Parthia in 218 B.C.

Parthia — 218 BC · The Young Kingdom of the Arsacids.

Parthia — the young kingdom of the Arsacids, lately won by the spear on the north-eastern edge of the Iranian lands. Its kings are no old Persian house but the chiefs of the Parni, a clan of the Dahae who rode out of the steppe beyond the Caspian; their founder Arsaces tore the satrapy of Parthia from the failing Seleucid grip about forty years ago and seized neighbouring Hyrcania beside it. Every king of the line takes the name Arsaces, and the realm they rule is still small — a country of horse-archers and pasture-lands strung along the caravan roads, pressed between the recovering power of Antiochus III to the west and the Greek kingdom of Bactria to the east. In 218 BC it watches the great king in the west with care, knowing that one day he will turn his armies toward the upper satrapies and demand the old obedience back.

Parthia is a kingdom newly made and not yet sure of itself. A single lifetime ago this was a Seleucid satrapy; then the satrap Andragoras rose in revolt, and into that confusion rode Arsaces and his Parni, who killed Andragoras, took the land, and made themselves kings of it. Hyrcania, the rich province under the Caspian, fell to them next. So in 218 BC the house of Arsaces holds a long northern strip of the Iranian plateau — Parthyene the heartland and Varkana beside the sea — a realm of grazing herds, walled caravan towns and tireless mounted bowmen. But it is a realm caught in a vice. To west and south lies the Seleucid empire, where Antiochus III is putting down rebels and rebuilding his forefathers’ power; to the east the Greeks of Bactria hold their own kingdom. The Arsacids keep their crown for now only because the great king’s hands are full elsewhere — and they know it cannot last.