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Although the Parthians had defeated the Seleucids and protected their newly won territory of Babylonia, their grasp on the region remained fragile. Shortly after Mithridates defeated the Seleucids, he promptly returned east, where he fell seriously ill and, after six years of suffering from the illness, died in 132 BCE.
The Seleucid satrap of Parthia, named Andragoras, first claimed independence, in a parallel to the secession of his Bactrian neighbour. Soon after, however, a Parthian tribal chief called Arsaces invaded the Parthian territory around 238 BC to form the Arsacid dynasty, from which the Parthian Empire originated.
The Seleucids amassed a large force of Greek mercenaries and led the army, totaling 80,000 soldiers, to confront the Parthians, initiating a campaign in 130 BC to retake Mesopotamia. The Parthian general Indates was defeated along the Great Zab, followed by a local uprising where the Parthian governor of Babylonia was killed.
A. D. H. Bivar concludes that this was the year the Seleucids lost control of Parthia to Andragoras, the appointed satrap who rebelled against them. Hence, Arsaces I "backdated his regnal years" to the moment when Seleucid control over Parthia ceased. [20]
The ever weakening empire led to the Parthians' sweeping into and taking over their eastern satrapies. These conquests took place at the same time as the bitter civil wars in the empire. There was a moment of success and strength with the Parthian campaign of Antiochus VII, but his death in battle led to further defeat and decline. The loss of ...
After the fall of Sirynx Arsaces opened negotiations with Antiochus, reducing Parthia to a vassal of the Seleucid Empire. Two decades later the Seleucids were defeated by the Roman Republic at the Battle of Magnesia and began a century-long decline, allowing the Parthians to regain their independence and become a dominant power in the Middle East.
The Parthian campaigns of Septimius Severus (195-198) involved the Roman armies] success over the Parthians for supremacy over the nearby Kingdom of Armenia. After this defeat the Parthians were first defeated by the Roman armies of Severus's son, Caracalla (215–217), and then replaced in 224 by the Sassanid dynasty .
In 245 BC, Andragoras, the Seleucid governor of Parthia ("roughly western Khurasan" [1]) proclaimed independence from the Seleucids, when - following the death of Antiochus II - Ptolemy III seized control of the Seleucid capital at Antioch, and "so left the future of the Seleucid dynasty for a moment in question."