III

THE SARMATAE AND PARTHIANS

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, specially Adiabene, Osrhoene, Elymai's 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 marzapan) who were styled in the Greek version of their title strategos. 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 Characene, 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 Seleucia on the Tigris, the greatest and the richest of them, about Seleucia 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 Seleucia 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 ethnarches) seem to have belonged to one particular family. Strategoi and epistatai are also found at Babylon and Nineveh and probably at Uruk. 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, the man who restored to prosperity the kleroi 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 honor 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 honored man, bearer of court titles, who was sent twice as ambassador 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. Seleucia 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 Seleucia’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.