At the beginning of the common era, the two major imperial powers of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East were Rome and Parthia. In this book, Jake Nabel analyzes Roman-Parthian interstate politics by focusing on a group of princes from the Arsacid family—the ruling dynasty of Parthia—who were sent to live at the Roman court. Although Roman authors called these figures “hostages” and scholars have studied them as such, Nabel draws on Iranian and Armenian sources to argue that the Parthians would have seen them as the emperor’s foster-children. These divergent perspectives allowed each empire to perceive itself as superior to the other, since the two sides interpreted the exchange of royal children through conflicting cultural frameworks. Moving beyond the paradigm of great powers in conflict, The Arsacids of Rome advances a new vision of interstate relations with misunderstanding at its center.
The Arsacids of Rome: Misunderstandings in Roman-Parthian Relations is part of the Pourdavoud Institute’s Iran and the Ancient World (IAW) series published by UC Press. Occupying a singular place in the current publishing landscape in its representation of both specialized monographs in Iranology and research that integrates the field into the broader study of the pre-modern period, Iran and the Ancient World (IAW) encompasses specialist studies of ancient Persian history, literature, archaeology, and religion. The series also promotes the integration of ancient Iran into the historiographic mainstream of the pre-modern world. Accordingly, it will foreground the Iranian plateau’s connected history with adjacent regions of antiquity, fostering comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives on questions of broad import to the humanities and social sciences.
Iran and the Ancient World provides a leading publication venue for pioneering research in Iranian studies while also putting the field in dialogue with broader endeavors of academic inquiry. The series encompasses both dedicated monographs on pre-Islamic Iranian history, archaeology, and literary traditions; and books that originate from the prestigious and endowed Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series at UCLA, which has a counterpart at the Collège de France.
Iran and the Ancient World thus promotes a more expansive role for Iranian studies in the current research landscape. Building and improving on the field’s strong philological foundations, IAW foregrounds Persia’s geographical interconnections with proximate areas of the ancient world like Rome, Egypt, and central Asia, as well as the field’s disciplinary points of contact with anthropology, comparative literature, archaeology, and the histories of other regions and periods.
A free ebook version of The Arsacids of Rome: Misunderstandings in Roman-Parthian Relations is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program: <www.luminosoa.org>.
Physical book orders can be placed at the University of California Press website.
About the Author
Jake Nabel is the Tombros Early Career Professor of Classical Studies and Assistant Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University.