Page:Political History of Parthia.pdf/61

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THE GROWTH OF PARTHIA
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forts, strengthened existing cities, and built a new one, Dara, on Mount Apaortenon, an almost impregnable position,[1] which he perhaps intended to make the capital of his kingdom.[2] Tiridates or one of his immediate successors refounded Rhages-Europus under the name Arsacia,[3] a designation which it did not long retain. In later times the royal residence of central Parthia was certainly Hecatompylos.[4] Tiridates

  1. ↑ Justin xli. 5. 1–4; incorrect variant, Zapaortenon.
  2. ↑ Rawlinson, Sixth Mon., p. 53. Pliny Hist. nat. vi. 46 gives the city as Dareium and the place Apavortene; cf. Apauarkticene, Isid. Char. Mans. Parth. 1 and 13. The site has been variously identified as the oasis of Attek east of the "Achal-Tekke" (PW, art. "Dara," No. 1), as "probably near Abivard in Apavarktikene" (Tarn in CAH, IX, 575), as Kala Maran (Sykes, Hist. of Persia, I, 310), as perhaps Kelat (Ed. Meyer in Encyc. Brit. art. "Parthia"), and as near Kelat-i-Nādirī (Herzfeld, "Zarathustra," AMI, I, 109, n. 1). Victor Chapot, La frontière de l'Euphrate de Pompée à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1907), p. 314 and n. 1, confuses the Dara of Tiridates with the Dara founded by Anastasius near Nisibis about a.d. 504, and therefore charges Justin, not his original, Trogus Pompeius, with a bad eye for topography.
  3. ↑ Apollodorus in Strabo xi. 13. 6; Steph. Byz. s.v. 'Ράγα; Pliny Hist. nat. vi. 113. Cf. the boundaries of Parthia as given by Strabo xi. 9. 1.
  4. ↑ Baeton fr. 2 (J, II B, p. 623); Diognetus fr. 1 (J, II B, p. 626); Strabo xi. 9. i; Ptolemy vi. 5. 2. Polyb. x. 28 says all roads converge on Hecatompylos. The site is not yet identified, as recent excavations at Damghan failed to produce Parthian material. A. V. Williams Jackson, From Constantinople to the Home of Omar Khayyam (New York, 1911), pp. 161 ff. and 176 ff., places it between Frat and Damghan at Shahr-i-Ḳūmis. See also A. D. Mordtmann, "Hekatompylos. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Geographie Persiens," Bayerische Akad. der Wiss., Sitzungsberichte, 1869, 1, pp. 497–536; A. H. Schindler, "Beschreibung einiger wenig bekannten Routen in Chorassân," Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, XII (1877), 216, and "Notes on Some Antiquities Found in a Mound near Damghan," JRAS, N.S., IX (1877), 425–27; PW, art. "Hekatompylos," No. 1. P. M. Sykes, "A Sixth Jour-
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