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Like the Romans, the Parththeians originated on the outskirts of the Greek world. In their case, the grasslands beside the Caspian Sea. Their expansion, like the republics, was rapid. As the legions marched into Greece and Asia Minor, Parththeion horsemen overran the Iranian plateau in Mesopotamia. The eastward drive of the legions met the westward push of the Parththeians in the valley of the Euphrates. For the next three centuries, the Romans and Parththeians were uneasy neighbors. The triumvier crossesus launched the first Roman Parthion war only a few years after Pompy created the province of Syria. That campaign which culminated in the disastrous defeat at Karai launched a cycle of conflict that continued into the reign of Augustus.
There was peace then until the time of Nero when an Armenian succession crisis sparked an inconclusive war. Trajan briefly conquered all of Mesopotamia. Conflict became endemic in the half century between the reign of Marcus Aurelius and the rise of the Sassinids. In these final wars, the Romans usually had the upper hand, twice burning the Parthion capital at Tissifon. Then, and repeatedly in the preceding centuries, Partha seemed ripe for Roman conquest. The gods poets and penagerists proclaimed had granted Rome dominion over the whole world and for a series of Roman generals and emperors. The example of Alexander the Great lent a special
allure to Eastern adventures. The Roman Empire was larger and more populous than Partha. It had a professional army unlike the Parththeians who relied on levies. The emperors were usually more secure than the Parthion kings who had difficulty controlling their sons and subordinates. Yet despite these advantages, no emperor besides Trajan tried to conquer any substantial part of the Parthion Empire. The failure is made more striking by the fact that Parthion Mesopotamia was by far the most appealing region within striking distance of the legions that the Romans failed to annex.
Almost everywhere else, both in North Africa and continental Europe, the Roman frontier mapped fairly neatly onto ecological limits. Beyond those limits, in regions like northern Britain or Germania, emperors tended to campaign only for glory or temporary strategic advantage. Unlike northern Britain or Germania, Mesopotamia was populous, fertile, and studded with cities, including Salucia on the Tigris, nearly the size of Alexandria. There was no cultural barrier between it and Roman Syria. In both, the lingua frana was Aramaic and Greek was widely spoken. The cross frontier cultural links strengthened in late antiquity when both Syria and Mesopotamia became hotbeds of Christianity.
We'll discuss why the Romans never conquered Mesopotamia after a brief word about this video's sponsor. History isn't just written in books, it's also struck on coins. Take for example this drama issued by the Parthion King Freddy's Frees IV. The reverse shows the king with a bow, the Parthion national weapon, but the legend is in Greek, illustrating Partha's henistic origins. This coin and hundreds of others are available at Kinser Coins. From tetradrams of Alexander the Great to Dinari like this one of Antonus Pas, every ancient coin is a direct connection with the past. If you want to experience that connection and hold
history in the palm of your hand, visit kinserccoins.com and use the code tollenstone for a 10% discount on all purchases. Returning to our topic, Rome's inability or unwillingness to expand eastward is partially explicable in military terms. In stark contrast to the legions, Parthion armies consisted largely of cavalry. Noblemen galloped into battle on huge Nissan war horses mailed like medieval knights. Their lances, it was said, could transfix two men without shattering. Equally dangerous were the light cavalry armed with composite bows that outranged anything in the Roman arsenal. At the battle of Karai, Crosus and his
seven legions were encircled by Parthion horsemen who showered them with arrows. When Crosus detached a force to engage with the enemy, the Parththeians withdrew, lured the detachment forward, and destroyed it. The Parththeians subjected the Romans to another withering barrage the following day, forcing Crosus to surrender. The disaster at Karai, however, was remembered because it was exceptional. More often than not, Roman armies defeated their Parthion counterparts. In the light of that fact, it seems unlikely that purely tactical concerns prevented the Romans from conquering more of their eastern rivals territory.
Logistics raised more fundamental problems. For most of its 900 m length, the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire ran through inaccessible mountains and deserts. The only sections suitable for large-scale campaigning were Armenia and Upper Mesopotamia. Both were problematic. Lucullis' legions were caught by the snowstorms of the Armenian mountains. So, a generation later were those of Mark Anthony. During Nero's Parthion War, many soldiers lost fingers and toes to frostbite. It was comparatively easy for an army to march through Mesopotamia as long as it paralleled the Tigris or Euphrates. But away from the rivers irrigated flood plains, much of the region was waterless and barren.
Cross and his legions struggled over endless sand hills. A century and a half later, scarcity of water and fodder forced Trajan to raise his siege of Hatra. Both mountains and deserts, however, could be crossed by wellprovisioned Roman armies. Nero's commanders set up a supply line that began at Trapezus on the Black Sea, crossed the Pontic Alps, and followed the Araxis River into Armenia, a distance of well over 300 m. During the same war, Dimmiticious Corbulo led a 275 m forced march over a desolate plateau.
Trajan brought about 80,000 men, an army twice the size of Alexander, through Mesopotamia without suffering significant casualties. That most of Mesopotamia remained in Parthion hands was a historical accident in the sense that the Romans would probably have kept the region if Trajan had lived longer. But it also reflected the calculation made again and again by a series of emperors that the conquest of Mesopotamia, let alone the Parththeians eastern provinces was undesirable. In their wars with the Parththeians, the emperors sought quick victory, ideally seasoned with a goodly leaven of loot. Both sides seem to have expected that war would leave the balance of power basically unaltered with only a few
border cities changing hands. Even Trajan envisioned a limited conquest which would leave everything east of Mesopotamia under the control of a Parthion king allied to Rome. The Parthion Empire was simply too big to conquer. Even Alexander had struggled to subdue the vast and rugged Iranian plateau, and beyond the plateau stretched the steps of central Asia, open to the raids of nomads. The Romans, like the Ottomans a millennium and a half later, could have pushed their eastern frontier to the foothills of the Zagros mountains. Any campaign beyond that would have involved them in a world they were illequipped to
attack, let alone rule. The emperors seem to have understood this. Even in times of peace, it would have been foolhardy to strip the European frontiers and empty the treasury in pursuit of Alexander's dream. Fantasies of Eastern conquest, in short, faded in the harsh light of geopolitical realities. The existence of two empires in the Middle East came to seem embedded in the natural order of things. The two eyes of the world, as one Persian diplomat put it, until the final cataclysmic war that brought about the end of antiquity, it was taken for granted that the Roman Empire would always have an eastern neighbor.
Wait, before you go on to the next Tolten Stone video, I have a special announcement. Next spring, I'm leading a group tour to the Roman ruins of Spain. We'll see the great amphitheater at Italica, the birthplace of Trajan and Hadrien. We'll cross the longest Roman bridge in existence. Stand beneath the towering aqueduct at Segovia. Explore the ruins beneath the streets of Barcelona and much more. All in the company of yours truly and an experienced Spanish historian. To learn more, follow the link on screen and in the description. Thanks. Hope to see you in Seville. In the latest episode of Roman Review, my series exploring movies and shows set in the ancient world, I reviewed Montipython's Life of Brian. You can watch it along with all the earlier
episodes on the Tolten Stone Patreon. There's more great content on my other channels, Tolken Stone Footnotes and Cynic Roots to the Past, including a new episode of the long neglected Tolten Stone podcast. Enjoy and thanks for watching.
