Tell me about the Parthian Empire, /his/. I don't know shit

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The Parthians were a indo-iranian tribe that used to be defined as Schytians, cause of their tribal ways and being steppefags (since Persians referred to every non-civilized iranian tribe as Saka/Scythians). But after the term "Scythian" became something to define a certain ethnic group of indo-iranians thanks to modern historian shenanigans, Parthians are just seen as an extension of Persians.

They were vassals to the Achaemenids and later Seleucids when Alexander moved in.
But after the Seleucids turned out to be shit by Roman bullying they gradually expanded Westward, like every other steppefag from the Seljuks to the Mongols and created their little Empire to challenge Rome with dominion over the silk road. All while introducing everyones favourite RTS-tactic, spam horse archers and incooperating both Persian and Hellenistic-style warfare, thanks to serving both previously mentioned empires.

>>2463665

YOU ARE IGNORANT AND MORONIC.

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>>2463731
What a puny response.

>>2463731
enlighten us please

>>2463616
They are famously rather piss-weak. Unlike the later Sassanids, they really couldn't get their act together very often since it was very decentralised kingdom.

>>2464202
Only in comparison, they still were one of the top four most powerful states at the time. It's just that the gap between them and Rome was a bit larger. Still, the Romans acknowledged the Parthians as their equals diplomatically, and during the principate the negotiations were often held between the two heads of state - the only case of Rome doing this sort of stuff.

OTOH in some of my sources the contrast between the Parthians as a confederation and the Sassanids as a centralized state is downplayed. The Sassanids still had various vassal states that in a large part carried over from the Parthian era, and the seven magnate houses held a lot of sway. Only after Khosrau Anushirvan instituted the tax and social reforms the state became more centralized, but the dynasty fell less than a century after that. There's even some voices that the centralization what was contributed to its fall.

>Romans occupied Ctesiphon multiple times
>never annexed them

This kinda sucks desu, Trajan was very close to taking Persia

>>2464202
>piss-weak
Not really. They just didn't go out intentionally antagonizing wars with the Romans. There are many battles where they were blown out by the Arsacids; Antony's entire invasion, Crassus' war, the synergy between a Roman traitor general and one of the Great King's sons that spelled huge disaster. The illusion Parthian Empire was weak is simply because they really did not go out of their way to start fights with the Roman Republic/Empire and usually fought a defensive war when that happened.

>>2465836
Each time the Romans occupied Ctesiphon it fucked them over in the long run. Trajan's War literally bankrupted the Roman Empire of any extra reserves in manpower for its legions and that was literally the last offensive attempt at conquering new land or territory. On top of that it misfired and blew hilariously backwards in Rome's face with the plague their soldiers got infected with carried back into the Roman East and Mediterranean.

On top of all that, Trajan never even got close to mainland Iran/Iranian plateau and the Parthians switching to ambush tactics was massively wearing down his forces. And the fact that the area favored Parthian cavalry heavily over didn't help.

He wasn't close to actually taking Persia.