ABSTRACT
Parthia was unique among the lands bordering the Roman empire in that it was a large kingdom with a long and distinctive tradition of civilization, coherent government, and domination over subject peoples. Parthian armies not only inflicted unavenged defeats on Rome but even invaded Roman territory. This unprecedented situation presented the Romans with unique problems, since there was little in their historical experience to prepare them for dealing with an adversary of significant strength on a permanent basis, but also with unique opportunities for diplomatic contact. The process by which Romans and Parthians achieved an orderly coexistence, the factors in society that influenced this, and also the methods by which diplomacy was successfully accomplished, help to illustrate the interrelation of society, government, and war in the imperial period. Even within the confines of ancient warfare Rome and Parthia had a significant capacity for acting outside their borders and initiating destruction. In that sense they were superpowers, and Henry Kissinger has aptly summed up the consequences of mutual ignorance and lack of communication between great powers:
Relations between Rome and Parthia from 92 to 31 BC did not encourage hopes of diplomatic rapport. Sulla’s unfortunate decision to sit between the king of Cappadocia and a Parthian envoy at a meeting in 92, though perhaps due to ignorance, was construed as an insult by the Parthian king (Plut. Sull. 5). Pompey was rude and uncompromising in 65 in refusing to address Phraates III as ‘king of kings’ and in announcing that justice was to be the boundary between Rome and Parthia (Plut. Pomp. 33; Apophtheg. Regum, 8). From 53 BC onwards the Romans had tended to settle problems in the East by invasion and warfare: Crassus invaded Parthia largely for personal aggrandizement; Julius Caesar could not ignore the opportunities for military glory offered by a war in the East, and only his murder prevented the campaign he was carefully preparing. The Parthians responded to these acts or threats of aggression by exploiting Roman disarray in the civil wars and invading Roman Syria in 40 under the joint command of the Parthian king’s son and the Roman defector Quintus Labienus, ‘The Parthian’.1 They killed Decidius Saxa, the governor of Syria, and overran the province before being repulsed in three battles in 39-38 by Antony’s lieutenant P. Ventidius. Antony then tried to chastise the Parthians and add glory to his own name by another invasion of their territory, but his campaign ended in ignominious retreat with no positive achievement.
