In the weakest time of the empire, the last Arsacid Parthian King was busy fighting Roman armies. But he lost to a faction he wasn’t expecting.
A Narrative by Varan
Roman Invasion, Parthian Victory
Ardawān IV (Gr.: Artabanos IV), the last Arsacid king of Parthia was in dispute with his brother Walaxš VI, a situation the Romans took advantage of and thus invaded the western Parthian territories. Under the Roman emperor Caracalla, the Romans conquered Charrae, Nisibis and Arbela (today known as Harran, Nusaybin, and Erbil). When Caracalla heard that Ardawān IV was on his way with a Parthian force, he retreated from Arbela to Charrae. Once in Charrae in western Parthia, he was assassinated by his own men, leaving his successor, Marcus Opellius, in command and later engaged in battle against the Parthians. The last Roman-Arsacid battle took place at Nisibis, where the Parthians were victorious.
Equal Rivals
As a result, Marcus Opellius undertook to pay for the peace and hand back the Parthian territories to Ardawān IV. Thus, the Romans ultimately went home empty-handed, once again. Although presented otherwise to the mob at home for propaganda purposes, the Romans had learned to fear the Arsacid Parthians and had come to regard them as serious opponents through their experiences. The Parthians thus remained an equal rival for the Romans until the end. From the Roman perspective, there are no signs of the end of the Arsacid Empire. Despite the victory of the Arsacids against the Romans, Ardawān IV went down in history as the last Arsacid Parthian king of the Parthian Empire. Although the disagreement between the Arsacid brothers had resulted in a noticeable loss of power in the Parthian court, this was not the only reason worth mentioning for the collapse of the empire. To learn the reasons for the decline, we must look to another period of the Parthians and of Eran, namely the time of the Perso-Parthian intrigues and the power struggles of rival Parthian houses, families, dehkans, and spahbeds. (Further articles related to this topic will be linked soon in this section).
