Mehestan | مهستان Megistanum | مغستان

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
CE 69 - CE 122
Book: The Lives of the Caesars

Original:
1 Tamen longe maiora et firmiora de eo iudicia in morte ac post mortem exstiterunt. Quo defunctus est die, lapidata sunt templa, subversae deum arae, Lares a quibusdam familiares in publicum abiecti, partus coniugum expositi. Quin et barbaros ferunt, quibus intestinum quibusque adversus nos bellum esset, velut in domestico communique maerore consensisse ad indutias; regulos quosdam barbam posuisse p410 et uxorum capita rasisse ad indicium maximi luctus; regum etiam regem et exercitatione venandi et convictu megistanum abstinuisse, quod apud Parthos iustiti​ instar est.

English Translation:
Yet far greater and stronger tokens of regard were shown at the time of his death and immediately afterward. On the day when he passed away the temples were stoned and the altars of the gods thrown down, while some flung their household gods into the street and cast out their newly born children.​ Even barbarian peoples, so they say, who were engaged in war with us or with one another, unanimously consented to a truce, as if all in common had suffered a domestic tragedy. It is said that some princes put off their beards and had their wives' heads shaved, as p411 a token of the deepest mourning; that even the king of kings​ suspended his exercise at hunting and the banquets with his grandees, which among the Parthians is a sign of public mourning.

-Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars: The Life of Caligula | page 410,411 (Read Source)

Publius Cornelius Tacitus
CE 56 - CE 120
The Annals • The Histories

2 1 After domestic murders had made an end of Phraates and his successors, a deputation from the Parthian nobility arrived in Rome, to summon Vonones,​ as the eldest of his children, to the throne. The Caesar took this as an honour to himself and presented the youth with a considerable sum. The barbarians, too, accepted him with the pleasure they usually evince at a change of sovereigns. It quickly gave place to shame:— "The Parthians had degenerated: they had gone to another continent for a king tainted with the enemy's arts, and now the throne of the Arsacidae was held, or given away, as one of the provinces of Rome. Where was the glory of the men who slew Crassus​ and ejected Antony, if a chattel of the Caesar, who had brooked his bondage through all these years, was to govern Parthians?" Their contempt was heightened by the man himself, with his remoteness from ancestral traditions, his rare appearances in the hunting-field, his languid interest in horseflesh,​ his use of a litter when passing through the towns, and his disdain of the national banquets (megistanes).​ Other subjects for mirth were his Greek retinue and his habit of keeping even the humblest household necessaries under seal. His easy accessibility, on the other hand, and his unreserved courtesy — virtues unknown to Parthia — were construed as exotic vices; and the good and ill in him, as they were equally strange to the national character, were impartially abhorred.

- TACITUS | The Histories | ANNALS | Book II (beginning) (Read Source)

They say that the Aparnian Däae were emigrants from the Däae above Lake Maeotis, who are called Xandii or Parii. But the view is not altogether accepted that the Däae are a part of the Scythians who live about Maeotis. At any rate, some say that Arsaces derives his origin from the Scythians, whereas others say that he was a Bactrian, and that when in flight from the enlarged power of Diodotus and his followers he caused Parthia to revolt. But since I have said much about the Parthian usages in the sixth book of my Historical Sketches and in the second book of my History of events after Polybius,​ I shall omit discussion of that subject here, lest I may seem to be repeating what I have already said, though I shall mention this alone, that the Council of the Parthians, according to Poseidonius, consists of two groups, one that of kinsmen,​ and the other that of wise men and Magi, from both of which groups the kings were appointed.

-STRABO | GEOGRAPHY | Book XI, Chapter 9 (Read Source)

The work of Poseidonius, cited here by Strabo, is now lost. But from the descriptions, it might have been the most complete account of what the Romans knew about Magistanes at the time (1st c. BCE and CE). Unfortunately, the book “Historical Sketches” published around 20 BCE, which Strabo also mentiones here in which he has described the workings of the Magistanes is also now lost.