Toward the end of his reign, Darius became involved in a campaign against Greece. The conflict began when the Ionians of Asia Minor rose in rebellion and with support from Athens and Eretria seized Sardis, the former capital of Lydia. The rebellion was suppressed in 493 BCE, but Darius decided to punish the Greek states for their interference in the internal affairs of his empire. In 492 BCE a Persian army seized Thrace and Macedonia, but the mission was aborted a short time later as a result of bad weather and clashes with local tribes. In 490 BCE, the Persians crossed the Aegean Sea and captured Cyclades and Eretria on the island of Euboea. After they had landed on the Greek mainland, however, they suffered a defeat at the hands of the Athenians in the Battle of Marathon. Though they were forced to retreat to their ships, the Persians proceeded with their attack on Athens but were forced to withdraw when they realized that the city and its residents had organized their defenses. Darius planned to complete the conquest of Greece, but before embarking on this campaign he died in 486 BCE.
Darius’s son and successor, Xerxes, also organized a campaign against Greece, which was immortalized in flowery language by Herodotus. Encouraged by the prowar Athenian exiles at his court, Xerxes invaded mainland Greece in 480 BCE. After crossing the Hellespont (the Dardanelles), the Persian army seized Thessaly, Macedonia, and northern Greece. Athens was divided between those who advocated negotiations with the Persian king and those who favored a confrontation. The prowar party triumphed and formed a league under the leadership of Sparta, which tried to halt the Persian advance at a mountain pass called Thermopylae. The Persians defeated the small Spartan force, which had fought them courageously, and then advanced on Athens and seized it with little resistance. The confrontation between the Persian army and a small band of Athenian fighters, however, resulted in the burning and destruction of temples and homes on the Acropolis by the Persians. The next confrontation between the Persians and the Greeks took place at Salamis, where the Greek fleet destroyed the Persian naval forces.
Xerxes did not remain in Greece. He returned to Asia and left an army under the command of one of his generals, Mardonius, in Greece. In 479 BCE, a year after Xerxes had departed mainland Greece, the Persians were back on the offensive, attacking Attica, a region that included Athens. The Greeks finally managed to organize an army, which fought the Persians on the Plain of Plataea. Mardonius made the fatal mistake of participating in the fighting. The Persian commander was killed on the battlefield, and his army was forced to accept defeat and withdraw. The Greeks scored another impressive victory against a Persian force under the command of Tigranes near Mount Mycale on the coast of Asia Minor.
In their accounts, Greek authors and dramatists celebrated the courage and self-sacrifice of the Spartans at Thermopylae and the victory at Salamis as momentous events in their history. Many in the West who insist that “the story of the Persian Wars should serve as the founding myth of European civilization; as the archetype of the triumph of freedom over slavery, and of rugged civic virtue over enervated despotism,” have also celebrated the Persian defeat as a rare, singular, and extraordinary event and a critical turning point in the history of Western civilization (Holland: xvi). The defeats in Greece were not the only military setbacks suffered by the Persian Achaemenid armies. Cyrus the Great was repeatedly defeated by the Medes before he triumphed over the Median monarch Astyages. His army was also defeated and humiliated by the Massagetae of Central Asia, who killed the founder of the Persian Empire on the battlefield. The loss at the hands of the Massagetae and the death of the Persian monarch on the battlefield dwarfed the defeats at Marathon and Salamis. For a superpower such as the Achaemenid Empire, military setbacks such as the ones in Greece were probably viewed as a natural and inevitable consequence of wars of expansion, which every empire had to confront as it tried to expand its power and influence. The defeats in Greece were most probably not “of great importance for the Persians: their army was practically intact, the conquered districts remained in their hands, and the enemy forces opposed to them were insignificant in number” (Ghirshman: 192).
The decline of the Achaemenid Empire began during the reigns of Darius II (r. 423–404 BCE) and his successor Artaxerxes II (r. 404–359 BCE), who lost Egypt to a rebellion. As the power of provincial governors increased, the authority and prestige of the central government waned. During the reign of Artaxerxes III (r. 359–338 BCE) the Persians restored the power of the central government and even reconquered Egypt, but at the height of his success the Persian king and all but one of his sons were assassinated by a close confidant, Bagoas, who cherished the dream of ruling the empire through a puppet. In this case the puppet was to be Arses (r. 338–336 BCE), the remaining son of Artaxerxes III, whose life had been spared so he could play the role of the nominal ruler while Bagoas emerged as the true power behind the throne. Having become aware of the heinous crimes of Bagoas against his father and brothers, Arses tried to punish the traitor, but he and his sons were also murdered. The Achaemenid royal house was decimated by these assassinations. In fact, only one prince of the ruling dynasty could still claim a direct and legitimate link to the Achaemenid male line. This ill-fated prince was a distant relative of Artaxerxes III who at the time served as the governor of Armenia and would ascend the throne as Darius III (r. 336–330 BCE). To consolidate power in his own hands, Darius eliminated Bagoas, but the new king never enjoyed the opportunity to reorganize the significantly weakened empire that he had inherited.
In 330 BCE, the fragile and crumbling Achaemenid state collapsed after it was attacked by Alexander the Macedon, who defeated Darius III and his armies in 333 and 331 BCE. Alexander seized Susa, Persepolis, Pasargadae, and Ecbatana. Darius, who was fleeing east to reorganize his forces in Bactria and Sogdiana, was killed by his commanders in 330 BCE. The death of Darius III signaled the end of the Achaemenid dynasty. Alexander seized the provinces of the Persian Empire and marched to Central Asia and then to India before returning to Mesopotamia and dying in Babylon in 323 BCE.
The short-lived empire of Alexander quickly disintegrated as his generals began to fight over the imperial spoils. Between 312 and 301 BCE, Mesopotamia, much of Asia Minor, and present-day Iran, Afghanistan, and the southern regions of Central Asia came under the rule of one of Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, who founded the Seleucid state. For much of its history, the Seleucid dynasty ruled from its capital, the city of Antioch in Syria. The incessant military campaigns against the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt exhausted the Seleucid treasury and diverted the attention of its rulers from the eastern provinces of their empire. The capital of the Seleucid kings, Antioch, was situated on the western frontiers of the empire and a long way away from Iran and Central Asia. The great distance between the Seleucid capital and its eastern provinces allowed the region’s provincial governors and invading nomadic groups from Central Asia to establish themselves as independent kings.
Sometime between 247 and 238 BCE, Diodotus, the Seleucid governor of Bactria, broke away from the Seleucids and established his own independent kingdom in present-day northern Afghanistan. Soon another governor, Andragoras of Parthia, proclaimed his independence. Meanwhile, a branch of the Parni or Aparni, an Iranian Scythian group from Central Asia under the charismatic leadership of Arsaces (Arshak), began to push into Parthia and Hyrcania. In 238 BCE Arsaces attacked Parthia, defeating and killing Andragoras in battle. After this victory, Arsaces established himself as the master of Parthia. Because Parthia was identified as the birthplace of the newly founded kingdom, the Greek and Romans referred to Arsaces and his successors as Parthians, or those who hail from Parthia. Indeed, Parthia served as a territorial base from which the dynasty of the Arsaces, also known as the Arsacids, expanded, eventually creating a vast and formidable empire.
The Seleucids made repeated attempts to reimpose their authority over Greater Iran, particularly during the reigns of Seleucus II (r. 246–225 BCE) and Antiochus III (r. 223–187 BCE). Since the inception of the Seleucid state, Med
ia Atropatene (present-day Azerbaijan), in present-day northwestern Iran, and Chorasmia, on the lower reaches of the Oxus River south of the Aral Sea, had remained independent under their own rulers. The Seleucids had also failed to capture the Indus River basin, which was ceded to Chandragupta, the founder of the powerful Maurya dynasty based in northern India.
Though the Seleucids managed to reassert their nominal control over most of their eastern provinces, these efforts failed to establish a stable and centralized empire under the direct control of Antioch. The Seleucid state in the east remained a collection of autonomous kingdoms, which paid tribute to their Macedonian overlord but for all practical purposes functioned independently. In 190 BCE, the Seleucid monarch Antiochus III was defeated by the Romans and their allies in the Battle of Magnesia in western Asia Minor. The Roman Republic forced the Seleucid monarch to sign the humiliating Treaty of Apamea in 188 BCE. According to this peace treaty, Antiochus renounced his claims to all territories north and west of the Taurus mountain range in southern Asia Minor. He also agreed to send a group of hostages, including his son, the future Antiochus IV, to Rome; pay a heavy war indemnity to the Romans; and surrender his fleet and elephants. With the defeat at the hands of the Romans, the Seleucid kingdom was reduced to Syria, Mesopotamia, and parts of Iran. The defeat at Magnesia undermined the credibility of the Seleucids and convinced the pretenders to power in the east, particularly the newly emerging Arsacid dynasty based in northeastern Iran and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in northern Afghanistan, to resume their campaigns of territorial expansion. The rise of a new Iranian royal house in the east, namely the Arsacids, corresponded with the growing decline of the Seleucid state in the west.
The origins of the Arsacid dynasty and the events that led to the rise of Arsaces I, the founder of the Parthian state, are shrouded in mystery. The absence of reliable Parthian sources has forced historians of ancient Iran to rely almost exclusively on Greek and Roman sources, who were resolute and unyielding in their hostility and disdain toward the Arsacids, portraying them as “treacherous, bellicose and arrogant barbarians with curious and distasteful customs” (Colledge: 13). The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus claimed that Arsaces I was “a man of low birth” who had been a “brigand chief during his younger days, but since his ideals gradually changed for the better, by a series of brilliant exploits he rose to greater heights” (Ammianus Marcellinus: 23.6.2). The Greek geographer Strabo stated that Arsaces was a Scythian or a Bactrian chief who emerged as the leader of the Parni or Aparni, a group within the Dahae tribal confederation. In his account of Alexander’s campaigns in Central Asia, the historian Arrian mentions the Dahae or Daae as a people living in close proximity to the Jaxartes River (Syr Darya) in Central Asia. Sometime during the closing years of the fourth century or the earlier part of the third century BCE, the Parni moved southward from Central Asia and occupied the regions on the eastern and southeastern shores of the Caspian Sea. A short time later, Arsaces I was crowned as king.
The conquest of Parthia by Arsaces I alarmed the Seleucid ruler, Seleucus II (r. 246–225 BCE), who was forced to organize a military campaign to regain his control over eastern Iran. In 231/230 BCE, Seleucus II marched against the Arsacids, but the campaign was inconclusive and failed to neutralize the threat posed by Arsaces I. When the Seleucid army returned home, Arsaces restored his control over northeastern Iran. By the time Arsaces died, his territorial gains had laid the foundation of a strong state. The significance of Arsaces I as the founder of the Parthian state persisted after his death. Out of respect and admiration for his accomplishments, all Arsacid monarchs assumed the title “Arsaces” (Arshak) upon ascending the throne. The Greek author Strabo wrote that it is the custom of the Parthians that all their rulers are called Arsaces, “although personally one king is called Orodes, another Phraates, and another something else” (Strabo: 7:63).
During the reign of Arsaces’s successor, Arsaces II (r. 217–191 BCE), the Parthian state was once again attacked by the Seleucid armies, this time under the command of Antiochus III. In 209 BCE, Antiochus III embarked on an eastern campaign to reestablish Seleucid rule over Iran. One of the principal goals of this campaign was to neutralize the threat posed by the newly emerging Arsacid state based in Parthia. Antiochus managed to occupy one of the capitals of the Arsacid dynasty at Shahr-i Qumis (Hecatompylos or Sad Darvazeh, City of a Hundred Gates) near present-day Damghan in northern Iran. The Parthians made a tactical retreat. They acknowledged Seleucid sovereignty and agreed to withdraw from some of their newly conquered territories. The Arsacid retreat was, however, short-lived. After his return to Syria, Antiochus III became involved in a conflict with Rome. In the Battle of Magnesia near Mount Sipylus in western Asia Minor in late 190 BCE, Antiochus suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Romans and their allies. In the Treaty of Apamea signed in 188 BCE, Antiochus renounced his claims to all territories north and west of the Taurus mountain range in southern Asia Minor. He also agreed to send a group of hostages, including his own son, the future Antiochus IV, to Rome; pay a heavy war indemnity to the Romans; and surrender his fleet and elephants (Appian: 11.8.38–40). With the defeat at the hands of the Romans, the Seleucid kingdom was reduced to Syria, Mesopotamia, and parts of Iran. The humiliation at Magnesia undermined the credibility of the Seleucids and convinced the pretenders to power in the east, particularly the Arsacid dynasty based in Parthia, and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in northern Afghanistan to resume their campaigns of territorial expansion.
Beginning in the reigns of Phraates I (Frahata I), who ruled from 176 to 171 BCE, the Arsacids expanded their territorial possessions. Phraates began the slow process of breaking out of the geographical confines of northeastern Iran, extending the territory of the Parthian state to the regions lying to the south of the Alborz mountain range. Phraates I defeated the Mardi, a tribal group who lived in the eastern regions of the Alborz, and expanded the boundaries of the Arsacid state from northeastern Iran to the lands west of the Caspian Gates. When Phraates I died he was succeeded by his brother, Mithridates I (Mithradata I), who proved to be one of the most capable and dynamic of all Arsacid kings.
During the reign of Mithridates I (r. 171–139/138 BCE), the Arsacid state was transformed from a small kingdom in present-day northeastern Iran into a major empire ruling a vast territory extending from the Oxus River in Central Asia to Mesopotamia in the heart of the ancient Near East. His first major victory was achieved against the Greco-Bactrian kingdom based in present-day northern Afghanistan. Mithridates I then pushed westward and conquered Media sometime between 148 and 147 BCE. The Parthian armies then moved into Mesopotamia and captured Babylon, including the city of Seleucia-on-Tigris by 141 BCE. Next, the Parthian armies attacked and defeated the forces of Elymais in present-day southwestern Iran, seizing Susa, which had served for nearly two centuries as the capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. The impressive victories of Mithridates I forced the Seleucid monarch Demetrius II to respond by attacking Mesopotamia and western Iran. The campaigns of Demetrius II against Mithridates I proved to be disastrous for the Seleucid monarchy. Demetrius was defeated and captured by the Parthians in 139 BCE. The humiliated Seleucid king was first paraded in public and then transported to Hyrcania in northeastern Iran, where he was received with kindness by Mithridates I. Mithridates arranged a marriage between his daughter Rhodogune and Demetrius, but Demetrius was determined to return to Syria. He therefore tried twice to escape northeastern Iran and reach Syria, but on both occasions he was captured. Between 139 and 132 BCE, Parthian armies completed their conquest of southwestern Iran and southern Iraq. After a long and successful reign of nearly 44 years, Mithridates I, who had assumed the title “great king,” died in either 139 or 138 BCE and was succeeded by his son, Phraates II.
The empire that Phraates II (r. 139/138–128 BCE) inherited from his father was threatened by enemies in the east as well as in the west. In the last months of Mithridates’s reign, the northeastern borders
of the Parthian Empire had been attacked once again by invading Iranian nomadic groups from Central Asia. These groups, known as the Yüeh-chihs (Yuezhis) in Chinese and as the Tochari by Western writers, were pushed out of Central Asia by the Huns and forced to seek new pasturelands for their animals. A branch of the Tochari would eventually establish the Kushan Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and parts of India. The Kushans moved from Central Asia first to Bactria in present-day northern Afghanistan. From Bactria they crossed the Hindu Kush mountain range and occupied Gandhara in present-day northwestern Pakistan. The occupation of Gandhara, southeast of the Hindu Kush Mountains, allowed the Kushans to extend their power to the Indus River Valley and the city of Taxila by the middle of the first century CE. From here, the Kushans moved farther south to the region of the Yamuna River in the present-day northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where they chose the city of Mathura as their southern capital, while Parasawara or Purushapura (today’s Peshawar) in present-day Pakistan remained their northern capital. Thus, by the beginning of the second century CE the Kushans, along with the Romans, Parthians, and Chinese, were one of the four most powerful states in the world.
The Persian Empire Page 4