Search

In the eighth book of Lucan'sBellum Ciuile, Pompey sends the Galatian king Deiotarus into the distant East to seek an alliance with Parthia, the vast empire beyond the Euphrates ruled by the Arsacid dynasty. His instructions to Deiotarus begin with these lines (8.211–14):‘quando’ ait ‘Emathiis amissus cladibus orbis,qua Romanus erat, superest, fidissime regum,Eoam temptare fidempopulosque bibentisEuphraten et adhuc securum a Caesare Tigrim.’

uirginibus Tyriis mos est gestare pharetram,purpureoque alte suras uincire cothurno.It is customary for us Tyrian girls to carry a quiverand to lace our calves up high in red boots.(Verg. Aen. 1.336–7) With these words a disguised Venus explains the accessories of her costume to Aeneas and Achates shortly after the Trojan landing in North Africa. Even detailed commentaries on this passage overlook an important feature: the lines contain a reference to Julius Caesar, who claimed descent from Venus and made a political point of wearing red boots during his dictatorship. This allusion to Caesar connects in significant ways to adjoining passages of the first book of the Aeneid.

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.