 years of existence a Spartan King may be strong or weak a Roman Emperor powerful or pitiful but no reasonable historian would place the entirety of praise or blame upon that individual for the fate of the entire state the reasonable historian recognizes that the structure is behind the figurehead are far more important in describing the rise decline and fall of states and empires than the actions of any one individual who may hold power at any point yet for all that the great man theory of history has fallen in popularity among historians of Greece Rome and the Mediterranean the same consideration has not been given to the empires of the Iranian plateau while the Roman Empire is lauded for the strength of its Republican institutions its military formations and its systems of taxation the Parthian Empire is derided for its weak leadership the lackluster accounting of any particular assassin King to blame for any diplomatic failure or loss of territory this is the case of course when the Parthian czar allowed any measure of agency in their affairs at all the deprivation of agency is one of the most effective tools to marginalize a target group when historians view the Parthian Empire it is often not as an active entity complete with unique social and political customs but as a secondary entity to the Roman state with its only importance in contextualizing Roman achievements and failures with this mindset it is easy to accept and perpetuate the claim that the assassin Parthians fell from power because they were steadily weakened through extended conflicts with roman expansion this is because the narrative that Parthia is included in is one of military conflict with Rome and is fundamentally subservient to the goals of exploring Roman history to contextualize this argument the problem here is not that Parthia exists in some works as a secondary figure to the actions of Republican and Imperial Rome but that Parthia exists in almost all works as a secondary figure to the actions of Republican and Imperial Rome when even the best of Parthian histories dedicated to only that Empire spend a majority of their time exploring parthia only in their relation to the much better documented Rome when those histories touch only briefly on the broad topic of the Empire's decline and collapse and that topic touched on with little to no depth something is deeply flawed with the historiography why is the history of Parthia treated as such by modern historians the answer can only be partly placed upon the shoulders of Rawlinson Debevoise in college their orientalist perspectives are if nothing else understandable for the time in which they were written Edward Saeed who heavily criticized this trend of Orientalism in academic history only published his book in 1978 more than a decade after colleges the Parthians came out further Syed's Orientalism took several years to inculcate itself into the academic consciousness and even then only did so after a great amount of pushback from those scholars of whose work he had targeted simply put Rawlinson and de Beauvoir's wrote their pieces during a different time during the final gasps of colonialism and the rising tide of d colonialism their works along with colleges represent a common point of view not just in relation to the near and Middle East but across academic historiography in fact when focusing in on parthia and its fall it becomes very understandable why so little emphasis was play upon the Empire's decline and collapse there was already an accepted understanding for why oriental empires fell that had been in place for decades if not centuries Orientalism in the historiography of the East provided the blueprint for the life of the despotic oriental monarchy a blueprint which inevitably ended in centralized power fragmenting as the effete lazy natural tendencies gave way to excess degeneracy and Civil War why make an argument which only agrees with all the common thought of the time Rawlinson and Debevoise readers knew why Parthia fell that was obvious they wanted the political blow-by-blow of the empire colleges readers knew why Parthia collapsed they wanted to know about the art and culture of as Rollins entitled his work the six the great oriental monarchy the difference between Parthian history and other histories is that those other periods of history even other Near Eastern history have continued to attract attention in the Anglophone world Parthian historiography in comparison at least in the Anglophone world essentially stopped in 1967 after colleges publication there have been isolated articles published on Parthian art or their views on religion maria bros uses the persians dedicates a chapter to the Parthian z' but remains only an introductory piece beyond these works and brief mentions in the histories of neighboring empires the Parthians have been largely forgotten in the english historiographical tradition and as a result the Orientalist theories of Rawlinson Debevoise and college are cemented as the existing definitive works on parthia this stagnancy in the english academic tradition may also have its roots in the broader idea of Orientalism spreading even beyond Parthia or persia and into how the entire field of Near Eastern history is studied because of the focus on create the divide between east and west and of showing how the advanced West has developed from the primitive East historians have dedicated their work to examining how civilization has moved from east to west from the Orient to the Occident this focus by its very nature preferences certain Near Eastern histories over others depending on how strong the link is between that Kingdom or Empire and its causal links on the development of Western civilization the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt are therefore important as cradles of civilization while Achaemenid Persia Parthia and sasanian Persia are not because the torch of civilization had already passed from the Orient to the oxidant leaving those empires of the East to stagnate therefore the history of Parthia is unimportant because it does not add to our understanding of how Greece or Rome came to power the decline and collapse of the Parthian Empire holds no value and it is therefore ignored within this thesis I will revisit the history of the Parthian Empire their rise consolidation decline and collapse and will provide an alternative methodology for understanding the Parthians that goes beyond the simplistic Orientalism that has haunted the retelling of this period of history through this inquiry I will repudiate the ideas of party and degeneracy or weakness that has so plagued discussions surrounding them with this in mind the theory that I propose to explain the Parthian decline in collapse is one not rooted in assumptions of a people's inherent capabilities or vices but rather in a broad economic understanding of that empires life this theory though ignored in every history of parthia I have come across should not be surprising in the least for an empire that sat upon one of the greatest trade routes in history and facilitated the trade of vast amounts of goods and capital between the Han Chinese Empire and the roman empire i propose that the reason the parthian empire was able to fend off intermittent invasions by the Romans nomadic peoples and the occasional revolt while expanding their territorial holdings and political reach for the majority of their history is that between 125 before Common Era and circa 100 Common Era the Parthians held mastery over the Silk Road and its operation from this mastery they were able to extract enormous amounts of wealth from the trade passing through their territory that could then be used to pacify their subject people's pay for the mercenaries so often used by Iranian civilizations to augment their forces and fight wars while also building and maintaining the burgeoning infrastructure project that the system of Royal Roads represents for an empire sandwiched between expansionist powers on both their eastern and western borders they required all the wealth they could amass after all the sinews of war money in abundance and money was one thing the Parthian Zinn their prime were overflowing with to paraphrase the statistician Edward Tufte correlation does not imply causation but it certainly is suggestive and the shift in party is fortunes as I will detail correlates strongly with their territorial control over the Silk Road and the income that came from controlling it around 100 Common Era two major changes occurred that I argued disrupted the Parthians control over their section of the Silk Road first the Kushan Empire rose out of Northwest India expanded north to Central Asia and south to the Arabian Sea essentially cutting through the primary path of the Silk Road trade from China to parthia ii having solidified their empire in the first century Common Era Rome expanded their shipbuilding and road infrastructure in Egypt allowing a more full-fledged trade operation to emerge from the Red Sea to India this facilitated direct trade with Indian and Kushan traders who were because of the Kushan expansion funneling the luxury goods that Parthian needed to trade directly to the Roman traders waiting at the Arabian Sea this disruption of both the beginning and the end points of the Parthian section of the Silk Road was deadly to the Parthian Empire and was the true cause of their decline and collapse without the ample income the Parthian x' collected from the Silk Road their capability to wage wars and support political actors outside of their borders was severely hindered added to this the maintenance of the Royal Roads that facilitated that trade along with quick and efficacious military movements would be hindered as less capital was available for this upkeep worsening conditions on the Royal Road only added to the problems the Parthian started to face on each end of their empire adding to their decline and later collapse shortly after the end of the first century and beginning of the second century Common Era the Parthian 's go from successfully defending their territory and influencing their neighbors to losing territory political authority and popular appeal among their subject nation's primary sources the primary challenge of this thesis indeed with much of ancient history as a whole is struggling with the scarce evidence that exists the primary sources on Parthia in general are lackluster and on matters of their economic activity and the Silk Road trade even more so despite this the evidence that does exist from Parthia Rome China and even the sasanian Persians supports the conclusion of this thesis available sources on this thesis can first be divided into textual and non-textual categories as for the non textual sources on this topic two standout the numismatic evidence and the excavations of Parthian nisa Palmyra and dura europas Parthian coinage provides the best method of dating the reigns of partying kings when matched with the Greek and Latin sources from the West the excavations especially of Parthi and Nisa provide a glimpse into the lives of the Parthians where so many of their other cities were entirely subsumed by sasanian and Islamic influences Antonio in Vernon si has essentially focused his entire career on the study of Nisa within the Italian and English historiography within the textual sources available three broad categories can be drawn Greek and Latin sources on the Parthian Empire Han Chinese writings on the western regions and the ostraka that detail some aspects of the administrative and economic functions of the Empire unfortunately textual sources like those written in Greek and Latin are virtually non-existent from within the Parthian Empire since so little survives from the Parthian period a cohesive picture must be constructed using the accounts of neighbouring empires which presents its own set of problems that will be discussed below the sources that best paint the picture of Parthian history are those written in greek and latin and can be divided into two sections those that primarily detail the military conflicts rome had with Parthia and those that attempt to document a historical or geographical examination of the Parthia empire both are useful for their connection with the established roman historiography which provides easily dated moments that are used to reconstruct the Parthian reign the downside to those texts dealing with the roman Parthian conflict is that only the roman perspective is given and they are because of that perspective hostile to the Parthian point of view Casius dio's roman history is emblematic of this problem parthia comes up four times India's history once each for the invasions into parthia by Crassus Mark Antony Trajan and Caracalla with each section having only enough contextual information to detail the failures or successes of each Rome in general do even comments about the Parthians that now about their race and their country and their peculiar customs many have written and I have no intention of describing them making clear that any information gleaned about parthia is only to better understand the Roman perspective Plutarch's life of Crassus acts in a similar fashion constructing a narrative of Crassus where the Parthians play only a faciliate ori role works such as these and others like you Tropius is abridgement of roman history and velay aspetta cool asses Roman history give detailed explorations into specific moments of the Roman and Parthian empires without exploring the contact of any of these moments it is from works like these that the histories of Parthia from the 19th and 20th centuries were written providing detailed and lurid views of the debauched actions of this oriental monarchy luckily not all Greek and Latin histories were written in such a vein in particular sections 8.4 8 and 8.5 one of a pians Syrian Wars provide an early and relatively unbiased account of the Parthians in their struggles against the Seleucid Empire while Josephus's Jewish antiquities contains a section on the civil war between von Onis the first and r2 baños the second writing like a peon with little interest other than the depiction of the events books 41 and 42 of Justin's epitome of the philippic history of pompeius trochus provide an exemplary early history of the Parthian Empire up to the reign of freh ATS and his diplomacy with Augustus providing the context that particular you Tropius do and Plutarch often lacked the best works however for exploring the broad scope of Parthian history and the systems by which they ran their empire are the works of Isadora of Shiraz who put together a Travel Guide of the Parthian stations across the Empire and Pliny the Elder whose natural history lays out the broad political makeup of the 18 King of Parthia lastly works such as strabos geography and the para plus maurice era 3a will be utilized within this thesis as they provide general geographical guides of the known Parthian world the perilous functions exceptionally well as a travel and trade guide for the maritime spice route and provides superb contextual evidence toward the propagation of that trade in the first and second centuries Common Era moving the focus to Chinese writings two vital sources exist the records of the grand historian by Summa yen and the Ho Honshu by Fong yay together these works detailed the Chinese expeditions which discovered the western regions and marked the beginnings of the Silk Road both deal with the opening of trade and communication between Han China and the West in the late 2nd and early 1st centuries before Common Era sue machi ins records acts more as a biographical narrative of Chang Chien's Journey to the West while fine years whole Han Xu reads as closer to Pliny the elders natural history preferring a more geographical and less narrative focus on the history of the western regions both works are valuable but fine years ho Han Xu must be taken with more cautious analysis than the works of Sumathi n while SMAW lived during the events he wrote about dying in the first century before Common Era after the beginning of trade along what would come to be known as the Silk Road Fon Yi finished the whole Han Xu in the 5th century Common Era half a millennium after the events he supposedly wrote about while this work was almost certainly put together using court records and the information that China had learned in the interim those exact things make it important to question the whole Han Xu to its ability to faithfully recount the specific events of the late second century before Common Era the papyri and ostraka of the Roman to provide another pool of evidence to draw from though this thesis avoids delving into the micro economic studies that these pieces allow for the best source of this evidence comes from Egypt and the maritime spice route but limited sources can be found from other sectors of the Roman East while this thesis does not delve deeply into the study of these pieces being more a political history informed by economic theory than a strict economic history they can be used to evaluate the flow of goods traveling into and out of the Roman Empire additionally at nisa several thousand ostraka have been uncovered that detail some of the history of eastern parthia particularly related to their policy of taxation and customs which integrate nicely into the evidence that is ador of Shahrukh's provides in his Parthian stations i mentioned above that the Parthian histories of the last two centuries were primarily written from a collection of the latin and greek sources which tended to be antagonistic toward the Parthians it is at this point that Rawlinson Debevoise and college must be given some slack for the works that they produced working from these sources to near exclusivity creates an image of the Parthians that within the bounds of the 19th and 20th century colonialism and imperialism seemed natural and just the fact that english translations of the han chinese records did not emerge until the mid to late 20th century further excuses some of these authors historiographical choices finally all three authors wrote in a time where economic history in general was in its infancy this does not excuse them for the way they wrote about parthia but it provides an explanation for it beyond an accusation of malice aside from these primary sources I want to also make special mention of those historians of Rome's trade along both the silk and spice roads as their work is the closest to a discussion on this thesis topic as could be found Raoul McLaughlin and his two works on Roman economic interactions with the east form a backbone of my fourth chapter the evidence he brought together in his Rome and the distant East and his Roman Empire on the Indian Ocean was invaluable to this work additionally Gary Young's Rome's Eastern trade was similarly invaluable though I disagree with some of the conclusions he makes regarding Roman policy regarding their economic situation organization of this paper this first chapter having provided an introduction and overview to the historiography of parthia and aims of this thesis the following chapters will each be devoted to a chronological accounting of the Parthians their emergence rise to dominance decline and collapse each of these four chapters will detail the literary evidence of the political and military histories of the parthian empire as well as a discussion towards how such information fits within the economically informed argument this thesis makes this separation of Parthian history into four periods will show that Parthian success and failure is highly correlated to their control over the Silk Road trade route this will provide the evidence for my theory that when Parthia is strong against the military and political actions of their enemies and effective at quieting internal strife their control of the Silk Road was strong when they began to lose territory to roman incursion and began facing troubles from within they cannot deal with they had already lost significant control over the trade routes that had made them so strong before additionally this structure will also highlight the drastic shifts in fortunes that the Parthian Empire underwent from success to failure back to success again and then immediately to collapse this perhaps more than anything else disproves the theory of a degenerate partyi weakened by their oriental nature and doomed to fall after all if parthia was in such a degenerative state near the end of their reign their victory over the Romans in - 1617 Common Era becomes highly implausible finally my conclusion along with discussing the further paths of this research will also document the birth of the sasanian empire and how their emergence fits within the economic theory this thesis presents the second chapter and first period will focus on the emergence of the Parthians and their rise to dominance first as a kingdom in the northern Seleucid province of parthia and here Kania and later as rulers of the entire Iranian Plateau dating between the reins of our Sassy's the first - 47 to 217 before Common Era and our two baños the first 128 to 124 23 before Common Era this period witnessed not only the beginning of diplomatic relations between Parthia and Rome but also the beginnings of trade on the Silk Road as Han China sought military and economic aid against their own enemies these two relationships defined the Parthian Empire for much of their history and dominated the narrative of their second period the 3rd chapter and second period beginning with the rise of Mithra Dottie's the second 124 123 - 88 87 before Common Era as king and ending with the death of valla DC's the first 51 to 7680 Common Era brings the consolidated might of the Parthian Empire to bear on an expansionist Roman Republic raising tensions across their mutual border along the Euphrates River and multiple times escalating to declared war during this period parthia challenged Rome to territories in both Syria and Armenia claiming several extraordinary victories in the former and establishing political dominance in the latter concurrently the Silk Road overseen by Parthian interests were fully operational granting the Parthian economic as well as political power in the region in short this period saw the Parthians that their most militarily successful in their conflict with it is logical to assume successes on other fronts of the Parthian Empire however we hear little to nothing about Parthian military or political machinations in their eastern provinces even with the later rise of the kushan empire it is only the numerous works written by Romans either lamenting their losses or posturing for better appearances that give historians such a good picture of this period while this conflict raged between Parthian and Roman armies subject merchants of both the Parthians and Romans engaged in a staggering amount of trade at key cities along their border trade during this period was almost certainly at the highest it was during the Parthian dominion of the Iranian plateau no coincidence when one correlates their military and political victories of this same time frame the 4th chapter and 3rd period of Parthian history from the end of the first century Common Era to the beginning of the 3rd century Common Era begins with the rise of the kushan empire in the east and sees a market reverse in the power and prestige of the Parthian state after the mid late first century Common Era for more than a century no party an army bested a Roman one on the field of battle whether they were within corps Parthian territories or without Parthian political and diplomatic control of Armenia slipped away and Roman armies sacked multiple Parthian cities in Mesopotamia and eventually established dominance over northern Mesopotamia continuing the correlation between par Thea's economy and their success this period saw a proliferation of new Roman trade opportunities which cut out Parthian merchants entirely strengthening the position of the new kushan empire which exists as a territorial power between Parthian and chinese trade the 5th chapter and final period of party in history is the shortest of the four lasting at greatest extent 20 to 30 years and comprising the last war between Parthia and Rome in two 16/17 Common Era and the revolution of the Persians under the sasanian x' which overthrew the ruling assassin Parthians I am designating this a separate and distinct period in Parthian history because of its importance to the narratives surrounding partitas decline and fall simply put the success Parthia had over the Roman Empire in 217 Common Era is comparable to their earlier victories over Crassus and Mark Antony in their second period within the narratives of Rawlinson Debevoise in college this is an improbability of such a scale that it is unacceptable the degenerate weak oriental Parthian Empire of the classic histories could not have been able to not only best roam on the field of battle outside their core territory in Armenia but also extract indemnities totaling millions of sesterces of silver from their enemy in this chapter I will explore the Antonine plague the reduction in Roman trade opportunities and the resurrection of the steppe route trade within this economic lens one sees a resurgent Parthian trade system which not only granted them the capability to wage such a war but also the motive to do so though the political and military histories of each of these periods are important tools to frame my economic argument it is the focus on the Silk Road that provides the evidence through a study of its rise and fall in importance through the Parthian reign laced throughout each of chapters 2 through 5 will be an examination of the beginnings of the Silk Road along with its neighbouring routes which facilitated trade between Asia Africa and Europe part and parcel of this correlation will be the Kushan Empire and the Roman maritime spice route trade which spelled the end of Parthian economic dominance and the cause of their decline and collapse the 6th and final chapter will explore the 3rd and 4th centuries Common Era and act as a post-mortem for the Parthians why exploring how their successors the sasanian Persian Empire used the economic might of the Silk Road to ascend back to a place of power in the region the sasanian empire provides in its history counterpoints to many of the arguments made against the parthian empire particularly the argument of the fractious nobility tearing the empire down and this chapter will explore those ideas and show why they have little to commend them by the end of this thesis I aim to rehabilitate the Parthian Empire by returning to them a sense of autonomy and agency by viewing their history through this economic lens the Parthians ceased to exist solely as an Orientalist monarchy doomed to fail because of their nature and become instead an agent in their own affairs as they always were [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

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Keywords: Parthian Empire, Silk Road, Han China, Roman Empire, Roman–Parthian Wars, Parthia, parthia vs rome, Ancient History, ancient trade, roman history, history documentary, history channel, ancient armenia, Arsacid Empire, Ancient Iran, Iran, history of Iran, history of the silk road, ancient middle east, ancient persia, ancient canaan, Seleucid, ancient levant, Roman Republic, Battle of Carrhae, ancient mesopotamia, ancient civilizations, Kushan Empire, Indo Parthian

Id: Eh949tcAEzY

Length: 51min 26sec (3086 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2020