The Provinces of the Roman Empire 1

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 1

The Provinces of the Roman Empire, v. 2.

From Caesar to Diocletian

: Theodor Mommsen

 

CONTENTS

 

 

BOOK EIGHTH

 

_THE PROVINCES AND PEOPLE, FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN_

 

PAGE

CHAPTER IX.

 

THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER AND THE PARTHIANS 1

 

CHAPTER X.

 

SYRIA AND THE LAND OF THE NABATAEANS 116

 

CHAPTER XI.

 

JUDAEA AND THE JEWS 160

 

CHAPTER XII.

 

EGYPT 232

 

CHAPTER XIII.

 

THE AFRICAN PROVINCES 303

 

APPENDIX 347

 

MAPS I. to II.

 

INDEX 355

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER AND THE PARTHIANS.

 

 

[Sidenote: The empire of Iran.]

 

The only great state with which the Roman empire bordered was the

empire of Iran,[1] based upon that nationality which was best known

in antiquity, as it is in the present day, under the name of the

Persians, consolidated politically by the old Persian royal family of

the Achaemenids and its first great-king Cyrus, united religiously by

the faith of Ahura Mazda and of Mithra. No one of the ancient peoples

of culture solved the problem of national union equally early and with

equal completeness. The Iranian tribes reached on the south as far

as the Indian Ocean, on the north as far as the Caspian Sea; on the

north-east the steppes of inland Asia formed the constant battle-ground

between the settled Persians and the nomadic tribes of Turan. On the

east mighty mountains formed a boundary separating them from the

Indians. In western Asia three great nations early encountered one

another, each pushing forward on its own account: the Hellenes, who

from Europe grasped at the coast of Asia Minor, the Aramaic peoples,

who from Arabia and Syria advanced in a northern and north-eastern

direction and substantially filled the valley of the Euphrates, and

lastly, the races of Iran, not merely inhabiting the country as far

as the Tigris, but even penetrating to Armenia and Cappadocia, while

primitive inhabitants of other types in these far-extending regions

succumbed under these leading powers and disappeared. In the epoch

of the Achaemenids, the culminating point of the glory of Iran, the

Iranian rule went far beyond this wide domain proper to the stock on

all sides, but especially towards the west. Apart from the times, when

Turan gained the upper hand over Iran and the Seljuks and Mongols ruled

over the Persians, foreign rule, strictly so called, has only been

established over the flower of the Iranian stocks twice, by Alexander

the Great and his immediate successors and by the Arabian Abbasids,

and on both occasions only for a comparatively short time; the

eastern regions--in the former case the Parthians, in the latter the

inhabitants of the ancient Bactria--not merely threw off again the yoke

of the foreigner, but dislodged him also from the cognate west.

 

[Sidenote: The rule of the Parthians.]

 

When the Romans in the last age of the republic came into immediate

contact with Iran as a consequence of the occupation of Syria, they

found in existence the Persian empire regenerated by the Parthians. We

have formerly had to make mention of this state on several occasions;

this is the place to gather together the little that can be ascertained

regarding the peculiar character of the empire, which so often

exercised a decisive influence on the destinies of the neighbouring

state. Certainly to most questions, which the historical inquirer

has here to put, tradition has no answer. The Occidentals give but

occasional notices, which may in their isolation easily mislead us,

concerning the internal condition of their Parthian neighbours and

foes; and, if the Orientals in general have hardly understood how to

fix and to preserve historical tradition, this holds doubly true of

the period of the Arsacids, seeing that it was by the later Iranians

regarded, together with the preceding foreign rule of the Seleucids, as

an unwarranted usurpation between the periods of the old and the new

Persian rule--the Achaemenids and the Sassanids; this period of five

hundred years is, so to speak, eliminated by way of correction[2] from

the history of Iran, and is as if nonexistent.

 

[Sidenote: The Parthians Scythian.]

 

The standpoint, thus occupied by the court-historiographers of the

Sassanid dynasty, is more the legitimist-dynastic one of the Persian

nobility than that of Iranian nationality. No doubt the authors of the

first imperial epoch describe the language of the Parthians, whose home

corresponds nearly to the modern Chorasan, as intermediate between

the Median and the Scythian, that is, as an impure Iranian dialect;

accordingly they were regarded as immigrants from the land of the

Scythians, and in this sense their name is interpreted as “fugitive

people,” while the founder of the dynasty, Arsaces, is declared by

some indeed to have been a Bactrian, but by others a Scythian from the

Maeotis. The fact that their princes did not take up their residence

in Seleucia on the Tigris, but pitched their winter quarters in the

immediate neighbourhood at Ctesiphon, is traced to their wish not

to quarter Scythian troops in the rich mercantile city. Much in the

manners and arrangements of the Parthians is alien from Iranian habits,

and reminds us of the customs of nomadic life; they transact business

and eat on horseback, and the free man never goes on foot. It cannot

well be doubted that the Parthians, whose name alone of all the tribes

of this region is not named in the sacred books of the Persians, stand

aloof from Iran proper, in which the Achaemenids and the Magians are at

home. The antagonism of this Iran to the ruling family springing from

an uncivilised and half foreign district, and to its immediate

followers--this antagonism, which the Roman authors not unwillingly

took over from their Persian neighbours--certainly subsisted and

fermented throughout the whole rule of the Arsacids, till it at length

brought about their fall. But the rule of the Arsacids may not on that

account be conceived as a foreign rule. No privileges were conceded

to the Parthian stock and to the Parthian province. It is true that

the Parthian town Hecatompylos is named as residence of the Arsacids;

but they chiefly sojourned in summer at Ecbatana (Hamadan), or else

at Rhagae like the Achaemenids, in winter, as already stated, in the

camp-town of Ctesiphon, or else in Babylon on the extreme western

border of the empire. The hereditary burial-place continued in the

Parthian town Nisaea; but subsequently Arbela in Assyria served for

that purpose more frequently. The poor and remote native province of

the Parthians was in no way suited for the luxurious court-life, and

the important relations to the West, especially of the later Arsacids.

The chief country continued even now to be Media, just as under the

Achaemenids. Although the Arsacids might be of Scythian descent, not so

much depended on what they were as on what they desired to be; and they

regarded and professed themselves throughout as the successors of Cyrus

and of Darius. As the seven Persian family-princes had set aside the

false Achaemenid, and had restored the legitimate rule by the elevation

of Darius, so needs must other seven have overthrown the Macedonian

foreign yoke and placed king Arsaces on the throne. With this patriotic

fiction must further be connected the circumstance that a Bactrian

nativity instead of a Scythian was assigned to the first Arsaces. The

dress and the etiquette at the court of the Arsacids were those of the

Persian court; after king Mithradates I. had extended his rule to the

Indus and Tigris, the dynasty exchanged the simple title of king for

that of king of kings which the Achaemenids had borne, and the pointed

Scythian cap for the high tiara adorned with pearls; on the coins the

king carries the bow like Darius. The aristocracy, too, that came into

the land with the Arsacids and doubtless became in many ways mixed with

the old indigenous one, adopted Persian manners and dress, mostly also

Persian names; of the Parthian army which fought with Crassus it is

said that the soldiers still wore their hair rough after the Scythian

fashion, but the general appeared after the Median manner with the hair

parted in the middle and with painted face.

 

[Sidenote: The regal office.]

 

The political organisation, as it was established by the first

Mithradates, was accordingly in substance that of the Achaemenids. The

family of the founder of the dynasty is invested with all the lustre

and with all the consecration of ancestral and divinely-ordained rule;

his name is transferred _de jure_ to each of his successors and divine

honour is assigned to him; his successors are therefore called sons of

God,[3] and besides brothers of the sun-god and the moon-goddess, like

the Shah of Persia still at the present day; to shed the blood of a

member of the royal family even by mere accident is a sacrilege--all

of them regulations, which with few abatements recur among the Roman

Caesars, and are perhaps borrowed in part from those of the older great-monarchy.