Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/628

 PERSIA [PARTHIAN 27 B.C. 21 A.D. Wars and C1 Eucratides with his bust on one side anil the mounted Dioscuri on the other will still have had course. South-west of Kipin lay the hot plain of U-ghe-shan-li (Kandahar and Sistan), where the southern road ended (necessarily at a considerable commercial town, therefore at Alexandria in Arachosia). Hence a road leads to An-si (in its original sense, supra, p. 593), first northward (to Herat) and then east (to Merv). The inhabitants of U-ghe-shan-li, which was too remote to be often visited from China, hated blood shed and had weapons adorned with gold and silver. Their coins are described in the same terms as those of Kipin ; and probably the latter had course, and there was no native mint. But there was an independent kingdom ; and, as it is certain that Drangiana and Arachosia were not at this time (middle of 1st century B. c. ) subject to the Greeks no coins of the successors of Apollodotus having been found there we conclude that this kingdom was that of the Saca?, who overran Iran in 128. Later Chinese writers say that the country was subject to An-si (Parthia), and Isidore of Charax (1 B.C.) makes Arachosia a Parthian satrapy. It was prob ably under Orodes that Arachosia was conquered and the Sactu confined to Sacastane. The latest coins of Hermreus bear also the name of a king, Kujula- Kaso, first in the Arianian and finally also in the Greek legend (Kofoi o-Ka5&amp;lt;/&amp;gt;iw). Now the Chinese tell us (Mem. de I Ac., xxv. 27, 29) that about a century after the Tochari (Yue-chi) conquered Bactria i.e., 39-27 Kieu-tsieu-khio, prince of Kuei-shuang, conquered the other four principalities of the Tochari and named his whole kingdom Kuei-shuang (Kashan). He then warred against the Parthians and took the great land of Kao-fu (Cabul), which had been subject to India, Kipin, and Parthia, as well as the neigh bouring lands of Po-ta (north of U-ghe-shan -li ; to be identified with the Pactyes or Patans originally settled in Glior) and Kipin. The last fact shows that Kieu-tsieu-khio is none other than Kofoi o-Ka0foi, who indeed is called on the coins Kashana- Yavugo, &quot;king of Kashan,&quot; and &quot;steadfast in the fai.h,&quot; i.e., in Buddhism, which early found entrance among the Tochari. &quot;Vith this account of the conquest of Cabul it agrees that Isidore names Arachosia but not Cabul as Parthian. Now the war of the king of Kashan with the Parthians is none other than that undertaken by the Scythians to restore Phraates to the throne. Trogus had an excursus in this connexion on the Asianic kings of the Tochari and the fall of the Sacaraucne (doubtless before the increased might of the realm of the Tochari). These intestine conflicts of the Scythians seem to have been at their height during the exile of Phraates, and their issue decided his fortunes. The Romans followed these movements with attention because they threatened Tiridates, and Horace has repeated references to them of a kind that is more than poetic fancy (Carm., i. 26, 3 sq., and especially iii. 29, 20 sq., &quot; Tanais discors,&quot; wars of Tochari and Sacaraucrc ; &quot;plans of the Seres,&quot; the Chinese stood in close relation to these lands and had powerfully intervened in the affairs of the SacarauctB in 44). Before the great host of the Scythians Tiridates retired without a contest. On 1st March 2G * the news of this had not reached Rome; but in June, as the coins prove, 2 Phraates again held the throne. Tiridates fled to Augustus, who refused to give him up, but agreed not to support him, and restored to Phraates a son whom Tiridates had carried off and placed in his hands as a hostage. The Parthian in return promised to give up the captives and ensigns taken from Crassus and Antony, and fulfilled his promise in 20, when Augustus was in Syria. He would hardly have done so perhaps had not his throne been again insecure ; there is a break in the Parthian coinage after October 23, and it is not resumed for many years a sure sign of inner troubles. There is just one coin known of Phraates s later years (October 10 B.C.; Gardner, p. 62), which probably marks his return from a second exile; for we know from Josephus (Ant., xvi. 8, 4) that between 12 and 9 B.C. Mithradates IV. was on the throne of the Arsacids, and that Herod of Judaea was accused of plotting with him against Piome. 3 The revolt of Media Atropatene, which asked a king from Rome some time between 20 B.C. and 2 A.D., and received Ario- 1 Hor., Car., iii. 8, 19-20, belongs to this year, as appears from Phraates s coinage of D;usius, 286 Sel. The reduction of the Can- tabrians refers to Augustus s personal presence in Spain in the end of 27 (Dio, liii. 22), not to their second reduction in 25, which could hardly be known in Rome on 1st March. The retreat of the Scythians refers to the Sarmatian war (Floras, iv. 12, 20). 2 Prokesch-Osten, Monnaits des Rois Purthcs, p. 37. 3 Vaillant having missed this passage, no later writer cites it. barzanes II., son of Artavasdes, was probably about this time (J/o/i. ARC., vi. 9). In 10 or 9 B.C. Phraates took the precaution of sending his family to Rome so that the rebels might have no Arsacid pretender to put forward, keeping only and designating as heir his youngest son by his favourite wife Thea Musa Urania, an Italian slave-girl presented to him by Augustus. This was mainly a scheme of Urania s, and she and her son crowned it by murdering the old tyrant. Phraates V., or as he is usually called Phraataces (diminutive), was thus the third Arsacid, in successive generations, to reach the throne by parricide. 4 Phraates V., whose first coin is of May 2 B.C., tried an Phraa energetic policy, expelling Artavasdes III. and the Roman v - troops that supported him from Armenia, and seating on the throne Tigranes IV., who had been a fugitive under Parthian protection. Ariobarzanes of Atropatene was probably expelled at the same time ; a little later we find him in exile at Rome, and (in spite of Strabo, xi. p. 523, who perhaps had not the latest news) the old line of Atropates seems now to have been superseded by a line of Parthian princes. As Augustus did not wish to extend the empire, and Phraates was not very secure on his throne, neither party cared to fight, and an agreement was patched up after some angry words, Phraates resigning all claim on Armenia and leaving his brothers as hostages in Rome (1 A.D.). Phraates now married his mother, who appears with him on coins from April 2 A.D., a match probably meant to conciliate the clergy, as he knew that the nobles hated him. In fact he Avas soon driven by a rebellion (after October 4 A.D.) to flee to Roman soil, where he died, it seems, not long afterwards. The Parthians called Orodes II. from exile to the throne. Civil Of him we have a coin of autumn G A.D. ; but his wild wars&amp;lt; and cruel temper soon made him hated, and he was murdered while out hunting. Anarchy and bloodshed now gaining the upper hand, the Parthians sent to Rome (before 9 A.D.), and received thence as king Vonones, the eldest of the sons of Phraates IV., a well-meaning prince, whose foreign education put him quite out of sympathy with his country. He preferred a litter to a horse, cared nothing for hunting and carousals, liked to be with Greeks, and relaxed the stringent etiquette that barred approach to the sovereign, and at the same time he tried to check peculation. A strong reaction of national feeling took place, and the main line of the Arsacids being now exhausted by death or exile, Artabanus, an Arsacid on the mother s side, who had grown up among the Daha3 and had after wards been made king of Media (Atropatene), was set up as pretendant in 10 or 11 A.D. Artabanus was defeated at first, 5 but ultimately gained a great and bloody victory and seated himself in Ctesiphon. Vonones fled to Armenia and was chosen as king of that country (1C A.D.), but Tiberius, who was anxious to avoid war, and did not wish to give Artabanus III. any pretext to invade Armenia, Arta- persuaded Vonones to retire to Syria. By and by he was lliuius interned in Cilicia, and in 19 A.D. lost his life in an attempt to escape. The clearest proof of the miserable results of continual civil war in Parthia at this time is that a Jewish robber state maintained itself for fifteen years in the marshes of Nearda and the Babylonian Nisibis a little after 21 A.D., 4 Of the Beni Jellab, who reigned in Tugurt till after the middle of the present century, every sultan is said to have murdered his father, and Mahmud Shah of Guzerat (1538-54) made all his wives procure abortion as the only possible protection for a king against attempts of sons on his life. 5 A drachma of King Vonones when he had conquered Artabanus is one of the earliest examples of the use of the personal name of the king instead of the throne name. The practice became common, and marks an era of disputed successions, when it was necessary to indi cate to which pretendaut a coin belonged.