A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. At the beginning of the common era, the two major imperial powers of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East were Rome and Parthia. In this book, Jake Nabel analyzes Roman-Parthian interstate politics by focusing on a group of princes from the Arsacid family—the ruling dynasty of Parthia—who were sent to live at the Roman court. Although Roman authors called these figures “hostages” and scholars have studied them as such, Nabel draws on Iranian and Armenian sources to argue that the Parthians would have seen them as the emperor’s foster-children. These divergent perspectives allowed each empire to perceive itself as superior to the other, since the two sides interpreted the exchange of royal children through conflicting cultural frameworks. Moving beyond the paradigm of great powers in conflict,
The Arsacids of Rome advances a new vision of interstate relations with misunderstanding at its center.
Jake Nabel is the Tombros Early Career Professor of Classical Studies and Assistant Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University.
"Nabel’s The Arsacids of Rome represents a significant advance in both Roman and ancient Iranian history. A tour de force of source criticism, this work shrewdly reevaluates the classical literary sources, skillfully putting them into dialogue with the Iranian evidence to create a masterful work of political, diplomatic, and cultural history."—Matthew P. Canepa, author of The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity through Landscape, Architecture, and the Built Environment
"This absorbing analysis of power and kinship emancipates misunderstanding as a vital conceptual tool for ancient historians. With theoretical ambition, Nabel leads the way towards a truly inclusive study of the ancient world. A transformative work."—Albert de Jong, Professor of Religion, Leiden University
"Nabel presents a bold new vision of Parthian and Roman relations at the dawn of the first millennium, contending that creative misunderstanding lay at the heart of the international détente between the two superpowers of Europe and Western Asia. In a world in which human proxies continue to play an outsized role in international relations, The Arsacids of Rome offers lessons of value still for today."—John Bodel, W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics and Professor of History, Brown University
"Nabel's thesis of 'pragmatic misunderstanding,' confirmed by historical comparison and stupendous criticism of the sources, places research on the political settlements of Roman-Parthian relations on an entirely new footing."—Josef Wiesehöfer, author of Ancient Persia
"Jake Nabel’s book is innovative, timely, and impressive—a welcome addition to the burgeoning field of Parthian studies. It will be invaluable in shedding much-needed light on the agency of the Arsacids in their interactions with Rome."—Nikolaus Overtoom, author of Reign of Arrows: The Rise of the Parthian Empire in the Hellenistic Middle East
283 pp.6 x 9Illus: 20 color images, 2 tables
9780520413061$34.95|£30.00Paper
Apr 2025