Demetrius II, called Nicator, was one of the sons of Demetrius I Soter. His mother may have been Laodice V, as was the case with his brother Antiochus VII Sidetes. Demetrius ruled the Seleucid Empire for two periods, separated by a number of years of captivity in Hyrcania in Parthia, first from September 145 BC to July/August 138 BC, and again from 129 BC until his death in 125 BC. His brother Antiochus VII ruled the Seleucid Empire in the interim between his two reigns.
Gaius Caesar was the grandson and heir to the throne of Roman emperor Augustus, alongside his younger brother Lucius Caesar. Although he was born to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, Augustus' only daughter, Gaius and his younger brother, Lucius Caesar, were raised by their grandfather as his adopted sons and joint-heirs to the empire. He would experience an accelerated political career befitting a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, with the Roman Senate allowing him to advance his career without first holding a quaestorship or praetorship, offices that ordinary senators were required to hold as part of the cursus honorum.
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.
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 was a Dahae 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 then 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.
Tiridates or Teridates or Tirdad or تیرداد Parthian:𐭕𐭉𐭓𐭉𐭃𐭕 (Tīridāt) is a Persian name, given by Arrian in his Parthica to the brother of Arsaces I, the founder of the Parthian kingdom, whom he is said to have succeeded around 246 BC. But Arrian's account seems to be quite unhistorical and modern historians believe that the character of Tiridates is fictional, and that Arsaces continued to rule Parthia until 217 BC.
Priapatius, was the Arsacid king of Parthia from 191 BC to 176 BC. He was the cousin and successor of Arsaces II. Like many Arsacid monarchs, his reign is sparsely known. His coinage indicates that he managed to rid himself of the influence of the Seleucid Empire. He was succeeded by his son Phraates I.
Tiridates III of Parthia, ruled the Parthian Empire briefly in 35–36. He was the grandson of Phraates IV. He was sent to Rome as a hostage and was educated there.
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.
Isidore of Charax was a Greco-Roman geographer of the 1st century BC and 1st century AD, a citizen of the Parthian Empire, about whom nothing is known but his name and that he wrote at least one work.
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 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 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.
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.
Antony's Parthian War was a military campaign by Mark Antony, the eastern triumvir of the Roman Republic, against the Parthian Empire under Phraates IV.
