The Provinces of the Roman Empire 13

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 13

Even in a religious point of view no change, strictly so called, set

in; but the faith and the priests gained under the Persian great-kings

an influence and a power such as they had never possessed under

the Parthian. It may well be that the twofold diffusion of foreign

worships in the direction of Iran--of Buddhism from the East and

of the Jewish-Christian faith from the West--brought by their very

hostility a regeneration to the old religion of Mazda. The founder of

the new dynasty, Ardashir, was, as is credibly reported, a zealous

fire-worshipper, and himself took priestly orders; therefore, it is

further said, from that time the order of the Magi became influential

and arrogant, while it had hitherto by no means had such honour and

such freedom, but on the contrary had not been held in much account

by the rulers. “Thenceforth all the Persians honour and revere the

priests; public affairs are arranged according to their counsels and

oracles; each treaty and each law-dispute undergoes their inspection

and their judgment, and nothing appears to the Persian right and legal

which has not been confirmed by a priest.” Accordingly we encounter

an arrangement of spiritual administration which reminds us of the

position of the Pope and the bishops alongside of the Emperor and

the princes. Each circle is placed under a chief-Magian (Magupat,

lord of Magians, in new Persian Mobedh), and these all in turn under

the chiefest of the chief Magians (Mobedhan-Mobedh), the counterpart

of “the king of kings,” and now it is he who crowns the king. The

consequences of this priestly dominion did not fail to appear: the

rigid ritual, the restrictive precepts as to guilt and expiation,

science resolving itself into a wild system of oracles and of magic,

while belonging from the first to Parsism, in all probability only

attained to their full development at this epoch.

 

[Sidenote: The languages of the country under the Sassanids.]

 

Traces of the national reaction appear also in the use of the native

language and the native customs. The largest Greek city of the Parthian

empire, the ancient Seleucia, continued to subsist, but it was

thenceforth called not after the name of the Greek marshal, but after

that of its new master, Beh, or better, Ardashir. The Greek language

hitherto at any rate always in use, although debased and no longer

ruling alone, disappears on the emergence of the new dynasty at once

from the coins, and only on the inscriptions of the first Sassanids

is it still to be met with by the side of, and behind, the language

proper of the land. The “Parthian writing,” the Pahlavî, maintains its

ground, but alongside of it comes a second little different and indeed,

as the coins show, as properly official, probably that used hitherto in

the Persian province, so that the oldest monuments of the Sassanids,

like those of the Achaemenids, are trilingual, somewhat as in the

German middle ages Latin, Saxon, and Franconian were employed side by

side. After king Sapor I. († 272) the bilingual usage disappears, and

the second mode of writing alone retains its place, inheriting the

name Pahlavî. The year of the Seleucids, and the names of the months

belonging to it, disappear with the change of dynasty; in their stead

come, according to old Persian custom, the years of the rulers and the

native Persian names of months.[75] Even the old Persian legend is

transferred to the new Persia. The still extant “history of Ardashir,

son of Papak,” which makes this son of a Persian shepherd arrive at

the Median court, perform menial offices there, and then become the

deliverer of his people, is nothing but the old tale of Cyrus changed

to the new names. Another fable-book of the Indian Parsees is able to

tell how king Iskander Rumi, _i.e._ “Alexander the Roman,” had caused

the holy books of Zarathustra to be burnt, and how they were then

restored by the pious Ardaviraf when king Ardashir had mounted the

throne. Here the Romano-Hellene confronts the Persian; the legend has,

as might be expected, forgotten the illegitimate Arsacid.

 

[Sidenote: Government of the Sassanids.]

 

In other respects the state of things remained essentially the same.

In a military point of view in particular, the armies of the Sassanids

were certainly not regular and trained troops, but the levy of men

capable of arms, into which with the national movement a new spirit

may doubtless have passed, but which afterwards, as before, was based

in the main on the cavalry-service of the nobility. The administration

too remained as it was; the able ruler took steps with inexorable

sternness against the highway-robber as against the exacting official,

and, compared at least with the later Arabic and the Turkish rule, the

subjects of the Sassanid empire found themselves prosperous and the

state-chest full.

 

[Sidenote: The new Persians and the Romans.]

 

But the alteration in the position of the new kingdom with reference

to the Roman is significant. The Arsacids never felt themselves quite

on a level with the Caesars. Often as the two states encountered each

other in war and peace as powers equal in weight, and decidedly as

the view of two great-powers dominated the Roman East (p. 1), there

remained with the Roman power a precedence similar to that which the

holy Roman empire of the German nation possessed throughout centuries,

very much to its hurt. Acts of subjection, such as the Parthian kings

took upon themselves in presence of Tiberius (p. 44) and of Nero (52),

without being compelled to them by extreme necessity, cannot be at

all conceived of on the Roman side. It cannot be accident that a gold

coin was never struck under the government of the Arsacids, and the

very first Sassanid ruler practised coining in gold; this is the most

palpable sign of sovereignty unrestricted by any duties of a vassal.

To the claim of the empire of the Caesars alone to the power of

coining money for universal circulation the Arsacids without exception

yielded, at least in so far that they themselves refrained generally

from coining, and left coinage in silver and copper to the towns or the

satraps; the Sassanids again struck gold pieces, as did king Darius.

The great-kingdom of the East at length demanded its full right; the

world no longer belonged to the Romans alone. The submissiveness of

the Orientals and the supremacy of the Occidentals were of the past.

Accordingly, in place of the relations between Romans and Parthians,

as hitherto, always reverting afresh to peace, there now came for

generations embittered hostility.

 

[Sidenote: Parthian war of Severus Antoninus.]

 

After having set forth the new state organisation, with which the

sinking Rome was soon to contend, we resume the thread of our

narrative. Antoninus, son and successor of Severus, not a warrior and

statesman like his father, but a dissolute caricature of both, must

have had the design--so far as in the case of such personages we can

speak of design at all--to bring the East entirely into the Roman

power. It was not difficult to place the princes of Osrhoene and of

Armenia, after they had been summoned to the imperial court, under

arrest, and to declare their fiefs forfeited. But on the arrival of the

news a revolt broke out in Armenia. The Arsacid prince Tiridates was

proclaimed king, and invoked the protection of the Parthians. Thereupon

Antoninus put himself at the head of a large military force, and

appeared in the East in the year 216, to put down the Armenians, and

in case of need also the Parthians. Tiridates himself at once gave up

the cause as lost, although the division sent to Armenia subsequently

encountered vehement resistance there; and he fled to the Parthians.

The Romans demanded his surrender. The Parthians were not inclined on

his account to enter into a war, the more especially as just then the

two sons of king Vologasus V., Vologasus VI. and Artabanus, were in

bitter feud over the succession to the throne. The former yielded when

the Roman demand was imperiously repeated, and delivered up Tiridates.

Thereupon the emperor desired from Artabanus, who had meanwhile

obtained recognition, the hand of his daughter for the express object

of thus obtaining the kingdom by marriage, and of bringing East and

West under one rule. The rejection of this wild proposal[76] was the

signal for war; the Romans declared it, and crossed the Tigris. The

Parthians were unprepared; without encountering resistance the Romans

burnt down the towns and villages in Adiabene, and ruthlessly destroyed

even the old royal tombs at Arbela.[77] But Artabanus made the utmost

exertions for the next campaign, and put into the field a powerful

force in the spring of 217. Antoninus, who had spent the winter in

Edessa, was assassinated by his officers just as he was setting out

for this second campaign. His successor Macrinus, unconfirmed in the

government and held in little repute, at the head, moreover, of an

army defective in discipline and tone and shaken by the murder of the

emperor, would gladly have rid himself of a war wantonly instigated

and assuming very serious proportions. He sent the prisoners back to

the Parthian king, and threw the blame of the outrages committed on

his predecessor. But Artabanus was not content with this; he demanded

compensation for all the devastation committed, and the evacuation

of Mesopotamia. Thus matters came to a battle at Nisibis, in which

the Romans had the worst. Nevertheless the Parthians, partly because

their levy seemed as though it would break up, perhaps also under

the influence of Roman money, granted peace (218) on comparatively

favourable terms. Rome paid a considerable war compensation (50,000,000

denarii), but retained Mesopotamia. Armenia remained with Tiridates,

but the latter took it as in dependency on the Romans. In Osrhoene also

the old princely house was reinstated.

 

[Sidenote: King Ardashir.]

 

This was the last treaty of peace which the Arsacid dynasty concluded

with Rome. Almost immediately afterwards, and perhaps partly in

consequence of this bargain, which certainly, as things stood, might be

looked upon by the Orientals as an abandonment by their own government

of the victories achieved, the insurrection began, which converted the

state of the Parthians into a state of the Persians. Its leader, king

Ardashir or Artaxares (A.D. 224-241) strove for several years with

the adherents of the old dynasty before he attained full success;[78]

after three great battles, in the last of which king Artabanus fell,

he was master in the Parthian empire proper, and could march into the

Mesopotamian desert to subdue the Arabs of Hatra and thence to advance

against the Roman Mesopotamia. But the brave and independent Arabs

defended themselves now against the Persians as formerly against the

Roman invasion, in their huge walls with good success; and Artaxares

found himself led to operate in the first instance against Media and

Armenia, where the Arsacids still maintained themselves, and the sons

of Artabanus had found a refuge. It was not till about the year 230

that he turned against the Romans, and not merely declared war against

them, but demanded back all the provinces which had formerly belonged

to the kingdom of his predecessors, Darius and Xerxes--in other words,

the cession of all Asia. To emphasise his threatening words, he led a mighty army over the Euphrates; Mesopotamia was occupied and Nisibis besieged; the enemy’s cavalry appeared in Cappadocia and in Syria.