Dura-Europos under Parthian Rule was a part is a number of mentions of astratēgosandepistatēsof the city,^20
stretching from /..(the earliest Greek inscription; see above) until after
the Roman conquest: paradoxically, the latest reference comes from an in-
scription in Latin which is thought to date to around..:Sept(imium)
Lusian str(ategum) Dur(ae).^21 It would be very reasonable to see such a person
as a royal official rather than as a local one; but the fact that holders are still
found in office at the end of the second century must suggest caution.^22 At
any rate in no inscribed document from Dura does either the termbasileus
or the name of any Parthian king appear.
That last fact lends a considerable extra importance to the very signifi-
cant group of ten Greek parchments dating to the period from the s to
/..^23 First of all, it should be stressed that these documents, record-
ing various private transactions, are all in Greek, and also provide no parallel
to the subscriptions in Nabataean, Aramaic, or Syriac which can be found on
Greek documents from the provinces of the Roman Near East.^24 The dating
of this series of texts, and their chronological cohesion, serves also to em-
phasise again that the ‘‘Parthian’’ Dura to which we can make some approach
is that which was contemporary with the Roman Empire.
In this context, however, what is important is that here alone reference to
the Parthian kings is present and is, moreover, detailed and explicit. A formal
correspondence is made between the Parthian royal era, and the Seleucid
one (alluded to simply as ‘‘formerly’’). So, for instance, in the earliest of the
group, from.., we find the following dating formula: ‘‘in the year
as the King of Kings reckons, but formerly .’’^25 Two royal officials also
appear later in the document, both described as ‘‘royal judges and belonging
to the first and most-honoured friends and bodyguards’’ (upper text, line ;
lower text, lines –).
The antichretic loan of.., written in the village of Paliga or Pha-
liga near the confluence of the Chabur and the Euphrates, opens with simi-
lar royal titles, and also provides evidence of royal officials: a garrison com-
mander, anarkapatēs(ruler of a city), and ‘‘a tax collector andstratēgosof
Mesopotamia and Parapotamia, andArabarchē[ruler of the Arabs].’’^26 We d o
. See Arnaud (n. ), , n. .
.ReportII, .
.P. Dura(n. ), no. Cotton, Cockle, and Millar (n. ), no. , see above; see also
P. Dura, no. .
. See appendix, section (c) below.
. See Cotton, Cockle, and Millar (n. ).
.P. Dura(n. ), no. Cotton, Cockle, and Millar (n. ), no. , upper text.
.P. Dura(n. ), no. Cotton, Cockle, and Millar (n. ), no. .