The Peopling of the Earth

SUPPLEMENTAL NOTE

Immediately following “8. The Sarmatians,” on page 260, read the following:- POTE 298.1

9. The Parthians, who gave name to the country of Parthia, in Central Asia. They were subdued by the great Cyrus, and their country became one of the most important provinces of the Medo-Persian Empire. They regained their independence about 250 b. c., by a successful revolt from the rule of Antiochus Theos, one of the “successors” of Alexander the Great. The leader in the revolt was named Arsaces, and that name was assumed as the kingly title by all his successors, as in Egypt Pharaoh was used in early times, and Ptolemy in later. The kingdom thus established went forward, in a continuous course of success until it became an empire ruling “all the lands of Central Asia,” “from the Indian Caucasus to the Euphrates,” and continued four hundred and seventy-eight years, from b. c. 250 to a. d. 228. By inflicting two terrible defeats upon the Roman armies-the defeat of Crassus at Carrhae, b. c. 53, and the defeat of Macrinus at Nisibis, a. d. 217 and 218-they “forced the arrogant Romans to respect them, and to allow that there was at least one nation which could meet them on equal terms and not be worsted in the encounter;” and by a contest of nearly three hundred years they “obtained recognition ... as the second power in the world, the admitted rival of Rome, the only real counterpoise upon the earth to the power which ruled from the Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean.”-Rawlinson, Sixth Mon., chap. XI, par. 19. In a. d. 228 the power of the Parthians was permanently broken by the rise of the Persian Artaxerxes, the son of Sasan, who established the New Persian or Sassanian Empire. POTE 298.2