The Parthian Empire

by

Hamish Cameron

• LAST MODIFIED: 24 July 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0417

Introduction

The history of the Parthian Empire traditionally begins in 247 BCE, when the founder of the Arsacid dynasty, Arsaces I, seized control of the Seleucid satrapy of Parthia (Parthyaia and Parthyene in Greek and Parθava in Old Persian) and ends with the defeat of Ardavan (or Artabanus) IV by the rebellious Sasanid Persian king Ardashir in 224 CE. The ruling dynasty of the state was the Arsacids, named for their founder Arsaces, thus leading to the alternate name of the state as the Arsacid Empire. “Arsacid” (or “Arsakid”) is increasingly used by specialists to refer to the period and state structure, but the geographic and ethnic term “Parthian” is still commonly used to refer to all aspects of this empire. The all-inclusive “Parthian” with its ethnic connotations can lead to conceptual confusion, particularly in the attribution of cultural products to the groups that produced them. The most important difficulty in studying the Parthians is the nature of our sources. The Parthians did not leave an extensive literature of their own; most of our written sources are Greek and Roman authors writing within the political and ideological structures of rival empires: external at best and hostile at worst. In particular, the tendency for Roman authors to minimize Parthian power compared to their own has cast a long shadow. Similarly, their successors, the Sasanid Persians, saw them as interlopers between their own empire and the earlier Achaemenids, referring to them as “petty kings.” These source biases influence the treatment of the Parthians in modern scholarship, with strands of Orientalism and Eurocentrism persisting even in recent works. Material culture is essential for understanding the Parthian Empire, especially numismatic evidence. The chronology of Arsacid kings relies in large part on the work of numismatists, in part owing to the ambiguity of royal names in our external written sources. The result is that the dates and even existence of some kings remain unsettled. In the absence of internal written evidence, much of our knowledge of Parthian culture must also derive from material culture. This is complicated by local diversity across the empire and by debates over the degree to which various aspects of Parthian culture should be attributed to Hellenizing influences from the Seleucids, the nomadic origins of Arsaces and the Parni in Central Asia, or local Iranian customs.

Historical Overview

The history of the Parthian Empire can be divided into four phases: the period of their rebellion from the Seleucid Empire (247–171 BCE, Arsaces I to Phraates I); a period of expansion ending in a short “Dark Age” (171–70 BCE, Mithridates I to Sinatruces); a period of strength in which they could be considered a superpower alongside the Roman Empire (70 BCE–110 CE, Phraates III to Pacorus II); and a final period of alternating stability and instability during which they suffered periodic Roman incursions (110–224 CE, Vologases III to Artabanus IV). The first two phases are entwined with the history of the Seleucid Empire, and the last two phases framed by the frontier conflict with Rome. Because of the external nature of the sources and the background of many of the scholars working in the field, a significant amount of work on the Parthians has approached them as part of either the Hellenistic world (see Rise of Parthia in a Seleucid Context) or as rivals to the Roman Empire (see Western Frontier and Rome) rather than considering the empire as a whole. Moreover, older works like Debevoise 1938 that did take this broader approach too often accepted the ideological attitudes of the Roman sources, especially in portraying the internal structures of the Parthian Empire as characterized by central weakness (a position critiqued by Wolski 1993). However, in recent decades an increasing number of scholars, following in the footsteps of Wolski, are now approaching the Parthians as their primary field of expertise. Although works like Debevoise 1938, Schippmann 1980, Bivar 1983, and Wolski 1993 should no longer be relied on without support from more recent studies, they have historiographical value, especially for their inclusion of older work in French, German, and Russian. Of particular historiographical note is the beginning of the shift away from Eurocentric conceptions of the Parthians by Schippmann 1980 and Wolski 1993. More recent scholarship has attempted to use recent archaeological evidence to view the Parthians on their own terms as much as possible (see, for example, Olbrycht 2021, cited under Rise of Parthia in a Seleucid Context).

• Bivar, A. D. H. 1983. The political history of Iran under the Arsacids. In The Cambridge history of Iran. Vol. 3.1, The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 21–99. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

  A detailed shorter summary of Parthian political history, also now superseded in many details, but still a useful overview.

• Debevoise, N. C. 1938. A political history of Parthia. New York: Greenwood Press.

  The first detailed study of Parthian history. While now outdated in many parts, most notably because of the subsequent discovery of much archaeological evidence, it remains one of the most detailed and complete summaries of Parthian political history and was considered important enough to be translated into Russian (by V. P. Nikonorov) as recently as 2008. Reprinted in 1968.

• Ellerbrock, Uwe. 2021. The Parthians: The forgotten empire. London: Routledge.

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003038559

  An English version and update of Ellerbrock and Winkelmann’s Die Parther: Die vergessene Großmacht (2012, revised in 2015). It provides a useful general overview to a wide range of topics and many high-quality images of Parthian art but does not include detailed bibliography.

• Fabian, Lara. 2019. The Arsakid Empire. In Handbook of ancient Afro-Eurasian economies. Vol. 1, Contexts. Edited by Sitta von Reden, 205–239. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

  A recent and succinct overview of the Parthian Empire including historiographical problems, historical narrative, and structural overviews of royal power, military organization, and regional administration. Fabian’s chapter engages with the scholarly literature to a greater degree that Gregoratti 2017, providing clear and useful notes on areas of debate.

• Gregoratti, Leonardo. 2017. The Arsacid Empire. In King of the Seven Climes: A history of the ancient Iranian world (3000 BCE–651 CE). Edited by Touraj Daryaee, 125–153. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

  Like Fabian 2019, Gregoratti addresses sources, narrative, and imperial structure of the Parthian Empire, with greater attention to primary sources, especially literary sources within his text and several useful pages of high-quality images at the end.

• Potts, Daniel T., ed. 2017. The Oxford handbook of ancient Iran. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

  This handbook includes a section of eight chapters on “Seleucid, Post-Achaemenid and Arsacid Archaeology and History” that includes useful overviews of the Arsacids by Hauser, Parthian rock reliefs by Kawami, numismatics by Rezakhani, and chapters on language by Haruta and Rougemont.

• Schippmann, K. 1980. Grundzüge der parthischen Geschichte. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

  Although this slim volume has been superseded on many points, it remains a succinct and useful overview of Parthian history and culture, including brief chapters on state structure, economy, the army, religion and art. See also Wolski’s 1982 review in Gnomon.

• Wolski, Józef. 1993. L’Émpire des Arsacides. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.

  DOI: 10.1163/9789004670563

  Józef Wolski was the twentieth century’s preeminent scholar of the Parthians. This was his first book, published late in his career, after the end of the communist period in Poland.

• Yarshater, Ehsan, et al., eds. 1996–. Encyclopaedia Iranica. New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation.

  A peer-reviewed, scholarly print and digital encyclopedia devoted to all aspects of Iranian studies, including the Parthian era. Articles from the Encyclopaedia are widely cited in scholarly articles on the Parthians. The first volume of the print edition was published in 1982 and now extends to fifteen volumes, covering A–J. The online edition has been published since 1996.