Page 26 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

HISTORICAL SURVEY 13

provide a final settlement of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. The
envoys of the king of Edessa1 came to him with gifts and a message of friend-
ship, excusing the king's tardy submission by his fear of the Parthians—
though it was only five years previously that, according to one source, he had
purchased his kingdom from Parthia for a large sum of money. Trajan
visited Edessa, and was entertained by the king, who, we are told, brought
in his son to perform a 'barbaric dance.' Abgar's protestations of loyalty, his
costly gifts—250 horses and mailed horsemen, suits of armour, and a large
store of arrows—and the intervention of his handsome son, who had become
a favourite with the Emperor, combined to induce Trajan to restore the
Edessan to his throne. The neighbouring phylarch of Anthemusia, who,
like Abgar, had failed to pay his respects to Trajan, was less fortunate. He
fled, and it was at Abgar's suggestion that the Roman troops captured his
capital town Batnae and annexed his territory. But Abgar was not to be
trusted. In 116 when Trajan was resting after his conquest of Adiabene and
Ctesiphon, Edessa joined a general insurrection in Mesopotamia; Roman
garrisons were massacred or expelled. The Romans exacted swift vengeance.
Lucius Quietus was sent to restore order. He besieged and captured Nisibis.
Edessa was recovered and laid waste by fire and the sword, and its king
seems to have perished in the disorder.2
On Trajan's death in 117, his conquests east of the Euphrates were
renounced by his successor Hadrian. To the throne of Edessa, which appears
to have been left vacant for two years, was appointed a Parthian prince,
Parthamaspat, who had been elevated by the Romans to the throne of Parthia
but rejected by his own countrymen. In 123, however, the native dy-
nasty seems to have been restored at Edessa with the accession of a king
Ma'nu.3 A generation later, early in the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius,
the Parthians resumed the offensive against Rome. The king of Edessa,
another Ma'nu,4 was replaced by a Wa'el bar Sahru (who struck coins with
the effigy of the king of Parthia and with the legend in Syriac),5 and the
Parthians crossed the Euphrates into Syria. Ma'nu took refuge in the Roman
camp, but his return was not long delayed. In 165 Avidius Cassius laid siege
to Edessa; its citizens slaughtered the Parthian garrison and admitted the
Romans. By a peace treaty in the following year, the ruler of Osrhoene
became a client of Rome; Ma'nu was restored with the title of Philorhomaios.
Thirty years later a ruler of Edessa again broke his pledge of loyalty to

1 Abgar VII, A.D. 109-116. to the east. More probably, however, the refer-
2 According to the biography of Emperor ence is to a later king, perhaps Ma'nu VIII;
Antoninus Pius, a king Abgar was persuaded by Abgar may well have been regarded as a
that Emperor to return to Edessa from eastern generic name for the kings of the dynasty of
Parthia. It has been suggested that this is the Edessa. 3 Ma'nu VII, A.D. 123-39.
Abgar in whose reign Edessa was sacked by 4 Ma'nu VIII, A.D. 139-63 and 165-77.
Lucius Quietus, and that he had in fact escaped 5 PI. zSb (i).

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