Hello I'm Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis.
I'm a curator of Middle Eastern coins at the British Museum
and welcome to my corner.
I became really interested in the Parthians because this is the period just after Alexander's conquest
of the ancient Near East. He conquered the Achaemenid Empire in 333 BC then for
about a hundred years his Macedonian generals ruled over the region.
From around 248 you have this sort of uprising of Iranian tribes in the
northeast and the formation of a new dynasty and this dynasty is called the
Parthian dynasty and they become for almost 500 years equals to the Roman Empire.
and also great opponents of the Romans.
Both Parthia and Rome were very interested to control the east west trade.
Parthia's geographical position was quite important.
It was placed between India and China in the east and Rome in
the West it, controlled the trade routes and had also access in the south to the Persian Gulf
So Rome wanted to conduct active trade
with the east and bypass the Parthians but the Parthian of course didn't want
to let this unique position go and this started the confrontation.
The reason behind it was basically commercial, economic, and then also political.
It is actually very similar to what happens today or what has happened today.
I mean, if you go back to the big first confrontation between
Parthia and Rome you find so many modern parallels. There is a battle which caused Rome quite a lot of grief
and humiliation and this was the Battle of Carrhae in 54-53 BC.
A Roman general, Crassus, decided against the Roman senate to take the army eastwards,
cross the river Euphrates, and confront the Parthian army.
Crassus was a very, very wealthy man who
wanted to make a name for himself he was really in competition with Caesar and
Pompey. So the Parthian king asked him 'what's actually behind your decision to
fight against us? Is it a decision taken by Rome? Which we can't ignore or is this
a personal decision? If it's the latter we can come to an amicable particularly
on the basis of your age.' Crassus was 60 years old, which didn't go down very well
at all with Crassus, it was quite humiliating and Crassus sent an envoy
back saying 'I will give you my answer when I reach Seleucia and Seleucia was
an important city in the Parthian Empire near modern Baghdad. The Parthian king,
Orodes, sent an envoy back saying, apparently he turned the palm of his
hand around and said 'before you reach Seleucia hair will grow in the palm of my hands.'
And of course Crassus never reached Seleucia, the Romans received a
humiliating defeat by the Parthians and they lost their standards and one of the
reasons why this happened was that the Parthians were very competent archers
and horsemen. We know of, for example, the Parthian shot. You sort of pretend that
you leaving the battleground, you gallop away and then you turn around on your
horse and you shoot.
So the Romans were defeated very very badly.
Crassus was killed in battle and, as I said, they lost also their standards.
Now, these standards were returned to Rome
in a very friendly manner by the Parthians in 18 BC when Augustus was the
emperor in Rome and once again it's quite fascinating to see how in ancient
times, like also in modern times, we see it again and again, a political defeat a
humiliating loss is turned into a great victory.
Augustus minted coins depicting the Parthians kneeling in front of him and
returning the lost standards. We know of various depictions of the Parthian in
Roman art always shown in a bearded scruffy way returning the
standards and one of the most well known examples is of course the breastplate of
Augustus on his statue from Prima Porta. Where Augustus is shown wearing this
cuirass and on the cuirass the Parthian, the bearded Parthian, is returning the Roman standard.
Rome was always keen to support rival kings to the Parthians
it's always embrace wholeheartedly puppet kings and when the time was right
for them, when internal problems escalated within the Parthian Empire
they let these puppet kings go into Parthian territories create havoc
and destabilized the situation. I personally see a huge huge parallel very
strong parallel to this day.
We are so indoctrinated in the West by sort of
the idea of Alexander, the might of Rome, and the influence of Hellenistic culture
that we really don't think critically about what is in the East I mean after
all the Parthians ruled for almost 500 years and they really were a threat to the Romans.
This is sort of ignored and I think really one should look at the
whole history of the ancient Near East with different eyes.
If I had written on my gravestone the person who drew attention to the Parthians and the
Sasanians as equals to Rome I would be very happy.
Thank you very much for listening to me. I hope that you'll also
become interested or have become interested in the Parthians and their importance.
So thank you again and please do subscribe to the YouTube channel.