The Parthians, who have acquired Mesopotamia by…

The Parthians, who have acquired Mesopotamia by 100 BCE, have captured the Seleucid city of Europos and renamed it Dura.

Founded in 303 BCE by Seleucis I on the intersection of an east-west trade route and the trade route along the Euphrates, Europus had controlled the river crossing on the route between his newly founded cities of Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris.

Its rebuilding as a great city after the Hippodamian model, with rectangular blocks defined by cross-streets ranged around a large central agora, had been formally laid out in the second century BCE.

During the first century BCE, Dura-Europus will prosper under Parthian rule as a center of agriculture and the caravan trade, serving as a frontier fortress of the Arsacid Parthian Empire, with a multicultural population, as testified by inscriptions in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Hatrian, Palmyrenean, Middle Persian and Safaitic Pahlavi.