Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/633

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 605 Yolagases III. died in 191, having reigned forty-two years without civil war, and was succeeded by Yolagases IV. During the civil troubles of Rome which preceded the establishment of the military empire this prince main tained friendly relations with Pescennius Niger ;. and his vassal Barsenius of Atra was permitted to supply a force of bowmen, who took part in the fighting against Septimiua Severus at Nicusa (194). When Niger s cause declined, however, Volagases allowed his clients of Adiabene to join with Orrhoene, now in revolt against the Roman power. The strongholds of Mesopotamia were taken, and their garrisons put to the sword ; Nisibis itself was besieged. In truth, the Parthian could no longer pretend to control the policy of the princes on his frontier, who felt them selves their own masters since they had borne the chief brunt of the last two Roman wars. But in summer 195 .r Severus appeared in Mesopotamia, received the submission i|S of of Abgar VIII. of Orrhoene, and from Nisibis (which, with true insight into its strategic importance, he raised to a colony and great military station) directed two successful campaigns against Adiabene 1 (196) and the Arabs of the Singara district, incorporating the latter in the province of Mesopotamia. 2 The Parthians made no movement till Severus was busy with Albinus, when they ravaged Meso potamia and besieged Laetus in Nisibis; but in 198 Severus was again on the scene of war, and they fell back without fighting, leaving the emperor free to prepare for next year a campaign on a great scale. In 199 a fleet on the Euphrates co-operated with the Roman army, and Severus, taking up an unaccomplished plan of Trajan, dredged out the old Naarmalca canal, through which his ships sailed into the Tigris, and took the Parthians wholly by surprise. Seleucia and Coche 3 were deserted by their inhabitants ; Ctesiphon was taken by the end of the year with terrible slaughter, 100,000 inhabitants being led cap tive and the place given up to pillage, for the great king had fled powerless at the approach of the foe. Severus, whose force was reduced by famine and dysenteries, did not attempt pursuit, but drew off up the Tigris. The army was again in its quarters by 1st April 200 (C.I.L., vi. 225 a), and for some time thereafter Severus was occupied in Armenia. But in 201 he undertook a carefully organ ized expedition against Atra, from whose walls the Romans had been repulsed with great loss when Severus, returning from the Tigris in the previous year, had attempted to carry it by a coup de main. This city, which in Trajan s time was neither great nor rich, was now a wealthy place, and the sun-temple contained vast treasures. The classical authors call Atra Arabian, but the king s name is Syriac, Barsenius, i.e., Bar Sin, son of the moon, and we may suppose that it was really an Aramaean principality, 4 which, like Palmyra, had its strength from the surrounding Arab tribes that it could call into the field. Severus lay before Atra for twenty days, but the enemy s cavalry cut off his foraging parties, the admirable archers galled the Roman troops, a great part of the siege train was burned with naphtha ; and, when, in addition, two assaults had been repulsed with tremendous loss on two successive days, the emperor was compelled to raise the siege, a severe blow to Roman prestige in the East, and one that greatly raised the name of Atra and its prince, but did not help the decay ing power of Parthia in the least. xxxii. (1768), p. 358 ; Pian-i-tiau, in Mem. Ac. Inscr., viii. (1827) p. 124 sq. ; and Journ. As., ser. 3, viii. 278, 280 sq. 1 In Dio, Ixxv. 3, read ryv Ap/SyXiTiv for TT]V apx^v. - Not only Herodian, iii. 9, but Capitol., Macrinus, 12, implies that these Arabs were Yemenites ; the great migration of southern Arabs, which led to the foundation of the kingdom of Hira, had therefore already taken place. 3 Dio, Ex,,. , Ixxv. 9, has Babylon, but it was a mere heap of ruins in the beginning of the 2d century A.D. 4 Cp. Xuldeke, Tabari, p. 34. In 209 Yolagases IY. was succeeded by his son Volagases 191-219. V., under whom in 212 the fatal troubles in Persis began, while in 213 his brother Artabanus rose as rival claim ant of the kingship ; 5 and the civil war lasted for many years. A fresh danger arose when Tiridates, a brother of Yolagases IY., who had long been a refugee with the Romans and had accompanied Severus s campaign of 199, escaped, in company with a Cilician adventurer, the Cynic Antiochus, to the court of his nephew Volagases ; for the emperor Antoninus (Caracalla) demanded their surrender, and obtained it only by a declaration of war (215). About the same time Artabanus gained the upper hand, and in Arta- 216 he held Ctesiphon and its district ; but Volagases still banns, held out in the Greek cities of Babylonia, as his tetra- drachms prove (till 222). Artabanus s strength lay in the north ; the Arab histories of the Sasanians make him king of the Median region, and agreeably with this he coins only drachmae. 6 Presently Artabanus had a war with Rome on his hands ; the pretext was that he had refused his daughter to Antoninus, but the emperor was mindful of his father s dying advice to enrich the soldiers and despise all other classes, and saw a prospect of rich booty. In 216 the Romans penetrated to Arbela by way of Carduene and Calachene, 7 and violated the graves of the kings of Adiabene, which they falsely took for those of the Arsacids. Thus far the Parthians, who had been taken by surprise in full peace, had offered little or no resistance, but Antoninus was murdered (8th April 217) while he was preparing for a new foray, and his successor Macrinus at once found that Artabanus was now armed, and was not the man to let the insult to his territory pass with im punity. An overwhelming Parthian force fell on Mesopo tamia and refused to be appeased by the restoration of the captives of the previous year ; Macrinus was beaten in two engagements 8 and compelled to retire to Syria, abandoning the Mesopotamian plain; and in the winter of 217/218 he was glad to purchase peace for an indemnity of 50,000,000 denarii (1,774,298). In or about 222 Artabanus must also have displaced his brother in Babylonia, for he was a patron of Rab Abba, who became head of the Jewish school of Sura in 219. 9 Persis, which dealt the last blow to the Arsacids, had Persis. through the whole Parthian period held an isolated position, and is so seldom mentioned that our knowledge of its history and native princes is almost wholly due to recently- found coins. 10 These embrace a triple series of silver coins and a class of copper pieces. The oldest of the latter class bears the name of Camnascires, and his is the only name in the class known to us from other sources, for Hyrodes and Phraates (each of which names was borne by two kings of the series) are not Arsacid great kings, as their title is only &quot;king,&quot; not &quot;king of kings&quot; (against Mordtmann). Nor do they seem to have ruled in the same quarter with the kings who struck silver ; the latter were native kings of Persis, the former rather Elymreans, who in the times after Camnascires were forced back in a south-east direction (as appears from the places in which the coins are found), and ruled parts of Persis side by side with the 5 According to Mani, in the book ShalurJxm, the 4th year of Ardhabau = 216/21 7 ; see Al-Beruni, tr. by Sachau, pp. 121, 190. This proves that in 216 Artabanus was the recognized sovereign in the district of Ctesiphon to which Mardinu (on Habl Ibrahim) belongs ; cf. Noldeke, Tabari, p. 16. 6 See above, p. 601. 7 Dio says they invaded Media, but Antoninus had not such a hold of Armenia as to open to him the route of the triumvir Antony, and a march from Gazaca to Arbela over Mount Zagrus is incredible. But, if Media at this time extended so far west as to include Arrapachitis and Calachene (the Marcomedians of Trajan s wars), the campaign is intelligible, and Spartian s mention of the Cadusians and Babylonians can be explained as a misreading of KapSorcu as /ecu A.pfirjuv in a Greek source. 8 The lacuna in Dio, Ixxviii. 26, is to be supplied by a passage of Xiphilinus. not given in recent editions. a Jost, Gesch. d. Jud., ii. 139. 10 See Mordtmann in Z. f. Num., iv. 152 sq., vii. 40 sq.