Trogus on Parthia

Three years ago I was looking into Trogus mainly for his take on THE JOOS. Today, let's look at his Parthic chapters, which we're told ran from #41 to #42. For that, I refer to Alice Borgna published 2015 more-or-less contemporaneously with "B2Bartle" Bartlett.

Trogus himself was a Gaul, so by necessity extracted his Oriental lore from others. I'd pondered if he'd used Timagenes; and/or a vetus-Latina Septuagint if only in epitome.

Apparently Trogus had a scholarly Reputation - recently, not in antiquity - as a hater of Rome. I don't think Bartlett ever fell for that trap; luckily, neither has Borgna. Trogus liked laws, and peace; and diplomacy where laws couldn't cut it, as across borders. It is also difficult to see that Trogus could have said much against Augustus living by grace of the prince's mercy as he was. And so it went for Parthia: as long as the Arsacid shahs ruled well and kept the peace, Trogus praised them. Some pre-2015 historians perhaps felt this was overpraise; even in Roman times, later historians will view the Parthians with less aplomb.

Since 1996, we know of Trogus' main source for the great Iranian east: one Apollodorus of Artemita. Borgna here defers to Nikonorov. Apollodorus for his own part was a loyal Arsacid subject, for all his personal Hellenism.

Before Apollodorus' time, the Parthians were also Hellenists. They even claimed descent from one Andragoras, a [Doric] Greek captain of the Macedonian conquest. This was nothing unusual for the turn of the first century BC; Armenia was doing this too, and more-so Pontus, to varying degrees of historical likelihood. Toward the end of the Parthian state, by contrast, their shahs got into their heads to LARP rather as Achaemenids - as shahs sometimes do. Apollodorus, in between, lived his career when the Parthian shahs claimed ancestry from Arsaces an Iranian from Balkh / Bactria. Most of us, too, would accept that "Arsacid" lineage as likely for them. At any rate, Trogus did not challenge Apollodorus' pro-Arsacid bias. The shahs likely hadn't claimed to be Persians, yet, which claim I suspect Trogus would have marked as hubris.

Apollodorus stops after Orodes II / 50 BC, early in Trogus' chapter #42. Our man must fill in the rest from others - Nikonorov suggests Nicolaus, Sallust, and even Strabo. Borgna, later, argues as a source for Trogus #12, Posidonius, back when the Arsacids were still "Andragorids". Borgna won't take seriously Timagenes as a potential source.