Orodes II

We do not know his personal name. “Surena” is the name of his clan, the Sūrēn. Iranica (Olbrycht) says the clan had Dahae roots, its power base was in eastern Iran and Sakastan (Sistan), and its name (swren) appears on an ostracon from Shahr-e Qumis. Plutarch says his family had long held the right to crown the Parthian king.

Plutarch calls him the second man in the kingdom in wealth and birth and the first in courage: under thirty, with a thousand baggage camels and at least ten thousand horsemen of his own dependants and servants. He brought Orodes back from exile, stormed Seleucia, and at Carrhae, with an army of horsemen only, beat a force four times his size. After the victory he staged a mock “triumph” in Seleucia, parading a prisoner named Paccianus, who looked like Crassus, in women’s clothes. Not long after, Orodes had him killed.

Shahbazi (Iranica) calls Surena’s reliance on cavalry a “brilliant idea” (Mommsen) and says no one before him had thought of an unending arrow supply. Olbrycht does not see the execution as mere envy: the king wanted to free himself from the mighty patron who had put him on the throne. Plutarch describes Surena’s painted face and hair “after the fashion of the Medes” with a hint of effeminacy; that is a Greek cliché about easterners.

Surena is the type of the hero whose merit was a threat to absolute power. A state where the victorious general’s life hangs on the king’s envy is afraid even of its best defenders. Where a person’s rights and life are not secure against the ruler’s will, talent either flees or is destroyed.

Iranica, quoting Bivar, calls Carrhae “without doubt the most celebrated episode of Parthian history”. The main source is Plutarch, who, says Shahbazi, used the report of an unknown eyewitness, probably a Hellenised Mesopotamian. Surena’s army was about 10,000 horse: 1,000 armoured cataphracts and 9,000 horse archers, with a thousand camels carrying arrows. Facing them were seven legions, 4,000 horse and 4,000 light infantry.

The old view, that the war was nothing but Crassus’ greed (Cicero: “no cause for the war”), should in Shahbazi’s view be dropped: a clash between Rome and Parthia had been coming for a century. He also says the treachery of Abgar of Osrhoene, whom the Roman sources blame, cannot be proved. The numbers are disputed too: Florus speaks of eleven legions.

Carrhae showed that the right tool on the right ground beats numbers. The other side of the story: an army that came to plunder a foreign land met people defending their own home.

Plutarch says the soldiers forced Crassus to go to the parley by threats. As he went he told his officers to tell everyone that “Crassus perished rather by the subtlety of his enemies, than by the disobedience of his countrymen”. Surena offered a horse with a golden bit; grooms forced Crassus into the saddle, his officers seized the bridle, and the fight began.

Crassus’ head and right hand were taken to Orodes in Armenia. There, at the feast that sealed Orodes’ peace with Artavasdes, an actor named Jason of Tralles was singing Agave’s scene from Euripides’ Bacchae; he took up the head in place of Pentheus’ and sang. Pomaxathres stood up and claimed the honour as his.

Plutarch himself says the details are “conjecture rather than certain knowledge”. Iranica (after Debevoise) says the Parthians may not have meant to kill Crassus. Dio has another story, that the Parthians poured molten gold into Crassus’ mouth; it is read as a symbol of his greed, not an eyewitness report.

The richest man in Rome invaded a foreign land for military glory and took thirty thousand soldiers down with him. A war begun for one man’s ambition is paid for by others.

Iranica: the 10,000 Roman prisoners were settled in Margiana (Merv) (Pliny, Natural History 6.47). The Roman poet Horace complains bitterly that Crassus’ soldiers married “barbarian” wives. Some served in the Parthian army. When the standards were returned in 20 BCE only a few came back.

Settling prisoners on the eastern frontier gave Parthia both labour and frontier troops; it was an old Iranian policy.

The prisoners of Carrhae built new lives in a foreign land. The history of frontiers is always also a history of peoples mixing.

Pacorus, Orodes’ eldest son, was junior king and struck coins with his youthful portrait. In 51 BCE he raided Syria with Osaces and Cassius drove him back. In 40 BCE, with the Roman Labienus and Barzaphranes, he took Syria and Judaea, and the Parthians reached Jerusalem and Gaza. Iranica says many in Syria and Judaea welcomed him warmly. In 38 BCE he fell at Gindarus.

Justin says that on hearing of Pacorus’ death Orodes for several days neither spoke nor ate; he seemed to see Pacorus and hear him.

Iranica says that despite popular support Orodes and Pacorus overrated the situation. The Romans saw Gindarus as revenge for Carrhae; the heir’s death led to civil war in Parthia.

The support Pacorus found in Syria and Judaea shows that Roman rule, with its governors’ taxes and plunder, was not “freedom” for everyone. People usually accept the ruler who troubles their property and faith less.

Plutarch: after Pacorus’ death Orodes fell ill with dropsy; his son Phraates gave him aconite, but the poison cured the disease, so Phraates strangled his father. Justin too says Phraates killed his father and his thirty brothers. Dio denies the parricide and says Orodes died of grief and old age.

Iranica gives both versions. The story of a poison that cures sounds like a tale; but all the sources agree on the killing of the brothers.

A dynasty that does not settle succession by clear rules turns the throne into a prize for murder. Orodes came in by parricide and, in one version, went out by it.