The Provinces of the Roman Empire 2

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 2

Although the royal dignity was thus firmly attached to the family,

there yet subsisted a certain choice as to the king. As the new ruler

had to belong as well to the college of the “kinsmen of the royal

house” as to the council of priests, in order to be able to ascend the

throne, an act must have taken place, whereby, it may be presumed,

these same colleges themselves acknowledged the new ruler.[4] By the

“kinsmen” are doubtless to be understood not merely the Arsacids

themselves, but the “seven houses” of the Achaemenid organisation,

princely families, to which according to that arrangement equality

of rank and free access to the great-king belonged, and which must

have had similar privileges under the Arsacids.[5] These families

were at the same time holders of hereditary crown offices,[6] _e.g._

the Surên--the name is like the name Arsaces, a designation at once

of person and of office--the second family after the royal house, as

crown-masters, placed on each occasion the tiara on the head of the

new Arsaces. But as the Arsacids themselves belonged to the Parthian

province, so the Surên were at home in Sacastane (Seistân) and perhaps

Sacae, thus Scythians; the Carên likewise descended from western Media,

while the highest aristocracy under the Achaemenids was purely Persian.

 

[Sidenote: Satraps.]

 

The administration lay in the hands of the under-kings or satraps;

according to the Roman geographers of Vespasian’s time the state of the

Parthians consisted of eighteen “kingdoms.” Some of these satrapies

were appanages of a second son of the ruling house; in particular the

two north-western provinces, the Atropatenian Media (Aderbijan) and

Armenia, so far as it was in the power of the Parthians, appear to

have been entrusted for administration to the prince standing next

to the ruler for the time.[7] We may add that prominent among the

satraps were the king of the province of Elymais or of Susa, to whom

was conceded a specially powerful and exceptional position, and next

to him the king of Persis, the ancestral land of the Achaemenids.

The form of administration, if not exclusive, yet preponderant and

conditioning the title, was in the Parthian empire--otherwise than in

the case of the Caesars--that of vassal-kingdom, so that the satraps

entered by hereditary right, but were subject to confirmation by the

great-king.[8] To all appearance this continued downwards, so that

smaller dynasts and family chiefs stood in the same relation to the

under-kings as the latter occupied to the great-king.[9] Thus the

office of great-king among the Parthians was limited to the utmost

in favour of the high aristocracy by the accompanying subdivision of

the hereditary administration of the land. With this it is quite in

keeping, that the mass of the population consisted of persons half or

wholly non-free,[10] and emancipation was not allowable. In the army

which fought against Antonius there are said to have been only 400 free

among 50,000. The chief among the vassals of Orodes, who as his general

defeated Crassus, marched to the field with a harem of 200 wives and

a baggage train of 1000 sumpter-camels; he himself furnished to the

army 10,000 horsemen from his clients and slaves. The Parthians never

had a standing army, but at all times the waging of war here was left

to depend on the general levy of the vassal-princes and of the vassals

subordinate to these, as well as of the great mass of the non-free over

whom these bore sway.

 

[Sidenote: The Greek towns of the Parthian empire.]

 

Certainly the urban element was not quite wanting in the political

organisation of the Parthian empire. It is true that the larger

townships, which arose out of the distinctive development of the

East, were not urban commonwealths, as indeed even the Parthian royal

residence, Ctesiphon, is named in contrast to the neighbouring Greek

foundation of Seleucia a village; they had no presidents of their

own and no common council, and the administration lay here, as in

the country districts, exclusively with the royal officials. But

a portion--comparatively small, it is true--of the foundations of

the Greek rulers had come under Parthian rule. In the provinces of

Mesopotamia and Babylonia by nationality Aramaean the Greek town-system

had gained a firm footing under Alexander and his successors.

Mesopotamia was covered with Greek commonwealths; and in Babylonia,

the successor of the ancient Babylon, the precursor of Bagdad, and

for a time the residence of the Greek kings of Asia--Seleucia on the

Tigris--had by its favourable commercial position and its manufactures

risen to be the first mercantile city beyond the Roman bounds, with

more, it is alleged, than half a million of inhabitants. Its free

Hellenic organisation, on which beyond doubt its prosperity above all

depended, was not touched even by the Parthian rulers in their own

interest, and the city preserved not merely its town council of 300

elected members, but also the Greek language and Greek habits amidst

the non-Greek East. It is true that the Hellenes in these towns formed

only the dominant element; alongside of them lived numerous Syrians,

and, as a third constituent, there were associated with these the not

much less numerous Jews, so that the population of these Greek towns

of the Parthian empire, just like that of Alexandria, was composed of

three separate nationalities standing side by side. Between these, just

as in Alexandria, conflicts not seldom occurred, as _e.g._ at the time

of the reign of Gaius under the eyes of the Parthian government the

three nations came to blows, and ultimately the Jews were driven out of

the larger towns.

 

In so far the Parthian empire was the genuine counterpart to the Roman.

As in the one the Oriental viceroyship is an exceptional occurrence,

so in the other is the Greek city; the general Oriental aristocratic

character of the Parthian government is as little injuriously affected

by the Greek mercantile towns on the west coast as is the civic

organisation of the Roman state by the vassal kingdoms of Cappadocia

and Armenia. While in the state of the Caesars the Romano-Greek urban

commonwealth spreads more and more, and gradually becomes the general

form of administration, the foundation of towns--the true mark of

Helleno-Roman civilisation, which embraces the Greek mercantile cities

and the military colonies of Rome as well as the grand settlements

of Alexander and the Alexandrids--suddenly breaks off with the

emergence of the Parthian government in the East, and even the existing

Greek cities of the Parthian empire wane in the further course of

development. There, as here, the rule more and more prevails over the

exceptions.

 

[Sidenote: Religion.]

 

The religion of Iran with its worship--approximating to monotheism--of

the “highest of the gods, who has made heaven and earth and men

and for these everything good,” with its absence of images and its

spirituality, with its stern morality and truthfulness, with its

influence upon practical activity and energetic conduct of life,

laid hold of the minds of its confessors in quite another and deeper

way than the religions of the West ever could; and, while neither

Zeus nor Jupiter maintained their ground in presence of a developed

civilisation, the faith among the Parsees remained ever young till it

succumbed to another gospel--that of the confessors of Mohammed--or

at any rate retreated before it to India. It is not our task to set

forth how the old Mazda-faith, which the Achaemenids professed, and

the origin of which falls in prehistoric time, was related to that

which the sacred books of the Persians having their origin probably

under the later Achaemenids--the Avestâ--announce as the doctrine

of the wise Zarathustra; for the epoch, when the West is placed in

contact with the East, only the later form of religion comes under

consideration. Perhaps the Avestâ took first shape in the east of Iran,

in Bactria, but it spread thence to Media and from there it exercised

its influence on the West. But the national religion and the national

state were bound up with one another in Iran more closely than even

among the Celts. It has already been noticed that the legitimate

kingship in Iran was at the same time a religious institution, that

the supreme ruler of the land was conceived as specially called to the

government by the supreme deity of the land, and even in some measure

divine. On the coins of a national type there appears regularly the

great fire-altar, and hovering over it the winged god Ahura Mazda,

alongside of him in lesser size, and in an attitude of prayer, the

king, and over-against the king the imperial banner. In keeping with

this, the ascendency of the nobility in the Parthian empire goes hand

in hand with the privileged position of the clergy. The priests of

this religion, the Magians, appear already in the documents of the

Achaemenids and in the narratives of Herodotus, and have, probably

with right, always been regarded by the Occidentals as a national

Persian institution. The priesthood was hereditary, and at least in

Media, presumably also in other provinces, the collective body of the

priests was accounted, somewhat like the Levites in the later Israel,

as a separate portion of the people. Even under the rule of the Greeks

the old religion of the state and the national priesthood maintained

their place. When the first Seleucus wished to found the new capital

of his empire, the already mentioned Seleucia, he caused the Magians

to fix day and hour for it, and it was only after those Persians, not

very willingly, had cast the desired horoscope, that the king and his

army, in accordance with their indication, accomplished the solemn

laying of the foundation-stone of the new Greek city. Thus by his side

stood the priests of Ahura Mazda as counsellors, and they, not those

of the Hellenic Olympus, were interrogated in public affairs, so far

as these concerned divine things. As a matter of course this was all

the more the case with the Arsacids. We have already observed that in

the election of king, along with the council of the nobility, that of

the priests took part. King Tiridates of Armenia, of the house of the

Arsacids, came to Rome attended by a train of Magians, and travelled

and took food according to their directions, even in company with

the emperor Nero, who gladly allowed the foreign wise men to preach

their doctrine and to conjure spirits for him. From this certainly

it does not follow that the priestly order as such exercised an

essentially determining influence on the management of the state; but

the Mazda-faith was by no means re-established only by the Sassanids;

on the contrary, amidst all change of dynasties, and amidst all its own

development, the religion of the land of Iran remained in its outline

the same.

 

[Sidenote: Language.]

 

The language of the land in the Parthian empire was the native language

of Iran. There is no trace pointing to any foreign language having

ever been in public use under the Arsacids. On the contrary, it is the

Iranian land-dialect of Babylonia and the writing peculiar to this--as

both were developed before, and in, the Arsacid period under the

influence of the language and writing of the Aramaean neighbours--which

are covered by the appellation Pahlavi, _i.e._ Parthava, and thereby

designated as those of the empire of the Parthians. Even Greek did not

become an official language there. None of the rulers bear even as

a second name a Greek one; and, had the Arsacids made this language

their own, we should not have failed to find Greek inscriptions in

their empire. Certainly their coins show down to the time of Claudius

exclusively,[11] and predominantly even later, Greek legends, as they

show also no trace of the religion of the land, and in standard attach

themselves to the local coinage of the Roman east provinces, while

they retain the division of the year as well as the reckoning by years

just as these had been regulated under the Seleucids. But this must

rather be taken as meaning that the great-kings themselves did not

coin at all,[12] and these coins, which in fact served essentially for

intercourse with the western neighbours, were struck by the Greek towns

of the empire in the name of the sovereign. The designation of the king

on these coins as “friend of Greeks” (φιλέλλην), which already meets us

early,[13] and is constant from the time of Mithradates I., _i.e._ from

the extension of the state as far as the Tigris, has a meaning only if

it is the Parthian Greek city that is speaking on these coins. It may

be conjectured that a secondary position was conceded in public use to

the Greek language in the Parthian empire alongside of the Persian,

similar to that which it possessed in the Roman state by the side of

Latin. The gradual disappearance of Hellenism under the Parthian rule

may be clearly followed on these urban coins, as well in the emergence

of the native language alongside and instead of the Greek, as in the

debasement of language which becomes more and more prominent.[14]

 

[Sidenote: Extent of the Parthian empire.]

 

As to extent the kingdom of the Arsacids was far inferior, not merely

to the great state of the Achaemenids, but also to that of their

immediate predecessors, the state of the Seleucids. Of its original

territory they possessed only the larger eastern half; after the battle

with the Parthians, in which king Antiochus Sidetes, a contemporary of

the Gracchi, fell, the Syrian kings did not again seriously attempt to

assert their rule beyond the Euphrates; but the country on this side of

the Euphrates remained with the Occidentals.

 

[Sidenote: Arabia.]

 

Both coasts of the Persian Gulf, even the Arabian, were in possession

of the Parthians, and the navigation was thus completely in their

power; the rest of the Arabian peninsula did not obey either the Parthians or the Romans ruling over Egypt.