tory.[1] A badly broken cuneiform tablet, which must be freely interpreted, gives us a contemporary account of the advance of Mithradates. When news of his approach reached the Seleucid ruler, Demetrius Nicator, then in Babylonia and very possibly at Seleucia on the Tigris, the latter quickly gathered together what men he could secure[2] and marched into Media to meet the enemy.[3] Apparently the Parthian managed to outmaneuver him and continued his advance. In the meantime Demetrius had left orders to
- ↑ The Parthian invasion is referred to in Orac. Sibyl. iii. 303–13. This section of book iii has been dated on other grounds to about 140 b.c. by R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913), II, 384, n. on lines 295–488.
- ↑ That the person referred to is Demetrius, not Mithradates, is shown by the fact that he gathered "men of all sorts." The Parthian ruler would have had with him the army with which he had just invaded the country.
- ↑ This account of the campaign is drawn from British Museum tablet SH 108, described by F. X. Kugler, Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel (Munster in Westfalen, 1907–35), II, 442, and partially published in his Von Moses bis Paulus (Munster in Westfalen, 1922), pp. 338 ff. Olmstead restores lines 2–9 as follows:
". . . . Men of all sorts [Demetrius collected]; to the cities of Media [he marched] In the beginning of that month, on the 22d day su-bu(?) . . . . . the rab uqu (general) entered the land of Akkad. [Against him] Arshaka the king to Seleucia [went. The city of . . . ., of] the land of Ashur, which before the face of Arshaka the king [had bowed down], . . . . . [Into Seleuci]a, the royal city, he entered; that month, on the 28th day, [he sat on the throne].
"Year 171, Arshaka the king, on the 30th of the month Duʾuzu . . . . ."
This passage was followed by astronomical data. While not certain, the restorations are much more probable than would appear to the uninitiated, for they are the common formulas of contemporary documents. Kugler's widely different interpretation of the text is followed by Tarn in CAH, IX, 579 f. See now Olmstead, "Cuneiform Texts and Hellenistic Chronology," Class. Philol., XXXII (1937), 12 f.
