Next to war, the favorite employment of the king and of the nobles was hunting.  The lion continued in the wild state an occupant of the Mesopotamian river-banks and marshes; and in other parts of the empire bears, leopards, and even tigers abounded.  Thus the higher kinds of sport were readily obtainable.  The ordinary practice, however, of the monarch and his courtiers seems to have fallen short of the true sportsman’s ideal.  Instead of seeking the more dangerous kinds of wild beasts in their native haunts, and engaging with them under the conditions designed by nature, the Parthians were generally content with a poorer and tamer method.  They kept lions, leopards, and bears in enclosed parks, or “paradises,” and found pleasure in the pursuit and slaughter of these denaturalized and half-domesticated animals.  The employment may still, even under these circumstances, have contained an element of danger which rendered it exciting; but it was a poor substitute for the true sport which the “mighty Hunter before the Lord” had first practised in these regions.

The ordinary dress of the Parthian noble was a long loose robe reaching to the feet, under which he wore a vest and trousers.  Bright and varied colors were affected, and sometimes dresses were interwoven or embroidered with gold.  In seasons of festivity garlands of fresh flowers were worn upon the head.  A long knife or dagger was carried at all times, which might be used either as an implement or as a weapon.

In the earlier period of the empire the Parthian was noted as a spare liver; but, as time went on, he aped the vices of more civilized peoples, and became an indiscriminate eater and a hard drinker.  Game formed a main portion of his diet; but he occasionally indulged in pork, and probably in other sorts of butcher’s meat.  He ate leavened bread, with his meat, and various kinds of vegetables.  The bread, which was particularly light and porous, seems to have been imported sometimes by the Romans, who knew it as panis aquaticus or panis Parthicus.  Dates were also consumed largely by the Parthians, and in some parts of the country grew to an extraordinary size.  A kind of wine was made from them; and this seems to have been the intoxicating drink in which the nation generally indulged too freely.  That made from the dates of Babylon was the most highly esteemed, and was reserved for the use of the king and the higher order of satraps.

Of the Parthian feasts, music was commonly an accompaniment.  The flute, the pipe, the drum, and the instrument called eambuca, appear to have been known to them; and they understood how to combine these instruments in concerted harmony.  They are said to have closed their feasts with dancing—­an amusement of which they were inordinately fond—­but this was probably the case only with the lower class of people.  Dancing in the East, if not associated with religion, is viewed as degrading, and, except as a religious exercise, is not indulged in by respectable persons.