ARSACES AND THE ARSACIDS

A1rsaces was then proclaimed first king of Parthia (250 B.C.). Such is the later official tradition, and we possess no other account of the beginnings of the Arsacid dynasty. But when the official account transforms Arsaces, who according to genuine tradition was the leader of a robber horde and of uncertain descent, into a Bactrian, the descendant of Phriapites son of Artaxerxes II (who was called Arsaces before his accession), and makes him conspire with his brother and five others, like the seven who slew the false Smerdis, we detect the invention of a period when the Arsacids had entered on the inheritance of the Achæmenians, and imitated the order of their court.

2The seven conspirators are the heads of the seven noble houses to whom, beyond doubt, the Karen, the Suren, and the Aspahapet belonged. And further, genuine tradition does not know the first Arsaces as king of Parthia at all, and as late as 105 B.C. the Parthians themselves reckoned the year (autumn) 248-247 B.C. as the first of their empire. But 248 B.C. is the year in which Arsaces I is said to have been killed, after a reign of two years, and succeeded by his brother; who, like all subsequent kings of the line, took the throne name of Arsaces.

3The first Arsaces must have existed, for he appears as deified on the reverse of his brother’s drachmæ, but he was not king of Parthia. Nay, we have authentic record that even in the epoch-year 248-247 B.C., the year of the accession of Tiridates, Parthia was still under the Seleucids. These contradictions are solved by a notice of Isidore of Charax, which names a city Asaak, not in Parthia but northwest of it, in the neighbouring Astauene, where Arsaces was proclaimed king and where an everlasting fire was kept burning. This, therefore, was the first seat of the monarchy, and Pherecles was presumably satrap of Astauene, not eparch of Parthia.

4[Sidenote: [241-238 B.C.]]

5The times were not favourable for the reduction of the rebels. When Antiochus II died, the horrors that accompanied the succession of his son Seleucus (II) Callinicus (246-226 B.C.) gave the king of Egypt the pretext for a war, in which he overran almost the whole lands of the Seleucids as far as Bactria. Meantime a civil war was raging between Seleucus and his brother Antiochus Hierax, whom the Galatians supported, and at the great battle of Ancyra in 242 or 241 B.C. Seleucus was totally defeated and thought to be slain. At this news Arsaces Tiridates, whom the genuine tradition still represents as a brave robber-chief, broke into Parthia at the head of the Parnians, slew the Macedonian eparch Andragoras, and took possession of the province. These Parnian Dahæ, in consequence of eternal dissensions, had migrated at a remote date to Hyrcania and the desert adjoining the Caspian. Here, and in great measure even after they conquered Parthia, they retained the peculiarities of Scythian nomads.