Arsaces and the Parni Found the Parthian Kingdom
A nomadic steppe tribe overruns a Seleucid frontier province and starts a dynasty that will rule Persia for nearly five centuries
Quick facts
- Founder
- Arsaces I
- Tribe
- Parni, a nomadic steppe people
- Founding date
- 247 BCE
- Dynasty
- Arsacid, ruled until 224 CE
What happened
The satrapy of Parthia in northeastern Iran had been governed by Seleucid appointees since Alexander's conquest, but in 245 BCE, while the Seleucids were distracted by the Laodicean War in the west, the local satrap Andragoras revolted from the young king Seleucus II. In the resulting confusion, a nomadic tribe from the Central Asian steppe called the Parni, led by a chieftain named Arsaces, overran Parthia itself. By 238 BCE they had added the neighboring district of Astauene, and three years after that a Parnian leader named Tiridates pushed further south and took the rest of Parthia. The Parni, who came to be called Parthians after the territory they occupied, recognized Arsaces as their king, founding the Arsacid dynasty that would eventually rule the Parthian Empire from 247 BCE until 224 CE.
Why it matters
This modest steppe conquest is the seed of the second great Persian empire. The Parthian Empire that grows from it would eventually stop Roman expansion cold at Carrhae and rule Iran and Mesopotamia for close to five centuries, longer than the Achaemenids managed.
How we know
The Parthian dynasty's own early history is less well documented than the Seleucid or Roman record of the same period; livius.org's scholarly synthesis notes the sequence of early Arsacid kings is less well-understood than Seleucid or Ptolemaic king-lists, reconstructed mainly from later coinage and fragmentary Greek and Roman accounts.
Sources
- Livius.org (Jona Lendering). Arsaces I · Reputable sourcelivius.org · The domain "livius.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Parthia (Empire) · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineAncient Persia27 events · Three empires in a row, Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid, ran the largest state the ancient world had seen and left cuneiform, coinage, and a fire religion behindView all →