The Provinces of the Roman Empire 12

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 12

The conflicts in Syria and Mesopotamia were more serious. The line

of the Euphrates was obstinately defended by the Parthians; after a

keen combat on the right bank at Sura the fortress of Nicephorium

(Ragga) on the left was stormed by the Romans. Still more vehemently

was the passage at Zeugma contested; but here too victory remained

with the Romans in the decisive battle at Europus (Djerabis to the

south of Biredjik). They now advanced on their part into Mesopotamia.

Edessa was besieged, Dausara not far from it stormed; the Romans

appeared before Nisibis; the Parthian general saved himself by

swimming over the Tigris. The Romans might from Mesopotamia undertake

the march to Babylon. The satraps forsook in part the banners of the

defeated great-king; Seleucia, the great capital of the Hellenes on

the Euphrates, voluntarily opened its gates to the Romans, but was

afterwards burnt down by them, because the burgesses were rightly

or wrongly accused of an understanding with the enemy. The Parthian

capital, Ctesiphon, was also taken and destroyed; with good reason at

the beginning of the year 165 the senate could salute the two rulers

as the Parthian grand-victors. In the campaign of this year Cassius

even penetrated into Media; but the outbreak of a pestilence, more

especially in these regions, decimated the troops and compelled them to

return, accelerating perhaps even the conclusion of peace. The result

of the war was the cession of the western district of Mesopotamia; the

princes of Edessa and of Osrhoene became vassals of Rome, and the town

of Carrhae, which had for long Greek leanings, became a free town under

Roman protection.[65] As regards extent, especially in presence of the

complete success of the war, the increase of territory was moderate,

but yet of importance, inasmuch as thereby the Romans gained a footing

on the left bank of the Euphrates. We may add that the territories

occupied were given back to the Parthians and the _status quo_ was

restored. On the whole, therefore, the policy of reserve adopted by

Hadrian was now abandoned once more, and there was a return to the

course of Trajan. This is the more remarkable, as the government of

Marcus certainly cannot be reproached with ambition and longing after

aggrandisement; what it did it did under compulsion and in modest

limits.

 

[Sidenote: Parthian wars under Severus.]

 

The emperor Severus pursued the same course further and more decidedly.

The year of the three emperors, 193, had led to the war between the

legions of the West and those of the East, and with Pescennius Niger

the latter had succumbed. The Roman vassal-princes of the East, and

as well the ruler of the Parthians, Vologasus V., son of Sanatrucius,

had, as was natural, recognised Niger, and even put their troops at

his disposal; the latter had at first gratefully declined, and then,

when his cause took a turn to the worse, invoked their aid. The other

Roman vassals, above all the prince of Armenia, cautiously kept back;

only Abgarus, the prince of Edessa, sent the desired contingent.

The Parthians promised aid, and it came at least from the nearest

districts, from the prince Barsemias of Hatra in the Mesopotamian

desert, and from the satrap of the Adiabeni beyond the Tigris. Even

after Niger’s death (194) these strangers not merely remained in the

Roman Mesopotamia, but even demanded the withdrawal of the Roman

garrisons stationed there and the giving back of this territory.[66]

 

[Sidenote: Province of Mesopotamia.]

 

Thereupon Severus advanced into Mesopotamia and took possession of the

whole extensive and important region. From Nisibis an expedition was

conducted against the Arab prince of Hatra, which, however, did not

succeed in taking the fortified town; even beyond the Tigris against

the satrap of Adiabene the generals of Severus accomplished nothing

of importance.[67] But Mesopotamia, _i.e._ the whole region between

the Euphrates and Tigris as far as the Chaboras, became a Roman

province, and was occupied with two legions newly created on account

of this extension of territory. The principality of Edessa continued

to subsist as a Roman fief, but was now no longer border-territory

but surrounded by land directly imperial. The considerable and strong

city of Nisibis, thenceforth called after the name of the emperor and

organised as a Roman colony, became the capital of the new province

and seat of the governor. After an important portion of territory had

thus been torn from the Parthian kingdom, and armed force had been

used against two satraps dependent on it, the great-king made ready

with his troops to oppose the Romans. Severus offered peace, and ceded

for Mesopotamia a portion of Armenia. But the decision of arms was

thereby only postponed. As soon as Severus had started for the West,

whither the complication with his co-ruler in Gaul recalled him, the

Parthians broke the peace[68] and advanced into Mesopotamia; the prince

of Osrhoene was driven out, the land was occupied, and the governor,

Laetus, one of the most excellent warriors of the time, was besieged

in Nisibis. He was in great danger, when Severus once more arrived

in the East in the year 198, after Albinus had succumbed. Thereupon

the fortune of war turned. The Parthians retreated, and now Severus

took the offensive. He advanced into Babylonia, and won Seleucia

and Ctesiphon; the Parthian king saved himself with a few horsemen

by flight, the crown-treasure became the spoil of the victors, the

Parthian capital was abandoned to the pillage of the Roman soldiers,

and more than 100,000 captives were brought to the Roman slave market.

The Arabians indeed in Hatra defended themselves better than the

Parthian state itself; in vain Severus endeavoured in two severe sieges

to reduce the desert-stronghold. But in the main the success of the

two campaigns of 198 and 199 was complete. By the erection of the

province of Mesopotamia and of the great command there, Armenia lost

the intermediate position which it hitherto had; it might remain in

its previous relations and apart from formal incorporation. The land

retained thus its own troops, and the imperial government even paid for

these subsequently a contribution from the imperial chest.[69]

 

[Sidenote: The change of government in the West and in the East.]

 

The further development of these relations as neighbours was

essentially influenced by the changes which internal order underwent

in the two empires. If under the dynasty of Nerva, and not less

under Severus, the Parthian state, often torn asunder by civil war

and contention for the crown, had been confronted by the relatively

stable Roman monarchy as superior, this order of things broke down

after Severus’s death, and almost for a century there followed in the

western empire mostly wretched and thoroughly ephemeral regents, who

in presence of other countries were constantly hesitating between

arrogance and weakness. While the scale of the West thus sank that

of the East rose. A few years after the death of Severus (211)

a revolution took place in Iran, which not merely, like so many

earlier crises, overthrew the ruling regent, nor even merely called

to the government another dynasty instead of the decayed Arsacids,

but, unchaining the national and religious elements for a mightier

upward flight, substituted for the bastard civilisation--pervaded

by Hellenism--of the Parthian state the state-organisation, faith,

manners, and princes of that province which had created the old Persian

empire, and, since its transition to the Parthian dynasty, preserved

within it as well the tombs of Darius and Xerxes as the germs of the

regeneration of the people. The re-establishment of the great-kingdom

of the Persians overthrown by Alexander ensued through the emergence of

the dynasty of the Sassanids. Let us cast a glance at this new shape of

things before we pursue further the course of Romano-Parthian relations

in the East.

 

[Sidenote: The Sassanids.]

 

It has already been stated that the Parthian dynasty, although it had

wrested Iran from Hellenism, was yet regarded by the nation as, so to

speak, illegitimate. Artahshatr, or in new Persian Ardashir--so the

official biography of the Sassanids reports--came forward to revenge

the blood of Dara murdered by Alexander, and to bring back the rule to

the legitimate family and re-establish it, such as it had been at the

time of his forefathers before the divisional kings. Under this legend

lies a good deal of reality. The dynasty which bears the name of Sasan,

the grandfather of Ardashir, was no other than the royal dynasty of the

Persian province; Ardashir’s father, Papak or Pabek,[70] and a long

list of his ancestors had, under the supremacy of the Arsacids, swayed

the sceptre in this ancestral land of the Iranian nation,[71] had

resided in Istachr, not far from the old Persepolis, and marked their

coins with Iranian language and Iranian writing, and with the sacred

emblems of the Persian national faith, while the great-kings had their

abode in the half-Greek border-land, and had their coins stamped in the

Greek language and after the Greek style. The fundamental organisation

of the Iranian state-system--the great-kingdom holding superiority

over the divisional kings--was under the two dynasties as little

different as that of the empire of the German nation under the Saxon

and the Suabian emperors. Only for this reason in that official version

the time of the Arsacids is designated as that of the divisional-kings,

and Ardashir as the first common head of all Iran after the last

Darius, because in the old Persian empire the Persian province stood

related alike to the other provinces and to the Parthians, as in the

Roman state Italy stood related to the provinces, and the Persian

disputed with the Parthian the legitimate title to the great-kingdom

connected _de jure_ with his province.[72]

 

[Sidenote: Extent of the Sassanid kingdom.]

 

What was the relation of the Sassanid kingdom to that of the Arsacids

in point of extent, is a question to which tradition gives no

sufficient answer. The provinces of the west collectively remained

subject to the new dynasty after it sat firm in the saddle, and the

claims which it set up against the Romans went, as we shall see, far

beyond the pretensions of the Arsacids. But how far the rule of the

Sassanids reached towards the West, and when it advanced to the Oxus

which was subsequently regarded as the legitimate boundary between Iran

and Turan, are matters withdrawn from our field of vision.[73]

 

[Sidenote: The state of the Sassanids.]

 

The state-system of Iran did not undergo quite a fundamental

transformation in consequence of the coming in of the new dynasty. The

official title of the first Sassanid ruler, as it is given uniformly

in three languages under the rock-relief of Nakshi-Rustam, “The

Mazda-servant God Artaxares, king of kings of the Arians, of divine

descent,”[74] is substantially that of the Arsacids, except that the

Iranian nation, as already in the old native regal title, and the

indigenous god are now expressly named. That a dynasty having its

home in Persis came in lieu of one originally alien in race and only

nationalised, was a work and a victory of national reaction; but the

force of circumstances placed various insurmountable barriers in the

way of the consequences thence resulting. Persepolis, or, as it is now

called, Istachr, becomes again nominally the capital of the empire,

and there on the same rock-wall, alongside of the similar monuments of

Darius, the remarkable statues and still more remarkable inscriptions

just mentioned proclaim the fame of Ardashir and Shapur; but the

administration could not well be conducted from this remote locality,

and Ctesiphon continued still to be its centre. The new Persian

government did not resume the _de jure_ prerogative of the Persians,

as it had subsisted under the Achaemenids; while Darius named himself

“a Persian son of a Persian, an Arian from Arian stock,” Ardashir named

himself, as we saw, simply king of the Arians. We do not know whether

Persian elements were introduced afresh into the great houses apart

from the royal; in any case several of them remained, like the Surên

and the Carên; only under the Achaemenids, not under the Sassanids these were exclusively Persian.