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Was this to be always so? If it was, then Parthia had only to make up her mind to fall, and, like the great Roman, to let it be her care that she should fall grandly and with dignity. Accession of Mithridates II. Termination of the Scythic Wars. Commencement of the struggle with Armenia. Previous history of Armenia. Result of the first Armenian War. First contact of Rome with Parthia.
Accepted, it would seem, as chief by the former Arian inhabitants of the tract, he proceeded to reduce the scattered Scythic tribes which had hitherto held possession of the high mountain region.
It is evidently not improbable that the sufferings endured at the hands of the Scyths may have disposed the nations east of the river to adopt the same remedy and that, so soon as Media had proved her strength, first by shaking herself free of the Scythic invaders and then conquering Assyria. the tribes of these parts accepted her as at once their mistress and their deliverer.
The statements made of the extent of Parthia on the side of Syria in the time of Mithridates the First render it impossible for us to discover these nations in the west: we are, therefore, compelled to regard them as consisting of races on the eastern frontier, who could at this period only be outlying tribes of the recent Scythic immigration.
Pharasmanes had obtained the assistance of his neighbors, the Albanians, and, opening the passes of the Caucasus, had admitted through them a number of the Scythic or Sarmatian hordes, who were always ready, when their swords were hired, to take a part in the quarrels of the south.
Others added to this that the Scythic tribe to which they belonged was called the Dahse; that their own proper name was Parni, or Aparni; and that they had migrated originally from the country to the north of the Palus Maeotis, where they had left the great mass of their fellow tribesmen.
Previously the royal headdress had been either a mere cap of a Scythic type, but lower than the Scyths commonly wore it; or the ordinary diadem, which was a band round the head terminating in two long ribbons or ends, that hung down behind the head on the back. Ammianus says that among the titles assumed by the Parthian monarchs was that of "Brother of the Sun and Moon."
The Medes, with whom they subsequently became associated, were inclined to the old elemental worship of nature, which they learned from the Turanian or Scythic population. He is immortal, not from his personal history, the details of which we are ignorant, but from his ideas, which became the basis of the faith of the Persians.
We may conclude from this as probable that he held some Scythic tribes under his sway, probably in Segestan, or Seistan, the country south and east of the Hamoon, or lake in which the Helmend is swallowed up.
Such conclusions cannot safely be drawn from the mere fact that the Scythic character of the Parthians is asserted in the strongest terms by the ancient writers. The term "Scythic" is not, strictly speaking, ethnical. It designates a life rather a descent, habits rather than blood.
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