BIOGRAPHYCAL UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

ARSACES I (247- 217 BC) ARSACES II. (217-209 BC) ARSACES III (191-176 BC) PHRAATES I ( 176-165 BC) MITHRIDATES I. (165 - 132 BC) PHRAATES II. (132 - 127 BC) ;ARTABANUS II. (127 -124/3 BC). I.

ARSACES I. 247- 217 BC

The grand attempt of Alexander the Great to unite the East and West in a single universal monarchy, magnificent in conception, and carried out in act with extraordinary energy and political wisdom, so long as he was spared to conduct his enterprise in person, was frustrated, in the first place, by the unfortunate circumstance of his premature decease; and, secondly, by the want of ability among his “Successors.” Although among them there were several who possessed considerable talent, there was no commanding personality of force sufficient to dominate the others, and certainly none who inherited either Alexander’s grandeur of conception or his powers of execution, or who can be imagined as, under any circumstances, successfully accomplishing his projects. The scheme, therefore, which the great Macedonian had conceived, unhappily collapsed, and his effort to unite and consolidate led only to increased division and disintegration. He left behind him at least twelve rival claimants of his power, and it was only by partition that the immediate breaking out of civil war among the competitors was prevented. Partition itself did but stave off the struggle for a few years, and the wars of the “Successors,” which followed, caused further change, and tended to split the empire into minute fragments. After a while the various collisions produced something like a “survival of the fittest,” and about the close of the fourth century, after the great battle of Ipsus (BC 301), that division of the Macedonian Empire was made into four principal parts, which thenceforward for nearly three centuries formed the basis of the political situation in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt became the great powers of the time, and on the fortunes of these four powers, their policies, and lines of action, depended the general course of affairs in the Oriental world for the next two hundred years at any rate.

Of these four great monarchies the one with which the interests of Parthia were almost wholly bound up was the Syrian kingdom of the Seleucidae. Originally, Seleucus received nothing but the single satrapy of Babylonia. But his military genius and his popularity were such, that his dominion kept continually in­creasing until it became an empire worthy of comparison with those ancient Oriental monarchies, which, in remoter times, had attracted, and almost monopolised, the attention of mankind. As early as BC 312, he had added to his original government of Babylonia; the important countries of Media, Susiana, and Persia. After Ipsus he received, by the agreement then made among the “Successors,” the districts of Cappadocia, Eastern Phrygia, Upper Syria, Mesopotamia, and the entire valley of the Euphrates; while, about the same time, or rather earlier, he, by his own unassisted efforts, obtained the adhesion of all the eastern provinces of Alexander’s Empire, Armenia, Assyria, Sagartia, Carmania, Hyrcania, Parthia, Bactria, Sogdiana, Aria, Sarangia, Arachosia, Sacastana, Gedrosia, and probably part of India. The empire thus established extended from the Mediterranean on the west to the Indus valley and the Bolor mountain chain upon the east, while it stretched from the Caspian and the Jaxartes towards the north to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean southwards. Its entire area could not have been much less than 1,200,000 square miles. Of these some 300,000 or 400,000 may have been desert; but the remainder was generally fertile, and comprised within its limits some of the very most productive regions in the whole world. The Mesopotamian lowland, the Orontes valley, the tract between the Southern Caspian and the mountains, the regions about Merv and Balkh, were among the richest in Asia, and produced grain and fruit in incredible abundance. The fine pastures of Media and Armenia furnished excellent horses. Bactria gave an inexhaustible supply of camels. Elephants in large numbers were readily procurable from India. Gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin were furnished by several of the provinces, and precious stones of various kinds abounded. Moreover, for above ten centuries, the precious metals and the most valuable kinds of merchandise had flowed from every quarter into the region; and though the Macedonians may have carried off, or wasted, a considerable quantity of both, yet the accumulations of ages withstood the strain; and the hoarded wealth, which had come down from Assyrian, Babylonian, and Median times, was to be found in the days of Seleucus chiefly within the limits of his empire. It might have seemed that Western Asia was about to enjoy under the Seleucid princes as tranquil and prosperous a condition as had prevailed throughout the region for the two centuries which had intervened between the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus (BC 538) and its destruction by Alexander (BC 323). But the fair prospect was soon clouded over. The Seleucid princes, instead of devoting themselves to the consolidation of their power, in the vast region between the Euphrates and the Indus, turned all their attention towards the West, and frittered away in petty quarrels for small gains with their rivals in that quarter—the Ptolemies and the princes of Asia Minor—those energies which would have been far better employed in arranging and organising the extensive dominions whereof they were already masters. It was symptomatic of this leaning to the West, that the first Seleucus, almost as soon as he found himself in quiet possession of his vast empire, transferred the seat of government from Lower Mesopotamia to Upper Syria, from the banks of the Tigris to those of the Orontes. This movement had fatal consequences. Already his empire contained within itself an element of weakness in its over-great length, which cannot be estimated at less than two thousand miles. To counteract this disadvantage a fairly central position for the capital was almost a necessity. The empire of Seleucus might have been conveniently ruled from the old Median capital of Ecbatana, or the later Persian one of Susa. Even Babylon, or Seleucia, though further to the west, were not unsuitable sites ; and had Seleucus been content with either of these, no blame would attach to him. But when, to keep watch upon his rivals, he removed the seat of government five hundred miles further westward, and placed it almost on his extreme western frontier, within a few miles of the Mediterranean, he intensified the weakness which required to be counter­acted, and made the disruption of his empire within no great length of time certain. The change loosened the ties which bound the empire together, offended the bulk of the Asiatics, who saw their monarch withdraw from them into a remote corner of his dominions, and particularly weakened the grasp of the government on those more eastern districts which were at once furthest from the new metropolis, and least assimilated to the Hellenic character. Among the causes which led to the disintegration of the Seleucid kingdom, there is none which deserves so well to be considered the main cause as this. It was calculated at once to produce the desire to revolt, and to render the reduction of revolted provinces difficult, if not impossible.

The evil day, however, might have been indefinitely postponed, if not even escaped altogether, had the Seleucid princes either established and maintained throughout their empire a vigorous and efficient administration, or abstained from entangling themselves in wars with their neighbours upon the West—the Ptolemies, the kings of Pergamus, and others.

But the organisation of the Seleucid Empire was unsatisfactory. Instead of pursuing the system inaugurated by Alexander, and seeking to weld the heterogeneous elements of which his kingdom was composed into a homogeneous whole, instead of at once conciliating and elevating the Asiatics by uniting them with the Macedonians and the Greeks, by promoting intermarriage and social intercourse between the two classes of his subjects, educating the Asiatics in Greek ideas and Greek schools, opening his court to them, promoting them to high employments, making them feel that they were as much valued and as much cared for as the people of the conquering race, the first Seleucus, and after him his successors, fell back upon the older, simpler, and ruder system—the system pursued before Alexander’s time by the Persians, and before them perhaps by the Medes—the system most congenial to human laziness and human pride—that of governing a nation of slaves by means of a clique of victorious aliens. Seleucus divided his empire into satrapies, seventy-two in number. He bestowed the office of satrap on none but Macedonians and Greeks. The standing army, by means of which he maintained his authority, was indeed composed in the main of Asiatics, disciplined after the Greek model; but it was officered entirely by men of Greek or Macedonian parentage. Nothing was done to keep up the self­respect of the Asiatics, or to soften the unpleasantness which must always attach to being governed by foreigners. Even the superintendence over the satraps seems to have been insufficient. According to some writers, it was a gross outrage offered by a satrap to an Asiatic subject that stirred up the Parthians to their revolt. The story may not be true; but the currency given to it shows of what conduct to those under their rule the satraps of the Seleucidae were thought, by those who lived near the time, to have been capable. It may be said that this treatment was no worse than that whereto the subject races of Western Asia had been accustomed for many centuries under their Persian, Median, or Assyrian masters, and this statement may be quite consonant with truth ; but a new yoke is always more galling than an old one; in addition to which we must take into consideration the fact, that the hopes of the Asiatics had been raised by the policy of assimilation avowed, and to some extent introduced, by Alexander; so that they may be excused if they felt with some bitterness the disappointment of their very legitimate expectations, when the Seleucidae revived the old satrapial system, unmodified, unsoftened, with all its many abuses as pronounced and as rampant as ever.

An entire abstention on the part of the Seleucidae from quarrels with the other “Successors of Alexander,” would perhaps scarcely have been possible. Their territory bordered on that of the Ptolemies and the kings of Pergamus, and was liable to invasion from either quarter. But by planting their capital on the Orontes they aggravated the importance of the attacks which they could not prevent, and became mixed up with Pergamenian and Egyptian, and even Macedonian, politics far more than was necessary. Had they but made Seleucia permanently their metropolis, and held lightly by their dominion to the west of the Euphrates, they might certainly have avoided to a large extent the entanglements into which they were drawn by their actual policy, and have been free to give their main attention to the true sources of their real strength—the central and eastern provinces. But it may be doubted whether the idea of abstention ever presented itself to the mind of any one of the early Seleucid princes. It was the fond dream of each of them, as of the other “Successors,” that possibly in his person might one day be reunited the whole of the territories which had been ruled by the Great Conqueror. Each Seleucid prince would have felt that he sacrificed his dearest and most cherished hopes, if he had withdrawn from the regions of the west, and shunning engagements and adventures in that quarter, had contented himself with efforts to consolidate a great power in the more inland and more thoroughly Asiatic portions of the empire.

The result was that, during the first half of the third century (BC 300-250), the Seleucid princes were almost constantly engaged in disputes and wars in Asia Minor and Syria Proper, gave their personal superintendence to those regions, and had neither time nor attention to spare for the affairs of the far East. So long as the satraps of these regions paid regularly their appointed tributes, and furnished regularly the required quotas of troops for service in the western wars, Seleucus and his successors, the first and second Antiochi, were content. The satraps were left to, manage the affairs of their provinces at their own discretion ; and we cannot be surprised if the absence of a controlling hand led to various complications and disorders.

As time went on these disorders would naturally increase, and matters might very probably have come to a head in a few more years through the mere negligence and apathy of those who had the direction of the state; but a further impulse towards actual disintegration was given by the character of the second Antiochus, which was especially weak and contemptible. To have taken the title of “Theos”— never before assumed, so far as we know, by any monarch—was, even by itself, a sufficient indication of presumption and folly, and might justify us, did we know no more of him, in concluding that the calamities of his reign were the fruit of his unfitness to direct and rule an empire. But we have further abundant evidence of his incapacity. He was noted, even among Asiatic sovereigns, for luxury and debauchery; he neglected all state affairs in the pursuit of pleasure; his wives and his male favourites were allowed to rule his kingdom at their will, and their most flagrant crimes were neither restrained nor punished. The satraps, to whom the character and conduct of their sovereign could not but become known, would be partly encouraged to follow the bad example set them, partly provoked by it to shake themselves free from the rule of so hateful yet contemptible a master.

It may be added, that already there had been examples of successful revolts on the part of satraps in outlying provinces, which could not but have been generally known, and which must have excited ambitious longings on the part of persons similarly placed, from the very beginning of the Macedonian period. Even at the time of Alexander’s great conquests, a Persian satrap, Atropates, succeeded in converting his satrapy of Upper Media—thenceforward called Media Atropatene—into an independent sovereignty. Not long afterwards, Cappadocia had detached itself from the kingdom of Eumenes (BC 326), and had established its independence under Ariarathes, who became the founder of a dynasty. Still earlier, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus, once Persian provinces, had revolted, and in each case the revolt had issued in the recovery of autonomy. Thus already in Western Asia, beside the Greco-Macedonian kingdoms which had been established by the “Successors of Alexander,” there were existent some five or six states which had had their origin in successful rebellions.

Such were the circumstances under which, in or about the year BC 256, which was the sixth year of Antiochus Theus, actual disturbances broke out in the extreme north-east of the Seleucid Empire. The first province to raise the standard of revolt, and proclaim itself independent, was Bactria. This district had from a remote antiquity been one with special pretensions. The country was fertile, and much of it readily defensible; the people were hardy and valiant; they had been generally treated with exceptional favour by the Persian monarchs; and they seem to have had traditions which assigned them a pre-eminence among the Arian nations at some indefinitely distant period. “Bactria with the lofty banner ” is celebrated in one of the most ancient portions of the Zendavesta. It remained unsubdued until the time of Cyrus. Cyrus is said by some to have left it as an appanage to his second son, Bardes, or Tanyoxares. Under the Persians, it had for satrap generally, or at any rate frequently, a member of the royal family. Alexander had conquered it with difficulty, and only by prolonged efforts. It was therefore natural that disintegration should make its first appearance in this quarter. The Greek satrap of the time, Diodotus, either disgusted with the conduct of Antiochus Theus, or simply seeing in his weakness and general unpopularity an opportunity which it would be foolish to let slip, in or about the year BC 256, assumed the style and title of king, struck coins stamped with his own name, and established himself without any difficulty as king over the entire province. Theus, engaged in war with the Egyptian monarch, Ptolemy Philadelphus, did not even make an effort to put him down, and the Bactrian ruler, without encountering any serious opposition, passed into the ranks of autonomous sovereigns.

The example of successful revolt thus set could not well be barren of consequences. If one Seleucid province might throw off the yoke of its feudal lord with absolute impunity, why might not others? There seemed to be actually nothing to prevent them. Syria, so far as we can discern, allowed Bactria to go its way without any effort whatever either to check the revolt or to punish it. For eighteen years no Syrian force came near the country. Diodotus was permitted to consolidate his kingdom and rivet his authority on his subjects, without any interference, and the Bactrian monarchy became thus a permanent factor in Asiatic politics for nearly two centuries.

It was about six years after the establishment of Bactrian independence that the Parthian satrapy followed the pattern set it by its neighbour, and detached itself from the Seleucid Empire. The circumstances, however, under which the severance took place were very different in the two cases. History, by no means repeated itself. In Bactria the Greek satrap took the lead; and the Bactrian kingdom was, at any rate at its commencement, as thoroughly Hellenic as that of the Seleucidae. But in Parthia Greek rule was from the first cast aside. The native Asiatics rebelled against their masters. A people of a rude and uncivilised type, coarse and savage, but brave and freedom-loving, rose up against the polished but comparatively effeminate Greeks, who held them in subjection, and claimed and succeeded in establishing their independence. The Parthian kingdom was thoroughly anti-Hellenic. It appealed to patriotic feelings, and to the hate universally felt towards the stranger. It set itself to undo the work of Alexander, to cast out the Europeans, to recover for the native race the possession of its own continent. “Asia for for the Asiatics,” was its cry. It was naturally almost as hostile to Bactria as to Syria, although danger from a common enemy might cause it sometimes to make a temporary alliance with the former kingdom. It had, no doubt, the general sympathy of the populations in the adjacent countries, and represented to them the cause of freedom and autonomy. Arsaces effected for Parthia that which Arminius strove to effect for Germany, and which Tell accomplished for Switzerland, and Victor Emmanuel for Lombardy.

The circumstances of the revolt of Parthia are variously narrated by ancient authors. According to a story reported by Strabo, though not accepted as true by him, Arsaces was a Bactrian, who did not approve of the proceedings of Diodotus, and, when he was successful, quitted the newly-founded kingdom, and transferred his residence to Parthia, where he stirred up an insurrection against the satrap, and, succeeding in the attempt, induced the Parthians to accept him as their sovereign. But it is intrinsically improbable that an entire foreigner would have been accepted as king under such circumstances, and it is fatal to the narrative that every other account contradicts the Bactrian origin of Arsaces, and makes him a Parthian, or next door to a Parthian. Arrian states that Arsaces and his brother, Tiridates, were Parthians, descendants of Phriapites, the son of Arsaces; that they revolted against the satrap of Antiochus Theus, by name Pherecles, on account of a gross insult which he had offered to one of them; and that finally, having murdered the satrap, they declared Parthia independent, and set up a government of their own. Strabo, while giving currency to more than one story on the subject, lets us see that, in his own mind, he accepts the following account: “Arsaces was a Scythian, a chief among the Parnian Dahae, who inhabited the valley of the Ochus (Attrek?). Soon after the establishment of Bactrian independence, he entered Parthia at the head of a body of his country-men, and succeeded in making himself master of it.” Finally, Justin, who no doubt, here as elsewhere, follows Trogus Pompeius, a writer of the Augustan age, expresses himself as follows: “Arsaces, having been long accustomed to live by robbery and rapine, attacked the Parthians with a predatory band, killed their satrap, Andragoras, and seized the supreme authority.” This last account seems fairly probable, and does not greatly differ from Arrian’s. If Arsaces was a Dahan chief, accustomed to make forays into the fertile hill country of Parthia from the Chorasmian desert, and, in one of them, fell in with the Greek satrap, defeated him, and slew him, it would not be unlikely that the Parthians, who were of a kindred race, might be so delighted with his prowess as to invite him to place himself at their head. An oppressed people gladly adopts as ruler the chieftain of an allied tribe, if he has shown skill and daring, and promises them deliverance from their oppressors.

The date of the Parthian revolt was probably BC 250, which was the eleventh year of Antiochus Theus. Antiochus was at that time engaged in a serious conflict with Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, which, however, was brought to a close in the following year by his marriage with Berenice, Ptolemy’s daughter. It might have been expected that, as soon as his hands were free, he would have turned his attention towards the East, and have made an effort, at any rate, to regain his lost territory. But Antiochus lacked either the energy or the courage to engage in a fresh war. He was selfish and luxurious in his habits, and seems to have preferred the delights of repose amid the soft seductions of Antioch to the perils and hardships of a campaign in the rough Caspian region. At any rate, he remained quietly at home, while Arsaces consolidated his power, chastised those who for one reason or another resisted his authority, and settled himself firmly upon the throne. His capital appears to have been Hecatompylus, which had been built by Alexander in the valley of the Gurghan river. According to some late authors of small account, he came to a violent end, having been killed in battle by a spear-thrust, which penetrated his side. It is certain that he had a short reign, since he was succeeded in BC 248 by his brother, Tiridates, the second Parthian monarch.

ARSACES II. 217 BC. In 209 BC

Tiridates, on ascending the throne, followed a practice not very uncommon in the East, and adopted his brother’s name as a “throne-name,” reigning as Arsaces the Second. He is the first Parthian king of whom we possess contemporary memorials. The coins struck by Arsaces II commence the Parthian series, and present to us a monarch of strongly-marked features, with a large eye, a prominent, slightly aquiline nose, a projecting chin, and an entire absence of hair. He wears upon his head a curious cap, or helmet, with lappets on either side that reach to the shoulders, and has around his forehead and above his ears a coronal of pearls, apparently of a large size. On the reverse side of his coins he exhibits the figure of a man, seated on a sort of stool, and holding out in front of him a strung bow, with the string uppermost. This may be either a representation of himself in his war costume, or an ideal figure of a Parthian god, but is probably the former. Tiridates takes upon his coins the title either of “King,” or of “Great King.” The legend which they bear is Greek, as is that of almost all the kings his successors. The coins follow the Seleucid model.

Tiridates was an able and active monarch. He had the good fortune to hold the throne for a period of above thirty years, and had thus ample space for the development of his talents, and for completing the organisation of the kingdom. Having received Parthia from his brother in a somewhat weak and unsettled condition, he left it a united and powerful monarchy, enlarged in its boundaries, strengthened in its defences, in alliance with its nearest and most formidable neighbour, and triumphant over the great power of Syria, which had hoped to bring it once more into subjection. He witnessed some extraordinary movements, and conducted affairs during their progress with prudence and moderation. He was more than once brought into imminent danger, but succeeded in effectually protecting himself. He made a judicious use of the opportunities which the disturbed condition of Western Asia in his time presented to him, and might well be considered, as he was by many, a sort of second founder of the State.

It was within two years of the accession of Tiridates to the Parthian throne that one of those vast, but transient, revolutions to which Asia is subject, but which are rare occurrences in Europe, swept over Western Asia. Ptolemy Euergetes, the son of Philadelphus, having succeeded to his father’s kingdom in BC 247, made war on Syria in BC 245, to avenge the murder of his sister Berenice, to whose death the Syrian king, Seleucus II, had been a party. In the war which followed he at first carried everything before him. Having taken Antioch, he crossed the Euphrates, and, in the course of a couple of years, succeeded in effecting the conquest of Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylonia, Susiana, Media, and Persia, while the smaller provinces, as far as Parthia and Bactria, submitted to him without resistance. He went in person, as he tells us, as far as Babylon, and, regarding his power as established, proceeded somewhat hastily to gather the fruits of victory, by compelling the conquered countries to surrender all the most valuable works of art which were to be found in them, and sending off the treasures to Egypt, for the adornment of Alexandria. He also levied heavy contributions on the countries which had submitted to him, and altogether treated them with a severity that was impolitic. Bactria and Parthia cannot but have felt considerable alarm at his victorious progress. Here was a young warrior who, in a single campaign, had marched the distance of a thousand miles from the banks of the Nile to those of the Lower Euphrates, without so much as receiving a check, and who was threatening to repeat the career of Alexander. What resistance could the little Parthian state hope to offer to him? It must have rejoiced the heart of Tiridates to hear that, while the conqueror was reaping the spoils of victory in his newly-subjugated provinces, dangerous disturbances had broken out in his own land, which had forced him to withdraw his troops suddenly (BC 243), and evacuate the territory which he had overrun. Thus his invasion proved to be a raid rather than a real conquest, and, instead of damaging Parthia, had rather the effect of improving her position, and contributing to the advance of her power. On Ptolemy’s departure, Syria recovered her sway over her lost provinces, and again stood forward; as Parthia’s principal enemy; but she was less formidable than she had been previously; her hold over her outlying dominions was relaxed, her strength was crippled, her prestige lost, and her honour tarnished. Tiridates saw in her depression his own opportunity’ and, suddenly invading Hyrcania, his near neighbour, and Syria’s most distant dependency, succeeded in overrunning it and detaching it from the empire of the Seleucidae.

The gauntlet was thus thrown down to the Syrian king, and a challenge given, which he was compelled to accept, unless he was prepared to yield unresistingly, one after another, all the fairest of his remaining provinces. It was not likely that he would so act. Seleucus II was no coward. He had been engaged in wars almost continuously from his accession, and, though more than once defeated in battle, had never shown the white feather. On learning the loss of Hyrcania, he proceeded immediately to patch up a peace with his brother, Antiochus Hierax, against whom he was at the time contending, and having collected a large army, marched away to the East. He did not, however, at once invade Parthia, but, deflecting his course to the right, entered into negotiations with the revolted Bactrian king, Diodotus, and made alliance with him against Tiridates. It may be supposed that he represented Tiridates as their common foe, as much a danger to Bactria as to Syria, the head of a movement, which was directed against Hellenism, and which aimed as much at putting down Bactrian rule as Syrian. At any rate, he succeeded in gaining Diodotus to his side; and the confederate monarchs, having joined their forces, proceeded to invade the territory of the Parthian sovereign. Tiridates did not await their onset. Regarding himself as overmatched, he quitted his country, and fled northwards into the region between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, where he took refuge with a Scythic tribe, called the Aspasiacae, which was powerful at this period. The Aspasiacae, probably lent him troops, for he did not remain long in retirement; but, hearing that the first Diodotus, the ally of Seleucus, had died, he contrived to draw over his son, Diodotus II, to his alliance, and, in conjunction with him, gave Seleucus battle, and completely defeated his army. Seleucus retreated hastily to Antioch, and resumed his struggle with his brother, whom he eventually overcame; but, having learned wisdom by experience, he made no further attempts against either the Bactrian or the Parthian power.

This victory was with reason regarded by the Parthians as a sort of second beginning of their independence. Hitherto the kingdom had existed precariously, and as it were by sufferance. From the day that the revolt took place, it was certain that, some time or other, Syria would reclaim, and make an attempt to recover, its lost territory. Until a battle had been fought, until the new monarchy had measured its strength against that of its former mistress, it was impossible for any one to feel secure that it would be able to maintain its existence. The victory gained by Tiridates over Seleucus Callinicus put an end to these doubts. It proved to the world at large, as well as to the Parthians themselves, that they had nothing to fear—that they were strong enough to preserve their freedom. If we consider the enormous disproportion between the military strength and resources of the narrow Parthian state and the vast Syrian Empire—if we remember that the one comprised at this time about fifty thousand, and the other above a million of square miles; that the one had inherited the wealth of ages, while the other was probably as poor as any province in Asia; that the one possessed the Macedonian arms, training, and tactics, while the other knew only the rude warfare of the Steppes—the result of the struggle cannot but be regarded as surprising. Still, it was not without precedent; and it has not been without repetition. It adds another to the many instances, where a small but brave people, bent on resisting foreign domination, have, when standing on their defence in their own territory, proved more than a match for the utmost force that a foe of overwhelming strength could bring against them. It reminds us of Marathon of Bannockburn, of Morgarten. We may not sympathise wholly with the victors, for Greek civilization, even of the type introduced by Alexander into Asia, was ill replaced by Tatar coarseness and barbarism; but we cannot refuse our admiration to the spectacle of a handful of gallant men determinedly resisting in the fastnesses of their native land a host of aliens, and triumphing over their would-be oppressors. The Parthians themselves were so impressed with the importance of the conflict, that they preserved the memory of it by a solemn festival on the anniversary of their victory, which was still celebrated in the days of the historian Trogus Pompeius.

It is possible that Seleucus would not have accepted his defeat as final, or desisted from his attempt to reduce Parthia to obedience, if he had felt perfectly free to continue or discontinue the Parthian war at his pleasure. But, on his return to Antioch, he found much to occupy him. His brother, Antiochus Hierax, was still a rebel against his authority, and the proceedings of Attalus, King of Pergamus, were threatening. Seleucus was engaged in contests with these two enemies from the time of his return from Parthia (BC 237) almost to his death (BC 226). He was thus compelled to leave Tiridates to take his own course, and either occupy himself with fresh conquests, or devote himself to the strengthening and adorning of Tiis existing kingdom, as he pleased. Tiridates chose 1 the latter course; and during the remainder of his long reign, for the space of above twenty years, employed his leisure in useful labours within the limits of his own territories. He erected a number of strong forts, or castles, in suitable positions, fortified the Parthian towns generally, and placed garrisons in them, and carefully selected a site for a new city, which he probably intended to make, and perhaps actually made, his capital. The situation chosen was one in the mountain range known as Zapavortenon, where a hill was found, surrounded on all sides by precipitous rocks, and placed in the middle of a plain of extraordinary fertility. Abundant wood and copious streams of water existed in the neighbourhood. The soil was so rich that it scarcely required cultivation, and the woods were so full of game as to afford endless amusement to hunters. The city itself was called Dara, which the Greeks and Romans elongated into Dareium. Its exact site is undiscovered; but it seems to have lain towards the east, and was probably not very far from the now sacred city of Meshed.

We may account for the desire of Tiridates to establish a new capital by the natural antipathy of the Parthians to the Greeks, and the fact that Hecatompylos, which had been hitherto the seat of government, was a thoroughly Greek town, having been built by Alexander the Great, and peopled mainly by Grecian settlers. The Parthians disliked close contact with Hellenic manners and Hellenic ideas. Just as, in their most palmy days, they rejected Seleucia for their capital, and preferred to build the entirely new town of Ctesiphon in its immediate vicinity, as the residence of the Court and monarch, so even now, when their prosperity was but just budding, an instinctive feeling of repulsion caused them to shrink from sharing a locality with the Greeks, and make the experiment of having for their headquarters a city wholly their own. The experiment did not altogether succeed. Either Hecatompylos had natural advantages even greater than those of Dara, or, as the growth of the Parthian power was mainly towards the west, the eastward position of the latter was found inconvenient. After a short trial, the successors of Tiridates ceased to reside at Dara, and Hecatompylos became once more the Parthian capital and the seat of Parthian government.

ARSACES III

Tiridates, having done his best, according to his lights, for the security of Parthia from without, and for her prosperity within, died peaceably after a reign which is reckoned at thirty-four years, and which lasted probably from 248 to 214 BC. He left his throne to a son, named Artabanus, who, like his father, took the “throne-name” of Arsaces, and is known in history as Arsaces the Third.

Artabanus I, if we may judge by his coins, was not unlike his father in appearance, having the same projecting and slightly aquiline nose, and the same large eye; but he differed from his father in possessing abundance of hair, and wearing a long beard. He has discarded, moreover, the cap of Tiridates, and,  instead of it, wears his own hair, which he confines with a band (the diadem), passing from the forehead to the occiput, there knotted, and flowing down behind. He takes the later legend of his father—“Arsaces, the Great King.”

It was the aim of Artabanus to pursue his father’s aggressive policy, and further enlarge the limits of the kingdom. He was scarcely settled upon the throne, when he declared war against Antiochus the Great, the second son of Seleucus Callinicus, who had inherited the Syrian crown in BC 223, and was entangled in a contest with one of the satraps of Asia Minor, named Achaeus. Proceeding westward along the skirts of the mountains, he made his way to Ecbatana in Media, receiving the submission of the various countries as he went, and (nominally) adding to his dominions the entire tract between Hyrcania and the Zagros mountain chain. From this elevated position he threatened the low-lying countries of the Mesopotamian plain, and seemed likely, unless opposed, in another campaign to reach the Euphrates. The situation was most critical for Syria; and Antiochus, recognising his peril, bent all his energies to meet and overcome it. Fortunately he had just crushed Achaeus, and was able, without greatly exposing himself to serious loss in the West, to collect and lead a vast expedition against the East. With an army of a hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse, he set out for Media in the spring of BC 213, recovered Ecbatana without a battle, and thence pressed eastward after his startled enemy, who retreated as he advanced. In vain Artabanus attempted to hinder his progress by stopping, or poisoning, the wells along the route which he had necessarily to take; Antiochus caught the poisoners at their work, and brushed them from his path. He then marched rapidly against Parthia, and entering the enemy’s country, took and occupied without a battle the chief city, Hecatompylos.

Artabanus, bent on avoiding an engagement, retreated into Hyrcania, perhaps flattering himself that his adversary would not venture to follow him into that rugged and almost inaccessible region. If so, however, he soon found that he had underrated the perseverance and tenacity of the Syrian king. Antiochus, after resting his army for a brief space at Hecatompylos, set out in pursuit of his enemy, crossed by a difficult pass, chiefly along the dry channel of a mountain torrent, obstructed by masses of rock and trunks of trees, the high ridge which separated between Parthia and Hyrcania—his advance disputed by the Parthians at every step—fought and won a battle at the top, and thence descending into the rich Hyrcanian valley, endeavoured to take possession of “the entire country. But Artabanus, brought to bay by his foe, defended himself with extraordinary courage and energy. One by one the principal Hyrcanian towns were besieged and taken, but the monarch himself was unsubdued. Carrying on a guerilla warfare, moving from place to place, occupying one strong position after another, he continued his resistance with such dogged firmness that at length the patience of Antiochus was worn out, and he came to terms with his gallant adversary, conceding to him that which was the real bone of contention, his independence. Parthia came out of the struggle with the Great Antiochus unscathed: she did, not even have to relinquish her conquered dependency of Hyrcania. Artabanus moreover had the honour of being admitted into the number of the Great King’s allies. As for Antiochus, he turned his attention to the affairs of Bactria, and the remoter East, and having arranged them to his satisfaction, returned by way of Arachosia, Drangiana, and Kerman to his western possessions (BC 206).

The retirement of Antiochus, however honourable to Parthia, must have left her weakened and exhausted by her vast and astonishing efforts. She had been taxed almost beyond her strength, and must have needed a breathing-space to recruit and recover herself. Artabanus wisely remained at peace during the rest of his reign; and his son and successor, Priapatius, followed his example. It was not till BC 181 that the fifth Arsaces, Phraates I, son of Priapatius, having mounted the throne, resumed the policy of aggression introduced by Tiridates, and further extended the dominion of Parthia in the region south of the Caspian. The great Antiochus was dead. His successor, Seleucus IV (Philopator), was a weak and unenterprising prince, whom the defeat of Magnesia had cowed, and who regarded inaction as his only security. Aware probably of this condition of affairs, Phraates, early in his reign, invaded the country of the Mardi, which lay in the mountain tract south of the Caspian Sea, overran it, and added it to his territories. Successful thus far, he proceeded to make an encroachment on Media Rhagiana, the district between the Caspian Gates and Media Atropatene, by occupying the tract immediately west of the Gates, and building there the important city of Charax, which he garrisoned with Mardians. This was an advance of the Parthian Terminus towards the west by a distance of nearly two hundred miles—an advance, not so much important in itself as in the indication which it furnished, at once of Parthian aggressiveness and of Syrian inability to withstand it. The conquests of Phraates added little either to the military strength or to the resources of his kingdom, but they were prophetic of the future. They foreshadowed that gradual waning of the Syrian and advance of the Parthian state, which is the chief fact of West Asian history in the two centuries immediately preceding our era, and which was to make itself startlingly apparent within the next few years, during the reign of the sixth Arsaces.

MITHRIDATES I. 165 - 132 BC.

Mithridates the First, a brother of Phraates, was nominated to the kingly office by his predecessor, who had shown his affection for him during his life by assuming the title of “Philadelphus” upon his coins, and at his death passed over in his favour the claims of several sons. Undoubtedly, he was a born “king of men”—pointed out by nature as fitter to rule than any other individual among his contempo­raries. He had a physiognomy which was at once intelligent, strong, and dignified. He was ambitious, but not possessed of an ambition which was likely to  o’erleap itself”—strict, but not cruel—brave, energetic, a good general, an excellent administrator, firm ruler. Parthia, under his government, advanced by leaps and bounds.” Receiving at his accession kingdom but of narrow dimensions, confined apparently between the city of Charax on the one side and the river Arius, or Heri-rud, on the other, he transformed it, within the space of thirty-seven years—which was the time that his reign lasted—into a great and flourishing empire. It is not too much to say that, but for him, Parthia might have remained to the end a mere petty state on the outskirts of the Syrian kingdom, and, instead of becoming a rival to Rome, might have sunk after a short time into insig­nificance and obscurity.

To explain the circumstances under which this vast change—this revolution in the Asiatic balance of power—became possible, it is necessary that we should cast our eye over the general condition of Western Asia in the early part of the second century before our era, and especially consider the course of events in the two kingdoms between which Parthia intervened, the Bactrian and Syrian monarchies.

The Bactrian kingdom, as originally established by Diodotus, lay wholly to the north of the Paropamisus, in the long and broad valley of the Oxus, from its sources in the Pamir to its entrance on the Kharesmian Desert. The countries to the south of the range continued to be Syrian dependencies, and were reckoned by Seleucus Nicator as included within the limits of his dominion. But it was not long before the empire of Alexander in these parts began to crumble and decay. Indian princes, like Sandracottus (Chandragupta) and Sophagasenus, asserted their rights over the Region of the Five Rivers (Punjab), and even over the greater portion of Afghanistan. Greek dominion was swept away. At the time when Bactria, having had its independence acknowledged by Antiochus the Great, felt itself at liberty to embark in ambitious enterprises, as Parthia had done, the Greco-Macedonian sway over the tracts between Parthia and the Sutlej was either swept away altogether, or reduced to a mere shadow ; and Euthydemus, the third Bactrian monarch, was not afraid of provoking hostilities from Syria, when, about BC 205, he began his aggressions in this direction. Under him, and under his son and successor, Demetrius, in the twenty years between BC 205 and BC 185, Bactrian conquest was pushed as far as the Punjab region, Cabul and Candahar were overrun, and the southern side of the mountains occupied from the Heri-rud to the Indus. Eucratidas, who succeeded Demetrius (about BC 180), extended his sway still further into the Punjab region but with unfortunate results, so far as his original territories were concerned. Neglected, and comparatively denuded of troops, these districts began to slip from his grasp. The Scythian nomads of the Steppes saw their opportunity, and bursting into Bactria, harried it with fire and sword, even occupying por­tions, and settling themselves in the Oxus valley.

While matters were thus progressing in the East, and the Bactrian princes, attempting enterprises beyond their strength, were exhausting rather than! advantaging the kingdom under their sway, the Seleucid monarchs in the West were also becoming more and more entangled in difficulties, partly of their own creation, partly brought about by the ambition of pretenders.' Antiochus the Great, shortly after his return from the eastern provinces, became embroiled with the Romans (BC 196), who dealt his power a severe blow by the defeat of Magnesia (BC 190), and further weakened it by the support which they lent to the kings of Pergamus, which was now the ruling state in Asia Minor. The weakness of Antiochus encouraged Armenia to revolt, and so lost Syria another province (BC 189). Troubles began to break out in Elymais, consequent upon the exactions of the Seleucidae (BC 187). Eleven years later (BC 176) there was a lift of the clouds, and Syria seemed about to recover herself through the courage and energy of the fourth Antiochus (Epiphanes); but the hopes raised by his successes in Egypt (BC 171-168) and Armenia (BC. 165) were destroyed by his unwise conduct towards the Jews, whom his persecuting policy permanently alienated, and erected into a hostile state upon his southern border (BC 168-160). Epiphanes. having not only plundered and desecrated the Temple, but having set himself to eradicate utterly the Jewish religion, and completely Hellenise the people, was met with the most determined resistance on the part of a moiety of the nation. A patriotic party rose up under devoted leaders, who asserted, and in the end secured, the independence of their country. Not alone during the remaining years of Epiphanes, but for half a century after his death, throughout seven reigns, the struggle continued; Judaea taking advantage of every trouble and difficulty in Syria to detach herself more and more completely from her oppressor, and being a continued thorn in her side, a constant source of weakness, preventing more than anything else the recovery of her power. The triumph which Epiphanes had obtained in the distant Armenia, where he defeated and captured the king, Artaxias, was a poor set-off against the foe which he had created for himself at his doors through his cruelty and intolerance. Nor did the removal of Epiphanes (BC 164) improve the condition of affairs in Syria. The throne fell to his son, Antiochus V (Eupator), a boy of nine, according to one authority, or, according to another, of twelve years of age. The regent, Lysias, exercised the chief power, and was soon engaged in a war with the Jews, whom the death of the oppressor had encouraged to fresh efforts. The authority of Lysias was further disputed by a certain Philip, whom Epiphanes, shortly before his death, had made tutor to the young monarch. The claim of this tutor to the regent’s office being supported by a considerable portion of the army, a civil war arose between him and Lysias, which raged for the greater part of two, years, terminating in the defeat and death of Philip (BC 162). But Syrian affairs did not even then settle down into tranquillity. A prince of the Seleucid house, Demetrius by name, the son of Seleucus IV, and consequently the first cousin of Eupator, was at this time detained in Rome as a hostage, having been sent there during his father’s lifetime, as a security for his fidelity. Demetrius, with some reason, regarded his claim to the Syrian throne as better than that of his cousin, who was the son of the younger brother; and, being in the full vigour of early youth, he determined to assert his pretensions in Syria, and to make a bold stroke for the crown. Having failed to obtain the Senate’s consent to his quitting Italy, he took his departure secretly, crossed the Mediterranean in a Carthaginian vessel, and landing in Asia, succeeded within a few months in establishing himself as Syrian monarch.

From this review of the condition of affairs in the Syrian and Bactrian kingdoms during the first half of the second century before Christ, it is sufficiently apparent, that in both countries the state of things was favourable to any aspirations which the power that lay between them might entertain after dominion and self-aggrandisement. The kings of the two countries indeed, at the time of the accession of Mithridates to the Parthian throne (BC 174), were, both of them, energetic and able princes, but the Syrian monarch was involved in difficulties at home which required all his attention, while the Bactrian was engaged in enterprises abroad which equally engrossed and occupied him. Mithridates might have attacked either with a good prospect of success. Personally, he was at least their equal, and though considerably inferior in military strength and resources, he possessed the great advantage of having a perfectly free choice both of time and place, could seize the most unguarded moment, and make his attack in the quarter where he knew that he would be least expected and least likely to find his enemy on the alert. Circumstances, of which we now cannot appreciate the force, seem to have determined him to direct his first attack against the territories of his eastern neighbour, the Bactrian king, Eucratidas. These, as we have seen, were left comparatively unguarded, while their ambitious master threw all his strength into his Indian wars, pressing through Cabul into the Punjab region, and seeking to extend his dominion to the Sutlej river, or even to the Ganges. Naturally, Mithridates was successful. Attacking the Bactrian territory where it adjoined Parthia, he made himself master, without much difficulty, of two provinces—those of Turiua and of Aspionus. Turiua recalls the great but vague name of “Turanian,” which certainly belongs to these parts, but can scarcely be regarded as local. Aspionus has been regarded as the district of the Aspasiacae; but the two words do not invite comparison. It is best to be content with saying that we cannot locate the districts conquered, but that they should be looked for in the district of the Tejend and Heri-rud, between the Paropamisus and the great city of Balkh.

It does not appear that Eucratidas attempted any retaliation. Absorbed in his schemes of Indian conquest, he let his home provinces go, and sought compensation for them only in the far East. Mean-time Mithridates, having been successful in his Bactrian aggression, and thus whetted his appetite for territorial gain, determined on a more important expedition. After waiting for a few years, until Epiphanes was dead, and the Syrian throne occupied by the boy king, Eupator, while the two claimants of the regency, Lysias and Philip, were contending in arms for the supreme power, he suddenly marched with a large force towards the West, and fell upon the great province of Media Magna, which, though still nominally a Syrian dependency, was under the rule of a king, and practically, if not legally, independent. Media was a most extensive and powerful country. Polybius calls it “the most powerful of all the kingdoms of Asia, whether we consider the extent of the territory, or the number and quality of the men, or the goodness of the horses produced there. For these animals,” he says, “are found in it in such abundance, that almost all the rest of Asia is supplied with them from this province. It is here, also that the Royal horses are always fed, on account of the excellence of the pasture.” The capital of the province was now, as in the more ancient times, Ecbatana, situated on the declivity of Mount Orontes (Elwand), and, though fallen from its former grandeur, yet still a place of much importance, second only in all Western Asia to Antioch and perhaps Babylon. The invasion of Mithridates was stoutly resisted by the Medes, and several engagements took place, in which sometimes one and sometimes the other side had the. advantage; but eventually the Parthians prevailed. Mithridates seized and occupied Ecbatana, which was at the time an unwalled town, established his authority over the whole region, and finally placed it under the government of a Parthian satrap, Bacasis, while he himself returned home, to crush a revolt which had broken out.

The scene of the revolt was Hyrcania. The Hyrcanian people, one markedly Arian, had probably from the time of their subjugation chafed under the Parthian yoke, and seeing in the absence of Mithridates, with almost the whole of his power, in Media a tempting opportunity, had resolved to make a bold stroke for freedom before the further growth of Parthia should render such an attempt hopeless. We are not told that they had any special grievances; but they were brave and high-spirited they had enjoyed exceptional privileges under the Persians; and no doubt they found the rule of a Turanian people galling and oppressive. They may well have expected to receive support and assistance from the other Arian nations in their neighbourhood, as the Mardi, the Sagartians, the Arians on the Heri-rud, &c., and they may have thought that Mithridates would be too fully occupied with his Median struggle to have leisure to direct his arms against them. But the event showed that they had miscalculated. Media submitted to Mithridates without any very protracted resistance; the Parthian monarch knew the value of time, and, quitting Media, marched upon Hyrcania without losing a moment; the others Arian tribes of the vicinity were either apathetic or timid, and did not stir a step for their relief. The insurrection was nipped in the bud; Hyrcania was forced to submit, and became for centuries the obedient vassal of her powerful neighbour.

The conquest of Media had brought the Parthians into contact with the important country of Susiana or Elymais, an ancient seat of power, and one which had flourished much during the whole of the Persian period, having contained within it the principal Persian capital, Susa. This tract possessed strong attractions for a conqueror; and it appears to have been not very long after he had succeeded in crushing the Hyrcanian revolt, that Mithridates once more turned his arms westward, and from the advantageous position which he held in Media, directed an attack upon the rich and flourishing province which lay to the south. It would seem that Elymais, like Media, though reckoned a dependency of the Seleucid Em­pire, had a king of its own, who was entrusted with its government and defence, and expected to fight his own battles. At any rate we do not hear of any aid being rendered to the Elymaeans in this war, or of Mithridates having any other antagonist to meet in the course of it, besides “the Elymaean king.” This monarch he defeated without difficulty, and, having overrun his country, apparently in a single campaign, added the entire territory to his dominions.

Elymais was interposed between two regions of first-rate importance, Babylonia and Persia. The thorough mastery of any one of the three, commonly carried with it in ancient times dominion over the other two. So far as can be gathered from the scanty materials which we possess for Parthian . history at this period, the conquest of Elymais was followed almost immediately by the submission of Babylonia and Persia to the conqueror. Media and Elymais having been forced to submit, the great Mithridates was very shortly acknowledged as their sovereign lord by all the countries that intervened between the Paropamisus and the Lower Euphrates.

Thus gloriously successful in this quarter, Mithridates, who may fairly be considered the greatest monarch of his day, after devoting a few years to repose, judged that the time was come for once more embarking on a career of aggression, and seeking a similar extension of his dominions towards the East to that which he had found it so easy to effect in the regions of the West. The Bactrian troubles hack increased. Eucratidas, after greatly straining the resources of Bactria in his Indian wars, had been waylaid and murdered on his return from one of them by his son Heliocles, who chose to declare him a public enemy, drove his chariot over his corpse, and ordered it to be left unburied. This ill beginning inaugurated an unfortunate reign. Attacked by Scythians from the north, by Indians and Sarangians on the east and the south-east, Heliocles had already more on his hands than he could conveniently manage, when Mithridates declared war against him, and marched into his country (about BC 150). Already exhausted by his other wars, Heliocles could bear up no longer. Mithridates rapidly overran his dominions, and took possession of the greater part of them. According to some he did not stop here, but pressing still further eastward invaded India, and carried his arms over the Punjab to the banks of the Hydaspes. But this last advance, if it ever took place, was a raid rather than an attempt at conquest. It had no serious results. Indo-Bactrian kingdoms continued to exist in Cabul down to about BC 80, when Hellenism in this quarter was finally swept away by the Yue-chi and other Scythic tribes. The Parthian Empire never included any portion of the Indus region, its furthest provinces towards the east being Bactria, Aria, Sarangia, Arachosia, and Sacastana.

The great increase of power which Mithridates had obtained by his conquests could not be a matter of indifference to the Syrian monarchs. But their domestic troubles—the contentions between Philip and Lysias, between Lysias and Demetrius Soter, Soter and Alexander Balas, Balas and Demetrius II, Demetrius II and Tryphon—had so engrossed them for twenty years (from 162 to 142 BC), that they had felt it impossible, or hopeless, to attempt any expedition towards the East, for the protection or recovery of their provinces. Mithridates had been allowed to pursue his career of conquest unopposed, so far as the Syrians were concerned, and to establish his sway from the Hindu Kush to the Euphrates, time, however, at last came when home dangers were less absorbing, and a prospect of engaging the terrible Parthians with success seemed to present itself. The second Demetrius had not, indeed, altogether overcome his domestic enemy, Tryphon; but he had so far brought him into difficulties as to believe that he might safely be left to be dealt with by his wife, Cleopatra, and by his captains. At the same time, the condition of affairs in the East seemed to invite his interference. Mithridates ruled his new conquests with some strictness, probably suspecting their fidelity, and determined that he would not by any remissness allow them to escape from his grasp.

The native inhabitants could scarcely be much attached to the Syro-Macedonians, who had certainly not treated them with much tenderness; but a possession of one hundred and ninety years’ duration confers prestige in the East, and a strange yoke may have galled more than one to whose pressure they had become accustomed. Moreover, all the provinces which the Parthians had taken from Syria contained Greek towns, and their inhabitants might at all times be depended on to side with their countrymen against the Asiatics. At the present conjuncture, too, the number of the malcontents was swelled by the addition of the recently subdued Bactrians, who hated the Parthian yoke, and longed for an opportunity of recovering their freedom.

Thus, when Demetrius II, anxious to escape the reproach of inertness, determined to make a great expedition upon the formidable Parthian monarch, who ruled over all the countries between the Paropamisus and the Lower Euphrates, he found himself welcomed as a deliverer by a considerable number of his enemy’s subjects, whom the harshness or the novelty of the Parthian rule had offended. The malcontents joined his standard as he advanced; and supported, as he thus was, by Persian, Elymaean, and Bactrian contingents, he engaged and defeated the Parthians in several battles. Mithridates at last, recognising his inferiority in military strength, determined to have recourse to stratagem, and having put Demetrius off his guard by proposals of peace, made a sudden attack upon him, completely defeated his army, and took him prisoner. The conquered monarch was at first treated with some harshness, being conveyed about to the several nations which had revolted, and paraded before each in turn, to show them how foolish they had been in lending him their aid; but when this purpose had been answered, Mithridates showed himself magnanimous, gave his royal captive the honours befitting his rank, assigned him a residence in Hyrcania, and even gave him the hand of his daughter, Rhodogune, in marriage. It was policy, however, still more than clemency, which dictated this conduct. Mithridates nurtured designs against the Syrian kingdom itself, and saw that it would be for his advantage to have a Syrian prince in his camp, allied to him by marriage, whom he could put forward as entitled to the throne, and whom, if his enterprise succeeded, he might leave to govern Syria for him, as tributary monarch. These far-reaching plans might perhaps have been crowned with success, had the head which conceived them been spared to watch over and direct their execution. But Providence decreed otherwise. Mithridates had reached an advanced age, and, being attacked by illness soon after his capture of Demetrius, found his strength insufficient to battle with his malady, and, to the great grief of his subjects, succumbed to it (BC 136), after an eventful and glorious reign of thirty-eight years.

PHRAATES II. 132 - 127 BC.

The death of Mithridates, and the accession of a comparatively unenterprising successor, Phraates II, encouraged Syria to make one more effort to thrust the Parthians back into their native wilds, and to recover the dominion of Western Asia. So great a position was not a thing to be surrendered without a final, even if it were a despairing, struggle ; and in the actual position of affairs it was quite open to question whether, on the whole, Parthia or Syria were the stronger. The dominion of both countries was comparatively recent; neither had any firm hold on its outlying provinces; neither could claim to have conciliated to itself the affections of the Western Asiatics generally, or to rest its power on any other basis than that of military force. And in military force it was uncertain which way the balance inclined. Both countries had a nucleus of native troops, on which absolute reliance might be placed, which was brave, faithful, stanch, and would contend to the death for their respective sovereigns. But, beyond this, both had also a fluctuating body of unwilling subjects or subject-allies, unworthy of implicit trust, and likely to gravitate to one side or the other, according as hope, or fancy, or the merest caprice might decide. The chances of victory or defeat turned mainly on this fluctuating body, the instability of which had been amply proved in the wars of the last half-century. Those wars themselves, taken as a whole, had manifested no decided preponderance of either people over the other; at one time Parthia, at another Syria, had been hard pressed; and it was natural for the leaders on either side to believe that accidental circumstances, rather than any marked superiority of one of the two peoples over the other, had brought about the re­sults that had been reached.

In the last war that had been waged success had finally rested with Parthia. An entire army had been destroyed, and the Syrian monarch captured. Demetrius “the Conqueror,” as he called himself, was expiating in the cold and rugged region of Hyrcania, the rashness which had led him to deem himself a match for the craft and strategic skill of Mithridates. But now a new and untried monarch was upon the throne—one who was clearly without his father’s ambition, and probably lacked his ability. Settled in his kingdom for the space of six years, he had not only attempted nothing against Syria, but had engaged in no military enterprise whatever. Yet the condition of Syria had been strongest possible temptation such as to offer the to a neighbour possessed of courage and energy. Civil war had raged, and exhausted the resources of the country, from 146 to 137 BC, after which there had been a protracted struggle between the Syrians and the Jews (137-133), in which the Syrian arms had at first been worsted, but had at length asserted their superiority. Had Phraates II, the son and successor of Mithridates, inherited a tenth part of his father’s military spirit, he would have taken advantage of this troubled time to carry the war into Syria Proper, and might have shaken the Syrian throne to its base, or even wholly overturned it. In the person of the captured Demetrius, he possessed one whom he might have set up as a pretender with a certainty of drawing many Syrians to his side, and whom he might, if successful, have left to rule as Vitaxa, or subject king, the country of which he had once been actual monarch. But Phraates had no promptitude, no enterprise. He let all the opportunities which offered themselves escape him, content to keep watch on Demetrius—when he escaped from confinement, to pursue and retake him—and to hold him in reserve as a force of which he might one day make use, when it seemed to him that the fitting time was come for it.

The result of his long procrastination was, that the war, when renewed, was renewed from the other side. Antiochus Sidetes, who had succeeded to the Syrian throne on the captivity of his brother, Demetrius, and had taken to wife his brother’s wife, Cleopatra, having crushed the pretender, Tryphon, with her assistance, and then with some difficulty enforced submission on the Jews, felt himself, in 129, at liberty to resume the struggle with Parthia, and, having made great preparations, set out for the East with the full intention of releasing his brother, and recovering his lost provinces.

It is impossible to accept without considerable reserve the accounts that have come down to us of the force which Antiochus collected. According to Justin, it consisted of no more than eighty thousand fighting men, to whom were attached the incredible number of three hundred thousand camp-followers, the majority of them consisting of cooks, bakers, and actors. As in other extreme cases the camp-followers do but equal, or a little exceed, the number of men fit for actual service, this estimate, which makes them nearly four times as numerous, is entitled to but little credit. The late historian, Orosius, corrects the error here indicated; but his account seems to err in rating the supernumeraries too low. According to him, the armed force amounted to three hundred thousand, while the camp-followers, including grooms, sutlers, courtesans, and actors, were no more than a third of the number. From the two accounts, taken together we are perhaps entitled to conclude that the entire host did not fall much short of four hundred thousand men. This estimate receives a certain amount of confirmation from an independent statement made incidentally by Diodorus, with respect to the number' on the Syrian side that fell in the campaign, which he estimates at three hundred thousand.

The army of Phraates, according to two consentient accounts, numbered no more than a hundred and twenty thousand. An attempt which he made to enlist in his service a body of Scythian mercenaries from the regions beyond the Oxus failed, the Scyths being quite willing to lend their aid, but arriving too late at the rendezvous to be of any use. At the same time a defection on the part of the subject princes deprived the Parthian monarch of contingents which usually swelled his numbers, and threw him upon the support of his own countrymen, chiefly or solely. Under these circumstances it is more surprising that he was able to collect a hundred and twenty thousand men than that he did not succeed in bringing into the field a larger number.

The Syrian troops were magnificently appointed. The common soldiers had their military boots fastened with buckles or studs of gold; and the culinary utensils, in which the food of the army was cooked, were in many instances of silver. It seemed as if banqueting, rather than fighting, was to be the order of the day. But to suppose that this was actually so, would be to do the army of Antiochus an injustice. History, from the time of Sardanapalus to that of the Crimean War of 1854-6, abounds with instances of the somewhat strange combination of luxurious habits with valour of the highest kind. No charge of poltroonery can be established against the Syrian soldiery, who, on the contrary, seem to have played their part in the campaign with credit They were accompanied by a body of Jews under John Hyrcanus, the son of Simon and grand­son of the first Maccabee leader, who had been forced to take up temporarily the position of a Syrian feudatory. As they advanced through the Mesopotamian region after crossing the Euphrates, they received continually fresh accessions of strength by the arrival of contingents from the Parthian tributary states, which, disgusted with Parthian arrogance and coarseness, or perhaps attracted by Syrian luxury and magnificence, embraced the cause of the invader.

Phraates, on his part, instead of awaiting attack in the fastnesses of Parthia or Hyrcania, advanced to meet his enemy across the Assyrian and Babylonian plains, and, either in person or by his generals, engaged the Syrian monarch in three pitched battles, in each of which he was worsted. One of these was fought upon the banks of the Greater Zab or Lycus, in Adiabene, not far from the site of Arbela, where Antiochus met and defeated the Parthian general, Indates, and raised a trophy in honour of his victory. The exact scene of the other two engagements is unknown to us, and in no case have we any description of the battles, so that we have no means of judging whether it was by superiority of force or of strategy that the Syrian monarch thus far prevailed, and obtained almost the whole for which he was fighting. The entire province of Babylonia, the heart of the empire, where were situated the three great cities of Babylon, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon, fell into his hands, and a further defection of the tributary countries from the Parthian cause took place, a defection so widespread, that the writer who records it says, with a certain amount of rhetoric, no doubt—“Phraates had now nothing left to him beyond the limits of the original Parthian territory.” He maintained, however, a position somewhere in the Lower Babylonian plain, and Still confronted Antiochus with an army, which, though beaten, was bent on resistance.

When affairs were in this state, Phraates, recognising the peril of his position, came to the conclusion that it was necessary to attempt, at any rate, a diversion. He had still what seemed to him a winning card in his hand, and it was time to play it. Demetrius, the brother of Antiochus, and de jure the king of Syria, was still in his possession, watched and carefully guarded in the rough Hyrcanian home, from which he had twice escaped, but only to be recaptured. He would send Demetrius into Syria under an escort of Parthian troops, who should conduct him to the frontier and give him the opportunity of recovering his kingdom. It would be strange if one, entitled to the throne by his birth, and its actual occupant for the space of six years, could not rally to himself a party in a country always ready to welcome pretenders, and to accept, as valid, claims that were utterly baseless. Let troubles break out in his rear, let his rule over Syria be threatened in Syria itself, and Antiochus would, he thought, either hasten home, or, at the least, be greatly alarmed, have his attention distracted from his aggressive designs, and be afraid of plunging deeper into Asia, lest, while grasping at the shadow of power, he should lose the substance.

Demetrius and his Parthian escort set out, but the distance to be traversed was great, and travelling is slow in Asia. Moreover, the winter time was approaching, and each week would increase the difficulties of locomotion. The scheme of Phraates hung fire. No immediate effect followed from it. Antiochus may not have received intelligence of the impending danger, or he may have thought his wife, Cleopatra, whom he had left at Antioch, capable of coping with it. In any case, it is certain that his movements were in no way affected by the bolt which Phraates had launched at him. Instead of withdrawing his troops from the occupied provinces and marching them back into Syria, thus relinquishing all that he had gained by his successful campaign, he resolved to maintain all the conquests that he had made, and to keep his troops where they were, merely dividing them, on account of their numbers, among the various cities which he had taken, and making them go into winter quarters. His design was carried out; the army was dispersed; discipline was probably somewhat relaxed; and the soldiery, having no military duties to perform, amused themselves, as foreign soldiers are apt to do, by heavy requisitions, and by cavalier treatment of the native inhabitants.

Some months of the winter passed in this way. Gradually the discontent of the civil populations in the cities increased. Representations were made to Phraates by secret messengers, that the yoke of the Syrians was found to be intolerable, and that, if he would give the signal, the cities were ripe for revolt. Much hidden negotiation must have taken place before a complete arrangement could have been made, or a fixed plan settled on. As in the “Saint Bartholomew,” as in the “Sicilian Vespers,” as in the great outbreak against the Roman power in Asia Minor under Mithridates of Pontus, the secret must have been communicated to hundreds, who, with a marvellous tenacity of purpose, kept it inviolate for weeks or months, so that not a whisper reached the ears of the victims. Sunk in a delicious dream of the most absolute security, careless of the feelings, and deaf to the grumblings of the townsmen, the Syrian soldiers continued to enjoy their long and pleasant holiday without a suspicion of the danger that was impending. Meanwhile Phraates arranged all the details of plan, and communicated them to his confederates. It was agreed that, on an appointed day, all the cities should break out in revolt; the natives should take arms, rise against the soldiers quartered upon them, and kill all, or as many as possible. Phraates promised to be at hand with his army, to prevent the scattered garrisons from giving help to each other. It was calculated that, in this way, the invaders might be cut off almost to a man without the trouble of even fighting a battle.

But, before he proceeded to these terrible extremities, the Parthian prince, touched perhaps with compassion, determined to give his adversary a chance of escaping the fate prepared for him by timely concessions. The winter was not over; but the snow was beginning to melt through the increasing warmth of the sun’s rays, and the day appointed for the general rising was probably drawing near. Phraates felt that no time was to be lost. Accordingly, he sent ambassadors to Antiochus to propose peace, and to inquire on what terms it would be granted him. The reply of Antiochus, according to Diodorus, was as follows: “If Phraates would release his prisoner, Demetrius, from captivity, and deliver him up without ransom, at the same time restoring all the provinces which had been taken by Parthia from Syria, and consenting to pay a tribute for Parthia itself, peace might be had; but not otherwise.” To such terms it was, of course, impossible that any Parthian king should listen; and the ambassadors of Phraates returned, therefore, without further parley.

Soon afterwards, the day appointed for the outbreak arrived. Apparently, even yet no suspicion had been excited. The Syrian troops were everywhere quietly enjoying themselves in their winter quarters, when, suddenly and without any warning, they found attacked by the natives. Taken at disadvantage, it was impossible for them to make a successful resistance; and it would seem that the great bulk of them were massacred in their quarters. Antiochus, and the detachment stationed with him, alone, so far as we hear, escaped into the open field, and contended for their lives in just warfare. It had been the intention of the Syrian monarch, when he quitted his station, to hasten to the protection of the division quartered nearest to him; but he had no sooner com­menced his march than he found himself confronted by Phraates, who was at the head of his main army, having, no doubt, anticipated the design of Antiochus and resolved to frustrate it. The Parthian prince was anxious to engage at once, as his force far outnumbered that commanded by his adversary; but the latter might have declined the battle had he so willed, and have at any rate greatly protracted the struggle. He had a mountain region—Mount Zagros, probably—within a short distance of him, and might have fallen back upon it, so placing the Parthian horse at great disadvantage; but he was still at an age when caution is apt to be considered cowardice, and temerity to pass for true courage. Despite the advice of one of his captains, he determined to accept the battle which the enemy offered, and not to fly before a foe whom he had three times defeated. But the determination of the commander was ill seconded by the army which he commanded. Though Antiochus fought strenuously, he was defeated, since his troops, were without heart and offered but a poor resistance. Athenaeus, the general who had advised retreat, was the first to fly, and then the whole army broke up and dispersed itself. Antiochus himself perished, either slain by the enemy or by his own hand. His son, Seleucus, and a niece, a daughter of his brother, Demetrius, who had accompanied him in his expedition, were captured. His troops were either cut to pieces or made prisoners. The entire number of those slain in the battle, and in the general massacre, was reckoned at three hundred thousand.

Such was the issue of this great expedition. It was the last which any Seleucid monarch conducted into these countries—the final attempt made by Syria to repossess herself of her lost Eastern provinces. Henceforth, Parthia was no further troubled by the power that had hitherto been her most dangerous and most constant enemy, but was allowed to enjoy, without molestation from Syria, the conquests which she had effected. Syria, in fact, had received so deep a wound that she had from this time a difficulty in preserving her own existence. The immediate result of the destruction of Antiochus and his host was the revolt of Judaea, which henceforth maintained its independence uninterruptedly to the time of the Romans. The dominions of the Seleucidae were reduced to Cilicia, and Syria Proper, or the tract west of the Euphrates between the chain of Amanus and Palestine. Internally, the Syrian state was agitated by constant commotions from the claims of various pretenders to the sovereignty; externally, it was kept in continual alarm by the Egyptians, the Romans, and the Armenians. During the sixty years that elapsed between the return of Demetrius to his kingdom (BC 128) and the conversion of Syria into a Roman province (BC 65) she ceased wholly to be formidable to her neighbours. Her flourishing period was gone by, and a rapid decline set in, from which there was no recovery. It is surprising that the Romans did not step in earlier, to terminate a rule which was but a little removed from anarchy. Rome, however, had other work on her hands—civil troubles, social wars, and the struggle with Mithridates; and hence the Syrian state continued to exist till the year B.C. 65, though in a feeble and moribund condition.

In Parthia itself the consequences of Syria’s defeat and collapse were less important than might have been expected. One would naturally have looked to see, as the immediate result, a fresh development of the aggressive spirit, and a burst of energy and enterprise parallel to that which had carried the arms of Mithridates I, from his Parthian fastnesses to the Hydaspes on the one hand and to the Euphrates on the other. But no such result followed. We hear indeed of Phraates intending to follow up his victory over Antiochus by a grand attack upon Syria—an attack to which, if it had taken place, she must almost certainly have succumbed—but, in point of fact, the relations between the two countries continued for many years after the Great Massacre, peaceful, if not even friendly. Phraates celebrated the obsequies off Antiochus with the pomp and ceremony befitting a powerful king, and ultimately placed his remains in a coffin of silver, and sent them into Syria, to find their last resting-place in their native country. He treated Seleucus, the son of Antiochus, who had been made prisoner in the final battle, with the highest honour, and took to wife Antiochus’s niece, who fell into his hands at the same time. The royal houses of the Seleucidae and the Arsacidae became thus doubly allied; and, all grounds for further hostilities having been removed, peace and amity were established between the former rivals. No doubt a powerful motive influencing Parthia in the adoption of this policy was that revelation of a new danger which will form the chief subject of the ensuing section.

ARTABANUS II. 127 -124/3 BC.

The Turanian or Tatar races by which Central and Northern Asia are inhabited, have at all times constituted a serious danger to the inhabitants of the softer South. Hordes of wild barbarians wander over those inhospitable regions, increase, multiply, exert a pressure on their southern neighbours, and are felt as a perpetual menace. Every now and then a crisis arrives. Population has increased beyond the means of subsistence, or a novel ambition has seized a tribe or a powerful chief, and the barrier, which has hitherto proved a sufficient restraint, is forced. There issues suddenly out of the frozen bosom of the North a stream of coarse, uncouth savages—brave, hungry, countless—who swarm into the fairer southern regions determinedly, irresistibly; like locusts winging their flight into a green land. How such multitudes come to be propagated in countries where life is with difficulty sustained, we do not know; why the impulse suddenly seizes them to quit their old haunts and move steadily in a given direction, we cannot say; but we see that the phenomenon is one of constant recurrence, and we have thus come to regard it as being scarcely curious or strange at all. In Asia, Cimmerians, Scythians, Comans, Mongols, Turks; in Europe, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Avars, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, Bulgarians, have successively illustrated the law, and made us familiar with its operation. “Inroads of the northern barbarians” has become a common-place with writers of history, and there is scarcely any country of the South, whether in Asia or in Europe, that has not experienced them.

Such inroads are very dreadful when they take place. Hordes of savages, coarse and repulsive in their appearance, fierce in their tempers, rude in their habits, not perhaps individually very brave or strong, but powerful by their numbers, and sometimes by a new mode of warfare, which it is found difficult to meet, pour into the seats of civilisation, and spread havoc around. On they come (as before observed) like a flight of locusts, countless, irresistible—finding the land before them a garden, and leaving it behind them a howling wilderness. Neither sex nor age is spared. The inhabitants of the open country and of the villages, if they do not make their escape to high mountain tops or other strongholds, are ruthlessly massacred by the invaders, or, at best, forced to become their slaves. The crops are consumed, the flocks and herds swept off or destroyed, the villages and homesteads burnt, the whole country made a scene of desolation. Walled towns perhaps resist them, as they have not often patience enough for sieges; but sometimes, with a dogged determination, they sit down before the ramparts, and by a prolonged blockade, starve the defenders into submission. Then there ensues an indescribable scene of havoc, rapine, and bloodshed. Ancient cities, rich with the accumulated stores of ages, are ransacked and perhaps burnt; priceless works of art often perish; civilisations which it has taken centuries to build up are trampled down. Few things are more terrible than the devastation and ruin which such an inroad has often spread over a fair and smiling kingdom, even when it has merely swept over it, like a passing storm, and has led to no permanent occupation.

Against a danger of this kind the Parthian princes had had, almost from the first, to guard. They were themselves of the nomadic race—Turanians, if our hypothesis concerning them be sound—and had established their kingdom by an invasion of the type above described. But they had immediately become settlers, inhabitants of cities; they had been softened, to a certain extent, civilised; and now they looked on the nomadic hordes of the North with the same dislike and disgust with which the Persians and the Greco-Macedonians had formerly regarded them. In the Scythians of the Trans-Oxianian tract they saw an unceasing peril, and one, moreover, which was, about the time of Phraates, continually increasing and becoming more and more threatening.

Fully to explain the position of affairs in this quarter, we must ask the reader to accompany us into the remoter regions of inner Asia, where the Turanian tribes had their headquarters. There, about the year BC 200, a Turanian people called the Yue-chi were expelled from their territory on the west of Chen-si by the Hiong-nu, whom some identify with the Huns. “The Yue-chi separated into two bands: the smaller descended southwards into Thibet; the larger passed westwards, and after a hard struggle, dispossessed a people called ‘Su,’ of the plains west of the river of Ili. The latter advanced to Ferghana and the Jaxartes; and the Yue-chi not long afterwards retreating from the U-siun, another nomadic race, passed the Su, on the north, and occupied the tracts between the Oxus and the Caspian. The Su , were thus in the vicinity of the Bactrian Greeks; the Yue-chi in the neighbourhood of the Parthians.” On the particulars of this account, which comes from the Chinese historians, we cannot perhaps altogether depend; but there is no reason to doubt the main fact, testified by an eye­witness, that the Yue-chi, having migrated about the period mentioned from the interior of Asia, had established themselves sixty years later (BC 140) in the Caspian region. Such a movement would necessarily have thrown the entire previous population of those parts into commotion, and would probably have precipitated them upon their neighbours. It accounts satisfactorily for the unusual pressure of the northern hordes at this period on the Parthians, the Bactrians, and even the Indians; and it completely explains the crisis of Parthian history which we have now reached, and the necessity which lay upon the nation of meeting, and if possible overcoming, a new danger.

In fact, one of those occasions of peril had arisen to which we have before alluded, and to which, in ancient times, the civilised world was always liable from an outburst of northern barbarism. Whether the peril has altogether passed away or not, we need not here inquire, but certainly in the old world there was always a chance that civilisation, art, refinement, luxury, might suddenly and almost without warning be swept away by an overwhelming influx of savagery from the North. From the reign of Cyaxares, when the evil, so far as we know, first showed itself, the danger was patent to all wise and far-seeing governors both in Europe and Asia, and was from time to time guarded against The expeditions of Cyrus against the Massagetae, of Darius Hystaspis against the European Scyths, of Alexander against the Getae, of Trajan and Probus across the Danube, were designed to check and intimidate the northern nations, to break their power, and diminish the likelihood of their taking the offensive. It was now more than four centuries since in this part of Asia any such effort had been made ; and the northern barbarians might naturally have ceased to fear the arms and discipline of the South. Moreover, the circumstances of the time scarcely left them a choice. Pressed on continually more and more by the newly-arrived “Su” and Yue-chi, the old inhabitants of the Trans-Oxianian regions were under the necessity of seeking new settlements, and could only attempt to find them in the quarter towards which they were driven by the new-comers. Strengthened probably by daring spirits from among their conquerors themselves, they crossed the rivers and the deserts by which they had been hitherto confined, and advancing against the Parthians, Bactrians, and Arians, threatened to carry all before them. In Bactria, soon after the establishment of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, they began to give trouble. Province after province was swallowed up by the invaders, who occupied Sogdiana, or the tract between the Lower Jaxartes and the Lower Oxus, and hence proceeded to make inroads into Bactria itself. The rich land on the Polytimetus, or Ak-Su, the river of Samarkand, and even the highlands between the Upper Jaxartes and Upper Oxus, were permanently occupied by Turanian immigrants; and, if the Bactrians had not compensated themselves for their losses by acquisitions of territory in Afghanistan and India, they would soon have had no kingdom left. The hordes were always increasing in strength through the influx of fresh tribes. Bactria was pressed to the south-eastward, and precipitated upon its neighbours in that direction.

Presently, in Ariana, the hordes passed the mountains, and proceeding southwards, occupied the tract below the great lake wherein the Helmend terminates, which took from them the name of Sacastana—“the land of the Saka or Scyths”—a name still to be traced in the modern Seistan. Further to the east they effected a lodgment in Cabul, and another in the southern portion of the Indus valley, which for a time bore the name of Indo-Scythia. They even crossed the Indus, and attempted to penetrate into the interior of Hindustan, but here they were met and repulsed by a native monarch, about the year BC 56. 

The people engaged in this great movement are called in a general way by the classical writers Sacae or Scythae, i.e., Scyths. They consisted of a number of tribes, similar for the most part in language, habits, and mode of life, and allied more or less closely to the other nomadic races of Central and Northern Asia. Of these tribes the principal were the Massagetae (“great Jits or Jats”), the former adversaries of Cyrus, who occupied the country on both sides of the lower course of the Oxus; the Dahae, who bordered the Caspian above Hyrcania, and extended thence to the longitude of Herat; the Tochari, who settled in the mountains between the Upper Jaxartes and the Upper Oxus, where they gave name to the tract known as Tokharistan; the Asii or Asians, who were closely connected with the Tochari; and the Sacarauli, who are found connected with both the Tochari and the Asians. Some of these tribes contained within them further subdivisions, as the Dahae, who comprised the Parni or Aparni, the Pissuri, and the Xanthii; and the Massagetae, who included among them Chorasmii, Attasii, and others.

The general character of the barbarism, in which these various races were involved, may be best learnt from the description given of one of them, with but few differences, by Herodotus and Strabo. According to these writers, the Massagetae were nomads who moved about in waggons or carts, like the modern Kalmucks, accompanied by their flocks and herds, on whose milk they chiefly sustained themselves. Each man had only one wife, but all the wives were held in common. They were good riders, and excellent archers, but fought both on horseback and on foot, and used, besides their bows and arrows, lances, knives, and battle-axes. They had little or no iron, but made their spear and arrow-heads, and their other weapons, of bronze. They had also bronze breastplates, but otherwise the metal with which they adorned and protected their own persons and the heads of their horses, was gold. To a certain extent they were cannibals. It was their custom not to let the aged among them die a natural death; but, when life seemed approaching its term, to offer them up in sacrifice, and then boil the flesh and feast upon it. This mode of ending life was regarded as the best and most honourable; such as died of disease were not eaten, but buried, and their friends bewailed their misfortune. It may be added to this, that we have sufficient reason to believe, that the Massagetai and the other nomads of these parts regarded the use of poisoned arrows in warfare as legitimate, and employed the venom of serpents and the corrupted blood of men, to make the wounds which they inflicted more deadly.

Thus, what was threatened by the existing position of affairs was not merely the conquest of one race by another cognate to it, like that of the Medes by the Persians, or of the Greeks by Rome, but the obliteration of such art, civilisation, and refinement as Western Asia had attained to in the course of ages by the successive efforts of Babylonians, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and Greeks—the spread over some of the fairest regions of the earth of a low type of savagery—a type which in religion went no further than the worship of the Sun; in art knew but the easier forms of metallurgy and the construction of carts; in manners and customs, included cannibalism, the use of poisoned weapons, and a relation between the sexes destructive alike of all delicacy and all family affection. The Parthians were, no doubt, rude and coarse in their character as compared with the Persians; but they had been civilised to some extent by three centuries of subjection to the Persians and the Greeks before they rose to power; they affected Persian manners; they patronised Greek art; they had a smattering of Greek literature; they appreciated the advantages of having in their midst a number of Grecian states. Many of their kings called themselves upon their coins “Phil-Hellenes,” or “lovers of the Hellenic people.” Had the Massagetae and their kindred tribes of Sacae, Tochari, Dahae, Yue-chi, and Su, which now menaced the Parthian power, succeeded in sweeping it away, the gradual declension of all that is lovely or excellent in human life would have been marked. Scythicism would have overspread Western Asia. No doubt the conquerors would have learnt something from those whom they subjected to their yoke; but it cannot be supposed that they would have learnt much. The change would have .been like that which passed over the Western Roman Empire, when Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, Heruli, depopulated its fairest provinces and laid its civilisation in the dust. The East would have been barbarised; the gains of centuries would have been lost; the work of Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, and other great benefactors of Asiatic humanity, would have been undone; Western Asia would have sunk back into a condition not very much above that from which it had been raised two thousand years previously by the primitive Chaldaeans and the Assyrians.

The first monarch to recognise the approach of the) crisis and its danger was Phraates II, the son of Mithridates I, and the conqueror of Antiochus Sidetes. Not that the danger presented itself to his imagination in its full magnitude; but that he first woke up to the perception of the real position of affairs in the East, and saw that, whereas Parthia’s most formidable enemy had hitherto been Syria, and the Syro-Macedonian power, it had now become Scythia and the Sacae. No sooner did the pressure of the nomads begin to make itself felt on his north­eastern frontier, than, relinquishing all ideas of Syrian conquests, if he had really entertained them, he left the seat of empire in Babylonia to the care of a viceroy, Hymerus, or Evemerus, and marched in person to confront the new peril. The Scythians, apparently, had attacked Parthia Proper from their seats in the Oxus region. Phraates, in his haste to collect a sufficient force against them, enlisted in his service a large body of Greeks—the remnants mainly of the defeated army of Antiochus—and taking with him also a strong body of Parthian troops, marched at his best speed eastward. A war followed in the mountain region, which must have lasted for some years, but of which we have only the most meagre account. At last there was an engagement in which the Scythians got the advantage, and the Parthian troops began to waver and threaten to break, when the Greeks, who had been from the first disaffected, and had only waited for an occasion to mutiny, went over in a body to the enemy, and so decided the battle. Deserted by their allies, the Parthian soldiery were cut to pieces, and Phraates himself was among the slain. The event proved that he had acted rashly in taking the Greeks with him, but he can scarcely be said to have deserved much blame. It would have been surprising if he had anticipated so strange a thing as the fraternisation of a body of luxurious and over-civilised Greeks with the utter barbarians against whom he was contending, or had imagined that in so remote a region, cut off from the rest of their countrymen, they would have ventured to take a step which must have thrown them entirely on their own resources.

We have, no information with regard to the ultimate fate of the Greek mutineers. As for the Scythians, With that want of energy and of a settled purpose, which characterised them, they proceeded to plunder and ravage the portion of the Parthian territory which lay open to them, and, when they had thus wasted their strength, returned quietly to their homes.

The Parthian nobles appointed as monarch, in place of the late king, an uncle of his, named Artabanus, who is known in history as “Artabanus the Second.” He was probably advanced in years, and might perhaps have been excused, had he folded his arms, awaited the attack of his foes, and stood wholly on the defensive. But he was brave and energetic; and, what was still more important, he appears to have appreciated the perils of the position. He was not content, when the particular body of barbarians, which had defeated and slain his predecessor, having ravaged Parthia Proper, returned home, to sit still and wait till he was attacked in his turn. According to the brief but emphatic words of Justin, he assumed the aggressive, and invaded the country of the Tochari, one of the most powerful of the Scythian tribes, which was now settled in a portion of the region that had, till lately, belonged to the Bactrian kingdom. Artabanus evidently felt that what was needed was, not simply to withstand, but to roll back the flood of invasion, which had advanced so near to the sacred home of his nation; that the barbarians required to be taught a lesson; that they must at least be made to understand that Parthia was to be respected; if this could not be done, then the fate of the empire was sealed. He therefore, with a gallantry and boldness that we cannot sufficiently admire—a boldness that seemed like rashness, but was in reality prudence—without calculating too closely the immediate chances of battle, led his troops against one of the most forward of the advancing tribes. But’ fortune, unhappily, was adverse. How the battle was progressing we are not told; but it appears that, in the thick of an engagement, Artabanus, who was leading his men, received a wound in the forearm, from the effect of which he died almost immediately. The death of the leader on either side decides in the East, almost to a certainty, the issue of a conflict. We cannot doubt that the Parthians, having lost their monarch, were repulsed; that the expedition failed ; and that the situation of affairs became once more at least as threatening as it had been before Artabanus made his attempt. Two Parthian monarchs had now fallen, within the space of a few years, in combat with the aggressive Scyths—two Parthian armies had suffered defeat. Was this to be always so? If it was, then Parthia had only to make up her mind to fall, and, like the great Roman, to let it be her care that she should fall grandly and with dignity.