Mithridates the Great Read Free Page A

the Achaemenid Persians who had once ruled all of the region and who had twice invaded the G reek mainland. They took their name from the province of Parthava, their homeland just southwest of the Caspian Sea, and called themselves Parthians. They fought with a mixture of light, highly–mobile bowmen and heavily armoured cavalry. Like the Romans who attempted to defeat them in lateryears, the Seleucid phalanx found that this mixed ability to strike from a distance with missile weapons before getting up close and personal with lancers made the Parthians formidable foes on their home ground.
    The Seleucid yoke was thrown off even before the coming of the Romans, but after Magnesia there was little to limit the Parthian state’s expansion. Parthia sat astride the ‘Silk Road’; a trade route that reached across the Mediterranean and central Asia to China and even to the spice islands beyond. It has been speculated that the chaos in Syria and Judaea diverted the flow of trade from the orient so that it now ran northwest through Armenia to the Black Sea ports, and this was one of the sources of the unexpected prosperity of both Armenia and Pontus in this period. (And the survival of the trade route explains how the Roman elite could obtain luxuries such as silk underwear, which their recent conquests now allowed them to afford.)
    Trade did not harm the Parthians either. It helped to fund an army which defeated the Seleucid army of Demetrias II in 139 BC, and took the king himself prisoner. The leader of the Parthians at this time was Mithridates I. The name ‘Mithridates’ means ‘given by Mithras’, Mithras being an Indo–European god who, somewhat ironically, became a favourite of the Roman legions in later years.
    This Mithridates was no relation of Mithridates of Pontus, nor indeed of the various other royal Mithridati who were about at this time. Fortunately, even the kings themselves realized that to avert an identity crisis caused by too many like–named monarchs some further identifying tag was required. C onsequently each king chose for himself a fine, upstanding quality with which he wanted to be associated. The Parthian Mithridates called himself Mithridates Philhellene in order to soothe the fears of the G reeks who had a valuable economic role in the cities which he conquered. Under Mithridates Philhellene, Parthia conquered Babylonia in 144 BC, and the ancient empire of the Medes and Persians within the following decade.
    The Seleucid king, Demetrias II, was eventually released by the Parthians in 129 BC, and to show that there were no hard feelings, he married the Parthian king’s daughter – a match that symbolized to those few who still needed convincing that Parthia was now a fully–fledged regional superpower.
    Between Parthia and Asia Minor lay the mountain kingdom of Armenia. Originally a part of the empire of Alexander the Great, Armenia enjoyed a brief independence before it was conquered by the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The kingdom, which legend claimed had long been ruled by the Orontid dynasty, was then governed directly by satraps. Access to the kingdom forParthian armies was restricted to the defensible choke points of the city of Sophene and the crossings of the upper Euphrates. Armenia was more accessible from the west, so the satraps maintained their loyalty for as long as Selucia remained a threat. With the weakening of Seleucid rule after Magnesia, the Armenian satraps unilaterally declared independence, secure in the knowledge that their superb cavalry was a match for the horsemen of Parthia, who were in any case more at home on the lowland plains. Armenia at this point was formed from two small kingdoms, respectively west and east of the Euphrates. The western kingdom was known as Lesser Armenia and the former satrap took the name of King Zariadris. The eastern kingdom was called Greater Armenia and came to be ruled by Zariadris’ son Artaxias. It was Artaxias who rebuilt the