Fighting a Dying Enemy: The Struggle between Rome and the Parthians
Fighting a Dying Enemy: The Struggle between Rome and the Parthians

Summary/Abstract: From the mid-first century BC, when Crassus’s legions suffered a disastrous defeat on the open steppes of northern Mesopotamia, until the early decades of the third century AD, Rome’s expansionist goals in the East were fiercely opposed by the Parthians. What is now known about the history and structure of the Parthian kingdom is mainly based on the incomplete and largely stereotyped accounts given by Roman and Greek writers of the Imperial Era. Influenced by the attitude of the Classical Greek writers towards the Persians and by the needs of the Imperial propaganda, they depicted the Arsacid Empire as a weak opponent, lacking strong leadership and permanently on the brink of collapse as a consequence of internal struggle. Many modern scholars began to question this perspective. Modern research attempts to abandon the description that Roman writers offered – that of a weak Oriental empire – trying to set aside the myths and prejudices which the Europeans shared concerning great kingdoms of the Near East in every period.

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