Rostam was always represented as the mightiest of Iranian paladins (holy warriors), and the atmosphere of the episodes in which he features is strongly reminiscent of the Parthian Empire.

In some recent publications Frantz Grenet has attempted to find pictorial allusions several centuries earlier, in the “sīmurgh” depicted on the buckle of Shapur I (AD 240–272) on the Rag-i Bībī rock relief in northern Afghanistan, and in the scene of a prince breaking in a foal depicted on an Eastern Sasanian silver dish attributed to the first half of the fourth century.

Nicholas Sims-Williams has referred to the personal name Purlang-zin, spelt πορλαγγοζινο in Greek script, in a Bactrian document which was almost certainly written in the fourth century under Sasanian rule, claiming that this may be translated as “the man with the panther’s skin” and that it represents “a clear reference to the zīn-i palang of Rustam.” [...] the first element of this name, is the Bactrian word for “panther” or “leopard”.

[2]In the Shahnameh, Rostam is a native of Zabulistan, a historical region roughly corresponding to today's Zabul Province, southern Afghanistan.

As a young child, he slays the maddened white elephant of the king Manuchehr with just one blow of the mace owned by his grandfather Sam, son of Nariman.

Rostam's task was to conquer the fortress on the summit of Mt Sipand where his great grandfather, Nariman, once besieged it and was slain in the battle.

Rostam breached the fortress, defeated the enemy, ransacked its treasury and reported his success to his father, Zāl, and grandfather, Sam.

With Tahmineh, princess of Samangan, Rostam had a son called Sohrab, who was killed accidentally by his father in the time of Kay Kavus.

Ernst Herzfeld maintained that the dynasty of Gondophares represented the House of Suren, highest of the five premier families of Parthian Empire, invested with the hereditary right of commanding the royal armies, and placing the crown on the king's head at the coronation.

Probably when around 129 BCE, nomad peoples, especially the Indo-Scythians (Sacaraucae, Old Persian Sakaravaka "nomadic Saka” or Saraucae) and the Tocharians attacked the eastern frontier of Parthia, defense was entrusted by the Parthian emperors to the Surens; and the latter eventually not only repelled the Indo-Scythians, but pursued them into Arachosia and the Punjab, this event probably representing interitus Saraucarum ( the perishing of the Sacaraucae) of Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus (Prologue 42).