Vologaeses II.

Tetradrachm of Vologaeses II.

Vologaeses II. Was a usurper who ruled the Parthian Empire (several times?) For a short time and presumably pretended to be the son of Vologaeses I , who died between 76 and 80 . He is known almost exclusively from coins which he had minted in Seleukaia on the Tigris and which mainly date to the years between AD 77/78 and AD 89/90. However, since the assignment of the coins to the kings is highly controversial and highly ambiguous, attempts to reconstruct the Parthian history of these decades are anything but certain. But since all the pretenders to the throne in Seleukaia had coins minted, it seems at least certain that this city changed hands several times. The legitimately ruling Pakoros was able to ultimately destroy his nephew Vologaeses II.

Because of this Vologaeses, the numbering of the later rulers of the same name is ambiguous, so Vologaeses III. often referred to as Vologaeses II. and sometimes also referred to as the son of the usurper from 77-80 AD. Sometimes it is also assumed that the two are identical, although this is improbable due to the long reign (77–148 AD) that the usurper would have had.

literature

• Georges Le Rider : Suse sous les les Séleucides et les Parthes. Les trouvailles monétaires et l'histoire de la ville (= Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique en Iran. Vol. 38.) Geuthner, Paris 1965 (also dissertation), pp. 174–176.
• Margarete Karras-Klapproth: Vologaeses II. In: Prosopographical studies on the history of the Parthian empire on the basis of ancient literary tradition. Habelt, Bonn 1988, p. 199 f.
• ML Chaumont, Klaus Schippmann : Balāš II . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica , as of December 15, 1988, accessed on August 30, 2015 (English, including references)
• Martin Schottky: Vologaeses 2. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 12/2, Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01487-8 , Sp. 309.