Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/622

 594 PERSIA [PARTHIAN 138-128. tains. The Khang-kiu have risen in number as the Yue-chi fall, and have now 120,000 bowmen, or a population of 600,000 souls. Like the Yue-chi, they are divided into principalities, which are five in number, and the king is the prince of Su-hiai, with his winter residence iu a place of that name east of Ferghana, and his summer court much farther west at Lo-yuei-ni. The east of the Khang-kiu country was often subject to the Hiung-nu, and the pressure of this Turkish tribe seems to have been the cause which pushed the Khang-kiu and Yen-tsai farther west. The latter have now at least 100,000 bowmen, and extend westwards to the limits of Great Tsin or the Roman empire. This compels us to conclude that the Yen-tsai are the Aorsi, the western part of whom ranged between the lower Don and the west coast of the Caspian, while the older upper Aorsi were round the north coast, and so on to the neighbourhood of the lower Jaxartes (Strabo, xi. p. 506 ; Ptol., vi. 14, 10). When Pharnaces ruled on the Bosphorus (63-47 B.C.) both parts of the Aorsi intervened in the affairs of the neighbouring kingdom with large armies, and as Pharnaces was a client of Rome the Chinese statement is intelligible. Later Chinese accounts relating to the first Christian century give A-lan-na as the later name of the Yen-tsai, which agrees with the fact that the Aorsi appear last in history in 49 A.D. (Tac., Ann., xii. 15 sq.), and that Lucan, ten or fifteen years later, is the first to name the Alans, who succeed to their geographical place. When we understand the Chinese data we can speak with more definiteness about the four nations to whom Strabo ascribes the fall of Greek Bactria, and which Ptolemy also seems to name from a source relating to the time when the invasion began. From these data, compared with our Chinese sources, we can be sure that the Tochari are the great Yue-chi, the former being probably the name of the nation and the latter that of the leading horde. The Asii of Strabo, Asiani of Trogus, Jatii of Ptolemy, will then be all attempts to render the difficult name of ,the horde which the Chinese call Yue-chi. But, while the classical writers place the Sacaraucse in the west to balance the Tochari in the east, the Chinese know no second great nation between the latter and the Parthians in Margiana. We must therefore suppose that the Sacaraucaj are the Scythians who occupied part of the Greek lands, and were in turn conquered by Parthia according to Strabo (xi. 515) ; that this part was Margiana is known from a drachma of Phraates II. (Gardner, Parthian Coinage, p. 33) ; the conquest must have taken place a good while before 128, when Chang-kien visited Sogdiana, since by that time the Parthians had again displaced them. But he must have known and mentioned the Sacaraucre in some form, and they can hardly be other than the most powerful nation known to him in Trans- oxiana, the Khang-kiu. These, like the Sacaraucfe, came from beyond the Jaxartes ; they were the northern neighbours of Parthia just at the time when the Sacarauca? are so described. The only other tribe that can be thought of, the Yen-tsai, are known to the Greeks and Romans by a different name, as the Aorsi ; and Trogus (ProL, xlii.) mentions the fall of the Sacaraucte as one of the latest events in Scythian history, which, as he wrote soon after 2 B. c., agrees with the fact that the last mention of the Khang-kiu in Chinese history is in 11 B.C. ; while the Aorsi are mentioned much later. Khang-kiu seems to be properly the name of a country identical with the Kangha of the Khorda-Avesta and the Gangdiz of Firdausi. Finally, the Pasicaj or Pasiani are the same as the Apasiacse of the earlier Parthian history ; the Sacaraucte will have conquered them and swept them with them as the Mongols did with many Tatar tribes. The conquest of Bactria probably fol lowed soon after the last hopes of the Eastern Greeks in Demetrius II. came to nothing. It is very remarkable that Chang-kien notices no difference between the Greeks who had been rulers and the Iranians who were their subjects. This implies not merely some lapse of time but a marked decrease in the number of the Greeks, and probably also that here, as in other Eastern parts, they had become more and more completely Orientalized. Phraates II., 1 who succeeded his father in 138, and continued his work, wresting Margiana from the Scythians of Bactria in an expedition commemorated on extant coins, had also to meet the last and most formidable attempt to restore the sovereignty of the Seleucids. Antiochus VII., one of the ablest kings of his race, had put down the civil wars in Syria, even taking Jerusalem and compelling the Jews to acknowledge his might by paying him military service, and in 130 he marched eastward at the head of a force of 80,000 combatants, swollen by camp-followers to a total of 300,000. Many of the small princes, on whom the hand of Parthia lay heavy, joined him as they had joined his brother ; the enemy Avas smitten on the Great Zab, and in two other battles ; Babylon and then Ecbatana Phraates II. In coins Arsaces Theopator Euergetes Epiphanes Philhellen. opened their gates to the conqueror; and the subject-nations rose against the Parthians, who, when Antiochus took up his winter quarters in Media, were again confined to their ancient limits. &quot;When the snows began to melt, an embassy from Phraates appeared to ask for peace ; but the terms demanded by Antiochus the liberation of Demetrius, the surrender of all conquests, and the payment of tribute for the old Parthian country were such as could not be accepted without another appeal to the fortunes of war. Demetrius, indeed, was released and sent to Syria, but only to stir up a hostile party in his brother s rear. During the winter the Syrian host had been dispersed over a wide range of cantonments ; the disorderly insolence of the soldiers, for which the general Athenseus was held to be mainly responsible, and of the levies raised in the towns had disgusted the natives ; the Medes made secret terms with Parthia, and all the cantonments were attacked by concert on a single day. Hastening to relieve the nearest corps, Antiochus was met by the Parthian with a superior force of 120,000 men; he refused the advice of his officers to fall back to the neighbouring mountains, and accepted battle on a field too narrow for the evolution of his troops. The Syrian soldiers, enervated by luxury, were readier to imitate the flight of Athenseus than the valour of his master ; the whole host Avas involved in the rout and annihilated. Antiochus himself escaped Avounded from the fray and cast himself from a rock that he might not be taken alive. This catastrophe (February 129 2 ) freed the Parthians for ever from danger from Syria. Phraates paid funeral honours to the fallen king, and afterwards sent his body to Syria in a silver coffin. He entertained his captive family royally, married one of the tAvo daughters, and sent the eldest son Seleucus to Syria to claim the sovereignty, and so serve future plans of his OAVH ; for an attempt to folloAv and recapture Demetrius, made immediately after the battle, had proved too late. But dangers in the east soon turned the Partisan s attention away from enterprises in the west. In his distress he had bribed the Scythians 3 to send him help ; as they arrived too late he refused to pay them, and they in turn began to ravage the Parthian country. Phraates marched against them, leaving his charge at home to his favourite, the Hyrcanian Euhemerus, Avho chastised the countries that had sided with Antiochus, made war with Mesene, and treated Babylon and Seleucia Avith the utmost cruelty. But the Scythian Avar proved a disastrous one ; the enemy overran the whole empire, and for the first time for five hundred years Scythian plunderers again appeared in Mesopotamia 4 ; in a decisive battle Phraates was deserted by the old soldiers of Antiochus, Avhom he had forced into his service and then treated Avith insolent cruelty ; the Parthian host sustained a ruinous defeat, and the king himself Avas slain (spring 128, or someAvhat later). 5 Artabanus I. 6 (third son of Phriapatius), who now became Arta- king, was an elderly man. The Scythians, according to 1)anu the too favourable account by our chief authority, Avere con tent with their victory, and moved homewards, ravaging the country. But Ave knoAv from John of Antioch (66, 2) that the successor of Phraates paid them tribute ; and the southern part of Drangiana must UOAV have been per- 2 The date is fixed by Livy, who, according to Orosius, v. 10, and Obseq., De Prodig., 28, places the expedition in the consular year 130. With this it agrees that Antiochus came to the throne in 138 and reigned nine years. Too much weight is often attached to Porphyry s dates by Olympiads, which are merely calculated from the years of reigns. 3 Justin, xlii. 2, 1-2, plainly distinguishes these Scythians from the Tochari, so the Sacaraucae must be meant. 4 Jo. Ant., in Miiller, iv. 561. 5 The remains of Antiochus reached Syria in the reign of Alexander II., who came to the throne in 128 (Justin, xxxix. 1, 6). 6 Arsaces Theopator Nicator of the coins.