Artabanos IV.

Coin of Artabanos IV.

Artabanos IV ( Persian اردوان Ardawān [ ærdæˈvɔːn ]; † April 28, 224 ) from the house of the Arsacids was the last great king of the Parthians from 213 to 224 AD. In the older and occasionally in the more recent research he is also referred to as Artabanos V , since Arsakes II there as Artabanus I. is considered.

Artabanos was the younger brother of Vologaeses VI. and initially only ruler of the media . In 213 he rebelled against his brother and occupied Susa in 215 . A stele from there has survived from that year , showing him at the inauguration of a satrap Xvaschak .

In 216 the Roman emperor Caracalla demanded a daughter of Artabanos, who in the meantime seemed to have prevailed in the power struggle with his brother, as a wife, which Artabanos refused. Caracalla used this as a reason for war and invaded Mesopotamia with an army. Artabanos IV was initially able to evade a decisive battle and, after the death of Caracalla in 217, take action against the Romans in Mesopotamia and defeat them. The new emperor Macrinus had to make peace in 218, so that the western border of Parthia was secured for the time being. Some time later, however, there was a Sassanid rebellion in Persis .

Artabanos IV was defeated and killed on April 28, 224 by the leader of the rebellion Ardaschir I. The rule of the Parthians ended with his death. Vologaeses VI. seems to have held up for a few more years before he was also defeated. The Arsakid dynasty was able to stay in Armenia , while the Sassanids conquered the rest of the Parthian Empire, whose territory they were to rule until 642/651.

literature

• ADH Bivar: The political History of Iran under the Arsacids . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran . Vol. 3, Cambridge 1983, pp. 94ff.
• Friedrich Cauer : Artabanos 10 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 1, Stuttgart 1895, Sp. 1296-1298.
• Malcolm AR Colledge: The Parthians . Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp. 172f.

Web links

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• Stele from Susa (reversed!)

predecessor	Office	successor
Vologaeses VI.	King of the Parthian Empire 213–224	---