THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE

[1Sidenote: [261-241 B.C.]]

2Hellenism made no deep impression on Iran as on the West, nor did the loose-jointed empire attain to anything higher than a Hellenistic reproduction of the kingdom of the Achæmenians. Even in the fragmentary records that we possess we hear from the first of rebellions little favourable to consolidation of the realm; Seleucus, like Alexander, still had an army of Macedonians and Persians together, while the later Seleucids, at least in their western wars, used natives sparingly and only as bowmen, slingers, or the like, and preferred for these services the wild desert and mountain tribes of Iran.

3Under the weak Antiochus II northeastern Iran was lost to the empire. While the Seleucids were busy elsewhere, probably in the long war with Ptolemy Philadelphus, which occupied Antiochus’ later years, Diodotus, viceroy of Bactria, took the title of king. The new kingdom included Sogdiana and Margiana from the first, while the rest of the East, with a single exception scarcely noticed at the time, adhered to the Seleucids.

4Now the formation of a strong local kingdom, heartily supported by the Greek colonies and likely to control the neighbouring nomads and strictly to protect its own frontiers, was by no means agreeable to the chief of the desert tribes who, like the modern Turkomans, had been wont to pillage the settled lands and raise blackmail with little hindrance from the weak and distant central authority at Antioch. Accordingly two brothers, Arsaces and Tiridates--whose tribe, the Parnians, a subdivision of the Dahæ, had hitherto pastured their flocks in Bactria on the banks of the Ochus--moved west into Seleucid territory near Parthia. An insult offered to the younger brother by the satrap Pherecles moved them to revolt; Pherecles was slain, and Parthia freed from the Macedonians.