Remembering Intervention: Parthia in Rome’s Civil Wars

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Remembering Intervention: Parthia in Rome’s Civil Wars
Nabel, Jake

From the journal Historia Historia, Volume 68, September 2019, issue 3

Published by Franz Steiner Verlag

article, 14303 Words
Original language: English
Historia 2019, pp 327-352
https://doi.org/10.25162/historia-2019-0018

Abstract Related content References

Abstract

The Arsacid rulers of the Parthian empire intervened repeatedly in the civil wars of the late Republic. Previous analyses of these interventions have been misled by post-Republican ideas about the Roman-Parthian relationship or confined to discussions of individual episodes. This article comprehensively surveys Parthian intervention and traces divergent Roman attitudes towards it over time. It is argued that Roman observers sometimes perceived Parthia’s involvement as a singular external intrusion on the circumscribed domain of civil war - but only in the early imperial period, when the Arsacid kingdom’s status as an imperial arch-rival forced a reconsideration of the Republican past.

Author information

Jake Nabel

Keywords

Roman-Parthian relations | civil war | foreign intervention

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