Page:Political History of Parthia.pdf/27



HE peculiarity of the source material for a history of Parthia lies not in its scarcity but in the wide extent to which it is scattered through documents of much diversified character. Unfortunately none of the numerous histories of the country written in antiquity has survived, and we must therefore piece together the story from casual notices and from ancient authors who in their narrative occasionally touched upon some phase of Parthian history. By far the largest body of source material is in the classical writers, particularly those who dealt with military affairs and those who were themselves born in the Orient. To these may be added inscriptions from Greece, Italy, and the Near East as well as a certain number of parchments. Those authors who wrote in Armenian, Syriac, and Arabic, though all later than the Parthian period, add some information not otherwise available. But the fact that the evidence is to an overwhelming extent given by natives of or sympathizers with countries hostile to Parthia makes it impossible to present the picture wholly from the Parthian viewpoint.

Evidence from the Orient is scanty but of the utmost importance. Besides the late writers mentioned above, most of whom suffered from lack of good