The Parthians were originally wild Scythian horse-nomads from the steppes of eastern Iran (Khorasan) who took advantage of the weakness of the Seleukid satraps to seize power over all Iran. Their first king, Arsakes I, revolted around 247 BC, and the Seleukids were unable to recover their control.

The Arsakids adopted the Zoroastrian religion, the Middle Persian and Aramaic languages, and the trappings of Persian royalty. They eventually took Mesopotamia, settling their capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, across the river from Seleukeia ad Tigrem. Their government was a sort of loose feudal structure, and their deeds were something of an embarrassment to later Persian writers. Indeed, the compiler Firdowsi, when he composed his epic Shah-Namah, wrote that he failed to find any deeds of theirs worthy of mention.

The Parthians were the only serious rival to Rome, and even then they were not exactly an equal. Parthian horse-archers defeated the infantry led by Crassus in 53 BC; subsequent invasions were not so easily stopped, especially with the more widespread adoption of iron, as opposed to bronze, armor by the legionaries in the late first and early second centuries. The Romans defeated, but could not conquer, them on numerous occasions. Eventually the Parthian monarchy fell to a determined revolt from one of their subject kingdoms, that of Persis.

Parthian coinage is remarkably uniform over its four centuries of production. The denominations are almost always three: silver or billon tetradrachms, silver drachms, and small bronzes. The silver drachms show an increasingly stylized head of the monarch, and the reverse shows the founder, Arsakes, seated, holding a bow. The tetradrachms show on the reverse the king enthroned, with Tyche (Fortune) presenting him with a victors wreath. The reverses of the bronzes are more varied.