Parthian Empire: A Visual History

The Parthian (Arsacid) Empire was founded around 247 BC when Arsaces, chief of the nomadic Parni, seized Parthia from the Seleucids. Mithridates I took Media and Babylonia by 141 BC, and the Parthians ruled from the Euphrates to Afghanistan, controlling the Silk Road between Rome and China. Their horse archers destroyed Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BC and defeated Mark Antony. Rome sacked Ctesiphon three times in the second century AD; weakened by civil wars, the last Arsacid was overthrown by the Persian Ardashir in 224.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Parthian Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Parthian territory

Timeline of the Parthian Empire

1. 247 BC
   Arsaces seizes Parthia
2. 141 BC
   Mithridates I takes Babylonia
3. 53 BC
   CarrhaeCrassus killed.
4. 36 BC
   Antony's invasion fails
5. 20 BC
   Standards returned to Augustus
6. 116
   Trajan takes Ctesiphon
7. 165
   Ctesiphon sacked againThe Antonine plague follows.
8. 224
   HormozdganArdashir ends the dynasty.

From Parni to kings of kings

The Parni were a Scythian-type tribe from the steppes east of the Caspian who took over Seleucid Parthia while the Seleucids fought Egypt. Mithridates I (171-138 BC) exploited Seleucid weakness to seize Media, Persia and Mesopotamia and adopted the old title king of kings. Mithridates II defeated the Scythians and Armenians and received the first Chinese embassy from Zhang Qian's successors.

Rome's rival

In 53 BC Crassus led seven legions across the Euphrates; at Carrhae the general Surena's horse archers, resupplied by camel, and heavy cataphracts annihilated them, killing 20,000 and taking the eagles. Antony's invasion in 36 BC lost a third of his army. Augustus negotiated the return of the standards in 20 BC. For two centuries the Euphrates was the border and Armenia the contested prize; Trajan took Ctesiphon in 116, and Roman armies sacked it again in 165 and 198.

A loose empire and its fall

Parthia was a federation of semi-independent kingdoms and noble houses like the Suren and Karen, with Greek cities enjoying autonomy. Frequent succession wars and Roman invasions wore it down. In 224 Ardashir, ruler of Persis, defeated and killed Artabanus IV at Hormozdgan and founded the Sasanian dynasty, which claimed to restore true Persian rule.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Seleucid Empire (312 BC to 63 BC)
• Sasanian Empire (224 to 651)
• Roman Empire (27 BC to 476)
• Kingdom of Armenia (ancient) (331 BC to 428)
• Kushan Empire (30 to 375)
• Indo-Scythian Kingdom (150 BC to 400)
• Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (256 BC to 125 BC)
• Western Han dynasty (202 BC to 9)
• Eastern Han dynasty (25 to 220)

Wars of the same era and region

• Jewish-Roman wars (66 to 136)

8 surprising things about the Parthian Empire

1. The 'Parthian shot', firing backwards while retreating at the gallop, gave English the phrase 'parting shot'.
2. Crassus's head was allegedly used as a prop in a performance of Euripides' Bacchae at the Parthian court.
3. The Parthians used Greek on their coins for centuries and called themselves 'philhellene'.
4. Parthian rulers were all called Arsaces on their coins, which makes them hard to tell apart.
5. The Parthians blocked Roman-Chinese contact and are why Rome knew China only as the land of silk.
6. The Roman poet Horace called Parthia the only power Rome had reason to fear.
7. The Suren family, one of Parthia's seven great houses, may be ancestral to the family that later ruled the eastern Iranian region of Sakastan.
8. The Parthian capital Ctesiphon was on the Tigris opposite the Greek city of Seleucia; together they were one of the largest urban areas in the world.

Sources

• Parthia Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Parthian Empire Wikipedia
• Parthia (Empire) World History Encyclopedia
• Josef Wiesehofer, Ancient Persia (1996) I. B. Tauris

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