Romans in Persia is related to the brief invasion and occupation of western and central areas of Parthia (modern-day Iran) by the Romans during their empire. Emperor Trajan was even temporarily able to nominate a king of western parts of Parthia, Parthamaspates, as ruler of a Roman "client state" in Parthia.
The Romans, having expanded into the eastern Mediterranean, came in contact with their historical rivals in the Middle East: the Parthians and Persians, whose respective empires occupied modern Iran and surrounding areas. The Iranian empires that faced the Romans had different names, related to the origin of the dynasties in control of their empires in different historical periods: first were the Medians (Media Atropatene), then Parthians and finally Sassanians.
In 64 BC Pompey conquered the remaining Seleucid territories in Syria, extinguishing their state and advancing the Roman eastern frontier to the Euphrates, where Romans met for the first time the territory of the Parthians.[1]
Mark Antony, in his quest to avenge the battle of Carrhae defeat,[2] conquered in 33 BC some areas of Atropatene (northern Iran) and Armenia but soon lost it: that was the first time that Romans occupied a Persian territory, even if temporarily.[3]
Map showing Media Atropatene inside the Roman Empire, as part of Assyria province
Furthermore, probably in 20 BC, Augustus is said to have nominated Ariobarzanes II, the son of Artavasdes, to be king of Media Atropatene,[4] creating a semi-authonomous "vassal state" of Rome in what is now northwestern Iran. But soon, around 19 AD, The Parthians took again full control of Atropatene.
Although warfare between the Romans and the Parthians/Sassanids lasted for seven centuries, the frontier remained largely stable in those centuries. A game of tug of war ensued: towns, fortifications, and provinces were continuously sacked, captured, destroyed, and traded. The line of stalemate shifted in the 2nd century AD with Trajan: it had run along the northern Euphrates until then. The new line ran northeast, across Mesopotamia to the northern Tigris. There were also several substantial shifts further north, in Armenia and the Caucasus.
A new series of wars began in the 2nd century AD, during which the Romans consistently held the upper hand over Parthia. In 113 AD the Roman Emperor Trajan decided that the moment was ripe to resolve the "eastern question" once and for all time by the decisive defeat of Parthia and the annexation of Armenia: his conquests mark a deliberate change of the Roman Policy towards Parthia, and a shift of emphasis in the "grand strategy" of the empire.[5]
Finally, one characteristic of the Roman presence in Persia is that Roman emperors dreamed of conquering all Persia from Trajan to Galerius, while Parthian/Sassanian kings never tried to conquer Rome, Italy or southeastern Europe according to historian Theodor Mommsen.
Roman Parthia
Romans were able to conquer the westernmost part of Parthia under emperor Trajan.
Indeed, in 113 AD Trajan invaded Parthia, marching first on Armenia. In 114 AD Trajan annexed Armenia to the Roman empire, after defeating and killing Parthamasiris, relative of Osroes I of Parthia. Then he turned south into Parthia itself, taking the cities of Babylon, Seleucia and finally the capital of Ctesiphon in 116 AD.
He deposed Osroes I and put his own puppet ruler Parthamaspates on the throne. In Mesopotamia Osroes' brother Mithridates IV and his son Sanatruces II took the diadem and fought against the Romans, but Trajan marched southward to the Persian Gulf, defeated them, and declared Mesopotamia a new province of the empire. In the process, he also captured the great city of Susa in Khuzestan.
Those months of 116 and 117 saw western Parthia as a client state of the Romans. Trajan originally planned to annex Parthia as part of the Roman Empire, but ultimately decided instead to place Parthamaspates on his father's throne as a Roman client, doing so in 116.
Trajan then proceeded into Mesopotamia with eleven Legions, taking the city of Nisibis and Batnae in September 115 AD. For these early victories, he was granted the title Parthicus by the Senate, which he was hesitant to accept. Continuing his march, Trajan crossed the Tigris River using boats and reached the city of Babylon, before returning to Antioch to pass the winter. In the following year, Trajan returned to Mesopotamia to continue his conquest. He crossed the Tigris, reaffirmed his conquest of Adiabene and proceeded to Ctesiphon, the most important capital of the Parthian Empire. The Parthian King fled and the city fell without much of a siege. At that point, Trajan formally incorporated the title Parthicus into his name to his victory, along with the phrase Parthia Capta (Parthia seized) on his coins. During all of this campaign, he had been largely unopposed on the field by the Parthians, who had been severely weakened in a civil war that was still ongoing during Trajan’s campaign. No major pitched battles were recorded and it appears that most of the campaign had consisted of sieges. Trajan himself was disappointed, for he had not won a great victory on the field against the “King of Kings”, as Alexander the Great had centuries before him. Upon reaching the Persian Gulf, it is said that he lamented as he saw a ship leaving for India, where he could not bring his conquest to. In southern Mesopotamia, Trajan learned that the cities he conquered in the north were revolting. He then dispatched his generals who recaptured the region. Nisibis was recaptured and Edessa was sacked. Then, Trajan received word that a Parthian general Parthamastaphes, nephew of the King, was arriving with an army. Interestingly, no battle was fought. Instead, Trajan placed Parthamastaphes on the throne of Ctesiphon as puppet Trajan’s puppet king. However, Trajan’s campaign turned for the worse. Armenia revolted from Roman rule and Trajan was forced to concede much of his Armenian conquests. In Mesopotamia, the city of Hatra resisted Trajan’s siege. Unable to take the city and short of supplies and campaign resources, Trajan’s campaign came to a close. The emperor withdrew his men from southern Mesopotamia to consolidate his gains in the north. Trajan planned to embark on another campaign, but was struck by illness. Trajan died in 117 AD, after returning home.[6]
Trajan created even the province of Assyria, whose eastern border were never well defined by historians: it is possible that included northwestern Elam, a semi-autonomous Persian province (now Īlām Province of Iran) that welcomed his conquest of Mesopotamia.
Following the death of Trajan and Roman withdrawal from the area, Osroes easily defeated Parthamaspates and reclaimed the Persian throne. Hadrian acknowledged this fait accompli, recognized Osroes, Parthamaspates king of Osroene, and returned Osroes' daughter who had been taken prisoner by Trajan (as a warranty to control his client state).
Even if there were further attacks from Roman emperors against the Parthian and later Sassanid empire (Romans even suffered humiliating defeats, like with emperor Valerian), no huge territory of actual Iran was never occupied again by Roman legions: The Romans stopped always after conquering Ctesiphon and soon returned behind their "limes siriacus" (only in 298 AD western Atropene up to lake Urmia was occupied by Romans for half a century).
Indeed, this city (capital of the Parthian and Sassanian empire, but not located in Iran) was captured by Rome five times in its history - three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116 AD, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon the next year as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius captured Ctesiphon in 164 AD during another Parthian war, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In 197 AD, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery. Late in the 3rd century, after the Parthians had been supplanted by the Sassanids, the city again became a source of conflict with Rome. In 283 AD, emperor Carus sacked the city uncontested during a period of civil upheaval. In 295 AD, emperor Diocletianus sent Galerius but was defeated outside the city. However, he returned a year later with a vengeance and won a victory which ended in the fifth and final capture of the city by the Romans in 299 AD.
Map showing the Roman conquests in western Persia up to lake Urmia, in the first decades of the 4th century (light pink).
Furthermore, in 297 AD Galerius marched into eastern Armenia and crushed there a Persian force, capturing an enormous amount of booty and even the harem and family of the Sassanian King Narseh. Moving later into Mesopotamia, Galerius' advance had the Persian defence collapsing before him and so he conquered the Persian capital Ctesiphon. Badly mauled, the Persians sued for peace. In AD 298 the province of Mesopotamia, together with even some territory from across the river Tigris up to the lacus Matianus (now called Lake Urmia in western Iran), was restored to Rome for half a century with an important Treaty.[7]
Five provinces beyond the Tigris were to be ceded to the Romans. One writer gives these provinces as Intilene, Sophene, Arzanene, Carduene, and Zabdicene; while another as Arzanene, Moxoene, Zabdicene, Rehimene, and Corduene.
The Roman vassal "Kingdom of Armenia" was to be extended up to the fortress of Zintha, in Media Atropatene.
The extension of Armenia to the fortress of Zintha, in Media, seems to have imported much more than would at first sight appear from the words. Gibbon interprets it as implying the cession of all Media Atropatene, which certainly appears a little later to be in the possession of the Armenian monarch, Tiridates. A large addition to the Armenian territory out of the Median is doubtless intended; but it is quite impossible to determine definitely the extent or exact character of the cession....[8]
Galerius (who occupied western Persia up to lake Matianus) wanted to conquest all Persia after his victory against Sassanian king Narseh, but Diocletianus preferred to have a Treaty and did the last "Parade" in Rome with a significant victory in the history of the Roman Empire.
Romans withdrew from the homeland territory of Persia with the 363 AD defeat of Jovian, and only Byzantine emperor Heraclius was able to return and conquer Gazaca (the capital of Atropatene) during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, just a few years before the Arab conquest of Sassanian Persia.[9]
There are few Roman ruins in Persia, but one seems to be related to curious war events: the Valerian Bridge.
This Valerian Bridge (Band-e Kaisar in Persian, literally "bridge of Caesar") is named after the Roman emperor Valerian (253–260AD) who was captured with many legionaries by the Sassanid ruler Shapur I after having been defeated in the Battle of Edessa (260). This vast labour force, which may have numbered up to 50,000 men and included the Roman engineering corps, was deported and was probably employed by the victors for construction work in Shushtar, an important agricultural center in south-western Iran.[10] To service its large stretches of arable land, altogether some 150,000 hectares, the Romans set out to construct three structures: a canal called Ab-i Gargar, and the two dams of Band-e Kaisar and Band-e Mizan which directed the water flow of the Karun river into the artificial watercourse.[11] Perhaps the bridge was built by soldiers of the Sixth legion Ferrata, because this unit disappears from sources after Valerian's defeat.[12]
The story of the Valerian Bridge was written by the Muslim historians Tabari and Masudi in the 9th and 10thcenturies.[13] Although their novel-like narrative cannot be ignored, the historical presence of the Romans is corroborated by modern local names, such as "Roumischgan" for a nearby village, and a Lurs tribe by the name of "Rumian".[14] Moreover, local tradition ascribes to Roman settlers the origin of a number of trades, like the local production of brocade, and several popular customs.
↑ Lightfoot (1990), 115: "Trajan succeeded in acquiring territory in these lands with a view to annexation, something which had not seriously been attempted before [...] Although Hadrian abandoned all of Trajan's conquests [...] the trend was not to be reversed. Further wars of annexation followed under Lucius Verus and Septimius Severus."; Sicker (2000), 167-168
↑ Lightfoot, J. Trajan’s Parthian war and the Fourth-Century Perspective. The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol 80, (1990) pp. 115-125
Angeli Bertinelli, Maria. Roma e l'Oriente: strategia, economia, società e cultura nelle relazioni politiche fra Roma, la Giudea e l'Iran. L'Erma di Bretschneider editore. Roma, 1979
Arborio Mella, Federico. L'impero persiano. Da Ciro il grande alla conquista araba. Mursia editore. Milano, 1980
Dignas, Beate and Winter, Engelbert. Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 2004 ISBN978-0-521-84925-8
Lepper, F.A. Trajan's Parthian War. London: Oxford University Press, 1948.
Luttvak, Edward N. The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, ISBN0-8018-2158-4
The 110s decade ran from January 1, 110, to December 31, 119.
Year 116 (CXVI) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Lamia and Vetus. The denomination 116 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Ctesiphon was an ancient city, located on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about 35 kilometres (22 mi) southeast of present-day Baghdad. Ctesiphon served as a royal capital of the empires in the Parthian and Sasanian eras for over eight hundred years. Ctesiphon was capital of the Sasanian Empire from 226–637 until the Muslim conquest of Persia in 651 AD.
Parthamaspates was a Parthian prince who ruled as a Roman client king in Mesopotamia, and later of Osroene during the early second century AD. He was the son of the Parthian emperor Osroes I.
Vologases III was king of the Parthian Empire from 110 to 147. He was the son and successor of Pacorus II.
Osroes I was a Parthian contender, who ruled the western portion of the Parthian Empire from 109 to 129, with a one-year interruption. For most of his reign he contended with the rival king Vologases III who was based in the eastern provinces. In 116, Osroes I was briefly ousted from his throne at Ctesiphon during an invasion by Roman emperor Trajan, who installed Osroes' son, Parthamaspates. After Trajan's death the following year, Osroes I's rule was reinstated by the Parthian nobility. In 129, he was removed from power by Vologases III.
Seleucia, also known as Seleucia-on-Tigris or Seleucia on the Tigris, was a major Mesopotamian city, located on the west bank of the Tigris River within the present-day Baghdad Governorate in Iraq. It was founded around 305 BC by Seleucus I Nicator as the first capital of the Seleucid Empire, and remained an important center of trade and Hellenistic culture after the imperial capital relocated to Antioch. The city continued to flourish under Parthian rule beginning in 141 BC; ancient texts claim that it reached a population of 600,000. Seleucia was destroyed in 165 AD by Roman general Avidius Cassius and gradually faded into obscurity in the subsequent centuries. The site was rediscovered in the 1920s by archaeologists.
Relations between the Roman and Iranian states were established c. 92 BC. It was in 69 BC that the two states clashed for the first time; the political rivalry between the two empires would dominate much of Western Asia and Europe until 628. Initially commencing as a rivalry between the Parthians and Rome, from the 3rd to mid-7th centuries the Roman Empire and its rival Sassanid Persia were recognized as two of the leading powers in the world.
Sanatruces II of Parthia, was a pretender to the throne of the Parthian Empire during the disputed reign of his uncle Osroes I. He is only known from the writings of the Byzantine historian John Malalas (Chronographia), who is often not very reliable. The person of this ruler and the related events remain therefore enigmatic.
The Roman–Persian Wars, also known as the Roman–Iranian Wars, were a series of conflicts between states of the Greco-Roman world and two successive Iranian empires: the Parthian and the Sasanian. Battles between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic began in 54 BC; wars began under the late Republic, and continued through the Roman and Sasanian empires. A plethora of vassal kingdoms and allied nomadic nations in the form of buffer states and proxies also played a role. The wars were ended by the early Muslim conquests, which led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire and huge territorial losses for the Byzantine Empire, shortly after the end of the last war between them.
Assyria was a short-lived Roman province in Mesopotamia that was created by Trajan in 116 during his campaign against the Parthian Empire. After Trajan's death, the newly proclaimed emperor Hadrian ordered the evacuation of Assyria in 118.
The Arsacid dynasty, called the Arshakuni in Armenian, ruled the Kingdom of Armenia from 12 to 428. The dynasty was a branch of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia. Arsacid kings reigned intermittently throughout the chaotic years following the fall of the Artaxiad dynasty until 62 when Tiridates I, brother of the Parthian king Vologases I, secured Arsacid rule in Armenia as a client king of Rome. However, he did not succeed in establishing his line on the throne, and various princes of different Arsacid lineages ruled until the accession of Vologases II, who succeeded in establishing his own line on the Armenian throne, which ruled the kingdom until its abolishment by the Sasanian Empire in 428.
The Parthian Empire, also known as the Arsacid Empire, was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I, who led the Parni tribe in conquering the region of Parthia in Iran's northeast, then a satrapy (province) under Andragoras, who was rebelling against the Seleucid Empire. Mithridates I (r. c. 171–132 BC) greatly expanded the empire by seizing Media and Mesopotamia from the Seleucids. At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to present-day Afghanistan and western Pakistan. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han dynasty of China, became a center of trade and commerce.
The Sasanian Empire, officially known as Eranshahr was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th–8th centuries AD. Named after the House of Sasan, it endured for over four centuries, from 224 to 651 AD, making it the longest-lived Persian imperial dynasty. The Sasanian Empire succeeded the Parthian Empire, and re-established the Persians as a major power in late antiquity alongside its neighbouring arch-rival, the Roman Empire.
Mesopotamia was the name of a Roman province, initially a short-lived creation of the Roman emperor Trajan in 116–117 and then re-established by Emperor Septimius Severus in c. 198. Control of the province was subsequently fought over between the Roman and the Sassanid empires until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century.
Roman Armenia refers to the rule of parts of Greater Armenia by the Roman Empire from the 1st century AD to the end of Late Antiquity. While Armenia Minor had become a client state until it was incorporated into the Roman Empire proper during the 1st century AD, Greater Armenia remained an independent kingdom under the Arsacid dynasty. Throughout this period, Armenia remained a bone of contention between Rome and the Parthian Empire, as well as the Sasanian Empire that succeeded the latter, and the casus belli for several of the Roman–Persian Wars. Only in 114 would Emperor Trajan conquer and incorporate it as a short-lived Roman province.
The Roman–Parthian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. It was the first series of conflicts in what would be 682 years of Roman–Persian Wars.
The Sassanid Empire or Sassanian Dynasty is the name used for the Persian dynasty which lasted from 224 to 651 AD.
Trajan's Parthian campaign was engaged by Roman Emperor Trajan in 115 against the Parthian Empire in Mesopotamia. The war was initially successful for the Romans, but a series of setbacks, including wide-scale rebellions in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa and Trajan's death in 117, ended in a Roman withdrawal.
Persian war of succession may refer to:
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