Hi there, you're listening to The Hellenistic Age podcast, interview episode on the Parthian Empire with Dr. Nicholas Overtoom.

Hello everyone.

Today I have with me Dr. Nicholas Overtoom, assistant professor of history at Washington State University.

Dr. Overtum is a specialist of the Parthian Empire in early Parthian history, with an emphasis on their

interactions with the states of the Hellenistic and later Roman worlds. He is also the author of an

upcoming book, published by Oxford University Press, entitled Rain of Arrows, The Rise of the

Parthian Empire in the Hellenistic Middle East, set for a release date of May 1st, 2020. First off, I would like to say welcome to the show.

And as a starter, could you tell us a bit about your educational background and what led you to

focusing on the Parthians in particular? Sure, I may be happy to. So I'd like to begin by thanking

you for having me on the Hellenistic Age podcast. I'd also like to thank your listeners for their interests and what I believe is a very fascinating period and also very fascinating people. And I'm hoping that your listeners do get a lot of value out of this discussion. So as far as my educational background is concerned, I earned my bachelor's degree at the University of North Texas, which is a state school north of the Dallas Metroplex. I got my BA in history with a minor in classical studies in 2008. While at the University of North Texas, I studied under Dr. Christopher Furman, who is a specialist in policing in the Roman world. In fact, his book,

Policing the Roman Empire, also published by Oxford, is a terrific book, and I highly recommend it.

Basically, at the University of North Texas, I went to school to be a journalism major, but I started

taking history courses as a history minor, and just so happened to start taking ancient history courses with Dr. Furman

and really sort of fell in love with the subject matter.

You know, the Greeks and the Romans, even though I find them sometimes to be very despicable, I also find them to be very, very interesting.

Undergrad, I decided to change my major from journalism to history, and I also decided to go to graduate school for ancient history specifically.

As a graduate student, I was accepted into the master's program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

There, I earned my master's in ancient Mediterranean history in 2011.

While at the University of Maryland, I studied under the

wonderful and really just sort of an unbelievably productive scholar, Dr. Arthur Eckstein,

who his sort of major work when I was going to school at Maryland was Mediterranean Anarchy,

Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome, which again, I could not

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