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Atropatene, also known as Media Atropatene, was an ancient Iranian kingdom established in c. 323 BC by the Persian satrap Atropates. The kingdom, centered in present-day northern Iran, was ruled by Atropates' descendants until the early 1st-century AD, when the Parthian Arsacid dynasty supplanted them. It was conquered by the Sasanians in 226, and turned into a province governed by a marzban ("margrave"). Atropatene was the only Iranian region to remain under Zoroastrian authority from the Achaemenids to the Arab conquest without interruption, aside from being briefly ruled by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great.
Mithridates I, also known as Mithridates I the Great, was king of the Parthian Empire from 165 BC to 132 BC. During his reign, Parthia was transformed from a small kingdom into a major political power in the Ancient East as a result of his conquests. He first conquered Aria, Margiana and western Bactria from the Greco-Bactrians sometime in 163–155 BC, and then waged war with the Seleucid Empire, conquering Media and Atropatene in 148/7 BC. In 141 BC, he conquered Babylonia and held an official investiture ceremony in Seleucia. The kingdoms of Elymais and Characene shortly afterwards became Parthian vassals. In c. 140 BC, while Mithridates was fighting the nomadic Saka in the east, the Seleucid king Demetrius II Nicator attempted to regain the lost territories; initially successful, he was defeated and captured in 138 BC, and shortly afterwards sent to one of Mithridates I's palaces in Hyrcania. Mithridates I then punished Elymais for aiding Demetrius, and made Persis a Parthian vassal.
Phraates III, was King of Kings of the Parthian Empire from 69 BC to 57 BC. He was the son and successor of Sinatruces.
Phraates II was king of the Parthian Empire from 132 BC to 127 BC. He was the son and successor of Mithridates I.
Phraates I was king of the Arsacid dynasty from 170/168 BC to 165/64 BC. He subdued the Mardians, conquered their territory in the Alborz mountains, and reclaimed Hyrcania from the Seleucid Empire. He died in 165/64 BC, and was succeeded by his brother Mithridates I, whom he had appointed his heir.
Phraates IV was King of Kings of the Parthian Empire from 37 to 2 BC. He was the son and successor of Orodes II, and was given the throne after the death of his brother Pacorus I. Phraates IV soon murdered all his brothers, and also possibly his father. His actions alienated the Armenians and also some of his nobles, including the distinguished Monaeses, who fled to the Roman triumvir Mark Antony, but shortly returned and reconciled with Phraates IV.
Phraates V, also known by the diminutive version of his name, Phraataces, was the King of Kings of the Parthian Empire from 2 BC to 4 AD. He was the younger son of Phraates IV and Musa, who ruled with him.
"'Phraates'" is the Greek transliteration of Parthian Farhad. Five kings of Parthian Empire were named Phraates (Ancient Greek: Φραάτης, Parthian: Frahāt, Persian: Farhad
Orodes II, was King of Kings of the Parthian Empire from 57 BC to 37 BC. He was a son of Phraates III, whom he murdered in 57 BC, assisted by his elder brother Mithridates IV. The two brothers quickly fell out and entered into a dynastic struggle, in which Orodes was triumphant.
Mithridates IV was a Parthian king from to 57 to 54 BC. He was the son and successor of Phraates III. Mithridates IV's reign was marked by a dynastic struggle with his younger brother, Orodes II, who eventually emerged victorious and had Mithridates IV executed, thus succeeding him.
Sinatruces was king of the Parthian Empire from c. 75 BC to c. 69 BC. Some sources indicate that he could have been a son of the Parthian ruler Mithridates I, and a half-brother of Phraates II. David Sellwood, historian, designates Sinatruces as a probably younger brother of Mithridates I. Sinatruces was succeeded by his son Phraates III.
Artabanus I, incorrectly known in older scholarship as Artabanus II, was king of the Parthian Empire, ruling briefly from c. 127 to 124/3 BC. His short reign ended abruptly when he died during a battle against the Yuezhi in the east. He was succeeded by his son Mithridates II.
Artabanus II, incorrectly known in older scholarship as Artabanus III, was King of Kings of the Parthian Empire from 12 to 38/41 AD, with a one-year interruption. He was the nephew and successor of Vonones I. His father has been variously identified as a Dahae or Atropatid prince, whilst his mother was a daughter of the Parthian King of Kings Phraates IV.
Vonones I was an Arsacid prince, who ruled as King of Kings of Parthian Empire from 8 to 12, and subsequently as king of Armenia from 12 to 18. He was the eldest son of Phraates IV and was sent to Rome as a hostage in 10/9 BC in order to prevent conflict over the succession of Phraates IV's youngest son, Phraataces.
Vonones II was a Parthian prince who ruled as king of Media Atropatene and briefly as king of the Parthian Empire.
Musa, also known as Thea Musa, was a ruling queen of the Parthian Empire from 2 BC to 4 AD. Originally an Italian slave-girl, she was given as a gift to the Parthian monarch Phraates IV by the Roman Emperor Augustus. She quickly became queen and a favourite of Phraates IV, giving birth to Phraataces. In 2 BC, she had Phraates IV poisoned and made herself, along with Phraates V, the co-rulers of the empire. Their reign was short-lived; they were forced to flee to Rome after being deposed by the Parthian nobility, who crowned Orodes III as king.
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.
The Parthian Empire, also known as the Arsacid Empire, was a major Iranian political and cultural power centered 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.
Parthia is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Medes during the 7th century BC, was incorporated into the subsequent Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC, and formed part of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire after the 4th-century BC conquests of Alexander the Great. The region later served as the political and cultural base of the Eastern Iranian Parni people and Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire. The Sasanian Empire, the last state of pre-Islamic Iran, also held the region and maintained the seven Parthian clans as part of their feudal aristocracy.
Phraates was a Parthian prince, who was one of the eldest sons of Phraates IV.
References
- ↑ "PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN iv. PARTHIAN PERIOD – Encyclopaedia Iranica". www.iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
- ↑ Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik. D. N. MacKenzie, “Some Names from Nisa,” in Peredneaziatskiĭ sbornik IV: Drevnyaya isrednevekovaya istoriya i filologiya stran perednego i srednego vostoka, Moscow, 1986, pp. 105–15 (reprinted in Idem, Iranica diversa, ed. C. G. Cereti and L. Paul, Rome, 1999, pp. 209–15).