Since previously Phraates II had been engaged with the Sacaraucae, and it was known that the Tochari had been advancing behind the latter, and were thought at this moment to have been settled north of the Oxus, there is difficulty in the narrative which brings them into contact with Artabanus II of Parthia. Tarn indeed dismissed as impossible the statement that the Tochari were involved with Parthia at this moment. Yet where the sources are so fragmentary as for these incidents, and the detailed succession of events so little known, it is best to retain the evidence of the texts so far as possible. In any event, Artabanus is reported to have died in battle - against the Tochari - after receiving a wound in the arm, perhaps from a poisoned arrow. It is to his ultimate successor, Mithradates II (124/3-87 B.C.), later surnamed the Great, that credit must be given not only for securing the eastern boundaries of Parthia against the nomad threat, and even indeed enlarging them, but also for stabilizing the Arsacid administration in Babylonia, an area soon to become the very heart of the kingdom. It was probably owing to the vulnerability of the old Parthian homeland around Nisa and Ablvard to nomad raids by the fiercer tribes from beyond the Oxus that the headquarters of Parthian government gradually shifted westwards during the late 2nd and the whole of the 1st centuries B.C. Whether the official name of Mihrdadkert given to the city of Nisa originated with Mithradates I himself, or derived from some earlier, perhaps even Achaemenian, governor of that name, is perhaps still an open question, owing to the fact that a monogram which can be read as " Mithradatkert" appears on Parthian coins before the accession of Mithradates.That ruler, according to the historical accounts, had frequently resided in the province of Hyrcania. The site of Hecatompylos in Comisene, south of the Alburz range, is called by several classical writers a Parthian capital, and has been located by recent research at Shahr-i Qumis, near Qusha, and 32 km to the west of Damghan.
Parthian Conquest of Seleucid Kingdom
