Rome and Parthia : at war and peace : Romano-Parthian relations and trade from Vespasian to Caracalla

Abstract

Few rivalries in the ancient world match that of the Romans and Parthians in scope and duration. For almost three centuries their two empires vied for military and economic control over the Middle East. But however victorious one side may have been on the battlefield, neither was able to conquer the other. Cultural exchanges in peacetime between these two separate worlds containing all mankind are often missed by general modern historical narratives. That is in part a knock-on-effect from the nature of the narratives of the classical historians themselves which tend to idealise and emphasise Rome’s military prowess but make only passing reference to the peaceful relations between Romans and their eastern neighbours. This paper is designed to make a contribution to this neglected field. It will emerge upon reading it that gaps in current scholarship can be filled by careful evaluation of the ancient literary sources, as well as numismatic and archaeological findings. Of course, comprehensive historical works on Parthia were produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most notably by Rawlinson,1 Colledge2 and Debevoise3 and these are also given due care here. But given that today the study of Parthian history is still a growing discipline such works need to be considered alongside new finds in the fields of numismatics, archaeology, and epigraphy, as well as reappraisals of the ancient literary evidence, which add greatly to our understanding beyond these monographs.