The Parthian Empire is one of the most famous
and least-understood empires in world history, rising from humble beginnings to earn
titles such as destroyers of the Seleukids, conquerors of Gandhara, and Rome’s Greatest
Enemy. Beyond their obvious martial skill, the Parthians were also shrewd diplomats and
expert administrators, forging a unique empire that combined their nomadic roots with the
Hellenism of their Seleukid forebears and the traditions of Persia herself to create one
of the ancient worlds’ most vibrantly unique states. Who were the Parthians? Where did they
come from? And how did they set about building their massive empire? Welcome to our video on
the Parthian Empire, its history, its military and its many cultural and political achievements
as a crossroads of Eurasia and the Silk Roads. Parthia’s successes would have been
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time. Hit the link in the description. The Parthians are an elusive empire to
study, particularly due to the lack of sources from the people of Parthia themselves.
The Romans wrote plenty about the Parthians, but being their traditional archenemies, they
often paint the Parthians in a negative light. So, while we can claim some information from
Roman writers, they should always be taken with a grain of salt. Additionally, some Chinese
sources also mention Parthia, and the Chinese emissary Gan Ying is said to have gone to Parthia
on his way to find Rome. Beyond the written word, archaeology also helps us piece together Parthian
society. In the land once ruled by the Parthians, archaeological sites such as Nisa in Turkmenistan
have a significant Parthian presence. Moreover, an extensive corpus of coins allows us to
establish a dynastic cohesion of Parthian Kings. These coins often have Greek inscriptions
on them, implying that the Parthians maintained continuity with the post-Alexander Hellenistic
rulers who controlled Persia before them. Before we get into how the Parthians ended up
conquering the Middle East, let us first take a broader look at the ancient world before their
rise to power. After the death of Alexander the Great, most of what had once been the Persian
Achaemenid Empire was taken over by one of his generals, Seleukos I Nikator. The Seleukids had
a unique approach to ruling the Achaemenid core, managing their empire in conjunction with the
noble families of the former Achaemenid Empire in a sort of large web of social networks. As a
result, the Empire was more decentralised than other Hellenistic states, which lent itself to
a more flexible cultural policy. Hence, while the Seleukids promoted aspects of Hellenistic
Greek culture, such as the worship of Apollo, Persian culture remained strong, albeit coexisting
with a panoply of other cultures in the Seleukid domain. In the west, the Seleukids ruled
parts of modern-day Iraq and Armenia, where a diverse array of peoples, such as
Jews, Babylonians, Armenians and Greeks, lived. These regions were more or less
the most stable of the empire, however, they were also battlegrounds in wars with powerful
states like the Attalids, Ptolemies, Romans, Armenians and Pontics. In the east, the Empire
lost its provinces to the Maurya Empire early on in the late 300s BCE. This region was also fairly
diverse, and would come to play an important role in Parthia’s formation. Finally, in the north of
modern-day Central Asia lies a vast steppe land that was important for trade throughout human
history, and during this time, was populated by nomadic, predominantly Iranian-speaking peoples.
These peoples were often considered barbaric by both Greeks and Persians, due to such habits
as having women archers on horseback. Their Zoroastrian religion was far different from the
one of the Achaemenids, as they worshipped many deities rather than one. It is from these northern
steppe lands that the Parthians would arise. The story of the Parthian Empire begins around
247 BCE, in the land of Chorasmia. During this time, the Hellenic Kingdom of Bactria had
declared independence from Seleukid Persia, causing a struggle between the Seleukids and
what they saw as a breakaway province. Meanwhile, in the lands between the Aral and Caspian
Seas, a Scythian-adjacent people called the Parni were organizing under new leadership,
with two brothers, called Ashk (or Arsakes) and Tirdad (or Tiridates), managing to unite the many
tribes of Parthia under their rule. Newly unified, the Parthians instigated revolts in the north
and managed to take the regions of Hyrcania and Chorasmia from the Seleukids. Seleukos II was
fighting a war with the Ptolemies at the time and was unable to fight back effectively. Thus, the
Parthians solidified their conquests, establishing the first capital, Ashgabat, which was located
somewhere around modern-day Turkmenistan. The Seleukids pushed back against
the rising Parthian tide in 209 BCE, when Antiochos III defeated the Parthians
in battle, making them his vassals. However, this fealty would not last for long, and the
Parthians soon broke free and started growing once more. The small Parthian state saw its first large
expansion under Mehrbad I (or Mithridates I), the first royal to assume the old Achaemenid
title of King of Kings on his coinage. Between 160 - 140 BCE, he initiated a lightning campaign
against the Seleukid Empire, which resulted in massive conquests in Media, Babylon and Seleukia
on the Tigris. These newly annexed territories would later become core territories of
the Parthian Empire, but at the onset, Parthian control of these lands was tenuous.
The locals in these cosmopolitan, city-dense regions had a very urban-centric view of nomadic
peoples, considering them to be underdeveloped baboons. The Seleucids made a final attempt
to regain their lost territories when Phraates (Farhad) II ruled over Parthia, and initially
saw significant success in this endeavour, as the locals saw them as liberators delivering
them from the yoke of Parthian barbarism. However, the re-conquering Greeks enraged the people of
the reoccupied territories with their outrageous economic demands. Thus, they revolted, allowing
the Parthians to counter-attack in 129 BCE and drive the Seleucids back to Syria. This ended
all hope for a Seleukid reconquest of their Asian heartland: and they would remain a diminished
rump state until they were finally annexed by Pompey and the Romans in 63 BCE. Although having
replaced the Seleukids as the masters of Persia, the Parthians adopted a lot from their Seleukid
forebears, emulating their ruler cults and uses of the Achaemenid royal vocabulary to ensure
their rule was adapted to local circumstances. Once the Seleukids were defeated, the Parthians
pivoted east, for they were under nomadic assault. The Scythians, nomadic Iranian cousins to the
Parthians, were rampaging west from their homeland in what is now Eastern Turkestan. Parthian King
Phraates and his successors tried to stop them, but failed miserably. Meanwhile, rebellions
had broken out in the western provinces, including in the Arab kingdom of Charecene.
Overall, the Parthians were learning that conquering land was one thing, but defending and
holding it was another. However, around 123 BC, King Mithridates II ascended to the Parthian
throne and began righting the ship of state. After solidifying the Parthian grip in the west,
he turned to the eastern provinces to deal with the nomadic incursions, where he pushed
the Scythians back to the far side of the River Oxus and turned their newly founded
kingdom of Sakastan into a vassal state. Mithridates was the first Parthian to rule as a
neighbour to the Romans, who reached the Euphrates at around this time. During this period, the
kingdom of Armenia also bordered Parthia, and was engaging in many conquests across the region.
Mithridates initially tried to woo the Romans into an alliance against Armenia; but the infamous
Sulla contemptuously rejected them. Mithridates, who felt slighted, instead joined forces with
Armenia and Asia Minor against the Romans, initiating a vendetta that would last
centuries. After the death of the able and powerful Mithridates II in 88 BC, the Empire
was rather stagnant. Armenia, meanwhile, was conquering as far south as Ecbatana, causing the
Seleucid rump state to invite the Armenian King to occupy the throne of Syria and claim himself to
be the King of Kings in direct contradiction to Parthian royal ideology. The Romans, alarmed
by the expansion of Armenia in Asia Minor, offered a treaty to Parthian King Phraates III,
who took it, resulting in a rare example of Roman-Parthian cooperation as they worked
to contain Armenia. However, this did not change the Roman perception of the Parthians as a
lesser entity, something they would regret later. Before we continue on to the epic wars with
Rome, we must first understand how the Parthian military worked. The Parthians built their
military using their old nomadic traditions, while adapting it to also function in wars
with sedentary Empires such as the Seleukids, Armenians, and Romans. In general, the Parthian
army was destandardized. Parthian rulers usually let local kings rule various regions of the Empire
in their stead and so had to call upon these royal vassals to amass local troops based on demand.
The core of the Parthian army, called Spad, had a core of cavalry and archers, usually Iranians, who
were trained in such arts from their infancy. True to their nomadic roots, Parthians generally
favoured cavalry warfare because it allowed for flexibility and speed in engagements. Using
arrows, the Parthians would work in Simpsons-style Hit-And-Run tactics which could confuse the
enemy and provide lightning-bolt strikes that left their enemies weakened and demoralised.
Wars with Rome began after the fall of Tigranes of the Great of Armenia. The Parthians,
who had, on occasion, cooperated with the Romans, had installed members of the Parthian Arsacid
dynasty in various Caucasus states. In addition, after Pompey’s invasion of Armenia,
initially fruitful negotiations fell apart after disputes arose over the fertile
crossroads of Mesopotamia. As a result, a few years later, Marcus Licinius Crassus,
the Scrooge McDuck of Ancient Rome and Great Sponsor of the First Triumvirate YouTube Channel,
initiated a campaign against the Parthians, which ended disastrously. In the infamous battle of
Carrhae, Parthian troops faced the Roman legions, and managed to brutally defeat them. Crassus was
captured, and was executed either via decapitation and becoming a theatre prop, or by being made
to swallow molten gold. Crassus was not the only Roman military leader the Parthians humiliated,
as they also ambushed Pacorus in 51 BCE, fought off Cicero when he was governor of Cilicia,
and went to toe to toe against both Marc Anthony and his archrival Augustus on separate occasions.
The end result of all this was that the Parthians succeeded in taking over parts of the Caucasus and
Mesopotamia and installing vassals in their place. Over the 1st Century CE, many wars between Rome
and Parthia were fought in Mesopotamia, inflicting horrors upon the locals and resulting in some
territorial changes. It was here that some of the instability of the Parthian mode of government
unfolded. Many Parthian emperors would often assume power through palace coups against their
sons or brothers. The Romans would, on occasion, use this to their advantage to secure some sort of
peace. Moreover, the Romans were also capable of fomenting rebellions in Parthia’s decentralised
provinces, which, as previously mentioned, exercised considerable self-rule. One of these
rebellions, led by a man called Gondophares, took place in the eastern end of the empire. Declaring
independence, Gondophares established his own dynasty, the so-called Indo-Parthian kingdom,
with himself as yet another ‘King of Kings’. He then proceeded to fight the Indo-Scythians and
Indo-Greeks in the east and take control of parts of Gandhara and Bactria, becoming one of the
myriad peoples who inhabited this rich land. It was only in the 2nd Century CE that the Romans
began to make incursions inside Parthia. Trajan, who was a maximalist in terms of extending Roman
influence over the Euphrates River, initiated an invasion of Parthia in 115 CE. The campaign
resulted in the maximum ever extent of the Roman Empire, as well as the fall of Ctesiphon,
Parthia’s capital. This was an unstable victory, however, and the Parthians quickly regained many
of these territories. Hadrian, Trajan’s successor, was a geopolitical realist, preferring to maintain
the Euphrates as border. Under Parthian King Vologases III, the Parthians continued to regain
ground, but the Romans turned the tide against them, and in AD 165, once again entered Ctesiphon.
Some western Iranian provinces were thus ceded to Rome, and the unstable Parthian government
was unable to make further gains. This was what enabled Emperor Septimus Severus to attack and
capture Ctesiphon again in AD 197. By this time, the Parthians were firmly in decline, and they
would soon lose control over their western vassals, like Armenia, to Roman control. Some
of these fortunes were reversed in AD 217 when Artabanus V defeated the Romans in battle.
This was, however, too little too late for the once mighty Empire. Fratricidal strife with his
brother Vologases V led to chaos in the empire, one that a small dynasty led by a man
called Ardashir would soon exploit. Having now provided an abridged version of
Parthian history, let us now look at the Empires’ culture and society. As previously stated, Parthia
was an amalgamation of the nomadic culture of its rulers, the Achaemenid and Hellenistic culture
of its forebears, as well as the myriads of local cultures of its subjects and vassals. Parthia
was more decentralised than its predecessors or successors, with much more focus being put
on local vassal kings than satraps appointed by the central government. Parthian society was
not without its innovations. In particular, the Romans greatly admired Parthian irrigation
techniques and deliberately emulated them. This also suggests that, although generally
taking a hands-off approach to their vassals, the Parthians still had an active hand in guiding
their agricultural and economic output. Trade with China was also important, as the Parthians acted
as a sort of mediating force between the Middle Kingdom and Eternal Rome. The Parthians maintained
this fluidity in the realm of religion as well. Unlike their Sasanian successors, who preferred
to unify the doctrines of Zoroastrianism, the Parthians appear to have allowed for much
more regional diversity in the Iranian religion. This is seen in coinage, where Greek deities
merge with Iranian ones, such as Zeus Oromazdes and Athena-Artemis-Anahita. The use of Greek
probably was appealing to many Parthian vassals, who preferred it over the Parthian language, which
they saw as barbaric. Both the Iranian and Greek pantheons seem to have been worshipped across
the empire, and local religions such as that of the Jews, Babylonians, Armenian pagans, and
even proto-Christians, Buddhists, and Gnostics, had some place in the laissez-faire empire.
With that said, the Parthians placed a great deal of focus on Ahura-Mazda, the High God,
as well as Anahita, the Fertility Goddess, and Mithras, the Sun God, a well-known
triumvirate of deities in Iranian polytheism. In Ctesiphon, government was arranged based on
two councils – one of the great nobles and one of the elders and magi who advised the king. This
is an intriguing deviation from Achaemenid norms, but it is unclear as to what the exact functions
of these two councils were. While much has been said of the Parthians’ love of Greek culture
in coinage, for which many 20th Century Iranian nationalists chastised them, the Parthians were
an adaptable and diverse people. Some neo-Iranian cultural revivals actually began under rulers
such as Vologases I in the first century AD, who put on his coins a quintessentially Persian
fire altar with a sacrificing priest. The Parthians also appear to have continued the norm
of using ruler cults, something which many Iranian dynasties did. Parthian art and architecture also
was diverse and syncretic, with archaeology in the western provinces revealing buildings that
are influenced by Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Mesopotamian forms. Some of the most important
features of art from the later Sasanian and Islamic periods, such as the eyvan and stucco
decoration, have their origin in the Parthian period. We can thus see that Parthian culture was
a product of its Hellenistic and Iranian origins, with remarkable flexibility and syncretism.
The Parthian Empire, like many of its vassals, was in decline by the 3rd Century CE, torn up in
a civil war between dynastic claimants Artabanus and Vologases, while a new regional ruler from
Ardashir-Khwarrah in the south of Persia, called Ardashir I, rose to prominence via conquest.
In 224 CE, he managed to conquer the city of Ctesiphon and crowned himself King of Kings.
This heralded the end of the Parthian Empire, and the beginning of the Sasanian Empire was much
more centralised and Irano-centric than Parthia, and followed a very different path in terms
of governance. However, as we have seen, some of Parthia’s innovations survived in culture
and architecture. Legends even claim that Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, who was born
on the border between Iran and Iraq, claimed descent from Parthian kings. The
Parthians today are usually remembered as an enemy of Rome and by some as a bizarre
Hellenizing outlier in Iranian national history. However, Parthia produced a great deal
of artistic, cultural and economic innovations, refusing to stick to one type of governance. Using
Hellenistic, Iranian, Nomadic and many local types of cultural and political organisations, the
Parthians produced a tumultuous yet innovative empire in between the Silk Roads. Parthia
stands out as a nexus point which transformed Iran and its surrounding regions, and its
achievements are still with us to this day. Thanks again to War Thunder for sponsoring
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