Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/618

 590 PERSIA [GR.ECO-PARTHIAN 191-171. restored by Alexander, fall again into ruin. Another of Epiphanes s measures directed to the strengthening of the Hellenic element in the East was the occasion of the change to Epiphanea of the name of the Median capital. But against these useful efforts must be set the plundering of the temples of the barbarians, a sure way to exhaust Oriental patience, and one which involved the king in a catastrophe so like to that of his father that we should suspect some confusion were the accounts not so Avell con firmed. 1 The king, we are told, heard of a rich temple of the goddess Namea in Elymais stored with the gifts of many generations ; he marched out to plunder it, but was driven back by the natives to Babylon. In Persis he received tidings of the formidable rising in Judaea; excited by similar acts of violence ; apparently he was then on his way against the Persian rebels, but on the journey he died of consumption in the Persian town of Tabas (164). . Antiochus had given Mesene with its capital, Antioch, to a native dynast, Hyspaosines, as satrap ; and, when Antioch, like its predecessor Alexandria, was soon ruined by floods, the city was removed to an artificial hill and protected by an embankment. Under the name of Spasinu Charax (Hyspaosines s pile-town) the new city rose to commercial prosperity, and became the capital of. the petty kingdom Chara- of Characene, which probably became independent at the cene. death of Antiochus. Thus the Seleucid empire was now quite cut off from the Persian Gulf by a circle of small native states. 2 Now followed the troubled reign of the child -king Antiochus V. Eupator (164-162), which was cut short by Deme- Demetrius Soter (162-150). The latter was constantly trios I. persecuted by the Romans, who raised enemies against him on every side, and so the times seemed to invite a renewal of the enterprise of Molon. Since the time of Epiphanes the satrap of Media had been one Timarchus of Miletus, brother of the intriguing and influential treasurer Hera- elides, and, like the latter, a favourite of the late king, who had often sent him to Rome. Knowing the ground there, he went to Rome, and easily persuaded the senate to grant him the title of king (16 1). 3 He made a treaty with Artaxias of Armenia against Demetrius, compelled the neighbours of Media to acknowledge him, and extended his power as far as Zeugma, and finally over Babylonia. 4 But .he fared in the end no better than Molon. The Babylonians were oppressed and hated him, and the self- conceived majesty of Timarchus, who on his coins called himself &quot;the Great,&quot; soon broke down in conflict with Demetrius, one of the most gifted princes of a highly- gifted dynasty. Timarchus was slain, his brother fled, and the victor was saluted as &quot; saviour &quot; (Soter) by the grateful Babylonians (160). It was a great victory for Demetrius ; he had saved the best part of Iran for his monarchy, and he had shown all who speculated on the support of Rome that the decrees of the republic were powerless in regions to which its arm could not reach. The true danger for the Macedonian monarchy came not from rebellious lieutenants but from the ever stronger re action of the Oriental element, of which the little state of Parthia was the most vigorous champion. The kings of Parthia had long kept quiet after the war with Antiochus the Arsaces Great. Phriapatius, successor of Arsaces II., who reigned fifteen years (c. 191 -c. 176), calls himself on his coins Phil- adelphus. 1 Comp. Gran. Licinian., p. 9, with the first confused account in the letter of the Jews to Aristobulus, 2 Mac. i. 10 sq. 2 Hyspaosines was not an Arab, as Pliny states, vi. 139. The Iranian names of the older kings of Characene justify Juba s account of their extraction. 3 The corrupt passage of Diodorus, Exc. Escur., 13, ought to run thus, Tt^dpxV teii&amp;gt;ai Kal avry fiacriXta elvai. 4 In Diod., I.e., read TT}S Ba/SiAwj/t as for rr?5 /3a&amp;lt;7tei as. Hence the error of Appian, who does not mention Media at all. &quot;Arsaces Philadelphus,&quot; perhaps because he had married a sister, and (first of all Parthian kings) Philhellen. 5 By the last title he presents himself, at a time when the Seleucid power was sinking, as the protector of his present and future Greek subjects. His eldest son and successor, Phraates I. (Arsaces Theopator of the coins), conquered Phn the brave Mardian Highlanders and transplanted them to I - Charax in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Gates, a proof that the Parthians had already detached Comisene and Choarene from Media (Strabo, xi. 514), probably just after the death of Antiochus the Great. About 171 Phraates died and left the crown not to his Mitl sons but to his brother Mithradates (Arsaces Epiphanes and date apparently also, on tetradrachms of 139, 138, Arsaces Phil- I- hellen), a prince of remarkable capacity, who made Parthia the ruling power in Iran. His first conquests, it would seem, were made at the expense of Bactria. The kingdom of Bactria had made vast advances under Den Euthydemus, whose son Demetrius crossed the Indian* 1 Caucasus and began the Indian conquests, which soon Bac! carried the Greeks far beyond the farthest point of Alex ander. The Punjab was reduced and the city of Cakala, under the name of Euthyclemia, became the capital of the Indian conquests; but besides this it appears that Demetrius himself marched down the course of the Indus, conquered Pattala and the kingdoms of Saraostes (Surashtra) and Sigerdis, probably the district of the commercial city Barygaza. The object, it is plain, was to reach the sea and get a share in the trade of the world ; and it is possible that the extension of the power of the Bactrian Greeks over Chinese Tartary as far as the Seres and Phaunians had a similar object, viz., to protect the trade-route with China along the Tarym river. For the Seres are the Chinese, and the Phauni, according to Pliny, 7 lay west of the Attacori (the mythical people at the sources of the Hoang-ho) and east of the Tochari, whose earlier settle ments were east of Khoten. They occupied, therefore, the very region which, according to Chinese sources, was then held by a nomadic pastoral people, the Tibetan No-kiang. History shows that Chinese Tartary is easily conquered from the Oxus and Jaxartes, but very hard to hold, and there is thus no reason to doubt the truth of the Bactrian advance in this direction. Strabo, unluckily, does not tell us whether the campaign was made by Demetrius ; it must have fallen before 177, when the great conquests of the Hiung-nu began, but after 201, when the founder of the Han dynasty regained the country as far as the Great Wall, and put China in a position to take part in the trade of inner Asia. This is precisely the period of the greatest power of the Greeks in Bactria. Demetrius, having suc ceeded his father, was displaced in Bactria by the able usurper Eucratides, some time between 181 and 171. 8 A Em thousand cities obeyed Eucratides, and both he and his ** 4 rival Demetrius sought to extend the Greek settlements, the one founding Eucratidia in Bactria, the other Deme- trias in Arachosia. Now Justin tells us that the Bactrians were so exhausted by wars with the Sogdians, Arachosians, Drangians, Arians, and Indians that they at length fell an easy prey to the weaker Parthians ; but Eucratides he describes as a valiant prince, who once with 300 men held out during five months, though besieged by 60,000 men of Demetrius, king of India, and then, receiving succours, subdued India. 5 For these and other Parthian coins P. Gardner s work is the authority. One of them is dated 125 Sel. = 187 B.C. 6 Choarene contains the only Greek city in the older conquests of the Parthians, and the coin with Greek date and title is of the year of Antiochus s death. 7 y. If., vi. 55, where read &quot; Phuni et Thocari. ;&amp;gt; 8 Sallet s numismatic arguments, which place Eucratides about 200 B.C., are not conclusive, and do violence to the other testimonies.