Isidore must have written it some time after 26 BC, for it refers to the revolt of Tiridates II against Phraates IV, which occurred in that year.
A reference in Athenaeus[3] suggests that the title of the greater work was A Journey around Parthia (τὸ τῆς Παρθίας περιηγητικόν, tò tês Parthías periēgēticón).
Athenaeus's reference, not included in the present text of "The Parthian Stations", is a description of pearl fishing.
The 1st-century historiographer Pliny the Elder refers to a "description of the world" commissioned by the Emperor Augustus "to gather all necessary information in the east when his eldest son was about to set out for Armenia to take the command against the Parthians and Arabians";[4] this occurred c. 1 BC.
A collection of translations of the various fragments attributed to Isidore of Charax were published with commentary in "The Parthian Stations", a forty-six-page booklet by Wilfred Harvey Schoff in 1914.