For much of its history, the Roman Empire didn’t really have many rivals. Though there were great empires like Han China far away, they were too distant to be anything but a rumor to the Romans. There was only one major kingdom bordering Roman lands, only one possible challenger to Rome’s power: the Parthian Empire.
Between the 200s BCE and the 200s CE, the Parthians ruled roughly the same territorial unit — Mesopotamia, modern-day Iran, parts of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan — as other great empires before and after. The Achaemenid, or Persian, Empire, Alexander the Great’s empire, and, later, the Sassanid Empire, all oversaw the same lands.
We don’t have many Parthian sources about their own history. There seems to have been no independent tradition of recording history there, so all we have are governmental and economic records. These tell us something about who held power and who traded with whom, but they don’t really give us much narrative or atmosphere to hang onto. Most of what we know about the Parthians comes from the Romans, who held an uneasy on-and-off rivalry with them. We even use the Romans’ name for them — Persian sources refer to the kingdom as Parthava or Pahlaw.
Most of the time, the two empires were at peace; it helped that a few border kingdoms served as buffers between them. But there were occasionally fierce wars between the two powers, most notably when the politician Crassus tried to invade Parthia to boost his profile. It was a terrible blunder; he (along with much of his army) was killed, and, if the sources are to be believed, the Parthians severed his head and poured molten gold down his throat, as in this 1781 Dutch illustration:
It’s easy to see the Parthians only through the eyes of the Romans — as an exotic, barbaric rival on the fringes of civilized Rome. But we should try to understand them on their own terms, which means looking closely at what they left behind.
One of the things that’s most interesting about Parthia is its position as a crossroads of cultures. Parthia was in contact with the two great empires at either end of Eurasia, Rome in the west and China in the east, and served as a conduit for trade along what later came to be called the Silk Road. This means that Parthian culture was incredibly complex. Powerful influences came in from Rome, India, and China on the empire’s fringes, and the Parthians ruled over a panoply of peoples: Greeks, Mesopotamians, Persians, nomadic tribes, and more.
So, in Parthia, we see elements of ancient Mesopotamian culture like this relief of the god Nergal. Nergal, a god of war and death, was worshipped for thousands of years in the region. He’s still showing up in the first couple of centuries CE in Parthia, on this relief from Hatra, a city in northern Iraq that became an important center of trade and culture under the Parthians:
Though Nergal was an ancient god, Greek influence in the region had introduced a new god, Heracles, to the locals. Over time, Nergal and Heracles came to be associated with one another; their symbols and inscriptions are often combined. Imagery associated with Heracles — most famously a club and a lion skin — showed up all over the place during the Parthian period in Hatra. Here’s a statue from the first or second century:
And another from the third century:
Hatra boasted all sorts of remarkable statues, each representing the collision of cultures that took place there. We have this statue of a man wearing armor that looks an awful lot like Roman military garb. On his breastplate is Shamash, a Mesopotamian sun deity. But at his feet, we see Tyche, the Greek goddess of luck:
I find this young soldier — also found at Hatra — quite striking, with his distinctive armor, bushy hair, and robust mustache:
The Parthians were well-known for their horsemanship, having descended from nomadic tribes on the central Asian steppe. The Romans frequently remarked (and complained) that they relied on mounted archers and heavily armored cavalry called cataphracts. What we now call a “parting shot” comes from the phrase “Parthian shot” — when the mounted archers would fire arrows back over their shoulders while moving away from their enemies. Roman commanders, dependent on plodding infantry, found this incredibly frustrating and somewhat dishonorable.
This silver bowl, found in Pakistan, illustrates the Parthian shot, although it’s deployed here against anthropomorphic lions:
Horses show up all over the place in Parthian art, as symbols of trade, military prowess, and wealth. I quite like this knife handle from modern-day Iran, which shows an intense-looking horse:
Camels were an important part of Parthian travel and trade networks, so they show up in a number of everyday objects, like this vessel:
This relief from Palmyra shows traders in Parthian dress riding horses and camels in a trade caravan:
The Parthians seemed to love making little reclining figures. Again, these are an example of cultural blending in the empire. Greeks often made similar figurines, so perhaps this is where the Parthians got the idea. The trope shows up again and again, for example in this image of a man in patterned trousers on a patterned couch:
Though Greek reclining figures were usually male, the Parthians also made a lot of female figures, almost always nude, that show the influence of Greek sculptural techniques:
This one, with little stones for eyes, is either haunting or charming, depending on your perspective:
The Parthians became wealthy from all that trade. Archaeologists have found exquisite jewelry that demonstrated the prosperity of Parthian elites. They made beautiful earrings, often made to resemble foods that represented luxury, like grapes:
Or pomegranates, which represented fertility:
I also really like this ring with an engraving of a peacock:
While we may never have access to the Parthians’ own histories, we can at least get a sense of their material world. The Parthians ruled over very ancient lands — the places where human civilization first arose — and incorporated ancient ideas with new techniques. Parthia was full of skilled artists who used these techniques to worship their gods and beautify their surroundings. They had access to a wide variety of cultural influences, combining those influences to create new styles of art.
Parthia was a rich and complex place, and it’s a shame that we don’t understand more about it. It deserves to be seen as more than a foil for the Romans.
This newsletter is free to all, but I count on the kindness of readers to keep it going. If you enjoyed reading this week’s edition, there are three ways to support my work:
You can subscribe as a free or paying member:
You can share the newsletter with others:
You can “buy me a coffee” by sending me a one-time or recurring payment:
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you again next week!
Really interesting. I’m another who wasn’t at all familiar with the Parthians. What amazing art-- the confluence of so many diverse influences made it so rich.
Thank you, fascinating stuff. I had never heard of the Parthians, although I consider myself fairly well educated... my bad!