The Arsacids of Rome: Misunderstanding in Roman-Parthian Relations

Discussant: Jonathan Brockopp, Professor of History, Religious Studies, and Philosophy

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 power rivalry, The Arsacids of Rome advances a new vision of interstate relations with misunderstanding at its center.

Jake Nabel is the Tombros Early Career Professor of Classical Studies and an Assistant Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is a historian of ancient Rome, pre-Islamic Iran, and the points of contact between the two.

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