Music and Storytelling in the Parthian World

The Arsacid dynasty, known as the Parthian dynasty, ruled from about 247 BCE to 224 CE across Iran and Mesopotamia. A vivid account of performance at its court comes from 53 BCE. Orodes II of Parthia and Artavasdes, king of Armenia, arranged a marriage between the sister of Artavasdes and Pacorus, son of Orodes. Reciprocal banquets celebrated the alliance. The later Greek biographer Plutarch, writing in the early second century CE, reports that actor Jason of Tralles sang from the tragedy Bacchae by Euripides, then performed again after the severed head of the Roman general Crassus arrived. This episode offers a glimpse of Parthian culture and arts through a specific court performance.

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A Greek tragedy at the royal banquet

Plutarch describes Jason performing the part of Agave, who mistakes her murdered son Pentheus for a wild animal in Euripides’ tragedy. When a messenger brought Crassus’s head into the hall, Jason changed the performance: he took up the head and sang Agave’s lines as though it were her hunting prize. A chorus asked who had killed him, and the Parthian courtier Pomaxathres stepped forward to claim the deed. The king rewarded both performers for their parts in the scene.

The exchange joined a familiar Greek tragedy to a recent political event, turning a banquet performance into a pointed public joke. Plutarch closes his account of Crassus with this farce, presenting entertainment as part of the court’s political celebration. His description places drama amid reciprocal banquets and drinking bouts held to mark an alliance.

The poet-musician called a gōsān

Another strand of performance survives in the Parthian word gōsān, meaning a poet-musician or minstrel. The term appears in the eleventh-century Persian romance Vis o Rāmin, and the word’s survival in Armenian and other languages points to its wider life beyond the Arsacid period. A fourth- or fifth-century poem in Parthian describes a gōsān praising kings and heroes of old. It comes from the Manichaean religious community, founded by Mani in the third century CE. The poem values the singer’s memory and praise, even as it criticizes the performer for “achieving nothing.”

Mandaeans were members of a religious community with an Eastern Aramaic literary tradition. Their texts give contrasting views of a related word, gōsānā. One passage compares a singer’s standing with that of a district judge, while another associates singing for humble audiences with low status. The different portraits show how a performer could be honored before one audience and dismissed before another. A singer could praise a ruler or entertain listeners beyond the court.

A song that carries a dangerous message

In Vis o Rāmin, a minstrel sings at the court of King Mobad about a tree, a spring beneath it and a bull grazing nearby. He wishes that all three will endure. Mobad understands the song as an allegory: he is the tree, his wife Vis the spring, and his brother Ramin the bull. The meaning exposes Vis and Ramin’s love affair, and Mobad turns against his brother. The performance lets a singer express a dangerous truth through a story rather than a direct accusation.

The romance was written in Persian in the eleventh century. Mary Boyce argues that it draws on an older Parthian oral story that passed through a written Middle Persian version. Middle Persian, often called Pahlavi, was the written Iranian language of the Sasanian era. This literary path shows how a courtly tale could be reshaped in writing and still carry older performance traditions.

Heroic grief in Ayādgār ī Zarērān

The Middle Persian epic Ayādgār ī Zarērān, or “Memorial of Zarēr,” centers on a battle and its aftermath. Zarēr is killed, and his young son Bastwar disobeys an order to remain behind. He finds his father’s body, laments him and takes revenge. The lament gives heroic storytelling a personal voice: it turns a warrior’s death into grief remembered by his family.

The only surviving manuscript was written in 1322. Its text contains Parthian words, phrases and grammar. Boyce reports Émile Benveniste’s argument that the Middle Persian epic adapts an older Arsacid heroic poem. Its repeated epithets and formal phrasing help carry the tale through later retellings. The story binds mourning to family memory and keeps the hero’s name alive.