Athenaeus, however, declares that Rhages was the spring residence of the Parthian kings; and it seems not unlikely that this famous city, which Isidore, writing in Parthian times, calls "the greatest in Media," was among the occasional residences of the Court.

Parthia itself was, it would seem, deserted; but still a city of that region preserved in one respect a royal character, being the place where all the earlier kings were interred.
The pomp and grandeur of the Parthian monarchs are described only in the vaguest terms by the classical writers.

No author of repute appears to have visited the Parthian Court.

We may perhaps best obtain a true notion of the splendor of the sovereign from the accounts which have reached us of his relations and officers, who can have reflected only faintly the magnificence of the sovereign.

Plutarch tells us that the general whom Orodes deputed to conduct the war against Crassus came into the field accompanied by two hundred litters wherein were contained his concubines, and by a thousand camels which carried his baggage.