Suras

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Surenas or Surena ( Persian سورنا, 'The heroic, strong'; * around 84 BC Chr .; † around 52 BC BC) was a Parthian warlord ( Spahbod ). In 53 BC he led The Parthian army against the Romans and destroyed their army in the battle of Carrhae .

Plutarch describes the influence and power of Surenas and describes him as the second man after the Parthian king. Surenas is said to have traveled with a caravan of 1,000 camels carrying his luggage and 200 camels carrying his harem. Plutarch also noticed with some surprise that his supposedly made-up, perhaps Parthian custom, appearance was not in harmony with his otherwise noble appearance and his bravery. He was later executed by Orodes II , allegedly out of envy for fame.

Surenas came from the noble family of the Suren . It is known from Sassanid times that this family was one of seven who represented the uppermost nobility of the Parthians. The Suras had their headquarters in Sistan , in eastern Iran . With the classical Greco-Roman authors, the gender name Surenas was often misunderstood as an individual name or as a title. For the Romans, even in late antiquity, the term Surenas was mistakenly used as an official title (see, for example, Ammianus Marcellinus 24,2,4). In fact, various noble families, such as the Suras and the Karen , still had inheritance claims to certain positions in the empire in Sassanid times, which is why the error of Western authors is understandable - so many Parthian and Persian generals came from the houses of Suras that it was easy to believe that these names are titles. This error is not infrequently encountered in modern studies.

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ferdinand Justi : Iranian name book . Olms, Hildesheim 1962, p. 317 (reprint of the Marburg edition 1895).

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personal data
SURNAME Suras
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Surena; Rustaham Suren-Pahlav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Parthian general
DATE OF BIRTH around 84 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH around 52 BC Chr.