Thus terminated, the great Parthian invasion of Syria under Labienus and Pacorus; and with it terminated the prospect of any further spread of the Arsacid dominion towards the West. When the two great world-powers, Rome and Parthia, first came into collision, when the hard blow struck by the latter in the annihilation of the army of Crassus was followed up by the advance of their clouds of horse into Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor—when Apameia, Antioch, and Jerusalem fell into their hands, when Decidius Saxa was defeated and slain—Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia, and Caria occupied, Lydia and Ionia ravaged—it seemed as if Rome had met, not so much an equal, as a superior; it looked as if the power hitherto predominant would be compelled to draw back and retreat, while the new power, Parthia, would make a long step in advance, and push her frontier to the Aegean and the Mediterranean. The history of the contest between the East and West, between Asia and Europe, is a history of reactions. At one time one of the two continents, at another time the other, is in the ascendant The time appeared to have come when the Asiatics were once more to recover their own, and to beat back the European aggressor to his proper shores and islands. The triumphs achieved by the Seljukian Turks between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries would in that case have been anticipated by above a thousand years through the efforts of a kindred and not dissimilar people. But it turned out that the effort now made was premature. While the Parthian warfare was admirably adapted for the national defence on the broad plains of inner Asia, it was ill suited for conquest, and, comparatively speaking, ineffective in more contracted and difficult regions. The Parthian military system had not the elasticity of the Roman—it did not in the same way adapt itself to circumstances, or admit of the addition of new arms, or the indefinite expansion of an old one. However loose and seemingly flexible, it was rigid in its uniformity; it never altered; it remained under the thirtieth Arsaces such as it had been under the first, improved in details perhaps, but essentially the same system. The Romans, on the contrary, were always modifying and improving their system, always learning new combinations, or new manoeuvres, or new modes of warfare, from their enemies. They met the Parthian tactics of loose array, continuous distant missiles, and almost exclusive employment of cavalry, with an increase in the number of their own horse, a larger employment of auxiliary irregulars, and a greater use of the sling. At the same time they learnt to take full advantage of the Parthian inefficiency against walls, and to practise against them the arts of pretended retreat and ambush. The result was that Parthia found she could make no serious impression upon the dominions of Rome, and having become persuaded of this by the experience of a decade of years, thenceforth laid aside for ever the dream of Western conquest. She took up, in fact, from this time a new attitude. Hitherto she had been consistently aggressive. She had laboured constantly to extend herself at the expense of the Bactrians, the Scythians, the Syro-Macedonians, and the Armenians. She had proceeded, like Rome, from one aggression to another, leaving only short intervals between her wars, and had always been looking out for some fresh enemy. Henceforth she became, comparatively speaking, pacific. She was content, for the most part, to maintain her limits. She sought no new foe. Her contest with Rome degenerated, in the main, into a struggle for influence over the border kingdom of Armenia; and her hopes were limited to the reduction of that kingdom to a subject position.

The grief of Orodes at the death of Pacorus was something extreme and abnormal, even in the emotional East. For many days he would neither eat, nor speak, nor sleep; then his sorrow took another turn. He imagined that his son had returned; he thought continually that he heard or saw him; he could do nothing but repeat his name. Every now and then, however, he awoke to a sense of the actual fact, and mourned the death of his favourite with tears. After a while this excessive grief wore itself out; and the aged king began to direct his attention once more to public affairs, and to concern himself about the succession. Of the thirty sons who still remained to him there was not one who had made himself a name, or was in any way distinguished above the remainder. In the absence, therefore, of any personal ground of preference, Orodes—who seems to have regarded himself as possessing a right to nominate the son who should succeed him—thought that the claims of primogeniture were entitled to be considered, and selected as his successor, Phraates, the eldest of the thirty. Not content, however, with nominating him, or perhaps doubtful whether the nomination would be accepted by the Megistanes, he proceeded further to abdicate in his favour, whereupon Phraates became actual king. The transaction proved a most unhappy one. Phraates, jealous of some of his brothers, who were the sons of a princess married to Orodes, whereas his own mother was only a concubine, removed them by assassination, and when the ex-monarch ventured to express disapproval of the act, added the crime of parricide to that of fratricide by putting to death his aged father. Thus perished Orodes, son of Phraates, the thirteenth Arsacid, after a reign of eighteen or twenty years—the most memorable in the Parthian annals. Though scarcely a great king, he carried Parthia to the highest pitch of her glory, less however by his own personal merits, than by his judicious selection of able officers for the command of his armies. Exceedingly ambitious, he allowed .no scruples to interfere with his personal aggrandisement, but, having waded to power through the blood of a father and a brother, maintained himself in power by the sacrifice of his foremost subject.

His affection for his son Pacorus is the most amiable trait in his character, and redeems it from the charge, to which it would otherwise be liable, of a complete defect of humanity. Even here, however, he showed a want of balance and moderation; and, by allowing his mind to become unhinged, brought disaster on himself, and on those dearest to him. It may have been a just Nemesis, that he should die at the hands of one of his sons, but it seems hard that affection for one son should have put him altogether in the power of another.

 

EXPEDITION OF MARK ANTONY AGAINST PARTHIA —ITS FAILURE—WAR BETWEEN PARTHIA AND MEDIA.

 

Phraates, the son of Orodes, who is generally known as Phraates the Fourth, ascended the Parthian throne in the year BC 37. The Roman world was still in the throes of revolution. A mock peace had indeed been patched up between the irreconcilable rivals, Octavian and Antony, in the year BC 40, by the sacrifice of “the fair, the modest, and the discreet Octavia”—“that marvel of a woman,” as Plutarch calls her—to the short-lived passion of the coarse Triumvir; but dissension had quickly broken out—the bride and bridegroom had quarrelled—and, before the year BC 37 was over, had parted, never to come together again. Antony and Octavian were once more acknowledged enemies, and felt it necessary to place half the world between them in order that they might not at once come to blows. Antony betook himself to the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, and renewed his dalliance with his Egyptian mistress. Octavian remained in Italy, launching recriminations against his rival, and preparing for the deadly struggle which, he well knew, impended. Phraates probably thought himself safe from attack under the circumstances, and felt himself free to indulge his natural temperament, which was cruel, jealous, and blood­thirsty. Not content with having brushed from his path the brothers whose title to the throne was better than his, he proceeded to make a clean sweep, and killed the remainder of the thirty. Nor was this all. From the massacre of his own relations, he passed to executions of Parthian nobles who had provoked his jealousy, and at last created such a panic among them, that numbers of them fled the country, and taking refuge in the territory west of the Euphrates, filled the camps and cities of the Roman provinces. Among these fugitives was a certain Monaeses, a nobleman of high distinction, who appears to have gained more than one military success in the Syrian war of Pacorus. This officer represented to Antony that Phraates had by his tyrannical and sanguinary conduct made himself detested by his subjects, and that a revolt on the part of large numbers could easily be effected. “If the Romans would support him,” he said, “he was quite willing to

 

 

invade Parthia, and he made no doubt of wresting the greater portion of it from the hands of the tyrant, and of being himself accepted as king. In that case, he would consent to hold his crown of the Romans, as their dependant and feudatory; and they might count on his fidelity and gratitude.” Antony received Monaeses with ostentatious generosity, and, affecting the munifi- ence of an Artaxerxes towards a Themistocles, made him a present of three cities of Asia, Larissa, Arethusa, and Bambyce, or Hierapolis. The Parthian monarch, alarmed at the prospect, sought to withdraw his traitorous subject from the enemy’s blandishments by the offer of pardon and renewed favour; and Monaeses, after duly balancing the proposals made to him one against the other, came to the conclusion that his home prospects were the more promising. He therefore represented to Antony that he might probably do him better service as a friend at the Court of Phraates than as a pretender to his crown, and asked permission to accept the overtures which he had received, and to return to his native country. It is probable that the Triumvir was clever enough to see through his motives, and to understand that no dependence was to be placed on his protestations ; but it fitted in with his own interests to amuse Phraates for a short time longer with pacific pro­fessions, and he saw in the request of Monaeses an opportunity for throwing dust in the eyes of a not very keen-sighted barbarian. Monaeses thus obtained per­mission to rejoin his sovereign, and was instructed to assure him that the Roman commander desired nothing so much as peace, and asked only that the standards captured by the Parthians in the war with Crassus and Ventidius, and such of the prisoners taken as still survived, should be handed over to the Romans.

But while thus playing with his adversary, and deluding him with fond expectations, the Triumvir had fully made up his own mind to plunge into war, and was leaving no stone unturned to perfect his preparations. It is very unlikely that it had required the overtures of a Monaeses to put a Parthian expedition into his thoughts. The successes of his own lieutenants must have been stimulants of far greater efficacy. C. Sosius, as governor of Syria, had performed several martial exploits on the frontiers of that province. Canidius Crassus had defeated the Armenians, with their Albanian and Iberian allies, and had once more planted the Roman standards at the foot of the Caucasus. Above all, the great glory of Ventidius, who had been allowed the much-coveted honour of a “triumph” at Rome on account of his defeats of the Parthians in Cilicia and Syria, must have rankled in his mind, and have moved him to emulation, and caused him to cast about for some means of outshining his lieutenants and exalting his own military reputation above that of his subordinates. Nothing, he well knew, could be so effectual for this purpose as a successful Parthian expedition—the infliction upon this hated foe of an unmistakable humiliation, and the dictating to them of terms of peace on their own soil after some great and decisive victory. Nor did this now appear so very difficult. After the successes of Ventidius and Canidius Crassus the prestige of the Parthian name was gone number. The legionaries could be trusted to meet them without any undue alarm, and to contend with them in the usual Roman fashion, without excitement or flurry. Time had shown the weakness, as well as the strength, of the Parthian military system, and the Roman tacticians had succeeded in devising expedients by which its strong points might be met and triumphed over. With the forces at his command Antony might well expect to attack Parthia successfully, and not merely to avoid the fate of Crassus, but to obtain important advantages.

At the same time he had his eyes open to all the possibilities of the military situation, and was making his preparations with the greatest prudence and secrecy. He collected Roman troops from every available quarter, and gradually raised his legions to the number of sixteen, or (according to some) of eighteen. These he disposed in the different cities of Asia, and did not begin to mass them until he had no further need for concealment. He had brought with him from Europe Gallic and Iberian horse to the number of ten thousand; his Roman infantry is reckoned at sixty thousand; and the cavalry and infantry of the Asiatic allies amounted to thirty thousand. The Armenian monarch, Artavasdes, was secretly won over in the course of the winter, and promised a contingent of seven thousand foot and six thousand horse. Thus the entire number of all arms on which he could count to begin the campaign was 113,000.

Antony was in no hurry to begin. More lover than soldier, he was glad to defer the hour for parting with the siren by whose charms he was fascinated, and exchanging the delights of voluptuous dalliance for the hardships of life in the field. Thus it was not until the midsummer of BC 36 had arrived that he could bring himself to dismiss his mistress to her Egyptian home, and place himself at the head of his legions. It was his original intention to cross the Euphrates into Mesopotamia, and to advance against Parthia by the direct route, as Crassus had done; but, on reaching the banks of the Euphrates, possibly at Zeugma, he found the attitude of defence assumed by the enemy on his own frontier so imposing, that he abandoned his first design, and, turning northwards, entered Armenia, resolved to attack Parthia, in conjunction with his Armenian ally, from that quarter. Artavasdes gladly welcomed him, and recommended that he should begin the war, not by invading Parthia itself but by an attack on the dominions of a Parthian feudatory, the King of Media Atropatene, whose territories adjoined Ar­menia on the south-east. The king, he said, was absent, having been summoned to join his suzerain on the banks of the Euphrates, and having marched away with his best troops to the rendezvous. His territory, therefore, would be ill-defended, and open to ravage; it was even possible that Praaspa, his capital, might be an easy prey. The prospect excited Antony, and he put himself at the disposition of Artavasdes. Dividing his army into two portions, and ordering Oppius Statianus, one of his best officers, to follow him leisurely with the more unwieldly portion of the troops, the siege-batteries, and the baggage-train, he himself proceeded by forced marches to Praaspa, under the guidance of Artavasdes, accompanied by all the cavalry and infantry of the better sort. This town was situated at the distance of nearly three hundred miles from the Armenian frontier; but the way to it lay through well-cultivated plains, where food and water were abundant. Antony accomplished the march without any difficulty, and sat himself down before the place. But the want of his siege­engines and battering-train caused him to make little impression; and he was compelled to have recourse to the long and tedious process of raising up a mound against the walls. For some time he cherished the hope that Statianus would arrive to his relief; but this illusion was ere long dispelled. News arrived that the Parthian monarch, having been made acquainted with his plans and proceedings, had followed on the footsteps of his army, had come up with Statianus, and made a successful onslaught on his detachment. Ten thousand Romans were killed in the engagement; many prisoners were taken; all the baggage-waggons and engines of war fell into the enemy’s hands; and Statianus himself was among the slain. A further and still worse result followed. The Armenian monarch was so disheartened by the defeat, that, regarding the Roman cause as desperate, he retired from the contest, drew off his troops, and left Antony to his own resources.

The situation became now one of great difficulty. Autumn was approaching; supplies were falling short; the siege works which Antony had attempted made no progress; and it was impossible to construct a fresh battering-train to replace that which had been taken. If Antony could only capture the town before the winter set in, he would feel himself in safety, and, having a breathing-space during which he might repair his losses, would be able to recruit himself for another campaign. He therefore made desperate efforts to overcome the resistance offered by the besieged, and to obtain possession of the city. But all was in vain. The walls were too strong and too high. His mound was never brought to a level with their summit. From time to time the defenders made sallies, drove off his workmen, and inflicted serious damage on his construction. The Parthian monarch, hovering about in the neighbourhood, looked with scorn on his unavailing endeavours, and contented himself with hindering his supplies and interfering with his foraging parties. Efforts made by Antony to bring on a general engagement by means of a foraging expedition on a large scale failed, the Parthians retreating as soon as attacked, and exhibiting their marvellous power of getting out of an enemy’s reach almost without suffering any losses. The Roman commander, as the equinox drew near, came to the conclusion that he must withdraw from the siege and retire into Armenia, but before making this confession of failure, as a last resource, he sought to persuade his adversary to terms of accommodation. He would at once relinquish the siege, and recross the frontier, he said, if Phraates would only yield up to him the Crassian captives and standards. The demand was preposterous, and the Parthians simply laughed at it, feeling that it was for Antony rather to purchase an unmolested retreat, than for themselves to pay him for retiring. Each day that he lingered placed him in a worse position, and made it more certain that he could not escape serious disaster.

At last the equinox arrived, and retreat became imperative. There were two roads by which it would be possible to reach the Araxes at the usual point of passage. One lay to the left, through a plain and open country, probably along the course of the Jaghetu and the eastern shores of Lake Urumiyeh, which is the route that an army would ordinarily take; the other, which was shorter but more difficult, lay to the right, leading across a mountain tract, but one fairly supplied with water, and in which there were a number of inhabited villages. The Triumvir was informed by his- scouts that the Parthians had occupied the easier route in the expectation that he would select it, and were hopeful of overwhelming his entire force with their cavalry in the plains. He therefore took the road to the right, through a rugged and inclement country—probably that between Takht-i-Sulefman and Tabriz—and, guided by a Mardian who was well acquainted with the district, set out to make his way back to the Araxes. His decision took the Parthians by surprise, and for two whole days he was unmolested. By the third day, however, they had thrown themselves across his path. Antony, expecting no interference, was pursuing his march in a somewhat disorderly manner, when the Mardian guide, perceiving signs of recent injury to the route, gave him warning that the enemy could not be far off, and the Roman general had just time to make his troops form in battle array, and bring his light armed and slingers to the front, when the Parthian horsemen made their appearance on all sides, and began a fierce assault But the Roman light troops, especially those armed with slings and darts, made a vigorous resistance, the leaden missiles of the slingers being found particularly effective; and, after a short combat, the Parthians, following their usual tactics, drew off, only, however, to return again and again, until at last Antony’s Gallic cavalry found an opportunity of charging them, when they broke and fled hastily, having received a serious check, from which they did not recover during the remainder of the day.

However, on the day following, they reappeared; and thenceforth for nineteen consecutive days they disputed with Antony every inch of his road, and inflicted on him the most grievous losses. “The sufferings of the Roman army during this time,” says a modern historian of Rome, “ were unparalleled in their military annals. The intense cold, the blinding snow and driving sleet, the want sometimes of provisions, sometimes of water, the use of poisonous herbs, and the harassing attacks of the enemy’s cavalry and bowmen, which could only be repelled by maintaining the dense array of the phalanx or the tortoise, reduced the retreating army by one-third of its numbers.” Much gallantry was shown, especially by some of the officers, as Flavius Gallus; and Antony himself displayed all the finest qualities of a commander, except judgment; but every effort was in vain: as the Roman army dwindled in numbers, that of the Parthians increased; as the strength of the individual soldiers failed through scantiness or unwholesomeness of food, the courage and audacity of their adversaries were augmented ; the Roman losses grew greater from day to day, and at last culminated in one occasion of extreme disaster, when eight thousand men were placed hors de combat, three thousand of them, including Gallus, being slain. At length, after a march of 300 Roman, or 277 British, miles, the survivors reached the river Araxes, probably at the Julfa ferry, and, crossing it, found themselves in Armenia. But the calamities of the return were not yet ended. Although it had been arranged with Artavasdes that the bulk of the Roman army should winter in Armenia, yet, before the various detachments could reach the quarters assigned them in different parts of the country, eight thousand more had perished, through the effect of past privations or the severity of the Armenian winter. Altogether, out of the hundred thousand men whom Antony had taken with him into Media Atropatene in the mid­summer of BC 36, less than seventy thousand re­mained to commence the campaign of the ensuing year. Well may the unfortunate commander have exclaimed during the later portion of his march, as he compared his own heavy losses with the light ones suffered by Xenophon and his Greeks in these same regions : “Oh, those Ten Thousand! those Ten Thousand!”

On the withdrawal of Antony into Armenia, a quarrel broke out between Phraates and his Median vassal. The latter complained that he was wronged in the division made of the Roman spoils, and expressed himself with so much freedom as seriously to offend his suzerain. Perceiving this, he became alarmed lest Phraates should punish his boldness by deposing him from his office and setting up another vitaxa in his place. He thought it necessary therefore to look out for some powerful support, and on carefully considering the political situation, came to the conclusion that his best hope lay in making a friend of his late foe Antony, and placing himself under Roman protection. Antony was known to have been deeply offended by the conduct of his Armenian ally in the late campaign, and to be desirous of taking vengeance on him. He had already made an attempt to get possession of his person, which had failed through the suspiciousness and caution of the wily Oriental. Hostilities between Armenia and Rome were evidently impending, and might break out at any moment. It would be clearly for Antony’s interest, when war broke out, to have a friend on the Armenian frontier, and especially one who was strong in cavalry and bowmen. The Median monarch therefore sent an ambassador of rank to Alexandria, where Antony was passing the winter, and boldly proposed an alliance. Antony readily accepted the offer. He was intensely angered by the conduct of his late confederate, and resolved on punishing his disaffection and desertion; he viewed the Median alliance as of the utmost importance, not only as against Armenia, but still more in connection with the design, which he still entertained, of invading Parthia itself; and he saw in the Atropatenian ruler a prince whom it would be well worth his while to bind to his cause indissolubly. He therefore embraced the overtures made to him with joy, and even rewarded the messenger who had brought them with a princi­pality. After sundry efforts to entice Artavasdes into his power, which occupied him during the greater part of BC 35, but which were unsuccessful, in the spring of BC 34 he suddenly made his appearance in Armenia. His army, which had remained there from the previous campaign, held all the most important positions, and, as he professed the most friendly feelings towards Artavasdes, even proposing an alliance between their families, that prince, after some hesitation, at length ventured into his presence. He was immediately seized and put in chains. Armenia was rapidly overrun. Artaxias, the eldest son of Arta­vasdes, whom the Armenians made king in the room of his father, was defeated, and forced to take refuge with the Parthians. Antony then arranged a marriage between a daughter of the Median monarch and his own son by Cleopatra, Alexander; and leaving garri­sons in Armenia to hold it as a conquered province, carried off Artavasdes, together with a rich booty, into Egypt.

Phraates, during these transactions, had remained wholly upon the defensive. He was not a man of much enterprise, and probably thought that a waiting policy was, under the circumstances, the best one. It cannot have been displeasing to him to see Artavasdes punished; and doubtless he must have been gratified to observe how Antony was injuring his own cause by exasperating the Armenians, and teaching them to detest Rome even more than they detested Parthia. But while the Roman troops held possession both of Syria and of Armenia, and the alliance be­tween Rome and Media Atropatene continued, he could not venture to take any aggressive step, or think of doing more than protecting his own frontier. Almost any other Roman commander than Antony would, after crushing Armenia, have at once carried the war, in conjunction with his Median ally, into Parthia, and have endeavoured to strike a blow that might avenge the defeat of Carrhae. Phraates naturally expected an invasion of his territories both in BC 34, after Antony’s occupation of Armenia, and in the following year, when he again appeared in these parts, and advanced to the Araxes. But Antony’s attention was so much engrossed by the proceedings of his rival, Octavian, in the West, and it was so clear to him that the great contest for the mastership of the Roman world could not be delayed much longer, that Eastern affairs had almost ceased to interest him, and his chief desire was to be quit of them. The object of his advance to the Araxes in BC 33 was to place things in such a position that his presence might be no longer necessary. It seemed to him that the interests of Rome would be sufficiently safeguarded, if the Median alliance were assured, and he therefore sought an interview with the Atropatenian king, and concluded a treaty with him. The terms were very favourable to the Median. He received a body of Roman heavy infantry in exchange for a detachment of his own light horsemen; his dominions were considerably enlarged on the side of Armenia; and the marriage previously arranged between his daughter, Jotapa, and Antony’s son, Alexander, was accomplished. Antony then marched away to meet his Roman rival, flattering himself that he had secured, at any rate for some years, the tranquillity of the Asiatic continent.

But Phraates now saw his opportunity. In conjunction with Artaxias, he attacked the Median king, and, though at first repulsed by the valour of the Roman troops in the Median service, succeeded, after Antony had required them to rejoin his standard, in inflicting on him a severe defeat, and even making him a prisoner. This success led to another. Artaxias, having now only the Roman garrisons to contend with, re-entered and recovered Armenia. The Roman garrisons were put to the sword. Armenia became once more wholly independent of Rome; and it is probable that Media Atropatene returned to the Parthian allegiance.

The result of the, expedition of Antony was thus rather to elevate Parthia than to depress her. Antony, notwithstanding his undoubted courage, let it be clearly seen that he shrank from a direct encounter with the full force of the Parthian kingdom. Hence his avoidance of any invasion of actual Parthian territory, and the limitation of his efforts to the injuring of his enemy by striking at her through her dependencies, Media and Armenia. Nor was the timidity thus exhibited compensated for by success in the comparatively small enterprises to which he confined himself. The expedition against Media Atropatene was a complete failure, and resulted in the loss of thirty thousand men. The Armenian campaign succeeded at the time, but it alienated a nation which it was of the utmost importance to conciliate, and it was followed almost immediately by a revolt in which Rome suffered fresh disasters, and which drew Armenia closer to Parthia than she had ever been drawn previously. On the retirement of Antony from the East, Parthia occupied as grand a position as had ever before been hers, excepting during the brief space of her successes under Pacorus and Labienus.

 

INTERNAL TROUBLES IN PARTHIA—HER RELATIONS WITH ROME UNDER AUGUSTUS AND TIBERIUS.

 

Phraates, justly proud of his successes against Antony, and of the re-establishment of his authority over Media Atropatene, regarding, moreover, his position in Parthia as thereby absolutely secured, proceeded to indulge the natural cruelty of his disposition, and resumed the harsh and tyrannical treatment of his subjects, by which he had made himself odious in the early years of his reign. So far did he push his oppression, that ere long the patience of the people gave way, and an insurrection broke out against his authority, which compelled him to fly the country (BC 33). The revolt was headed by a certain Tiridates, a Parthian noble, who, upon its success, was made king by the insurgents. Phraates fled into Scythia, and appealed to the nomads to embrace his cause. Ever ready for war and plunder, the hordes were nothing loth; and, crossing the frontier in force, they succeeded without much difficulty in restoring the exiled monarch to the throne from which his subjects had deposed him. Tiridates fled at their approach, and, having contrived to carry off in his flight the youngest son of Phraates, presented himself before Octavian, who was in Syria at the time (BC 30) on his return from Egypt, surrendered the young prince into his hands, and requested his aid against the tyrant. Octavian accepted the valuable hostage, but, with his usual caution, declined to pledge himself to furnish any help to the pretender; he might remain, he said, in Syria, if he so wished, and while he continued under Roman protection a suitable provision should be made for his support, but he must not expect to be replaced upon the Parthian throne by the Roman arms. Some years later (BC 23), Phraates in his turn made application to the Imperator for the surrender of the person of Tiridates and the restoration of his kidnapped son; but the application was only partially successful. Octavian said he willingly restored to him his son, and would not even ask a ransom; but the surrender of a fugitive was a different matter, and one that he could not possibly consent to. Where would be the honour of Rome, if such a thing were done? Phraates would, no doubt, feel that some return was due on account of his son. An acceptable return would be the delivery to the Romans of the standards and captives taken from Crassus and Antony. The Parthian monarch made no direct reply to this suggestion. He gladly received his son, but ignored the rest of the message. It was not until three years later, when Octavian (now become Augustus) visited the East, and war seemed the probable alternative if he continued obdurate, that the Parthian monarch brought himself to relinquish the trophies, which were as much prized by the victors as by the vanquished. The act was one so unpatriotic as to be scarcely pardonable; but we must remember that Phraates held his crown by a very insecure tenure—he was extremely un­popular with his subjects, and Augustus had it in his power at any moment to produce a pretender, who had once occupied, and with Roman help might easily have ascended for a second time, the throne of the Arsacids.

The remaining years of Phraates—and he reigned for nearly twenty years after restoring the standards —were almost unbroken by any event of importance. The result of the twenty years’ struggle between Rome and Parthia had been to impress either nation with a wholesome fear of the other. Both had triumphed on their own ground; both had failed when they ventured on sending expeditions into their enemy’s territory. Each now stood on its guard, watching the movements of its adversary across the Euphrates. Both had become pacific. It is a well- known fact that Augustus left it as a principle of policy to his successors that the Roman territory had reached its proper limits, and could not with any advantage be extended further. This principle, followed with the utmost strictness by Tiberius, was accepted as a rule by all the earlier Caesars, and only regarded by them as admitting of rare and slight exceptions. Trajan was the first who, a hundred and thirty years after the accession of Augustus, made light of it, and set it at defiance. With him re-awoke the spirit of conquest, the aspiration after universal dominion. But in the meantime there was. peace—peace not indeed absolutely unbroken, for border wars occurred, and Rome was sometimes tempted to interfere by arms in the internal quarrels of her neighbour; but a general state of peace and amity prevailed; neither state made any grand attack on the other’s dominions; no change occurred in the frontier; no great battle tested the relative strength of the two peoples. Such rivalry as still continued was exhibited less in arms than in diplomacy, and showed itself mainly in endeavours on either side to obtain a predominant influence in Armenia. There alone during the century and a half that intervened between Antony and Trajan did the interests of Rome and Parthia come into col­lision, and in connection with this kingdom alone was there during these years any struggle between the two empires.

After Phraates had yielded to Augustus in the important matter of the standards and the prisoners, he appears for many years to have studiously cultivated his good graces. In the interval between BC 11 and BC 7, having reason to distrust the intentions of his subjects towards him, and to suspect that they might not improbably depose him and place one of his sons upon the Parthian throne, he resolved to send these possible rivals out of the country; and on this occasion he paid Augustus the compliment of selecting Rome for his children’s residence. The youths were four in number—Vonones, who was the eldest, Seraspadanes, Rhodaspes, and Phraates; two of them were married and had children. They resided at Rome during the remainder of their father’s lifetime, and were treated as became their rank, being supported at the public charge, and in a magnificent manner. The Roman writers speak of them as “hostages” given by Phraates to the Roman Emperor ; but this was certainly not the intention of the Parthian monarch, and it was scarcely possible that the idea could be entertained by the Romans at the time of their residence.

The friendly relations thus established between Phraates and Augustus would probably have continued undisturbed until the death of the one or the other had not a revolution broken out in Armenia, which tempted the Parthian king beyond his powers of resistance. On the death of Artaxias, in the year BC 20, Augustus, who was then in the East, had sent Tiberius into Armenia, to arrange the affairs of the nation; and Tiberius had thought it best to place upon the throne a brother of Artaxias, named Tigranes. Parthia had made no objection to this arrangement, but had tacitly admitted the Roman suzerainty over the Armenian nation. Fourteen years afterwards, in BC 6, Tigranes died; and the Armenians, without waiting to know the pleasure of the Roman Emperor, conferred the sovereignty on his three sons, whom their father had previously designated for the royal office by associating them with him in the govern­ment. But this was a liberty which Augustus could not possibly allow. He therefore, in BC 5, sent an expedition into Armenia, deposed the three sons of Tigranes, and established in the kingdom a certain Artavasdes, whose birth, rank, and claims to the royal position are unknown. But the Armenians were dis­satisfied and recalcitrant. After enduring the rule of Rome’s nominee for the short space of three years, they rose in revolt against him, defeated the Romans who endeavoured to support his authority, and drove him out of the kingdom. Another Tigranes was placed upon the throne; and, at the same time, Parthia was called in to give the Armenians their protection, in case Rome should again interfere with the choice of the nation. Phraates could not bring himself to reject the Armenian overtures. Ever since the time of the second Mithridates, it had been a settled principle of Parthia’s policy that Armenia should be dependent on herself; and, even at the cost of a rupture with Rome, it seemed to Phraates that he must respond to the appeal made to him. The rupture might not come. Augustus was now advanced in years, and might submit to the indignity offered him without resenting it. He had lately lost the services of his best general—his stepson, Tiberius—who, in consequence of the slights put upon him, had gone into retirement at Rhodes. He had no one that he could entrust with an army but his grandsons, youths who had not yet fleshed their maiden swords. Phraates probably hoped that, under such circumstances, Augustus would draw back before the terrors of a Parthian war, and would allow without remonstrance—or, at any rate, without resistance—the passing of Armenia into the position of a Parthian subject ally.

But, if such were his expectations, he had greatly miscalculated. Augustus had as keen a sense of what the honour of Rome required now that he was an old man of sixty as when he was a youth of twenty. From the time that he first heard of the Armenian outbreak, and of the support lent it by Parthia, he appears never to have wavered in his determination to re-assert the Roman claim to a pre­ponderating influence over Armenia, but only to have hesitated for a time as to the individual whose services it would be best to employ in the business. Tiberius naturally presented himself to his mind as by far the fittest person for such a work—a work in which diplomatic and military ability might be, both of them, almost equally required ; but Tiberius had recently taken offence at certain slights which he supposed himself to have received, and had withdrawn from the public service and from official life altogether. In default of his brave and astute stepson, Augustus could only fall back upon his grandsons; but the eldest of these, Caius, was now, in the year BC 2, no more than eighteen years of age, and the policy of employing so young a man in so difficult and important a business could not but appear to him extremely questionable. Augustus therefore hesitated, and it was not until late in the year BC 1 that he despatched Caius to the East, with authority to settle the Parthian and Armenian troubles as it should seem best to him.

Meanwhile, however, a change had occurred in Parthia. Phraates, when somewhat advanced in life, had married an Italian slave-girl, called Musa, who had been sent to him as a present by Augustus, and had had a son born to him from this marriage, who, as he grew up, came to hold an important position in the Parthian state. It was perhaps through the influence of this youth’s mother, Musa, that Phraates was induced to send his four elder boys to Rome, there to receive their education. At any rate, their absence left an opening for her son, Phraataces, of which she took care that he should have the full advantage; and the youth, becoming his father’s sole support in his declining years, came to look upon himself, and to be looked upon by others, as his natural successor. Conscious, however, of the weakness of his claim to the throne, and doubtful of his father’s intentions with regard to him, if he allowed events to take their natural course, the ambitious youth resolved to become the shaper of his own future, and, in conjunction with his mother, administered poison to the aged monarch, from the effects of which he died. Phraataces then seized the throne, and reigned as joint sovereign with his mother, to whom he allowed the titles of “Queen and Goddess,” and whose image he placed upon the reverse of most of his coins.

Among the first acts of Phraataces as king was the sending of an embassy to Augustus, whom he professed to regard as still friendly to Parthia, though he must have known that the Parthian attitude towards Armenia had alienated him. He informed Augustus of his accession to the throne of the Arsacidae, apologised for the circumstances under which it had taken place, and proposed a renewal of the treaty of peace which had subsisted between Augustus and his father, adding a request that the Roman Emperor would, in consideration of the peace, kindly surrender to him his four brothers, whose proper place of residence was not Rome, but Parthia. With respect to Armenia he observed a discreet silence, leaving it to Augustus to initiate negotiations on the subject or to accept the status quo. Augustus replied to this message in terms of extreme severity. Addressing Phraataces by his bare name, without adding the title of king, he required him to lay aside the royal appellation, which he had so arrogantly and unwarrantably assumed, and at the same time to evacuate all the portions of Armenia which his troops wrongfully occupied. With respect to the surrender of the Parthian princes, the brothers of Phraataces, and their families, he said nothing. Nor did he respond to the appeal concerning the formal renewal of a treaty of peace. He left Phraataces to infer that his brothers would be retained at Rome, as pretenders to the throne of Parthia, whom it might be convenient at some future time to bring forward; and he not obscurely intimated that no treaty of peace would be concluded until the Parthian troops were withdrawn across the Armenian frontier. Phraataces, however, was not to be cowed by mere words. He repaid Augustus in his own coin, sending him a contemptuous message, in which, while assum­ing to himself the high-sounding Oriental designation of “King of Kings,” he curtly addressed the Roman Emperor as “Caesar.”

It is probable that this attitude of defiance would have been maintained, and that the Parthian troops would have continued to garrison Armenia, had Augustus refrained from active measures, and been content with menaces. But when, in BC 1, the Emperor proceeded from words to acts, and despatched his grandson, Caius, to the East at the head of a large force, with orders to re-establish the Roman influence in Armenia, even at the cost of a Parthian war, and when Caius showed himself in Syria with all the magnificent surroundings of the Imperial dignity, Phraataces became alarmed. It was arranged during the winter that an interview should be held between the two princes in the spring of AD 1, on an island in the Euphrates, where the terms of an arrangement between the two empires should be discussed and settled. For the first and almost the last time a Parthian monarch and a scion of the Roman Imperial House met amicably for the purpose of negotiation, and discussed the terms on which the two empires could be friends. On either bank of the “great river” were drawn up the mighty hosts, which, within a few days, if no agreement were come to, would be loosed at each other’s' throats. 1 The two chiefs, accompanied by an equal number of attendants, passed from their respective banks to the island, and there, in the full sight of both armies, proceeded to hold the conference. An arrangement satisfactory to both sides was made, the chief proviso of which was the evacuation of Armenia by the Parthians. Feasting and banqueting followed. The Parthian king was first entertained by Caius on the Roman side of the river, after which Caius was in his turn feasted by the Parthian on the opposite bank. Cordial relations were established. For once in the course of the long struggle with Rome, Parthia seems to have actually made up her mind to relinquish Armenia to her adversary. She gave up her claims, withdrew her troops, and, during the serious troubles which followed—troubles wherein Caius lost his life— honourably abstained from all interference, either by intrigue or arms, in Armenian affairs, and allowed Rome to settle them at her pleasure.

The willingness of Phraataces thus to efface himself, and concede to Rome the foremost position in Asia, arose probably from the unsettled state of the kingdom, and the internal difficulties which threatened him. To be a parricide was not in Parthia an absolute bar to popularity and a quiet reign, as had been proved by the prosperous reign of Phraates IV., but there were circumstances connected with the recent palace revolution, which threw special discredit upon the principal agent in it, and grievously offended the pride oi the Parthian nobles. Private and selfish motives had alone actuated the young prince, who could not even pretend any public ground for the extreme step that he had taken. His subjection to female influence, especially when the female was a foreign slave-girl, enraged the nobles and drew down their contempt. The exalted honours which he heaped on her offended their pride. Rumours, which may have had no foundation in fact, increased his unpopularity, and covered his companion on the throne with even a deeper shade of disgrace. The Megistanes consulted together, and within a few years of his establishment as king raised a revolt against his authority, which terminated in his deposition or death. An Arsacid, named Orodes, was chosen in his place; but he too, in a short time, displeased his subjects, and was murdered by them, either at a banquet or during a hunting expedition. It then occurred to the Megistanes to fall back on the legitimate heir to the throne, who was still at Rome, whither he had been sent by his father Some fifteen years previously. Accordingly, they despatched an embassy to Augustus (AD. 5) and asked to have Vonones, the eldest son of Phraates IV, sent back to Parthia, that he might receive his father’s kingdom. Augustus readily complied, since he regarded it as for the honour of Rome to give a king to Parthia, and Vonones was sent out to Asia with much pomp and many presents, to occupy a position which was the second highest that the world had to offer.

It is said that princes are always popular on their coronation day; and certainly Vonones was no exception to the general rule. His subjects received him with every demonstration of joy, pleased like children with a new plaything. But this state of feeling did not continue very long. The foreign train­ing of the young monarch soon showed itself. Bred up at Rome, amid the luxuries and refinements of Western civilisation, the rough sports and coarse manners of his countrymen displeased and disgusted him. He took no pleasure in horses, seldom appeared in the hunting-field, absented himself from the rude feastings which formed a marked feature of the national manners, and, when he showed himself in public, was usually seen reclining in a litter. He had brought with him, moreover, from the place of his exile, a number of Greek companions, whom' the Parthians despised and ridiculed. The favour which he showed these interlopers excited their jealousy and rage. It was to no purpose that he sought to conciliate his angry subjects by the openness and affability of his demeanour, or by the readiness with which he allowed access to his person. Virtues and graces, unknown to the nation hitherto, were, in the eyes of the courtiers, not merits but defects. Dislike of the monarch led them to look back with dissatisfaction on the part which they had taken in placing him upon the throne. “ Parthia had indeed degenerated,” they said, “in asking for a king who belonged to another world, and into whom there had been engrained a foreign and hostile civilisation. All the glory gained by destroying Crassus and repulsing Antony was utterly lost and gone, if the country was to be ruled by Caesar’s bond-slave, and the throne of the Arsacidae to be treated as if it were a Roman province. It would have been bad enough to have had a prince imposed upon them by the will of a superior, if they had been conquered; it was worse, in all respects worse, to suffer such an insult, when they had not even had war made upon them.” Under the influence of these feelings, the Parthians, after they had tolerated Vonones for a few years, rose in revolt against him (about AD 10), and summoned Artabanus, an Arsacid, who had grown to manhood among the Dahae of the Caspian region, but was at this time subject-king of Media Atropatene, to rule over them.

A crown, when it is offered, is not often declined, though a few crowns may have gone begging in the modern world, now that kingship has lost its glamour; and Artabanus, on receiving the overture from the Parthian nobles, at once expressed his willingness to accept the proffered dignity. He invaded Parthia at the head of an army consisting of his own subjects, and engaged Vonones, to whom in his difficulties the bulk of the Parthian people had rallied. This engagement resulted in the defeat of the Median monarch ; and Vonones was so proud of his victory that he immediately had a coin struck to commemorate it, bearing on the obverse his own head, with the legend of, BASIALEUS ONONIS, and on the reverse a Victory with the legend—BASILEUS ONONHS NEIKISAS ARTABANON—“King Onones on his defeat of Artabanus.” But the self-gratulation was premature. Artabanus had made good his retreat into his own country, and, having there collected a larger army than before, returned to the attack. This time he was successful. The forces of Vonones were defeated, and he himself, escaping from the battle with a few followers, fled on horseback to Seleucia, while his vanquished army, following more slowly in his track, was pressed upon by the victorious Mede, and suffered great losses. Artabanus, entering Ctesiphon in triumph, was immediately acclaimed king. Vonones took refuge in Armenia, and, the throne happening to be vacant, was not only given an asylum, but ap­pointed to the kingly office. Artabanus naturally remonstrated, and threatened war unless Vonones were surrendered to him. Armenia was alarmed, and began to waver; whereupon Vonones withdrew himself from the country, and sought the protection of Creticus Silanus, the Roman governor of Syria, who received him with favour, gave him a guard, and allowed him the state and title of king, but at the same time kept him in a sort of honourable captivity.

It was under these circumstances that the Roman Emperor, Tiberius, who had recently succeeded Augustus, determined to entrust the administration and pacification of the East to a personage of importance—one who should combine the highest rank with considerable experience, and should strike the imagination of the Orientals, and command their attention, at once by the dignity of his office, and by the pomp and splendour of his surroundings. It may be that, in his selection of the individual, he was actuated by motives of jealousy, and by the wish to separate one, whom he could not but regard as a rival, from an army which had grown too much attached to him. But it seems scarcely fair to attribute these motives to him upon mere suspicion, and it is difficult to see what better choice than the one he made was open to him under the circumstances of the period. Germanicus was, at the time, the second man in the State. He had knowledge of affairs ; he was a good soldier and general; his manners were courteous and agree­able ; and he was popular with all classes. At once the nephew and the adopted son of the sovereign, he would scarcely seem to the Orientals to shine with a reflected radiance; they would see in him the alter ego of the great Western autocrat, and would be awed by the grandeur of his position, while fascinated by the charm of his personality. The more to affect their minds, Tiberius conferred on his representative none of the ordinary and well-worn titles of Roman administrative employment, but coined for him a phrase unknown in official language previously, investing him with an extraordinary command over all the Roman dominions east of the Hellespont. Full powers were granted him for making peace or war, for levying troops, annexing provinces, appointing subject kings, concluding treaties, and performing other sovereign acts without referring back to Rome for instructions. A train of unusual magnificence accompanied him to his charge, calculated to impress the Orientals with the conviction that this was no common negotiator. Germanicus arrived in Asia in the spring of AD 18, and within the space of a single year completed the task, which he had undertaken, satisfactorily. Having visited Artaxata in person, and ascertained the feelings and disposition of the Armenians, he made up his mind not to demand the re-instatement of Vonones, which would have been throwing down the gauntlet to Parthia, nor yet to allow the establishment of an Arsacid on the Armenian throne, which would have been exalting Parthia to the shame and dishonour of Rome, but to pursue a middle course, at which neither the Armenians nor the Parthians could take offence, while Roman dignity would be upheld, Roman traditions maintained, and something done to soothe the feelings and gratify the wishes of both the irritated Asiatic nations. There was in Armenia, where he had grown up, a foreign prince, named Zeno, the son of Polemo, once king of the curtailed Pontus, and afterwards of the Lesser Armenia, who was in very good odour among the Armenians, since he had, during a long residence, conformed himself in all respects to their habits and usages. Finding that it would please the Armenians, Germanicus determined on giving them this man for ruler, and at the seat of government, Artaxata, in the presence of a vast multitude of the people, and with the consent and approval of the principal nobles, he placed with his own hand the diadem on the brow of the favoured prince, and saluted him as king under the Armenian name, which he had never hitherto borne, of “Artaxias.” For the satisfaction of the Parthian monarch, who required that Vonones should either be delivered into his hands or removed to a greater distance from the Parthian frontier, he “interned” the unhappy prince in the Cilician city of Pompeiopolis—a change of residence so much disliked by the prince himself that the next year he endeavoured to escape from it, but, his attempt being discovered, he was pursued, overtaken, and slain in a skirmish on the banks of the river Pyramus. The pacification of the East was thus, with some difficulty, effected ; and Germanicus, quitting Asia, indulged himself in the luxury of a pleasure trip to Egypt.

The dispositions which Germanicus had made sufficed to preserve the tranquillity of the East for the space of fifteen years. Artabanus, at peace with Rome and with Armenia, employed the time in the chastisement of border-tribes, and in petty wars, which however increased his reputation. Success followed on success ; and by degrees his opinion of his own military capacity was so much raised that he began to look upon a rupture with Rome as rather to be desired than dreaded. He knew that Germanicus was dead; that Tiberius was advanced in years, and not likely to engage in a distant military expedition; and that the East was under the rule of an official who had never yet distinguished himself as a commander. When, therefore, in AD 34, the Armenian throne was made vacant by the death of Artaxias III, the nominee of Germanicus, he boldly occupied the country, and claiming the disposal of the vacant dignity, bestowed it upon his own eldest son, a prince who bore the name of Arsaces. Nor did he rest content with this. Insult must be added to injury. Ambassadors were despatched to Rome with a demand for the restoration of the treasure which Vonones had carried off from Parthia and taken with him into Roman territory; and a threat was held out that Artabanus was about to reoccupy all the territory which, having been once Macedonian or Persian, was now properly his, since he was the natural successor and representative of Cyrus and Alexander. According to one writer, the Parthian monarch actually commenced military operations against Rome by the invasion of Cappadocia, which had been for some time a Roman province.

It is uncertain what response Tiberius would have made to these demands and proceedings had the internal condition of Parthia been sound and satisfactory. He was certainly averse to war at this period of his life, and had actually sent instructions to Vitellius, the governor of Syria, after the seizure of Armenia by Artabanus, that he was to cultivate friendly relations with Parthia. But the Parthian kingdom was internally in a state of extreme disquiet; insurrection was threatened; and the nobles were in active correspondence with .the Imperial court on the subject of bringing forward a pretender. “Artabanus,” they said, “had, among his other cruelties, put to death all the adult members of the royal family who were in his power, and there was not an Arsacid in Asia of age to reign; but for a successful revolt an Arsacid leader was absolutely necessary: would not Rome supply the defect? Would she not send them one of the surviving sons of Phraates IV, to head the intended insurrection, which would then be sure to succeed? One son, named Phraates, like his father, was still living, and was, they understood, at Rome; if Tiberius would only send him, and he were once seen on the banks of the Euphrates, they guaranteed a successful outbreak—Artabanus would be driven from his throne without difficulty. Tiberius was prevailed upon to do as they desired. He furnished Phraates with all things necessary for his journey, and sent him into Asia, to lay claim to his father’s kingdom.

Phraates, however, was unequal to the task assigned him. The sudden change in his life and habits, which his new position necessitated, broke down his health, and he was but just arrived in Syria when he sickened and died. Tiberius replaced him by a nephew, named Tiridates, probably a son either of Rhodaspes or of Seraspadanes, and proceeded to devote to the affairs of the East all the energies of a mind eminently sagacious and fertile in resources. At his instigation, Pharasmanes, king of Iberia, a portion of the modern Georgia, was induced to take the field, and invade Armenia; where, after removing the reigning Parthian prince, Arsaces, by poison, he occupied the capital, and established his own brother, Mithridates, as king. Artabanus met this movement by giving the direction of affairs in Armenia to another son, Orodes, and sending him with all speed to maintain the Parthian cause in the disputed province; but Orodes proved no match for his adversary, who was superior in numbers, in the variety of his troops, and in familiarity with the localities. Pharasmanes had obtained the assistance of his neighbours, the Albanians, and opening the passes of the Caucasus, had admitted through them a number of the Scythic or Sarmatian hordes, who were always ready, when their services were well paid, to take a part in the quarrels of the south. Orodes failed to secure either mercenaries or allies, and had to contend unassisted against the three enemies who had joined their forces to oppose him. For some time he prudently declined an engagement; but it was impossible to restrain the ardour of his troops, whom the enemy exasperated by their reproaches. After a while he was compelled to accept the battle which Pharasmanes incessantly offered. The troops at his disposal consisted entirely of cavalry, while Pharasmanes had, besides his horse, a powerful body of infantry. The conflict was nevertheless long and furious ; the Parthians and Sarmatians were very equally matched ; and the victory might have been doubtful, if it had not happened that in a hand-to-hand combat between the two commanders, Orodes was struck to the ground by his antagonist, and thought by most of his own side to be killed. As usual under such circumstances in the East, a rout followed. If we are to believe Josephus, “many tens of thousands” were slain. Armenia was wholly lost to Parthia; and Artabanus found himself left with diminished resources and tarnished reputation to meet the intrigues of his domestic foes.

Still, he would not succumb without an effort. In the spring of AD 36, having levied the whole force of the empire, he took the field in person, and marched northwards, with the intention of avenging himself on the Iberians and recovering his lost province. But his first efforts were unsuccessful; and before he could renew them the Roman general, Vitellius, put himself at the head of his legions, and, moving towards the Euphrates, threatened Mesopotamia with invasion. Placed thus between two dangers, the Parthian monarch felt that he had no choice but to abandon Armenia and return to the defence of his own proper territories, which in his absence must have lain temptingly open to an invader. His return caused Vitellius to change his tactics. Instead of challenging Artabanus to an engagement, and letting the quarrel be decided by a trial of strength in the open field, he fell back on the weapon of intrigue so dear to his master, and proceeded by a lavish expenditure of money to excite disaffection once more among the Parthian grandees. This time the conspiracy was successful. The military disasters of the last two years had alienated from Artabanus the affections of those whom his previous cruelties had failed to disgust or alarm ; and he found himself without any armed force whereon he could rely, beyond a small number of the foreign guards whom he maintained about his person. It seemed to him that his only safety was in flight; and accordingly he quitted his capital, and removed himself hastily to Hyrcania, in the immediate vicinity of the Scythian Dahae, among whom he had been brought up. Here the population was friendly to him, and he lived a retired life, waiting (as he said) until the Parthians, who could judge an absent prince with fairness, although they could not long continue faithful to a present one, should repent of their behaviour to him.

When the flight of Artabanus became known to the Romans, Vitellius immediately advanced to the banks of the Euphrates, and introduced Tiridates into his kingdom. Fortunate omens were said to have accompanied the passage of the river, and these were followed by adhesions, the importance of which was undoubted. Ornospades, satrap of Mesopotamia, and a former comrade of Tiberius in the Dalmatic war, was the first to join the standard of the pretender with a large body of horse. Next came Sinnaces, who had long been in correspondence with the Romans, with a contingent; then his father, Abdageses—“the pillar of the party,” as Tacitus calls him—and the keeper of the royal treasures, together with other persons of high position. Vitellius, on seeing the pretender thus warmly welcomed by his countrymen, regarded his mission as accomplished, and returned with his troops into Syria. Tiridates proceeded through Mesopotamia and Assyria, re­ceiving on his way the submission of many Greek and some Parthian cities, as Halus and Artemita. The Greeks saw in his Roman breeding a guarantee of the politeness and refinement which had been wholly wanting in Artabanus, brought up among the uncivilised Scyths. In the great city of Seleucia he was received with an obsequiousness that bordered on adulation. Besides paying him all the customary royal honours, both old and new, they flatteringly compared him with his predecessor, who, they said, had been no true Arsacid. Tiridates was pleased to reward these unseemly compliments by a modification of the Seleucian constitution in a democratic sense. From Seleucia he crossed the Tigris to Ctesiphon, where, after a short delay, caused by the absence of some important governors of provinces, he was crowned King of Parthia according to the established forms by the Surena, or Commander-in-chief of the period.

Tiridates thought that now all was secure. Artabanus was in hiding in Hyrcania, leading a miserable existence. The whole of the western provinces had declared for him, and no signs of hostility appeared in the East. He deemed his rule acquiesced in generally, and there is reason to suppose that his anticipations would have proved correct, had not discontent shown itself at the Court and among the higher officials. There had been many who had hoped for the office of Grand Vizier, and in nominating one to it Tiridates had displeased all the rest. There were also many, who through accident or hesitation in making up their minds had been absent from the coronation ceremonial, and who believed themselves to be on that account suspected of disaffection, or at any rate of lukewarmness. It is also more than probable that the “Roman breeding” of the new monarch, which delighted his Grecian, offended his Parthian subjects. At any rate, however we may account for it, disaffection certainly broke out. Emissaries from the nobles sought the dethroned monarch in his obscure retirement, and placed before him the prospect of a restoration, which they declared themselves anxious to bring about. Distrustful at first of what seemed to him mere levity and fickleness, Artabanus was ultimately persuaded that the overtures made to him were sincere, and that if he himself were not the object of any very devoted affection on the part of the malcontents, Tiridates at any rate was the object of a very real and pronounced hostility. He therefore placed himself in the hands of the conspirators, and, having first secured the services of a body of Dahae and other Scyths, marched westward with all speed, anxious at once to cut short the preparations which were being made to resist him by his enemies, and to forestall the desertions, which he could not but anticipate, on the part of his friends. The good policy of this rapid movement is unquestionable. It startled and greatly discomposed Tiridates and his counsellors. Of these, some recommended an immediate attack on the troops of Artabanus before they were recovered from the fatigues of their long march ; while others, and among them Abdageses, the chief vizier, advised a retreat into Mesopotamia, and a junction with the Armenian levies, and with the Roman troops, which Vitellius, on the first news of the insurrection, had thrown across the Euphrates. The more timid counsel prevailed, and a retreat was determined on. But reculer pour mieux sauter is a maxim only suited to the West. In the East the first step in retreat is the first step towards ruin. No sooner was the Tigris crossed and the march through Mesopotamia begun than the host of Tiridates melted away like an iceberg in the Gulf Stream. The Arabs of the Mesopotamian desert were the first to break up and disband themselves, the nearness of their homes offering an irresistible attraction; but their example was soon followed by the rest of the army, which had no such excuse. Some directed their steps home­wards; others joined the enemy; Tiridates was at last left with a mere handful of adherents, and, hastening into Syria, put himself once more under Roman protection.

The attempt to establish the influence of Rome over the Parthian kingdom, by fixing a Roman puppet on the throne of the Arsacidae, thus proved altogether a failure. But the general effect of the struggle was advantageous to Rome, and reflects credit on the prince who, at the age of seventy-seven, at once vindicated the Roman honour and baffled the schemes of one of the ablest of the Parthian monarchs. Artabanus, when after his various vicissitudes he recovered his throne, had no longer any stomach for great enterprises. He took no further steps to disturb Mithridates in his possession of Armenia, and he left Vitellius unmolested on the Euphrates. When, towards the close of AD 36, or very early in AD 37, he had an interview with the Roman proconsul half­way between the two banks of the river, he distinctly renounced all claims to the Armenian kingdom; at the same time agreeing to send one of his sons, Darius, to Rome in a position which Rome regarded as that of a hostage, and further consenting to offer incense to the emblems of Roman sovereignty—an act, as the Romans understood it, of submission and homage. Artabanus, by these concessions, the meaning of which he did not perhaps fully under­stand, decidedly lowered the prestige of his nation, and yielded to Rome a pre-eminence which was scarcely admitted by any other monarch, or at any other period. We cannot be surprised that the credit of concluding such a peace, though belonging really to Tiberius, was falsely claimed by his flatterers for Caligula, the new emperor, soon after whose accession in March, AD 37, the news of the success­ful negotiations reached Rome.

 

ASINAI AND ANILAI—AN EPISODE OF PARTHIAN HISTORY.

 

It was during the troubled reign of Artabanus the Third, when the state was distracted between foreign war and domestic feud, that disturbances broke out in Mesopotamia, which have been graphically de­scribed by the Jewish writer Josephus, and which serve to throw considerable light on the internal condition of the Parthian Empire at this period. There was a large Jewish element in the population of the more western provinces of the empire, an element which dated from a time anterior to the rise, not only of the Parthian, but even of the Persian monarchy. That system of “transplantation of nations,” which was pursued on so large a scale by the Assyrian and Babylonian sovereigns of the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries before Christ, had introduced into the heart of Asia a number of strange nationalities, and among these there was none more remarkable than that of the Hebrews. Whatever had become of the descendants of the Ten Tribes—whether in any places they still constituted distinct communities, or had long ere this been absorbed into the general population of the country —at any rate, colonies of Jews, dating from the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s Captivity, maintained themselves, often in a flourishing condition, in various parts of Babylonia, Armenia, Media, Mesopotamia, Susiana, and probably in other Parthian provinces. These colonies exhibited very generally the curious but well-known tendency of the Jewish race to a rate of increase quite disproportionate to that of the population among which they are settled. The Hebrew element became continually larger and more important in Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and the adjacent countries, notwithstanding the large draughts which from time to time were made upon it by Seleucus Nicator, and others of the Syrian princes. And this alien element in the population, for the most part prospered. The Jewish settlers seem to have enjoyed under the Parthians the same sort of toleration, and the same permission to exercise a species of self-government, which both Jews and Christians enjoy now in several parts of Turkey. In many cities they formed a recognised community under their own magistrates; some towns they had wholly to themselves; those who dwelt in Mesopotamia possessed a common treasury; and it was customary for them to send up to Jerusalem from time to time the offerings of the faithful, escorted by a convoy of thirty thousand or forty thousand armed men. The Parthian kings treated them well, and probably regarded them as a valuable counterpoise to the disaffected Greeks and Syrians of this part of the empire. They laboured under no disabilities; suffered no oppression; had no grievances of which to complain; and it would have seemed beforehand very improbable that they would ever become the cause of trouble or dis­turbance to the state; but circumstances seemingly trivial threw the whole community into commotion, and led on to disasters of an unusual and lamentable character.

There were two young Jews, named respectively Asinai and Anilai, brothers, natives of Nearda, the city in which the general treasury of the community was established, who, on suffering some ill-usage at the hands of the manufacturer in whose service they were, threw up their employment, and, retiring to a marshy district enclosed between two arms of the Euphrates, made up their minds to exchange the dull career of honest labour for the more exciting one of robbery. The vagabonds of the neighbourhood, by the attraction which draws like to like, soon gathered about them, and a band was formed which in a little time became the terror of the entire vicinity. They exacted a black mail from the peaceable population of shepherds and others who lived near them, occasionally made plundering raids to a distance, and required a contribution from all travellers and merchants who passed through their district. Their proceedings having become notorious and intolerable, the satrap of Babylonia thought it his duty to put them down, and marched against them with the troops at his disposal, intending to take them by surprise on the Sabbath day, when it was supposed that their religious scruples would prevent them from making any resistance. But his intentions got wind, and the robber band, having agreed among themselves to disregard the obligation of the Sabbatical rest, turned the tables upon their assailant, and, instead of allowing themselves to be surprised, surprised him, and inflicted on him a severe defeat. Tidings of the affair having reached Artabanus, who had his hands already sufficiently occupied, he thought it best to make pacific overtures to the victors, and having induced them to pay him a visit at his Court, instead of inflicting any punishment, assigned to Asinai, the elder of the two brothers, the entire government of the Babylonian satrapy. At first the experiment appeared to be a success. Raised from the condition of an outlaw to that of a vitaxa, or Persian provincial governor, Asinai was perfectly content, and administered his province with zeal, diligence, and ability. For the space of fifteen years all things went smoothly in Babylonia, and no complaint was raised against the administration. At the end of that time, however, the lawless temper which from the first had characterised the two brothers, reasserted itself, not, however, in Asinai, but in Anilai. Having fallen in love with the wife of a Parthian nobleman, who seems to have been the commander of the Parthian troops stationed in Babylonia, and not knowing how otherwise to accomplish his purpose, he made an open attack upon the chieftain and killed him. Having thus removed the obstacle to a marriage, he, within a short space, made the object of his affections his wife, and having established her as the mistress of his house, allowed her to introduce into it the heathen rites whereto she had always been accustomed. But this gave great offence to the entire Jewish community, who were shocked that idolatrous practices should be permitted in a Hebrew household, and laid their complaint before Asinai, calling upon him to interfere in the matter, and compel Anilai to divorce his Parthian wife. Asinai came into their views, and would probably have enforced them upon his brother, had not the lady, alarmed at her impending disgrace, and, it may be, sincerely attached to her Jewish husband, anticipated the accomplishment of the project by secretly poisoning her brother-in-law. On the death of Asinai the authority which he had wielded with so much satisfaction to all concerned, passed, apparently without any fresh appointment by the crown, into Anilai’s hands, who thus became satrap of the extensive province of Babylonia, at this time the most important in the empire.

Anilai, however, possessed unfortunately none of his brother’s capacity for administration and government. His instincts were those of a mere ordinary freebooter, and he was no sooner settled in his province than he proceeded to give them free vent by invading, without so much as a pretext, the territory of a neighbouring satrap, named Mithridates, who was not only a Parthian noble of the highest rank, but was connected with the Royal house, being married to a daughter of Artabanus. Mithridates flew to arms in defence of his province, but Anilai, who had military if he had no other talent, fell suddenly upon his encampment in the night, completely routed his troops, and took Mithridates himself prisoner. The unhappy captive was subjected to extreme indignity; by the orders of Anilai, he was stripped naked, set upon an ass, and in this guise conducted from the battlefield to the camp of the victors, where he was paraded before the eyes of the soldiery. Not daring, however, to put to death a connection of the Great King, of whose vengeance he had a whole­ome dread, Anilai felt compelled after a time to release his captive and allow him to return to his satrapy. There the account which he gave of his sufferings so exasperated his wife, that she set herself to make his life a burden to him, and never rested until he consented to collect a second army and continue the war. His forces advanced against Anilai’s stronghold, but the Jewish captain was too proud to remain within it. Quitting the marshes, he led his troops a distance of ten miles through a hot and arid plain to meet the enemy, thus foolishly and quite unnecessarily exhausting them, and exposing them to the attack of the enemy under circumstances of the greatest disadvantage. The natural consequence followed. Anilai was defeated with great loss, but he himself escaped, and having enrolled fresh troops of a worthless character, proceeded to revenge himself by carrying fire and sword over the lands of his own Babylonian subjects, whom he must have looked upon as on the point of escaping from his jurisdiction. The unfortunate natives sent to Nearda and required that Anilai should be given up to them; but the Jews of Nearda, even supposing them to have had the will, had not the power to comply. Negotiations were then tried, but with no better result, except that, in the course of them, the Baby­lonians contrived to obtain an exact knowledge of the position which Anilai and his troops occupied, together with a general notion of their habits. Taking advantage of the knowledge thus acquired, they one night fell suddenly upon them, when they were all either drunk or asleep, and at one stroke exterminated the whole band. Such was the end of Anilai.

Up to this point, though the occurrences had been strange and abnormal, indicative of extreme disorganisation and weakness on the part of the Parthian government, yet no very great harm had been done. Two Jewish bandits had been elevated into the position of Parthian satraps, and had borne rule over an important province, with the result, in the first place, of fifteen years of peace and prosperity, and subsequently of a short civil war, terminating in the destruction of the surviving robber chief and the annihilation of the entire band of marauders. But worse consequences were to follow. The bonds of civil order cannot be relaxed or disturbed without extreme danger to the whole social edifice. There had long been a smouldering feud between the native Babylonian population and the Jewish colonists in Babylon, which from time to time had broken out into actual riot and commotion. Diverse in race, in manners, and in religion, the two nationalities were always ready to fly at each other’s throats when a fitting occasion offered. The present seemed an occasion not to be missed; authority was relaxed; the Jewish element in the population of Mesopotamia was at once disgraced and weakened. It had made itself obnoxious to the dominant power in the state, and was not likely to receive government support or protection. Moved by these considerations, the native Babylonian population, very shortly after the destruction of Anilai, rose up against the Hebrews settled in their midst and threatened them with extermination. Finding themselves unable to make an effectual resistance, and receiving no assistance from the government, the Hebrews came to a determination to withdraw from the conflict by retiring altogether from a city where they provoked such hostility and were subjected to such ill-usage. Notwithstanding the enormous pecuniary loss which such a migration necessarily entails, and the vast difficulty of finding new homes for a population of many scores of thousands, they quitted Babylon in a body and transferred themselves to Seleucia. Seleucia, originally a Hellenic city, had at this time a tripartite population, consisting of Greeks, Syrians, and Jews. The Greeks and Syrians were opposed to each other, but hitherto the Hebrew element had managed to live on tolerably friendly terms with both the other nationalities. Now, however, the new-comers felt themselves drawn to the Syrians, who were a kindred race, and, uniting with them against the Greeks, forced these last to succumb, and to accept a subordinate position. But such a condition of things could not last; the Greeks found it insupportable; and before many months were past they succeeded in gaining over the Syrians to their side, and persuading them to join in an organised attack upon the Hebrews.

Too weak to make head against so powerful a combination, the Hebrews were utterly overpowered, and in the massacre that ensued they lost, it is said, above fifty thousand men. Those who escaped crossed the Tigris, and transferred their abode to Ctesiphon, but the malice of their enemies was still unsatisfied. The persecution continued, and did not come to an end until the entire Jewish population, deserting the metropolitan cities, withdrew to the smaller provincial towns, which had no other inhabitants.

The series of events here related derives its interest, partly from its connection with the Jewish people, whose history will always, more or less, command our sympathies, but partly also, and indeed mainly, from the light which it throws on the character of the Parthian rule, and the condition of the countries under Parthian government. Once more the resemblance between the Parthian and the Turkish systems is brought vividly to our notice, and the scenes enacted in Syria and the Lebanon before our own eyes—the mutual animosities of Christian and Druse and Maronite, the terrible conflicts, and the bloody massacres that have been an indelible disgrace to Turkish administration, present themselves to our thoughts and memories. The picture has the same features of antipathies of race, unsoftened by time and contact, of perpetual feud bursting out into occasional conflict, of undying religious hatreds, of strange combinations, of massacres, of fearful outrages, and of a government looking tamely on, and allowing things for the most part to take their course. It is clear that the Parthian system failed utterly to blend together or amalgamate the conquered races; and not only so, but that it rubbed off none of their angles, rendered them after the lapse of centuries not one whit more friendly, or better disposed one towards another than they had been at the first, did absolutely nothing towards producing the “unity, peace, and concord,” which ought to knit together the subjects of a single government, the constituent elements of a single kingdom. Moreover, the Parthian system, as set before us in the events which we are considering, was impotent even to effect the first object of civil government, the securing of quiet and tranquillity within its borders. If we were bound to regard the events of the Asinai and Anilai episode as representing to us truthfully the normal condition of the peoples and countries with which it is concerned, and to take the picture as a fair sample of the general condition of the empire, we should be forced to conclude that Parthian government was merely a euphemistic name for anarchy, and that it was a rare good fortune which prevented the State from falling to pieces at this early period, within three centuries of its establishment. But, on the whole, there is reason to believe that the reign of Artabanus III puts before us, not the normal, but an exceptional state of things—a state of things which could only arise in Parthia when the machinery of government was deranged in consequence of rebellion and civil war. We have to bear in mind that Artabanus III was actually twice driven from his kingdom, and that during the greater part of his reign he lived in perpetual fear of revolt and insurrection. It is not at all improbable that the culminating atrocities of the struggle which we have described, synchronised with the second expulsion of the Parthian monarch, and are thus not so much a sign of the ordinary weakness of the Parthian rule, as an indication of the terrible strength of the forces which that rule for the most part restrained and held under control

 

END OF THE REIGN OF ARTABANUS III—GOTARZES AND HIS RIVALS.

 

Artabanus did not continue on the throne very long after his undignified submission to Vitellius. His proceedings probably disgusted his subjects, who vented their indignation in murmurs and threats of revolt. These threats coming to the knowledge of the king, provoked him to adopt severe measures against the malcontents; who thereupon banded themselves together, and from malcontents became open conspirators. Artabanus felt himself unequal to the task of coping with the movement, and, quitting his capital, fled to the Court of Izates, tributary king of Adiabene, who received him hospitably, and undertook to replace him upon the throne from which he had been driven. It lends an interest to this portion of Parthian history to learn from Josephus, who relates it, that Izates, and his mother, Helena, were converts to Judaism, and entertained so much affection for the Jewish people as to send supplies of corn to Jerusalem, when (about AD 44) that city was threatened with famine. Meanwhile, however, the Parthian Megistanes had deposed Artabanus, and elected in his place a certain Kinnamus, or Cinnamus, a distant relation of the cashiered monarch, brought up by him in his house. War would probably have broken out had not Cinnamus, who was of a gentle disposition, waived his claim in favour of his benefactor, and written to him, inviting him to return. Artabanus upon this remounted his throne, while Cinnamus carried his magnanimity so far as to take the diadem from his own head, and, replacing it on that of the old monarch, to salute him as king. It was a condition of the restoration, guaranteed both by Artabanus and Izates, that the transaction should be accompanied by a complete amnesty for all political offences. Such mildness, very unusual among the Parthians, may perhaps be ascribed to the gentle councils of the Judaean Izates.

It seems that Artabanus died very shortly after his restoration to the throne. His last days were clouded by the calamity of the revolt of Seleucia, far the most important of the Hellenic cities of the empire. We may assume that the disturbed condition of the Parthian kingdom, the frequent revolts, the occasional civil wars, the manifest tendency to disruption which the empire about this time showed, had raised among the Hellenic subjects of the Parthian crown, always disaffected, a belief, or at any rate a hope, that they might succeed in shaking off the yoke of their barbaric lords. Seleucia, naturally, took the lead. Had she succeeded in establishing her independence, other lesser towns, as Apollonia, Nicephorium, Edessa, Carrhae, might have followed her example. Rome might have been called in as a protector, and might perhaps have undertaken the charge. An imperium in imperio might conceivably have been established. But, as the event proved, the attempt now made was ill- judged. Though Artabanus himself failed to recover the revolted city, which maintained a precarious independence for the space of over six years (AD 40-46), yet there was at no time any reasonable prospect of a prosperous issue. Rome held aloof. The unhappy Greeks were overmatched. Though Parthia was thought to have incurred some disgrace by her inability to reduce a single rebel city to subjection for the space of nearly seven years, yet ultimately she prevailed. Seleucia succumbed to a son of Artabanus in AD 46, and resumed a subject position under her old masters.

On the death of Artabanus, the succession was disputed between two of his sons, Vardanes and Gotarzes. According to Josephus, the crown was left by his father to the former, who was probably the elder of the two; but, as he happened to be at a distance, while Gotarzes was present in the capital, or close at hand, the last named had the opportunity of occupying the throne, and, being an ambitious prince, availed himself of it. He reigned, however, at this time only for a few weeks. Having put to death a brother, named Artabanus, together with his wife and son, and otherwise shown a tyrannical disposition, he so alarmed his subjects, that they sent hurriedly for Vardanes, and offered him the post of king. Vardanes, a man of prompt action, instantly complied, and, having accomplished a journey of 350 miles in two days, drove Gotarzes from the kingdom; after which he received the submission of the provinces and cities generally, the only exception being Seleucia, which maintained its revolt, and resisted all his efforts to reduce it. Meantime Gotarzes had fled to the Dahae of the Caspian region, and thrown himself upon their support and protection. The Dahae, who wee not Parthian subjects, willingly gave him an asylum; and from this secure retreat he proceeded to seduce the neighbouring Hyrcanians from their allegiance to his brother, and drew together so large a power, that Vardanes felt himself under the necessity of raising the siege of Seleucia, and marching in person to the distant East. The two armies confronted each other in the plain country of Bactria, but before they came to an engagement, the commanders on either side thought it expedient to hold a conference, and arrange, if possible, terms of peace. It had come to the knowledge of Gotarzes, that there was a design afloat among the chief nobles in either army to get rid of both the brothers, and elect to the throne a wholly new king. Having informed his brother of this alarming discovery, he succeeded in arranging a secret meeting with him, where pledges were interchanged, and an understanding come to with respect to the future. Gotarzes agreed to relinquish his claims to the Parthian crown, and was assigned a residence in Hyrcania, which was probably made over to his government. Vardanes returned to the West, and resuming his siege operations, finally compelled Seleucia to a surrender in the year AD 46, the seventh year of the insurrection.

Regarding himself now as firmly settled in his kingdom, and as having nothing more to fear from his brother, Vardanes thought that the time was come for taking in hand a new and important enterprise. This was no less than the recovery of Armenia from the Roman influence. That country, relinquished to Tiberius by Artabanus III in AD 37, and placed by Rome under the government of Mithridates, an Iberian, had suffered various vicissitudes, and was now (AD 46) extremely discontented with its ruler, as well as with his Roman patrons and upholders. Vardanes thought that there would be no great difficulty in driving out Mithridates from the kingdom upon which he had so weak a hold, and replacing Armenia within the sphere of the Parthian rule and influence. But for success in such an enterprise he required the hearty concurrence and support of his principal feudatories, and especially of the great Izates, whose services to Artabanus had been rewarded by an important enlargement of his dominions, and who was now king both of Adiabene and of Gordyene or Upper Mesopotamia. Accordingly, he took this prince into his councils, arid requested his opinion as to the prudence of the course which he was contemplating. Izates gave the project his most strenuous opposition. He was profoundly convinced of the military strength and greatness of Rome, and on that account wholly disinclined to quarrel with her, while further he had a private and personal motive for desiring to maintain amicable relations with the great Western power from the fact that five of his sons were residing in Rome, whither he had sent them in order that they might receive a polite education. He refused, therefore, to abet Vardanes in his design, and the latter, indignant at a refusal, which he regarded as an act of rebellion, proceeded to engage in hostilities against his feudatory.

It was probably this condition of things which induced Gotarzes suddenly to come forth from his retirement, and again assert his claim to the Parthian throne—a claim which he had only withdrawn under the pressure of necessity. The quarrel of Vardanes with Izates had weakened his power, and inclined even the nobles who had hitherto supported his cause to desert him, and go over to his adversary. Many of them invited Gotarzes to resume the struggle; and Vardanes found himself compelled for the second time to march eastward. Several battles were fought between the two pretenders to the throne in the country between the Caspian and Herat, in which the advantage mostly rested with Vardanes; but his successes in the field failed to overcome the aversion in which he was held by his subjects; and on his return from the war a number of them, in spite of the glory which he had acquired, conspired against him, and treacherously slew him in the hunting-field.

Gotarzes was then unanimously accepted as king, and reigned for some years in peace. But he had the common Parthian defect of a cruel and suspicious temper, while he added to this defect the comparatively unusual faults of indolence and addiction to luxury. In a short time he alienated the affections of his subjects from him, partly by his severities, partly by his luxurious living, and to some extent by his ill-success in some small military expeditions. In the year AD 49, steps were taken by those especially opposed to him, for relieving their country from the incubus of a thoroughly bad king. Claudius, the Roman Emperor, was approached, and entreated to come to the aid of his Parthian “friends and allies.” “The rule of Gotarzes,” they said, “had become intolerable, alike to the nobility and the common people. He had murdered all his male relations, or at least all those who were within his reach—first his brothers, then his near kinsmen, finally even those whose relationship was more remote; nor had he stopped there; he had proceeded to put to death their young children and their pregnant wives. He was sluggish in his habits, unfortunate in his wars, and had betaken himself to cruelty, that men might not utterly despise him for his want of manliness. They knew that Rome and Parthia were bound together by the terms of a treaty, and they wanted no infringement of it. Let Rome send them an Arsacid worthy of reigning in the place of the unworthy scion of the house under whose tyranny they groaned. They asked for Meherdates, the son of Vonones, and grandson of Phraates IV, who was resident at Rome, and, having been so long accustomed to Roman manners, might be expected to rule justly and moderately.” This speech was delivered in the Roman Senate, Claudius being present, and also Meherdates, the candidate for the Parthian throne. The Emperor made a favourable response—“He would follow the example of the Divine Augustus, and allow the Parthians to receive from Rome the monarch whom they requested. That prince, bred up in the City, had always been remarkable for his moderation. He would (it was to be hoped) regard himself in his new position, not as a master of slaves, but as a ruler of citizens. He would find that clemency and justice were the more appreciated by a barbarous people, the less they had experience of them. Meherdates might accompany the Parthian envoys; and a Roman of rank, Caius Cassius, the prefect of Syria, should be instructed to receive them on their arrival in Asia, and to see them safely across the Euphrates.”

Meherdates thus set out for his proposed kingdom under the fairest auspices. He had a large party devoted to his cause in Parthia itself; he was backed by the great name of Rome; and he had the active support of a Roman of distinction, well acquainted with the East, and of good antecedents. Moreover, when he arrived at Zeugma on the Euphrates, he found himself welcomed, not only by a number of the Parthian nobles, but by a personage of great importance in those parts, no other than Abgarus, the Osrhoenian king, who commanded the passages of the Euphrates, and held the country to the east of the river, probably as far as the Khabour, or at any rate of the Ras-el-Ain, its western tributary. The parting advice of Cassius to his young protege was, that he should lose no time in pressing forward against his rival, Gotarzes, since the barbarians were always impetuous at the commencement, but lost their energy, or even grew perfidious, if there was delay. Meherdates, however, fell entirely under the influence of the Osrhoenian monarch, who seems to have been a traitor, like his predecessor in the time of Crassus, and to have determined from the first to lure the young prince to his destruction. By the persuasions of Abgarus, Meherdates was induced, first of all, to waste precious time while he indulged in a series of feasts and banquets at Edessa, the Osrhoenian capital, and then to proceed against his antagonist by the difficult and circuitous Armenian route, which followed the course of the Tigris by Diarbekr, Til, and Jezireh, instead of striking directly across Mesopotamia to Ctesiphon. The rough mountain passes and the snow-drifts of Armenia harassed his troops and seriously delayed his progress, ample time being thus given to Gotarzes for collecting a strong force and disposing it in the most convenient situations. Fortune, however, still continued to smile on the pretender. When he reached Adiabene, Izates, the powerful monarch of that tract, openly embraced his cause, and brought a body of troops to his assistance. Pressing forward towards Ctesiphon, Meherdates possessed himself of the fort which occupied the ancient site of Nineveh, as well as of the strong post of Arbela, and there found himself in the near vicinity of his adversary. But Gotarzes was unwilling to risk all on the fate of a battle. He stood on the defensive, with the river Corma in his front, and would not suffer himself to be provoked, or tempted, to an engagement. Reinforcements were still reaching him, and he had a good hope of drawing to his own side, or at any rate persuading to neutrality, a portion of his adversary’s adherents, if he could set his emissaries at work among them. These tactics were crowned with success. After a brief hesitation, Izates, the Adiabenian, and Abgarus, the Osrhoenian monarch, proved faithless to the cause which they had professedly espoused, and drew off their troops. Meherdates feared that other desertions might follow, and resolved, before losing more of his army, to precipitate a fight. Gotarzes being also willing to engage, since he was no longer outnumbered, the battle took place. It was stoutly contested. For a long time neither side could boast any decided advantage ; but at last Carrhenes, the chief general on the side of Meherdates, having repulsed the troops opposed to him, was tempted to pursue them too far, and being intercepted by the enemy on his return was either killed or made prisoner. His misfortune decided the engagement. The loss of their principal commander caused a general panic among the soldiers of Meherdates, who dispersed in all directions. The pretender might perhaps have escaped; but having entrusted his person to a certain Parrhaces, a dependent of his father’s, who promised to conduct him to a place of safety, he was seized, bound, and delivered up to Gotarzes. Gotarzes seems to have been touched with compassion by his rival’s youth and helplessness. Instead of awarding him the usual punishment of rebels and pretenders who fall into their enemies’ hands, he contented himself with inflicting on him a slight mutilation, sufficient, according to Oriental ideas, to incapacitate him from ever exercising sovereignty.

This victory which brought the troubles of Gotarzes with his rivals to an end, was regarded by him as worthy of commemoration in an unusual way. The Parthians had but little taste for mimetic art, and seldom indulged in artistic representations of any of the events of their history. But Gotarzes on this occasion took the exceptional course of commemorating his achievement by a rock tablet. On the great and sacred mountain of Behistun (originally, Baghistan, “The Place of the Gods”), which was already adorned by a sculptured tablet representing the Achaemenian monarch, Darius, the son of Hystaspes, with two attendants, receiving a number of conquered rebels, he caused to be engraved a second, though much smaller tablet, representative of his own exploit. In this he appeared seated on horseback, with a heavy spear in his right hand, while a Victory flying in the air crowned him with a wreath or diadem, and behind him his army galloped over the plain in pursuit of the flying foe. Some of the figures formed, apparently, a walking procession; while an inscription in the Greek character and language explained the intention of the monument. This inscription is now almost illegible, but, when first found, contained in two places the name “Gotarzes,” and in one the name “Mithrates,” an undoubted equivalent of “Meherdates.”

It appears that the successful monarch did not long survive his victory. His death, which is assigned by the best authorities to the year AD 50, is variously related by the historians. According to Tacitus, it was natural, the result of disease; but according to Josephus it was violent, and effected by a conspiracy. There would be nothing surprising in this, since through his whole reign he was unpopular, and must have had many bitter enemies. But Tacitus is an authority who cannot be lightly set aside; and his emphatic words — “morbo obiit” — have generally been accepted as closing controversy on the subject. The reign of Gotarzes must be considered to have helped forward in no small degree the disorganisation of the Parthian state. It showed Rome how easy it was to interfere in the internal affairs of her eastern neighbour, and to paralyse her action beyond her frontier, by raising troubles within it. It accustomed the Parthians themselves to intrigue, civil war, and confusion. It must have tended, moreover, to exhaust the resources of the empire. At any rate the downward course of the state from this time, though not rapid, is marked and continuous; and, though the tenacity of the race enables it to prolong its independent existence for nearly two centuries longer, yet the student of the history clearly sees that a decline has set in from which any real recovery is impossible.

 

PARTHIA IN THE TIME OF NERO—VOLOGASES I AND CORBULO.

 

Gotarzes was succeeded by a distant relative, an Arsacid called Vonones, and known in Parthian history as “Vonones the Second.” This prince did not occupy the throne more than about two months, and is chiefly remarkable as the father of three kings much more celebrated than himself—Vologases I, King of Parthia, Tiridates, King of Armenia, and Pacorus, dependent King of Media. Tiridates appears to have been the eldest, Pacorus the second, and Vologases the third son; but, on the death of their father, the two elder princes agreed to cede the Parthian throne to their younger brother. This was the more remarkable as Vologases was the son of Vonones by a Greek concubine, whereas his two brothers were legitimate. Probably he had given indications of an ability, which they did not recognise in themselves, and for which he may have been indebted to the foreign blood that flowed in his veins. At any rate he found himself; in AD. 50 or 51, established upon the throne, and able to reward Pacorus for his complaisance by bestowing on him the quasi-royal government of Media. For Tiridates something more was needed, and Vologases may be presumed to have been anxiously on the watch, during the earlier portion of his reign, for an opportunity of conferring on his other brother a dignity worthy of his acceptance. The opportunity came in AD 51, through circumstances which had lighted up the flames of war in the neighbouring territory of Armenia.

The origin of the strife was the following. Rhadamistus, the eldest son of Pharasmanes, King of Iberia, was a youth of such recklessness, and possessed with such a lust for power, that, for the security of his own crown, his father thought it necessary to divert his son’s thoughts to the acquisition of another. He therefore pointed out to him that his uncle, Mithridates, King of Armenia under the Romans, was a most unpopular ruler, and that it might not be difficult to supplant him, if he took up his residence at his court and gave his mind to ingratiating himself with the Armenian people. The ambitious youth followed the advice offered him, and ere long succeeded in making himself a general favourite, after which, having contrived to get Mithridates into his power, he ruthlessly put him to death, together with his wife and children. This was a challenge to the Romans, who had established Mithridates in his kingdom; but the Roman officer, Ummidius Quadratus, president of Syria, whose business it was to take up the challenge, neglected to do so, and another official, Julius Pelignus, procurator of Cappadocia, even went further, and authorised Rhadamistus to assume the title and insignia of king. A large party in Armenia was, however, adverse to the new rule, distrusted Rhadamistus, and condemned the course which he had pursued. The country was accordingly thrown into a ferment; and Vologases, having recently ascended the Parthian throne, and needing a principality for his brother Tiridates, thought he saw in the situation of Armenia an excellent opportunity of at once gratifying his brother and advancing his own reputation. To detach Armenia once more from the dominion of Rome and re-attach it to Parthia would be a happy inauguration of his reign, and one that would draw down upon him the open applause and secret envy of his neighbours.

Accordingly, Vologases, in AD 51, the year of his accession, having collected a large force, led an expedition into Armenia. At first it seemed as if he would effect an easy conquest. The Iberian garrison, on whose support Rhadamistus principally relied, quitted the field without risking a battle; his Armenian troops made but a poor resistance; Artaxata and Tigranocerta, his two principal cities, opened their gates to the foe; Vologases took possession of Armenia, and established Tiridates at Artaxata, the capital. But this fair beginning was soon clouded over. A severe winter, and some defect in the commissariat arrangements, caused the outburst of a pestilence, which so thinned the Parthian garrisons that Vologases was compelled to withdraw them. Rhadamistus returned, and, though ill-received by his subjects, and occasionally in danger of losing his life, on the whole contrived to maintain himself during the three years extending from AD 51 to 54, and was still in possession when Vologases, in the last-named year, having brought some other wars to an end, found himself in a position to resume his designs upon Armenia.

The delay in grappling with the Armenian difficulty had had a double origin. In AD 52 a dispute had arisen between Vologases and one of his principal feudatories, Izates, vitaxa of Adiabene, whose pretensions to exclusive privileges appeared to his feudal lord excessive and even dangerous. After fruitless negotiations, Izates appealed to arms, and took up a position on the Lower Zab, which was the southern limit of his territory. Vologases had advanced to the opposite bank of the river, and was on the point of crossing, and attacking his adversary when tidings reached him of the invasion of his own dominions by a foreign enemy. The Dahae, and the Scythians in their neighbourhood, had passed into Parthia Proper from the Caspian region, and were threatening to carry fire and sword through the entire province.

Domestic revolt could be chastised at any time, but a foreign foe must be met as soon as he showed himself. Vologases, accordingly, marched away from Adiabene to the Parthian and Hyrcanian frontier, east of the Caspian sea, where he met and repulsed the band of marauders, who had probably only ventured to invade his territory because they knew him to be engaged in a serious quarrel at a considerable distance, and imagined that they would therefore be unresisted. Successful in this quarter, he was about to resume his operations in Adiabene, when infor­mation reached him of the death of Izates, which brought his domestic difficulties to an end. The pretensions of the deceased monarch had been personal, being grounded upon special privileges granted him by Artabanus III., which would not pass to a successor, and Vologases had consequently no quarrel with Monobazus, Izates’ brother, who had inherited his throne. He thus found himself, at the close of AD 53, wholly his own master, and free to engage in whatever enterprise might seem to him most promising.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that, in AD 54, he turned his attention once more to Armenian affairs, and resumed his project of establishing his brother, Tiridates, upon the throne of that ancient, and still semi-independent, kingdom. Rhadamistus, though he continued in possession of the nominal sovereignty, had failed to establish his power, or to obtain any firm hold on the affections of his subjects, and might be attacked with a good prospect of success, unless he received external assistance. The real question was, would Rome interfere? Would she come to the aid of a monarch, who had not received his throne from herself, but had obtained it by supplanting, and finally murdering, her protégé Vologases was probably aware that a new sovereign had recently ascended the Imperial throne, a youth not yet eighteen years of age, one wholly destitute of military tastes or training, devoted to music and the arts, who could not be credited with very keen patriotic feelings, or with a very full comprehension of the niceties of the political situation. Would this raw youth grasp the meaning of a diminution of Roman influence in the far East, or rush to arms because a border kingdom—not a Roman province—wavered in its allegiance? Vologases, it would seem, answered three questions in the negative: or perhaps, while recognising the risk, he may have thought the immediate advantage so great as to make it worth his while to encounter the hazard. At any rate, early in AD 54, he made his invasion, drove Rhadamistus out of Armenia, reduced the whole country to subjection, and established his brother, Tiridates, as king in the capital city of Artaxata.

The boldness of this stroke took the Romans by surprise, and produced something like a panic in the Imperial city. But the traditions of Imperial policy were too firmly fixed in the minds of the official class for any doubt to be entertained as to the necessity of meeting and resisting the aggression. Orders went forth at once for recruiting the Oriental legions up to their full strength, and for moving them nearer to the Armenian frontier; preparations were made for bridging the Euphrates; Agrippa II, King of Chalcis, and Antiochus, King of Commagene, were ordered to raise troops and make ready for an invasion of Parthia; new governors were appointed over Sophene and the Lesser Armenia; above and beyond all, the brave and experienced Corbulo, universally allowed to be the best general of the time, was summoned from his command in Germany, and given the general superintendence of the war in Armenia, with Cappadocia and Galatia as his provinces. Ummidius Quadratus was maintained in the proconsulship of Syria, but required to co-operate with Corbulo, and made practically his second in command. Four legions, together with numerous auxiliaries were concentrated on the Armenian frontier, and it seemed as if the next year would see the contest between Rome and Parthia renewed on a scale which would recall the times of Antony and Phraates IV.

But to ardent spirits the new year brought nothing but disappointment. Instead of rushing to arms, and pouring their combined legions into Armenia or Parthia, the two Roman commanders suddenly showed a disposition for peace. Emissaries from both sought the Court of Vologases with offers of peace—offers which implied an acceptance of the status quo, provided that the Parthian monarch would take no further steps in opposition to Rome, and would place some Parthians of importance in the hands of the Romans as hostages. This he was quite willing to do, as he knew many of the nobles to be disaffected, and their absence from his Court would relieve him of the necessity of watching them. Internal troubles, probably fomented by Rome had commenced by the open revolt of his son, Vardanes, whose defection from his father Tacitus places in AD 54, and whose coins show that he had assumed the royal title, and set himself up as a rival to Vologases, certainly before the end of the next year. A truce with Rome was, consequently, what the Parthian monarch must earnestly have desired; and we can only feel surprised that the Roman commanders should have consented to play into his hands, and have left him wholly unmolested in the time of his greatest difficulties. Probably they were already jealous of each other, and disinclined to press forward a war in which each felt that mere accident might give the chief laurels to the other.

Vologases was thus able to give his whole attention, during the three years from AD 55 to AD 58, to the contest with his son. Its details have not come down to us; but it appears to be certain that by the spring of 58 he had succeeded in crushing the revolt, and re-establishing his authority over the whole kingdom. Aa Vardanes is no more heard of, we may presume that he either perished in battle, or was executed. His coins, which are numerous, belong to the years 55-58, and show a strong, masculine, type of face, with an expression that is fierce and determined.

The Great King, being now at liberty to resume the projects and plans, which his son’s rebellion had compelled him to drop, took up once more the Armenian question, which was still unsettled between his own Court and that of Rome, and by his envoys pressed for a final arrangement. He claimed that of right, and by ancient possession, Armenia was a Parthian province, or at least a Parthian dependency, and required that not only should Tiridates be left in undisturbed possession of it, but that there should be a distinct understanding that he held it, not as a Roman, but as a Parthian, feudatory. To this the Romans, and especially Corbulo, demurred. Armenia, they said, had been added to the Roman Empire by Lucullus, or at any rate by Pompey, and it was not consistent with the greatness of Rome to surrender territory which she had once acquired. Let Tiridates remain quiet, and the matter be settled by negotiation; otherwise Rome would be compelled to use force. Corbulo had utilised the three years of waiting by recruiting his legions from Cappadocia and Galatia, by tightening their discipline, and by accustoming them to the hardships of winter marches and movements; he had also obtained an additional legion from Germany; and he now felt ready for a campaign.

Tiridates soon gave him the opportunity which he seems to have desired. Having received a contingent of troops from Vologases, he commenced proceedings against the Roman partisans in Armenia, harrying them with fire and sword; whereupon Corbulo crossed the frontier to their relief. A number of partial engagements were fought in which Rome had the advantage, and at last, after three years’ fighting, Tiridates, having lost his capital city, Artaxata, in AD 58, and Tigranocerta, the second city of his kingdom, in AD 60, withdrew from the contest, and yielded the entire possession of Armenia to the Romans. By the favour of Nero, Tigranes, grandson of Archelaus, a former monarch of Cappadocia, was made king; but, as his ability to administer so large a territory was doubted, portions of it were detached from his rule, and made over to the neighbouring princes. Pharasmanes of Iberia, Polemo of Pontus, Aristobulus of the Lesser Armenia, and Antiochus of Commagene, profited by the new arrangement, which could not, however, but be distasteful to the Armenians, who saw the country of which they were so proud, not merely conquered, but broken into fragments.

Corbulo’s success must be attributed in a great measure to the absence of Vologases from the scene of contest. The Armenian monarch had been called away in AD 58 to his north-eastern frontier by a revolt, perhaps fomented by Rome, of the distant province of Hyrcania, and had found full occupation there for his utmost energies, so that he was wholly unable to lend effectual aid to his brother. But, about the year AD 62, the Hyrcanian troubles came to an end, and, the hands of Vologases being once more free, he had to consider and determine whether he should accept the state of things established in Armenia by Corbulo, or interfere by force of arms to modify it. To what conclusion he would have come, had his own dominions been left unmolested, it is impossible to say: as it was, the intolerable aggressions of Tigranes upon his rich province of Adiabene, and the bitter complaints of his subjects, who threatened to transfer their allegiance to Rome, left him no choice. His own interests and the honour of his country alike required him to assert his cause in arms; and Vologases, having made up his mind to declare war, announced his intention to a council of his nobles in a speech which is reported as follows: “Parthians, when I obtained the sovereignty of Parthia by the cession of my brothers’ claims, my intention was to substitute for the old system of fraternal hatred and strife, a new one of domestic affection and agreement; my brother Pacorus, accordingly, received Media from my hands at once; and Tiridates, whom you see now present before you, I shortly afterwards inducted into the royal appanage of Armenia, a dignity reckoned the third in the Parthian kingdom. Thus I put my family matters on a peaceful and satisfactory footing. But these arrangements are now disturbed by the Romans, who have never hitherto gained anything by breaking faith with us, and will scarcely do so on the present occasion. I shall not deny that up to this time I have proposed to maintain my right to the dominions left me by my ancestors by fair dealing rather than by shedding of blood, by negotiation rather than by arms; if however I have erred in this, and have been weak to delay so long, I will now amend my fault by showing the more vigour. You at any rate have lost nothing by my holding back; your strength is intact, your glory undiminished. Nay, you have added to your other well-known merits, the credit of moderation—a virtue which not even the highest among men can afford to despise, and which the gods view with special favour?” His speech ended, Vologases placed a diadem on the brow of Tiridates, in token of his determination to restore him to the Armenian throne, at the same time commanding Moneses, a Parthian noble, and Monobazus, the Adiabenian king, to take the field and invade Armenia, while he himself collected the whole strength of the empire, and marched to attack the Roman legions on the Euphrates.

The campaign which followed was of less importance than might have been anticipated from these preparations for it. Vologases, instead of invading Syria, marched no further than Nisibis, which was well within the limits of his own dominions. Moneses and Monobazus, on the other hand, carried out the concerted programme, and having invaded Armenia, and advanced to Tigranocerta, which had now become the capital of the kingdom, besieged Tigranes in that city (AD. 62). But the Parthian attack on walled places was always ineffective, and Tigranocerta happened to be exceptionally strong. The walls are said to have been seventy-five feet in height, the river Nicephorius, a broad stream, washed a portion of them; a huge moat protected the remainder; the town was strongly garrisoned; and the besieging force, though not wanting in gallantry, proved unable to make any serious impression upon the place. Vologases, as time went on, began to despair of effecting very much under existing circumstances by force of arms, and leant towards negotiation, which Corbulo invited. His army, which consisted almost entirely of cavalry, was reduced to inaction by want of forage, Mesopotamia having recently suffered from a plague of locusts. Hence he consented to conclude a truce with his antagonist, and to send a fresh embassy to Rome for the purpose of making a satisfactory arrangement. The truce was to last until the ambassadors returned ; and, meanwhile, Armenia was to be evacuated by both parties, and care was to be taken that no collision should occur between the soldiers of the two nations.

But this well-meant effort at pacification was entirely without result. Nero gave the envoys no answer; and, indeed, he had made arrangements before their arrival, from which he anticipated a triumphant issue to the contest instead of a mere patched-up and unstable convention. At the request of Corbulo, who was anxious not to arouse his jealousy, he had sent out a second commander to the East, a special favourite of his own, and from the conduct of the war by this new leader he looked for immediate results of the most important character. L. Caesennius Paetus was a man of energy and boldness, confident in himself, and contemptuous of the prudence and caution of his colleague. He held a separate command, with forces equal to those led by Corbulo, and soon let it be known that he was about to carry on the war in a new fashion. “Corbulo,” he said, “had shown no dash or vigour; he had neither plundered nor massacred; if he had besieged cities, it had been in name rather than in reality. His own method would be different. Instead of setting up shadowy kings he would bring Armenia under Roman law, and reduce it to the condition of a province.” These brave words were followed up by a show of brave deeds. Crossing the Euphrates, Paetus invaded Armenia with two legions, and spreading his troops over a wide extent of country, burnt the strongholds, ravaged the territory, and carried off a considerable booty. But he neither fought a single battle, nor ventured to besiege a single town. As winter approached, he withdrew his troops into Cappadocia, but, intent on pleasing his Imperial master, he gave in his despatches an exag­gerated account of what he had achieved in his short campaign, and spoke as if the war was well-nigh over.

Corbulo, on his part, maintained the prudent attitude habitual to him. He bridged the Euphrates in the face of a large opposing force by anchoring vessels laden with military engines in mid-stream. He then passed his troops across, and occupied a strong position in the hills at a little distance from the river, where he caused his legions to construct an entrenched camp, and remained on the defensive. He greatly distrusted Paetus, and would not allow himself to be so entangled in military operations as not to be able at any moment to march to his colleague’s assistance if he should hear that he was in any danger.

The prudence of this course soon became evident. Paetus, regarding the season for war as over, sent one of his legions to winter in Pontus, while he himself with the other two took up his quarters in the country between the Taurus and the Euphrates, and allowed free furloughs to all the soldiers who applied for them. While his legions were in this way much weakened, he suddenly heard that Vologases, braving the inclemency of the season, was advancing against him at the head of a strong force. The crisis revealed his incapacity. He was uncertain whether to await the enemy in quarters or to take the field against him, whether to concentrate his troops or to disperse them. Now he adopted one course, now another. The only consistency that he showed was in imploring aid from Corbulo, to whom he sent messenger after messenger. That general, however, was in no hurry to render help, since he did not wish to appear upon the scene as deliverer until it was clear that the danger threatening Paetus was imminent. Vologases, meanwhile, steadily pursued his way. Without attempting any rapid movements, he closed in upon Paetus, his adversary, swept away the small force that Paetus had detached to guard the passes of Taurus, and blocked up the remainder of his army in a position from which extrication, unless his colleague, came to his aid, was almost impossible. Corbulo was now on his march, and pressing forward with all speed, but a panic had seized on Paetus and his soldiers. Though he had abundant provisions, and might have prolonged the defence for weeks, or even for months, yet in his cowardly alarm he preferred to precipitate matters, and having entered into negotiations with Vologases, he practically capitulated to him. The terms granted were, that the blockaded army should be allowed to quit its entrench­ments, and be free to march away, but that it must at once quit Armenia; its stores and its fortified posts must be surrendered; no further hostilities must be engaged in; and Paetus should obtain from Nero the exact conditions on which he would now be willing to make peace. These terms were carried out, not how­ever without the addition of some further insults and indignities. The Parthians entered the Roman entrenchments before the legionaries had quitted them, claiming and seizing whatever they professed to recognise as Armenian spoil; they even took possession of the soldiers’ arms and clothes, which were tamely relinquished to them with the object of avoid­ing a conflict. Armenia was then quitted hastily, and not without disorder, Paetus setting the example of unseemly hurry. Corbulo was reached after a three days’ march, and received the fugitives without reproaches, and with every demonstration of sympathy.

Vologases followed up his success against Paetus by at once re-establishing his brother, Tiridates, in the Armenian kingdom. At the same time he devised a plan whereby, he thought, the interminable quarrel between the two empires of Rome and Parthia might be made up, and a modus vivendi arrived at. Rome, under Nero at any rate, was not really bent upon further conquests. It was rather her honour for which she was jealous than her power which she desired to see augmented. Vologases therefore sent an embassy to the Court of Nero, and explained that, so long as his brother was accepted and acknowledged by Rome as Armenian king, he would offer no objection to his going in person to Rome and receiving investiture from the Imperial hands. Nero and his counsellors in reality approved this compromise, but they felt that it would be too palpable a surrender of former claims, and too manifestly a concession extorted by recent dis­aster, if they closed with the suggestion of the Parthian monarch at once. No; Rome must not make an open confession of defeat; her recession from a claim must be glossed over, cloaked. Dust must be thrown in the eyes of the nations, and they must be induced to think that, whatever change Rome made in her politi­cal arrangements was made of her own free will, and because she regarded it as for her advantage. Accordingly, the envoys of Vologases were dismissed with an ambiguous answer. Paetus was recalled from the East, and Corbulo reinstated in sole command, and invested with a new and almost unlimited authority. The number of his troops was augmented, and their quality improved by draughts from Egypt and Illyri- cum. He was bidden once more to take the offensive, and, in the spring of AD 63, he crossed the frontier, and penetrated to the heart of Armenia by the road formerly opened by Lucullus. Tiridates met him, not however in arms, but for negotiation. On the site of the camp of Paetus, an interview was held between the Roman general and the Armenian monarch, where the terms suggested by the envoys of Vologases at Rome were accepted. It was agreed that Rome should withdraw her support from Tigranes, and acknowledge Tiridates as rightful monarch, while Tiridates should perform an act of homage to Rome for his kingdom, and be nominally Rome’s feudatory. To indicate his acceptance of these terms, Tiridates, in the presence of Corbulo and his suite, divested himself of the regal ensigns, and placed them at the foot of the statue of Nero, undertaking not to resume them except at Nero’s hands. For actual investiture he undertook to journey to Rome as soon as circumstances permitted, and meanwhile he placed in the hands of Corbulo one of his daughters as a hostage. Corbulo, on his part, undertook that Tiridates should be treated with the utmost honour and respect, both during his stay at Rome and on his journey to and from Italy, should be entitled to wear his sword, and have free access to all the provincial authorities upon the route. Peace was made upon these terms to the satisfaction of both parties, and it only remained that the terms should be. faithfully executed.

The execution was delayed for the space of above two years; but in the spring of AD 66, Tiridates, having set the affairs of Armenia in order, started upon his promised journey, accompanied by his wife, by a number of the Parthian princes and nobles, including sons of Vologases, Pacorus, and Monobazus, and by an escort of three thousand Parthian cavalry in all the glittering array of their gold ornaments and bright-gleaming panoplies. The long cavalcade passed, like a magnificent triumphal procession, through two-thirds of the Roman Empire, and was everywhere received with warmth, and entertained with profuse hospitality. The provincial cities which lay upon the line of route selected were gaily decorated to receive their unwonted visitors, and the loud acclamations of the assembled multitudes showed that they fully appreciated the novel spectacle. The whole journey, except the passage of the Hellespont, was made by land, the cavalcade proceeding through Thrace and Illyricum to the head of the Adriatic Gulf, and then descending the peninsula. The Roman Treasury defrayed the entire expenses of the travellers, which are said to have amounted to an average daily cost of 800,000 sesterces. As this outlay was continued for nine months, the entire sum expended by the Treasury must have exceeded a million and a half pounds sterling. Audience was given to the Parthian prince at Naples, where Nero happened to be residing, and passed off without serious difficulty. At first, indeed, an obstacle presented itself; it was the etiquette of the Roman Court that those introduced to the Emperor were to be unarmed, and consequently the usher, when Tiridates approached the Hall of Audience, requested him to lay aside his swords This he refused to do, since he was entitled to wear it by the terms of his agreement with Corbulo. The affair might have ended in a dead­lock, had not it been ingeniously suggested, that the Emperor’s safety might be assured and the Parthian prince’s honour saved, by the simple expedient of fastening the obnoxious weapon to its scabbard with half a dozen nails. This done, Tiridates was introduced into the Imperial presence, where he made obeisance, bending one knee to the ground, interlacing his hands, and at the same time saluting the Emperor as his “lord.”

The investiture was reserved for a subsequent occasion, and was made a spectacle to the Roman populace. On the night preceding, all the streets of the city were illuminated and decorated with garlands; as morning approached, “the Tribes,” clothed in long white robes and bearing branches of laurels in their hands, entered the Forum and filled all the middle space, arranged as was customary; next came the Praetorians, in their splendid arms and with their glittering standards, stationing themselves in two lines which reached from the further extremity of the Forum to the Rostra, to maintain the avenue of approach clear; all the roofs of the houses which gave upon the Forum were hidden beneath the masses of spectators; at break of day Nero himself entered, accompanied by the Senate and by his own body­guard, wearing the garb appropriated to Triumphs, and, passing down between the two lines of Praetorians, ascended a raised platform near the Rostra, and took his seat in an archaic curule chair. Tiridates was then introduced; silence was proclaimed; and in a short speech of a sufficiently abject character, the Parthian prince placed himself at the Roman Emperor’s disposal. Nero responded haughtily, but executed the covenanted investiture. Saluting Tiridates as king of Armenia, he handed him to a seat prepared for the purpose at his own feet,, gave him the kiss which sovereigns only gave to sovereigns, and with his own hand placed upon his brow the coveted diadem, the symbol of Oriental sovereignty. Magnificent entertainments followed, with shows and games of various kinds, in which the emperor himself took part; but this condescension astonished, more than it pleased, the Asiatic. However, he doubtless appreciated better the closing act of the entire drama, which was a parting gift from his nominal suzerain.

Tiridates returned to Asia across the Adriatic, and by the ordinary route through Greece, no doubt well pleased with his visit. At the cost of a formal submission, and a certain amount of personal humiliation, he had obtained a sum which not even a king could despise, and an assured title to the throne of a considerable kingdom. Vologases, who must be regarded as the moving spirit throughout the whole transaction, may also well have been satisfied. He had firmly established his brother upon the Armenian throne, and if he had conceded to Roman vanity the honour and glory of the arrangement, yet he had secured for himself the substantial advantage. As Dean Merivale well observes, “While Tiridates did homage for his kingdom to Nero, he was allowed to place himself really under the protection of Vologases.”

 

VOLOGASES I AND VESPASIAN—PACORUS II. AND DECEBALUS OF DACIA.

 

The establishment of peace between Rome and Parthia, while no doubt a fortunate circumstance for the subjects of the two empires, is one vexatious to the modern historian of the Parthians, since it places him at a considerable disadvantage. Until the conclusion of the peace, he is able to obtain tolerably ample materials for his narrative from the Greek and Roman writers who describe the condition of affairs in the East under the early Roman Emperors, and who have to trace the causes and course of the hostilities in which the two countries were engaged almost continuously. From the date of the pacification he wholly loses the benefit of this consecutive history, and has nothing to rely upon except a few scattered and isolated notices, not always very intelligible, occurring here and there in the pages of the classical authors, together with the series, which now becomes very confused and confusing, of the Parthian coins. The view obtainable of Parthian history is thus, for the space of above half a century, most imperfect and disjointed. Even the succession of the kings is uncertain; and the attribution of the coins to this or that monarch, rests frequently on conjecture.

The latest authorities seem to be of opinion that Vologases I—the monarch who ascended the Parthian throne in AD 50 or 51—continued to reign until about AD 77. If so, he must have been contemporary with six Roman Emperors—Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian—reigning contemporaneously with the last named of these for about eight years. The relations between the two rulers were, for the most part, friendly. When Vespasian first came forward as a candidate for empire (AD 70), Vologases went so far as to offer him the services of forty thousand horse-archers to assist in his establishment upon the throne; but the successes of his generals in Italy enabled the Emperor to decline this magnificent proposal, and so to escape the odium of employing foreign troops—“barbarians,” the Romans would have said—against his own countrymen. In the same spirit, when, a year later, Titus paid a visit to the Roman station of Zeugma on the Euphrates, the Parthian monarch sent to congratulate him on his successful conclusion of the Jewish war, and begged him to accept at his hands a crown of gold. Titus, with his usual amiability, consented; and, to show his appreciation of the compliment paid him, invited the envoys of Vologases to a banquet and sumptuously entertained them.

Shortly after this, however, by the machinations of Caesennius Paetus, the unsuccessful general in the last Armenian campaign, who had been recently promoted to the office of Syrian proconsul, these pleasing prospects were overclouded, and a rupture in the amicable relations that had hitherto subsisted between the two monarchs, appeared to be imminent. Caesennius Paetus—on what grounds it is impossible to say, perhaps on no reasonable grounds at all—sent a report to Vespasian, in AD 72, of a most important and alarming character. He had discovered a plot, he said, for the transfer of the Roman dependency of Commagene, a portion of Upper Syria, from the Roman to the Parthian allegiance—a plot concerted, he declared, between Vologases and the Commagenian king, Antiochus, and about to be almost immediately put into execution. Samosata, the capital of Comma- gen6, which commanded the passage of the Euphrates, was to be put into the hands of the Parthian monarch by the Commagenians, and a ready access thereby given him to the Roman provinces of Cappadocia, Cilicia, and Syria itself, which could all be easily invaded from the important site. Unless he were authorised at once to take steps to prevent the transfer, it would within a very short space be ac­complished, and the East once more thrown into confusion. Vespasian, who had no reason to doubt the correctness of the proconsul’s information, replied to him without delay, and gave him full liberty of acting as he thought best. Hereupon, Paetus, who had made every preparation in anticipation of such a response, immediately marched a strong force into Commagdne, and meeting with no resistance, proceeded against Samosata, which he carried by a coup de main. It cannot but be suspected that the whole story told to Vespasian was the invention of Paetus, who desired war as a field for his energies. His sudden invasion only failed to produce the crisis that he sought to bring about, owing to the moderation and prudence of the two sovereigns against whom his charges had been made. Antiochus, the Commagenian monarch, refused altogether to assume the part of rebel which had been assigned him, and, though his sons took arms against Paetus, himself withdrew from the country, and passing into the Roman province of Cilicia, took up his abode at Tarsus. Vologases declined to give the action taken by the sons of Antiochus any support. He folded his arms, and simply looked on while they contended with Paetus; when, on their father’s withdrawal into Cilicia, their troops abandoned them, and they were forced to take to flight, he contented himself with allowing them a temporary refuge in Parthia, and writing a letter to Vespasian on their behalf. It was probably this letter which induced Vespasian so far to pardon the young princes as to allow them to reside in Rome with their father, while at the same time he made the family an ample allowance from his privy purse.

It was not long after he had escaped the danger of a Roman war that Vologases was attacked by a savage enemy from another quarter. The Alani, a Scythic, or more probably a Finnish tribe from the regions east of the Caspian, having made alliance with the important nation of the Hyrcanians, which in later Parthian history gave many signs of being disaffected, burst through the Caspian Gates suddenly in the year AD 75, and, pouring into Media, drove King Pacorus, the brother of Vologases, to take refuge in the fastnesses of the mountains, while they carried fire and sword over the open country. From Media they passed on into Armenia, which was still held by Tiridates, defeated him in a pitched battle, and very nearly succeeded in making him prisoner by means of a lasso. Vologases, in great alarm, sent an embassy to Vespasian, and relying on his own offer, a few years previously, to lend the Roman Emperor, if he required it, a body of forty thousand horse archers, asked that an efficient contingent of Roman troops might now be placed at his disposal. He further requested that their commander might be either Titus or Domitian. The latter prince, jealous of his brother’s military fame, was most anxious to be selected, and to be placed at the head of a powerful army, so that he might have an opportunity of rivalling the great achievements of Titus. But Vespasian, with the caution of old age, felt averse from embarking the State in fresh adventures, and bluntly declared that he saw no reason for making himself a busybody in affairs that no way concerned him. Had he accepted the proffered support of Vologases in years previously, the case would have been different, but, as he had declined it, his hands were unshackled, and he was free either to consent or to refuse as he chose. The best interests of the State seemed to him to require abstention, and he therefore sent a negative reply to Vologases. The Parthian prince was not only disappointed, but angered, and vented his spleen by withholding from the Emperor, in subsequent diplomatic correspondence, his rightful titles. Vespasian, with a sense of humour rare in persons so highly placed, made no remonstrance beyond the ironic one of adopting in his reply the humble style assigned him by his correspondent. To the salutation— “Arsaces, King of Kings, to Flavius Vespasianus sends greeting,” he answered, “Flavius Vespasianus, to Arsaces, King of Kings, sends greeting.”

A coolness in the relations between the two powers now set in. Parthia, thrown on her own resources, was forced to submit to considerable loss in the way of booty at the hands of the Alani and their allies, and was unable to take any revenge upon them for their unprovoked attack; but she succeeded in maintaining her western territories intact, and in recovering both Media and Armenia. Hyrcania, it may be suspected, was from this time detached from her rule, and the cause of continual trouble and disturbance, falling under the dominion of pretenders who claimed Arsacid descent, and even took the full titles of Parthian sovereignty.

Vologases died about AD 78, and was succeeded by a certain Pacorus, not his brother, but probably his son, who appears by his coins to have been, at his accession, a very young man, and seems to have reigned for thirty years, from 78 to 108 AD. This prince was thus contemporary with five Roman Emperors—Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan—but with none of these does he seem to have held any communications. The “coolness” which had set in under his father gradually deepened into hostility; and, when the warlike Trajan came to the throne, it was soon apparent that an open quarrel could not be long avoided. Rome’s pretensions to a predominating influence in Armenia were revived, and Parthia, not knowing how soon she might be attacked, began to look out for allies among the avowed enemies of the Roman Empire. Relations were established between Pacorus and Decebalus, the Dacian monarch, who had been at war with Rome in the reign of Domitian (AD 81-90), and was now (AD 101) again threatened by Trajan. Pacorus, however, had not the courage to lend his ally any active assistance, either by sending troops to his aid in the struggle that went on upon the Danube, or by effecting a diversion in his favour upon the Euphrates. When Decebalus fell, in A.D. 104, and Dacia became a Roman province, Pacorus must have felt that he stood alone, and that, having provoked the hostility of Rome by his relations with her enemy, he might expect at any moment an attack. Trajan, however, was too wise and too cautious to precipitate matters; an invasion of the East needed careful preparation; and the invasion which he contemplated was one of unusual importance and magnitude: he therefore abstained for the present from all offensive measures, and contented himself with paving the way for his intended expedition by intrigues in Armenia and elsewhere, by accumulating warlike stores, and increasing the strictness of military discipline. Pacorus was thus left in peace to the termination of his long reign (AD 108), and the storm which had so long threatened did not burst until the time of his successor. A pretender, however, Artabanus IV, who has left coins, falls into this reign.

 

CHOSROES AND TRAJAN—TRAJAN’S ASIATIC CONQUESTS—RELINQUISHMENT OF THESE CONQUESTS BY HADRIAN

 

Pacorus the Second was succeeded upon the throne by Chosroes, his brother, whom the Parthian Megistanes preferred over the heads of Exedares and Parthamasiris, Pacorus’s two sons, as more fit to rule under the difficult circumstances of the period. It was known, or at any rate suspected, that the warlike and experienced Trajan designed an expedition against the East, and it therefore seemed necessary to entrust the government of the Parthian state to a man of mature age and sound judgment. The sons of Pacorus were young and rash, certainly incompetent to cope with so dangerous an antagonist as Trajan. Chosroes was of ripe age, at any rate, and, though untried, was believed to possess ability, a belief which after events, on the whole, justified.

The ostensible cause of quarrel between Rome and Parthia was, as so frequently before, Armenia. On the death of Tiridates, in or about the year AD 100, Pacorus appears, without any consultation with Rome, to have placed his own son, Exedares, upon the Armenian throne. This was certainly throwing out a challenge to Trajan, and was a high-handed proceeding, not justified by the previous relations of the countries. On the last occasion of the throne being vacant, though Parthia had nominated the prince, Rome’s right to give investiture had been admitted, and Tiridates had, in fact, received his diadem from the hands of Nero. But Pacorus probably knew that Trajan had his hands fully occupied with the Dacian troubles, and was therefore not likely to engage in another war, while he may perhaps have thought that the right of investiture was too shadowy a matter for Rome greatly to value it. Events so far justified his expectations that Trajan made neither remonstrance nor threat at the time, but seemingly acquiesced in the new departure. When, however, the Dacian War was over, and the country reduced into the form of a Roman province (about AD 114), the Emperor, whose appetite for conquest was whetted rather than satisfied by his Danubian successes, considered that the time was come for taking the affairs of the East into his serious consideration, and for placing them on a footing which should give Rome security against the troubles that had now, for about a century and a half, threatened her from this quarter.

Two views might be taken of the Oriental question. It might be regarded in the light in which the greatest of the Roman Emperors—Augustus, Tiberius, Vespasian—had hitherto regarded it, as chronic—a fatal necessity involving continuous trouble, continuous effort, and at the best of times only admitting of a sort of patched-up arrangement. Or it might be viewed in a more heroic light, as Alexander the Great had viewed it in his day, as an evil to be conquered, a difficulty to be overcome, an intolerable state of things, which might be brought to an end, and ought to be brought to an end as soon as possible. Ordinary minds would naturally see it in the former light. There had always been an East, there would necessarily always be an East, set in antagonism to the West, with a perpetual quarrel going on between them. The case would then only admit of palliatives, partial remedies, modi vivendi, such expedients as a wise diplomacy might suggest, and carry out, for avoiding collisions or minimising them, and carrying on such intercourse as was necessary with as little friction as possible. The other view opened a wider range both of thought and action. Might it be practicable to crush the East, to get rid of the constant antagonism; and if so, by what means, and at what cos ?

That this latter alternative was not an altogether hopeless one had been shown by Alexander himself. Alexander had conquered the East, and for a century and a half there had been no great barbaric Oriental monarchy standing over against the West, thwarting it and threatening it. The ambition of Trajan seems to have been fired by the thought of what Alexander had achieved, and an idea of rivalry seems to have taken possession of him. Without divulging his intentions even to his intimates, much less, like Crassus, making an open boast of them, he determined on an attempt to bring the Eastern question to an end by the subjugation of Parthia. At first, however, he veiled his designs under a cloak of pretended moderation. He professed that his sole object was the vindication of the Roman honour in respect of Armenia. Both Pacorus and Chosroes, he said, had insulted Rome by dealing with Armenia as if its government were altogether a Parthian, and not a Roman, affair. He maintained, on the contrary, that the authority of Rome was paramount. It was in vain that Chosroes offered to fall back upon the modus vivendi which had been accepted by Nero, and to allow Trajan to invest his nephew, Parthamasiris, a son of Pacorus, and younger brother of Exedares, with the diadem. Trajan replied ambiguously that he would see what was fittest to be done when he arrived in Syria, and proceeded to hasten his march, to augment the number of his troops, and to make preparations of an unusual character. The autumn of AD 114 saw him at Antioch, and in the spring of the ensuing year, undaunted by the terrible earthquake which had almost destroyed the Syrian capital in the winter of AD 114-5, he set out upon his march from Antioch to the Armenian frontier. The satraps and petty princes of the region made submission as he advanced, and sought his favour with gifts of various kinds, which he was pleased to receive graciously, while he made his way from Zeugma, the Roman outpost, to the passages of the Euphrates at Samosata and Elegia. Here, on the frontier of the Greater Armenia, he awaited the arrival of Parthamasiris, who, after attempting to negotiate with him as an equal, and being treated with disdain, had been encouraged to present himself as a suppliant in the Roman camp, and to ask his crown of Trajan. There can be no doubt that the Armenian prince understood that the scene was to be a repetition of that enacted at Rome in AD 66, when Tiridates received the diadem from Nero. But Trajan was otherwise minded. When the young prince, having ridden into the camp at the head of a small retinue, stript the diadem from his own brows and laid it at the feet of the Roman Emperor, then stood in dignified silence, expecting that his mute submission would be graciously accepted, and that the emblem of sovereignty would be returned to him, Trajan made no movement. The army, which stood around, prepared, no doubt, for the occasion, shouted with all their might, and, saluting Trajan anew as Imperator, congratulated him on his “bloodless victory.” Parthamasiris saw that he had fallen into a trap, and would fain have fled; but the troops had closed in upon him on all sides, and he found his retreat intercepted. Hereupon he once more confronted the Emperor, and demanded a private audience, which was granted him. A short conference was held between the two in the Emperor’s tent, but the proposals of Parthamasiris were rejected. He was given to understand that he must submit to the forfeiture of his crown, and summoned a second time before the Imperial tribunal, to show cause, if he desired to do so, against the proposed forfeiture, and to hear the Emperor’s decision. Parthamasiris, justly indignant, spoke at some length, and with much boldness. “He had neither been defeated,” he said, “nor made prisoner by the Romans, but had come of his own free will to hold a conference with the chief of the Roman State, in full assurance that he would suffer no wrong at his hands, but would be invested by him with the Armenian sovereignty, just as Tiridates had been invested by Nero. He demanded to be set at liberty, together with his retinue.” Trajan answered curtly that he did not intend to give the sovereignty of Armenia to any one. The country belonged to Rome, and should have a Roman governor. Parthamasiris might go where he pleased with his Parthians; but any Armenians that he had brought with him must remain—they were Roman subjects. Parthamasiris, upon this, rode off; but Trajan had no intention of allowing him to escape, and become the leader in an Armenian war. He ordered some of his troops to follow and arrest him, and, if he resisted, to put him to death. These instructions were carried out, and Parthamasiris was killed, as a recent historian says, “brutally.”

Cruel and brutal acts are frequently successful—at any rate, for a time. Trajan’s “sharp and sudden blow ” was effective, and produced the prompt and complete submission of Armenia. No resistance was made. It did not, perhaps, much matter to the bulk of the inhabitants whether a Parthian vitaxa or a Roman proconsul governed them. Trajan found no difficulty in carrying out his intention of absorbing Armenia into the empire. The two Armenias— the Greater and the Less—were united together, placed under a Roman governor, and reduced into the form of a province.

Attention was then turned to the neighbouring countries. Friendly relations were established with Anchialus, king of the Heniochi and Macheloni, and gifts were sent him in return for those which his envoys had brought to Trajan. A new king was given to the Albanians. Alliances were concluded with the Iberi, Sauromatae, Colchi, and even with the distant tribes settled on the Cimmerian Bosphorus. These names recalled to the Romans the glorious times of the great Pompey, and made it evident to them that Roman influence was now paramount in the entire region between the Caucasus, the Caspian, and the Araxes.

Still, the Emperor viewed what he had achieved as a mere prelude to what he was bent on achieving. It was Parthia, not Armenia, against which his expedition had been really aimed. Accordingly, having arranged matters in the north-east, and left garrisons in the principal Armenian strongholds, he made a counter-movement towards the south-west, on which side Parthia seemed to him most assailable. Stationing himself at Edessa, the capital of the province of Osrhoene, which was still administered by a Parthian vassal, bearing the usual name of Abgarus, he partly terrified, partly coaxed, that shifty prince into submission, after which he entered into negotiations with Sporaces, phylarch of Anthemusia, Mannus, an Arabian chieftain, and Manisares, a Parthian satrap, who had a quarrel of his own with Chosroes. Having drawn these chiefs to his side, he commenced his attack on the great Parthian kingdom by a double movement. Part of his troops marched southward, by the route which Crassus had followed, and made themselves masters of the tract known as Anthemusia, or that between the Euphrates and the Khabour; part proceeded eastward against Batnae, Nisibis, and Gordyene, or the country of the Kurds. No serious resistance was offered to the invaders on either route. Chosroes had withdrawn his forces to the further side of the Tigris, and left the defence of the provinces to his vassals, who were for the most part too weak to venture on opposing the march of a well-appointed Roman army. By the end of the year the whole tract between the Euphrates and the Tigris, as far south as the town of Singara and the modern range of Sinjar, had been overrun, and occupied; Upper Mesopotamia, in the broadest sense of the term, had become Roman; and the conqueror, pursuing the system which he had resolved on adopting from the first, absorbed the newly won territory into the empire and made Mesopotamia a Roman province. At Rome these successes were greeted with enthusiasm : medals were struck, on which the subjected countries were represented as prostrate under the foot of their conqueror, and the Senate conferred on him the titles, which now appear upon his coins, of “Armeniacus” and “Parthicus.”

As winter approached, the Emperor quitted his army, and retired to Edessa or Antioch, leaving his generals to maintain possession of the conquered regions, and giving them very special instructions with respect to the preparations that they were to make for the campaign of the ensuing year. As Trajan had resolved not to attempt the passage through the desert which intervenes between the Sinjar range and Babylonia, the crossing of the Tigris would be the first important operation to be accomplished. But the banks of the Tigris were, as Trajan knew, very deficient in wood, or at any rate in wood suitable for the construction of such boats as were required for the building of a bridge across the river. He therefore gave orders that, during the winter, a large fleet should be prepared at Nisibis, the headquarters of the army, where timber was excellent and abundant, so constructed that the vessels could be readily taken to pieces and put together again. These, when the spring came, were conveyed in waggons to the western bank of the Tigris, probably at the point where it debouches from the mountains upon the low country, a little above Jezireh. Trajan and his army accompanied them, meeting with no resistance until they reached the river and began their preparations for passing it. Then, however, the inhabitants of the opposite bank —not disciplined soldiers, but brave mountaineers —gathered together in force, to dispute the passage. It was only by launching a number of his boats at different points, laden with companies of heavy-armed and archers, which advanced into mid-stream and engaged the enemy, while at the same time they threatened to land at many different points, that Trajan was able, slowly and with difficulty, to complete his construction, and finally bridge the river. His troops then effected their passage, the enemy dispersing; and the Emperor rapidly overran the whole of the rich country of Adiabene, between the river and the hills, occupying in succession Nineveh, Arbela, and Gaugamela, and nowhere meeting with any resistance. Chosroes remained aloof, waiting till he had drawn his enemy further away from his base of operations, and nursing his own resources. Mebarsapes, the vitaxa or subject-king of Adiabene, who had hoped to be able to defend the line of the Tigris, finding that forced, appears to have despaired, and withdrew from the struggle. One after another the forts and strongholds of the district were taken and occupied. Adenystrae, a place of great strength, was captured by a small knot of Roman prisoners, who, when they found their friends near, rose upon the garrison, killed the commandant, and opened the gates to their countrymen. In a few weeks all Adiabene, the heart of the ancient Assyria, was conquered; and a third province was added to the empire.

It might now have been expected that the Roman army would advance directly upon Ctesiphon. The way was open; and Trajan might well have anticipated, as Napoleon did in 1812, that the capture of the enemy’s main capital would conclude the war.

But for reasons that are not made clear to us, the Emperor determined otherwise. Having repassed the Tigris into Mesopotamia, he took Hatra, one of the most considerable towns of the Middle Mesopotamian region, and, crossing to the Euphrates, visited the bitumen pits at Hit, so famous in the world’s history, whence the march was easy to Babylon. As still no enemy showed himself, Babylon was approached, invested, and taken—so far as appears—without a blow being struck. Seleucia soon afterwards submitted; and it only remained to attack and reduce the capital in order to have complete possession of the entire region watered by the two rivers. Here a fleet was again needful; and Trajan, accordingly, transported the flotilla, which he had taken care to have in readiness on the Euphrates, across the narrow tract between the streams in N. lat. 330, on rollers, and launched it upon the Tigris. He was prepared for a vigorous resistance, but once more found himself unopposed. Ctesiphon opened its gates to him. Chosroes had some time previously evacuated it, with his family and his chief treasures, withdrawing further into the interior of his vast empire, and seeking to weary out his assailant by means of distance, natural obstacles, and guerilla warfare. The tactics pursued resemble those which have not uncommonly been adopted by a comparatively weak enemy when attacked by superior force, and remind us of the method by which Idanthyrsus successfully defended Scythia against Darius Hystaspis in the sixth century BC, and by which the Russian Alexander baffled the Great Napoleon in the days of our own fathers or grand-fathers. But Trajan may be excused if he took his enemy’s retreat for entire withdrawal from the contest, and the apathy of the Western provinces for the complete submission of the empire. Ctesiphon was his; Babylon was his; Susa, the old capital of the Achaemenidae, was his; the war might be regarded as over; and so, not troubling himself to pursue his flying foe into the remote and barbarous regions of the far East, he proceeded to enjoy his triumph, embarked on a pleasure voyage down the Tigris, and even launched his bark upon the waters of the Persian Gulf. The career of Alexander the Great presented itself vividly to his imagination; and he sighed to think that, at his age, he could not hope to reach the limits which had been attained by the Macedonian. He instituted inquiries, however, with respect to India, and may have contemplated sending an expedition there, when he had had time to settle and arrange his Parthian conquests, and to place Mesopotamian affairs on a satisfactory footing. No suspicion seems to have crossed his mind that the conquests which he had so rapidly effected were insecure—no prevision of coming trouble appears to have disturbed his self-complacency. In a fool’s paradise he dreamed away the closing weeks of the summer of AD 116, and was still lazily floating on the waters of the Southern Sea, when intelligence of a startling character was suddenly brought to him.

Revolt had broken out in his rear. At Seleucia, at Hatra, at Nisibis, at Edessa, the natives had flown to arms, had ejected the Roman garrisons from their cities, or in some instances massacred them. His whole line of retreat was beset by foes, and he ran a great risk of having his return cut off, and of perishing in the distant region which he had invaded. The occasion called for the most active exertions and for the greatest energy; fortunately for the Romans, Trajan was equal to it. Personally, he hastened northwards, while he issued peremptory orders to his generals that they should everywhere take the most active measures against the rebels, and do their utmost to check the spread of insurrection. The chastisement of Seleucia was intrusted to Erucius Clarus and Julius Alexander, who stormed the city, and ruthlessly delivered it to the flames. Lucius Quietus succeeded in recovering Nisibis, and punished its rebellion in the same way. He also plundered and burnt Edessa. Maximus, however, one of Trajan’s most trusted officers, on coming to an engagement with the enemy, was defeated and slain. A Roman army with its legate was cut to pieces. Trajan himself, having returned to Ctesiphon, and made himself acquainted with the whole condition of affairs, woke up from his dream of an easy conquest, and saw that a complete change of policy was necessary. Parthia must not be treated like Armenia and Mesopotamia—its people must be humoured and conciliated. A native king and a show of independence must be allowed them. Accordingly, he selected a certain Parthamaspates, a man of Arsacid descent, who had embraced the side of Rome in the recent struggle, and summoning the Parthians of the capital and its neighbourhood to a great meeting in a plain near Ctesiphon, he produced before them the individual whom he favoured, commended him to their loyal affection in a speech of considerable length, and, after magnifying somewhat injudiciously the splendour of his own achievements, placed the diadem with his own hand upon his brow. He then commenced his retreat. Taking the direct line through Mesopotamia, he marched, in the first instance, upon Hatra, one of the towns which had revolted from him, and had not yet been reduced. The place was small, but strongly fortified. It lay in the desert between the Tigris and Euphrates, nearer to the former, and was protected, by the scantiness of its water, and the unproductiveness of the region around, from attack except by a small force. Trajan battered down a portion of the wall, and attempted to enter by the breach; but his troops met with a decided repulse, and he himself, having rashly approached too near the walls, was in the greatest danger of being wounded. The horseman nearest to him was actually struck by an arrow and slain. After this the siege did not last long. As autumn approached the weather broke up, and thunderstorms prevailed, with rain and violent hail. It was believed that whenever the Romans proceeded to the assault, the fury of the elemental war increased in severity. Moreover, a plague of insects set in. Gnats and flies disputed with the soldiers every morsel of their food and every drop of their drink. Under these circumstances the Emperor felt compelled to relinquish the siege and beat a retreat. He retired through Mesopotamia upon Syria, and took up his quarters at Antioch, having suffered, it would seem,1 considerable loss upon the way. At Antioch the effects of his heavy toils and exertions began to show themselves. He fell sick, and quitting his army, made an attempt to reach Rome, but succumbed to his malady before he had proceeded very far, and died at Selinus, in Cilicia, August, AD 117.

On the retirement of Trajan, the Parthian monarch, quitting Media, returned to Ctesiphon, expelled Parthamaspates without difficulty, and re-established his own rule over the regions which Trajan had over­run, but had not reduced into the form of provinces. Armenia, however, Upper Mesopotamia, and Assyria, or Adiabene, were still held in force by the Romans, and might probably have been maintained against any attack that Parthia could have made, had the new Emperor, Hadrian, who had succeeded Trajan, regarded their retention as desirable. But Hadrian, who, as prefect of Syria, had been a near witness of Trajan’s campaigns, and possessed an intimate acquaintance with the general condition of the East, was deeply convinced that the attempt of Trajan had been a mistake, and that the true policy for Rome was that laid down in principle by Augustus—that the possessions of the empire should not be extended beyond their natural and traditional limits. He resolved, therefore, to withdraw the Roman legions once more within the Euphrates, and to relinquish the newly-conquered provinces, of which so great a boast had been made—Armenia, Mesopotamia, Adiabene. It is generally allowed by modern historians, that the resolution was a wise one. “ There was no soil be­yond the Euphrates,” says Dean Merivale with excellent judgment, “in which Roman institutions could take root, while the expense of maintaining them would have been utterly exhausting.” As far as the Euphrates Greek colonisation had so leavened the original Asiatic mass as to render it semi-Euro-pean, and so to prepare it to a large extent for the reception of Roman ideas and Roman principles of government: beyond, the Greek infusion had been too weak to produce much effect—Orientalism pure prevailed—and Western institutions, if introduced, would have found themselves in an alien soil, where they could only have withered and died. Even apart from this, the Roman Empire was already so large as to be unwieldy, and to endanger its continued cohesion. The chiefs of provinces east of the Euphrates would have been so far removed from the seat of government as to be practically exempt from effectual control and supervision. They would have had enormous forces in men and money at their command, and have been under a perpetual temptation to revolt and endeavour to secure for themselves an independent position. The garrisoning, moreover, of such extensive countries would have been a severe drain upon the military resources of the empire, and would have exercised a demoralising influence upon the soldiery, such as was already felt to some extent with regard to the legions quartered in Syria. Altogether, it is clear that the course pursued by Hadrian in contracting once more the eastern limits of the empire was a prudent one, and entitles the prince who adopted it, not only to the praise of “moderation,” but to that of political insight and sagacity.

The evacuation of the conquered countries brought about a return to the condition of things in the East which had prevailed ever since the time of Augustus. Rome and Parthia resumed their ancient boundaries. Armenia reverted to its old condition of a kingdom nominally independent, but too weak to stand alone, and necessarily leaning on external support, at one time practically dependent on Rome, at another on Parthia. Its first ruler, after it ceased to be a Roman province, was Parthamaspates, to whom Hadrian seems to have handed it over, and in whose appointment Chosroes must have acquiesced. Chosroes could not but be well disposed towards the ruler who, without being compelled to do so by a defeat, had restored to Parthia the two most important and valuable of her provinces; and the consolidation of his power in them probably gave him ample occupation, and made him satisfied to have a time of repose from external troubles. He seems to have continued on friendly terms with Hadrian during the remainder of his life. Once only, in AD 122, was the good understanding threatened. The exact causes of complaint have not come down to us; but it appears that in that year rumours of an intended Parthian invasion reached the Emperor, and induced him to make a journey to the far East, in order, by his personal influence and assurances, to avert the danger. An interview was held between the two monarchs upon the frontier, and explanations were given and received, which both parties regarded as satisfactory The Parthian prince gave up his intention of troubling the peace of Rome, and the two empires continued, not only during the rest of the reign of Chosroes, but till some time after the death of Hadrian, on terms of friendship and amity. Hadrian went so far as to restore to Chosroes (about AD 130) a daughter who had been taken prisoner at Susa by the generals of Trajan fourteen years before, and had remained at Rome in captivity; and he is even said to have promised the restoration of the golden throne captured at the same time, on which the Parthians set a special value.

Chosroes, during his later years, had to contend with a pretender to his throne, who bore the name, so common at this time, of Vologases. The Parthian empire showed, more and more as time went on, a tendency to disintegration; and there is reason to believe that, during the space commonly assigned to Chosroes (AD 108-130), different monarchs reigned, not infrequently, in different parts of Parthia at the same time. The coins of Vologases II run parallel for many years with those of Chosroes. A coin of a Mithridates, and another of an Artabanus, fall into the same interval. The classical writers make no mention of these rival kings; and the native remains are so scanty that it is impossible to draw any con­tinuous narrative from them. We can only say, generally, that Parthia has entered the period of her decadence, and that, even apart from foreign attack, she would, if left to herself, have probably expired within little more than a century.

 

VOLOGASES II AND ANTONINUS PIUS—VOLOGASES III AND VERUS.

 

The Vologases who had for so many years disputed the crown with Chosroes, appears, on the decease of the latter, to have been generally acknowledged as king. He was an aged prince, indisposed to any unnecessary exertion, and quite content to continue on the friendly terms with Rome which had been established under his predecessor. He had not, however, been settled more than three years upon the throne, when hostilities came upon him from an unexpected quarter. Pharasmanes, who enjoyed the sovereignty of Iberia under Roman protection, but chafed at his dependent position, and had private grounds of quarrel with Hadrian, in the year AD 133, suddenly threw the whole of the East into a blaze. Inviting into Asia a great horde of the northern barbarians from the tracts beyond the Caucasus, he induced them to precipitate themselves upon Armenia, Cappadocia, and Media Atropatene, which was once more a dependency of Parthia, and to carry fire and sword into the midst of those fertile regions. Vologases at once complained to Rome of the injury done him by her feudatory, and requested assistance; but Hadrian regarded troubles in so distant a region as unimportant, and, satisfied that Cappadocia would be sufficiently protected by its governor, who was Arrian, the historian of Alexander, he left Vologases to struggle with his difficulties as he best might. The aged monarch, under these circumstances, had recourse to an expedient at once impolitic and disgraceful— ‘ he bribed the horde of Alans, which had invaded his province, to quit the country, and turn their arms in another direction. Such a policy, though occasionally adopted by the Romans themselves, can never be other than mistaken and ruinous. Once entered upon, it is almost certain to be continued, and to bring about at once the exhaustion and the degradation of the people that condescends to it.

It is not perhaps surprising that Hadrian, always studious of peace, abstained from taking any active part in the Alanic war; but it certainly seems strange that, instead of inflicting any punishment on Pharas- manes for his reckless action in introducing the bar­barians into Asia, and actually letting them loose upon the empire, he should have shortly afterwards loaded him with honours and benefits. He summoned him indeed to Rome, to answer for his conduct, but, having done this, accepted his explanations, condoned his crimes, and not only so, but rewarded him by an enlargement of his dominion, and by various other marks of favour. He permitted him to sacrifice in the Capitol, placed his equestrian statue in the temple of Bellona, and was present at a sham fight in which the Iberian monarch, his son, and his chief nobles exhibited their skill and prowess. It is not likely that Vologases can have been much pleased at these results of his complaints; but he seems to have sub­mitted to them without a murmur; and, when Hadrian died (in AD 138), and was succeeded by his adopted son, Titus Aurelius, better known as Antoninus Pius, he sent to Rome an embassy of congratulation, and presented his Roman brother with a crown of gold. The medal, which records this event, was struck in the first year of Antoninus, and exhibits on the reverse a female figure holding a bow and quiver in the left hand, and with the right presenting a crown, while underneath is the inscription, PARTHIA.

Having thus, as he thought, secured the good-will of the new monarch by a well-timed compliment, Vologases ventured on intruding upon him with an unpleasant demand. Hadrian, in a moment of weakness, had promised that the golden throne, captured by Trajan in his great expedition, should be given back to its proper owners; but, finding that the act would be unpalatable to his subjects, had delayed the performance of his promise, and finally died without giving effect to it. Vologases hoped that his successor might be more accommodating, and instructed his envoys to bring the matter before Antoninus, to remind him of Hadrian’s pledged word, and make a formal request for the delivery to them of the much- prized relic. But Antonine was as much averse to relinquishing the trophy as his predecessor had been, and positively refused to grant the request made of him. The envoys had to return re infecta, and to report to their master that, for the present at any rate, all hope must be laid aside of recovering the emblem of Arsacid sovereignty.

The remainder of the reign of Vologases II was tranquil and unmarked by any striking incident. No pretensions were put forward by the Parthians with respect to Armenia, to which, probably on the death Parthamaspates, Rome was suffered, without protest, to appoint a new monarch. No further Attempt was made to obtain the surrender of the “golden throne.” The coolness between the two states, which had followed on Antonine’s rejection of the demand preferred by Vologases, merely tended to keep the rival powers apart, and to prevent occasions of collision, while Antonine’s truly peaceful policy preserved Parthia even from internal disturbance, and allowed the successor of Chosroes to enjoy his throne, un­threatened by any pretender, for the comparatively long term of nineteen years (AD 130 to 149). The aged monarch left his crown to a successor of the same name as himself, who was probably his son, though of this there is no direct evidence.

The third Vologases ascended the Parthian throne either in AD 148 or 149. He took the same titles as his predecessor, but added to them, upon his coins, a Semitic legend—either “ Vologases, King,” or “ Volagases, Arsaces, King of Kings.” The dates on his coins extend from AD 148-9 to AD 190-1, showing that he held the throne for the long space of forty-two years. During the earlier portion of the time (148-161) he was contemporary with Antoninus Pius, and, though discontented with the exclusion of Parthia from all influence in Armenia, and meditating a war with Rome on this account, he suffered himself to be persuaded, by letters from the pacific Emperor, to keep the peace as long as he occupied the Imperial throne, and to defer his contemplated outbreak until the reign of his successor. On the death of Antoninus, however, he was not further to be restrained, but at once took the field, and marching an army suddenly into Armenia, carried all before him, expelled Soaemus, Rome’s vassal and creature, from the kingdom, and placed upon the throne a protege of his own, a certain Tigranes, a scion of the old royal stock, whose name recalled to the Armenians the period of their greatest glory. The Roman governors of the adjacent provinces learnt with surprise and alarm that Armenia was detached from the empire; and Severianus, prefect of Cappadocia, the nearest to the scene of action, and a man of an impetuous disposition, being a Gaul by birth, hurried to the scene at the head of a single legion, partly moved by his own hot temper, partly yielding to the persuasions of a pseudo-prophet of those parts named Alexander, who promised him a signal victory. But the result signally falsified the prophecy. Scarcely had Severianus crossed the Euphrates into Armenia, when he found himself in the presence of a superior force under the command of a Parthian general called Chosroes, and was under the necessity of throwing himself into the city of Elegeia, where he was immediately besieged and blockaded. Though he offered a strenuous resistance, it was unavailing. His troops were not of good quality, and, unable to break through the cordon which surrounded them, they were in a short time shot down by the Parthian archers, and perished almost to a man. Severianus shared their fate; and the Parthians obtained a success which was paralleled with that of Surenas against Crassus, or of Arminius against Varus. Their mastery over Armenia was confirmed, and the Roman provinces were laid wholly open to their attacks. Their squadrons crossed the Euphrates, and marched into Syria, where they obtained a second success. L. Attidius Cornelianus, the proconsul, gathered together the forces of his province, and gave battle to the invaders, but was repulsed. The situation became nearly such as had obtained after the defeat of Crassus, or when Pacorus and Labienus, in the year BC 40, carried ravage and ruin over the region between the Euphrates and the Orontes. The Parthians passed from Syria into Palestine, and the whole of the Roman East seemed to lie open to them. Intelligence of what had happened was rapidly carried to Rome, and threw the Senate into consternation. Aurelius felt that he could not be spared from Italy, but deputed Verus to represent him in the East, and bade him hasten to the scene of action with such forces as could be gathered. Verus, however, was a lover of pleasure. First he loitered on his way in Apulia, then proceeded at a leisurely pace to Syria, finally settled himself in the luxurious Antioch, and, giving himself up to its pleasures and amusements, handed over the cares of war to his lieutenants. Fortunately for Rome, there were among these several generals of the antique type, as especially Statius Priscus, Avidius Cassius, and Martius Verus. Cassius, even before the arrival of Verus and his army, had begun an effective resistance. He had, by almost incredible efforts, brought the Syrian legions into a state of order and discipline, had with them checked the advance of Vologases, and had finally found himself in a condition to take the offensive. In AD 163 he fought a great battle with the Parthians, defeated them, and drove them across the Euphrates. Meanwhile, Statius Priscus and Martius Verus had undertaken the recovery of Armenia. Statius had advanced without a check from the frontier to the capital, Artaxata, had taken the city, and burnt it to the ground, after which he built a new city, which he strongly garrisoned with Roman troops, and sent intelligence to Rome that Armenia was now ready to welcome back her expelled prince, Soaemus. Soaemus upon this returned, and, though some further disturbances were made by the anti-Roman party, yet these were successfully dealt with, chiefly by Martius Verus, and, in a short time, the Roman nominee was recognised as undisputed king, and the entire country brought into a state of tranquillity.

The success which had attended the first rush to arms of Vologases III was thus completely neutralised. In the space of two years Rome had made good all her losses, and shown that she was fully able to maintain the position in Western Asia which she had acquired by the victories of Trajan. But the ambitious generals, into whose hands the conduct of the war had fallen through the incapacity of Verus, were far from satisfied with the mere recovery of what had been lost. Personal, rather than patriotic, motives actuated them. In the circumstances of the time military distinction was more coveted than any other, and was looked upon as opening a path to the very highest honours. The successful general became, as a matter of course, by virtue of his position, a candidate for the Imperial dignity. If, under the great Napoleon, every conscript felt that he carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, still more, under the Middle Empire, was every victorious commander per­suaded that each step in the path of victory brought him sensibly nearer to the throne. Of all the officers engaged in the Parthian war, nominally under Verus, the most capable and the most ambitious was Avidius Cassius. Sprung from the family of the great “Liberator,” who had contended for the supreme power in the state with Augustus and Antony, he had a hereditary bias towards pushing himself to the front, and might be counted upon to let slip no occasion which fortune should put in his way. His position in Syria gave him a splendid opportunity. After his first successes against Vologases, Aurelius had made him a, sort of generalissimo; and, having thus perfect freedom of action, he resolved to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and see if he could not rival, or even outdo, the achievements of Trajan half a century earlier. No continuous history of his campaign has reached our time, but from the fragmentary notices of it which are still extant we may gather a good general idea of its course and character. Crossing the Euphrates into Mesopotamia at Zeugma, the most important of the Roman stations upon the river, he proceeded first to Nicephorium, near the junction of the Belik with the Euphrates, and thence made his way down the course of the stream to Sura (probably Sippara) and Babylon. At Sura a battle was fought, in which the Romans were victorious, but it was after this that the great successes took place which covered Cassius with glory. The vast city of Seleucia upon the Tigris, which had at the time a population of four hundred thousand souls, was besieged, taken, and burnt, to punish an alleged treason of the inhabitants. Ctesiphon, upon the opposite bank of the river, the summer residence of the Parthian kings, was occupied, and the royal palace there situated was pillaged, and levelled with the ground. The various fanes and temples were stripped of their treasures; and search was made for buried riches in all the places which were thought likely to have been utilised, the result being that an immense booty was carried off. The Parthians, worsted in every encounter, after a time, ceased to resist, and all the conquests made by Trajan, and relinquished by Hadrian, were recovered. Further, an expedition was made into the Zagros mountain tract, and a portion of it, considered to lie within the limits of Media, and never yet possessed by Rome, was occupied. Aurelius owed it to the valour and good fortune of his general that he was thus entitled to add to the epithets of “Armeniacus” and “Parthicus,” which he had already assumed, the further and wholly novel epithet of “Medicus.”

The victories of Avidius Cassius, unlike those of Trajan, were followed by no reverses, and they had further the effect, denied to Trajan’s, of making the permanent addition of a large tract to the Roman Empire. When Vologases, after five years of unsuccessful warfare, finally sued for peace to his too powerful antagonist, he was compelled to surrender, as the price of it, the extensive and valuable country of Western Mesopotamia. The entire region between the Euphrates and the Khabour passed under the dominion of Rome at this time, and though not formally made into a province, became wholly lost to Parthia. The coins of the Greek cities within the area bear henceforth on the obverse the head of a Roman Emperor, and on the reverse some local token or legend; every trace of Parthian influence is removed from them.

But, if Rome thus carried off all the honours of the war with Vologases III, still she did not escape the Nemesis which usually attends upon the over-fortu­nate. During its stay in the marshy regions of Lower Mesopotamia, the army of Cassius was deeply infected with the germs of a strange and terrible malady, which clung to it on its return, and was widely disseminated along the whole line of the retreat. The superstition of the soldiers assigned to the pestilence a supernatural origin. It had crept forth, they said, from a subterranean cell, or a golden coffer, in the temple of the Comaean Apollo at Seleucia, during the time that a portion of the army was engaged in plundering the temple treasures. Placed there in primeval times by the spells of the Chaldaeans, it raged with the more virulence on account of its long confinement, and amply avenged the Parthians for the many woes inflicted on them by Roman hands. Every town that lay upon the route of the returning army was smitten by it; and from these centres it diverged in every direction, east and west, and north and south, into the adjacent districts. At Rome, the number of victims amounted to tens of thousands. “ Not the vulgar herd of the Suburra only, the usual victims of a pestilence, were stricken, but many of the highest rank also suffered.” According to Orosius, in Italy generally the whole country was so devastated, that the villas, towns, and fields were everywhere left without inhabitant or cultivation, and fell to ruin, or relapsed into wildernesses. The army suffered especially,, and is said to have been almost annihilated. In the provinces more than half the population was carried off, and the pestilence, overleaping the Alps, spread as far as the Rhine and the Atlantic Ocean.

The remainder of the reign of Vologases III was uneventful. He continued to occupy the Parthian throne until AD 190 or 191, but took no further part, so far as we know, in any military operations. Once only does he seem to have been so far stirred from his inaction as to contemplate resuming the struggle against his powerful enemy. This was in 174 or 175, when, Aurelius being detained upon the Danube, the inordinate ambition of Avidius Cassius drove him into open rebellion, and the prospect of a Roman civil war seemed to offer a chance of Parthia being able to reassert herself. But the opportunity passed before Vologases could bring himself to make any serious movement. The revolt of Cassius collapsed almost as soon as it had broken out, and the East returned to its normal condition. Vologases repented of his warlike intention; and when (in 176) Aurelius visited Syria, sent ambassadors to him with friendly assurances, who were received with favour.

Four years later the reign of the philosophic Emperor came to an end; and the Imperial power passed into the hands of his weak and unworthy son, Lucius Aurelius Commodus. A second opportunity for an aggressive movement offered itself; but, again, Vologases resisted the temptation to rush into hostilities, and remained passive within the limits of his own dominions. The reign of Commodus (180-192) was, from first to last, untroubled by any Parthian outbreak. Vologases was probably by this time an old man, since he had held the Parthian throne for thirty-two years when Commodus suc­ceeded his father, and may naturally have been disinclined to further warlike exertion, Rome was therefore still allowed to maintain her Mesopotamian conquests unchallenged; and when Vologases died (in 190 or 191), the condition of things continued as established by Aurelius in 165.

 

VOLOGASES IV AND SEVERUS.

 

The third Vologases was succeeded by another prince of the same name, who is usually regarded as his son, though there is no distinct evidence of the fact. His coins, which generally present his full face upon their obverse, instead of the customary profile, have dates which run from AD 191 to 208. He thus appears to have been contemporary with the Roman Emperors—Commodus, Pertinax, Didius Julianus, Pescennius Niger, and Septimius Severus. The great Parthian war of Severus fell entirely within his reign, and it is as the antagonist of this distinguished prince that he is chiefly known to history.

It was very shortly after the accession of Vologases IV that the officers of the Court of Commodus, unable any longer to endure his excesses and cruelties, conspired against the unworthy son of the good Aurelius and assassinated him in his bed­chamber. This murder was soon followed by another—that of the virtuous, but perhaps over-strict, Pertinax. The Praetorians, after this, put up the office of Roman Emperor to public auction, and knocked it down to Didius Julianus, a rich senator. But this indignity exhausted the patience of the legions, and threw the entire empire into confusion. In three places—in Britain, in Pannonia, and in Syria—revolt broke out, and the soldiers invested their respective leaders, Clodius Albinus, Septimius Severus, and Pescennius Niger, with the purple. Niger, who, as prefect of Syria, held the second dignity in the empire, imagined that his elevation would not be disputed, and, instead of straining every nerve to raise forces, and strengthen himself by alliances, declined at first the offers of assistance made him by various Parthian feudatories, and remained inactive in the East, expecting the Senate’s confirmation of his appointment. But the unpleasant intelligence soon reached him that Septimius Severus, proclaimed Emperor in Pannonia and acknowledged at Rome, was on his way to Syria, determined to dispute with him the prize, whereof he had somewhat rashly thought himself assured. Under these changed circumstances, Niger felt compelled to alter his own policy, and to implore the assistance which so shortly before he had rejected. Towards the close of the year A.D. 193 he despatched envoys to the courts of the chief princes beyond the Euphrates, and especially to the kings of Armenia, Parthia, and Hatra, entreating them to send contingents to his aid as soon as possible. The Armenian monarch—Vologases, the son of Sanatroeces—made answer that it was not his intention to ally himself with either side; he should stand aloof from the conflict and simply defend his own kingdom if any attack were made upon it. The reply from the Parthian Vologases was more favourable. He could not send troops at once, he said, as his army was disbanded, but he would issue an order to his satraps for the collection of a strong force as soon as possible. Barsemius, king of Hatra, went further even than his suzerain, and actually despatched to Niger’s aid a body of archers, which reached his camp in safety, and took part in the war. Vologases IV must have given his sanction to this movement on the part of his feudatory, who could certainly not have ventured on such a proceeding against the will of his lord paramount. Still Vologases was not prepared to commit himself unreservedly to either side in the impending conflict, and refrained from taking any active steps in furtherance of his professed design to collect an army, waiting to see to which side the fortune of war would incline.

The struggle between the rival Emperors was soon terminated. Niger passed from Asia into Europe, and took up a position near Byzantium, but, having suffered a defeat at Cyzicus, was soon forced to fall back upon his reserves, and, passing through Asia Minor, gave his adversary battle for the second time near Issus, where his army was completely routed, and he himself captured and put to death. Meanwhile, however, the nations of the East had flown to arms. The newly-subjected Mesopotamians had risen in revolt, had massacred most of the Roman detachments stationed in their country, and had even laid siege to Nisibis, which was the headquarters of the Roman power in the district. Their kindred tribes from the further side of the Euphrates, particularly the people of Adiabene, had assisted them, and taken part in the attack. The first object of Severus after the defeat and death of Niger was to raise the siege, and to chastise the rebels, with their aiders and abettors. He marched hastily to Nisibis, defeated the combined Osrhoeni and Adiabeni, relieved the distressed garrison, and took up his own quarters in the place. He then proceeded to re-subject Mesopotamia. The inhabitants sought to disarm his resentment by representing that they had taken up arms, not against him, or against the Romans generally, but against Niger, his rival and foe, whom they had endeavoured to distress for his (Severus’s) benefit. They professed a readiness to surrender the Romans whom they had taken prisoners, and such portion of the Roman spoil as remained still in their hands; but it was observed that they said nothing about giving up the strongholds that they had taken, or about resuming the position of Roman tributaries. On the contrary, they put forward a demand that all the Roman troops still in their country should be withdrawn from it, and that their independence should be respected in the future. Severus was not prepared to accept these terms, or to sanction the retreat of Terminus. His immediate adversaries—the kings of Osrhoene, Adiabene, and Hatra—were of small account, and he might expect to defeat them without difficulty. Even if the Parthian monarch espoused the cause of his feudatories, he was not indisposed to cross swords with him. The expeditions of Trajan and Avidius Cassius had done much to diminish the terror of the Parthian name; and to ambitious Romans the East presented itself as the quarter in which, without any serious danger, the greatest glory was to be won.

Accordingly, the Emperor rejected the Mesopotamian proposals, and applied himself to the task of reducing their country to complete subjection. From the central position of Nisibis, where he himself remained, he sent out his forces under his three best commanders—Laternus, Candidus, and Laetus—in three directions, with orders to carry fire and sword through the entire region, and to re-establish every­where the Imperial authority. His commands were executed. Resistance was everywhere crushed; the old administration was restored; and Nisibis, raised to the dignity of a Roman colony, once more became the metropolis of the country. Nor was Severus contented with the mere restoration of the Roman power. He caused his troops to cross the Tigris into Adiabene, and though the inhabitants offered a stout resistance, succeeded in overrunning the district and occupying it. Further aggressions and further conquests would probably have followed, but the attitude of Albinus in the West made it imperative on Severus to quit these distant lands and return to his capital, which was menaced on the side of Gaul by the commander of the Western legions. The Emperor left Nisibis, and returned to Rome early in the year 196.

No sooner had he retired than the flames of war burst out more fiercely than before. Vologases, roused from his inaction by the threatened loss of a second province, poured his troops into Adiabene, drove out the Roman garrisons, and, crossing the Tigris into Mesopotamia, swept the Romans from the whole of the open country. Even the cities submitted them­selves, excepting only Nisibis, which was saved from capture by the courage and capacity of Laetus. According to Spartianus, the victorious Parthians, not content with recovering Mesopotamia, even passed the Euphrates, and spread themselves once more over the fertile plains of Northern Syria, as they had done in the times of Pacorus and Labienus. Severus, engaged in his doubtful contest with Albinus on the western side of the empire, could do nothing to relieve the pressure upon the east, and the Syrian prefecture continued open to the Parthian raids for the space of nearly a full year. An enterprising monarch might have done much during this interval; but Vologases frittered away his opportunity, and at length the victory of Lyons set Severus free, and allowed him again to turn his attention to Oriental affairs. In the summer of 197 he made a second Eastern expedition for the purpose of recovering his lost laurels, and of justifying the titles, which he had already assumed, of “Arabicus” and “Adiabenicus.” It is probable that in his own mind he entertained still loftier aspirations, and, like Trajan, had hopes of reducing the whole Parthian Empire under the Roman yoke.

One of the most important points to be secured by an assailant of Parthia from the west, was the friendship, or at any rate the neutrality, of the two kings of Armenia and Osrhoene. Armenia had professed itself neutral when the quarrel between Severus and Niger first broke out, but had subsequently, in some way or other, offended the former, and on his arrival in the East, was viewed as hostile to the Roman designs. The first intention of Severus was to fall with his full force on Armenia, and to endeavour to reduce it to subjection; but, before the fortune of war had been tried, the Armenian monarch, Vologases, son of Sanatroeces, made overtures for peace, sent gifts and hostages, assumed the attitude of a suppliant, and so wrought upon Severus that he not merely consented to conclude a treaty with him, but even granted him a certain extension of his dominions. The Arab king of Osrhoene, who is called, as usual, Abgarus, made a more complete and unqualified submission. He rode into the Roman camp at the head of a large body of archers, whose services he offered to the Emperor, and accompanied by a number of his sons, whom Severus was requested to look upon as hostages. All being prosperous thus far, Severus had only to determine by which line of route he should advance against the Parthian monarch, who had taken up his position at Ctesiphon, and to make his preparations accordingly. He fixed on the line of the Euphrates, but at the same time masked his intention by sending a strong body of troops under generals across the Tigris to ravage Adiabene, and create an impression that the main attack would come from that quarter. Meanwhile, following the example of Trajan, he was causing a fleet to be built in Upper Mesopotamia, where timber was plentiful, and was preparing to march his main army down the deft bank of the Euphrates, while his transports, laden with stores, descended the stream. In this way he reached the neighbourhood of Seleucia and Ctesiphon without suffering any loss, or even incurring any danger, and took the Parthians by surprise, when, having captured the cities of Babylon and Seleucia, which were deserted by their defenders, he made his appearance before the capital. His fleet, which he could easily transfer from one river to the other by means of the great canals that traversed the alluvium, would give him the complete command of the Tigris, and enable him to attack the city on either side, or indeed entirely to invest it. Vologases appears to have fought a single battle in defence of his capital, but, being defeated, shut himself up within its walls. The defences, however, were not strong; and, after a short siege, Severus took the city, by assault, without much difficulty, the king escaping with a few horsemen in the confusion of the capture. Thus the Parthian capital fell easily—a third time within the space of eighty-two years—into the hands of a foreign invader. On the first occasion it had opened its gates to the conqueror, and had experienced gentle treatment at the hands of a benignant emperor. On the second it had suffered considerably. Now it was to learn what extreme severity meant at the hands of a monarch whose character accorded with his name. The captured city was given up to massacre and pillage. The soldiers were allowed to plunder both the public and the private buildings at their pleasure. The precious metals accumulated in the royal treasury were seized, and the rich ornaments of the royal palace were taken from their places and carried off. All the adult male population was slaughtered; while the women and children, torn from their homes with­out compunction, were led into captivity by the victorious army, to the number of a hundred thousand.

Thus far the expedition of Severus had been completely successful. He stood where Trajan stood in AD 116, master of the whole low region between, the Arabian desert and the Zagros mountains, lord of Mesopotamia, of Assyria, of Babylonia, of the entire tract watered by the two great rivers from the Armenian highlands to the shores of the Persian Gulf. What use would he make of his conquests? Would he, like Trajan, endeavour to retain them, or would he, like the wiser Hadrian, relinquish them? He endeavoured to take an intermediate course. Recognising the fact, that to retain the more southern districts was impossible, and that the more eastern portions of the Parthian Empire were beyond his reach, he neither pursued the flying Vologases into the remote tracts in which he had taken refuge nor attempted to organise his southern conquests into provinces, but resolved at once to evacuate them. Notwithstanding the elaborate preparations which he had made for his invasion, and the care which he had taken to carry supplies with him, he found himself, about the time that he captured Ctesiphon, in want of provisions. He had exhausted the immense stores of grain which Lower Mesopotamia commonly furnished, or else the inhabitants had destroyed or hidden them, and his troops had, we are told, to subsist for some days on roots, which produced a dangerous dysentery. He was obliged to retreat before famine overtook him. Moreover, as the march of his army along the course of the Euphrates had stripped that region of its supplies of corn and fodder, he could not return as he had come, but was com­pelled to confront the perils of a new route. The line of the Tigris was the only route open to him, and along this he advanced, still supported by his fleet, which with some difficulty made its way against the current up the course of the stream. It does not appear that any opposition was offered to him ; but, after he had proceeded a moderate distance, he found himself in the vicinity of Hatra, the capital of a small state subject to Parthia, which had given him special offence by lending active support to the cause of his rival, Niger. His troops had now obtained sufficient supplies of food in an unexhausted country, and were ready for a fresh enterprise. Severus regarded his honour as concerned in the chastisement of a state which, without provocation, had declared itself his enemy. He may also have remembered that Trajan had attacked Hatra unsuccessfully, and have hoped to place himself above that conqueror by the capture of a town which had defied the utmost efforts of his predecessor. At any rate, whatever his motives, it seems certain that, when in the latitude of Hatra, he diverged from his previous line of march, and, proceeding westward, encamped under the walls of the city which had given him such dire offence, and engaged in its siege. He had brought with him a number of military engines—probably those employed with complete success at Ctesiphon, and, putting them in position, made a fierce attack upon the place. But the inhabitants were not daunted; the walls of the town were strong, its defenders brave and full of enterprise. They contrived to set on fire and destroy the siege machines brought against them, and repulsed with heavy loss the attacking soldiers. The army, upon this, grew discontented, and threatened mutiny; Severus was obliged to punish with death some of his leading officers, among them his best general, Laetus. This, however, only increased the exasperation ; and, to smooth matters over, he had to pretend that the execution of this officer had taken place without his knowledge. Even so the soldiers’ minds were not calmed down, and at last, in order to bring about a better state of feeling, he had to discontinue the siege and remove his camp to a distance.

He had not, however, abandoned his enterprise. Reculer pour mieux sauter was among the principles that guided his actions, and it was in the hope of returning and renewing the attack ere many weeks were past, that he had drawn off his army. In the tranquillity and security of the place whereto he had removed, he constructed fresh engines in increased numbers, collected vast stores of provisions, and made every preparation possible for a repetition of his attack and for bringing it to a successful issue. It was not merely that his honour was concerned in overcoming the resistance offered to him by what had always been regarded as no more than a second-rate town—his cupidity was also excited by reports of the rich treasures that were stored up in the city, and especially of those which the piety of successive generations had accumulated in the Temple of the Sun. He therefore, when his preparations were complete, once more put his troops in motion, and proceeded to renew the siege with a more efficient siege-train, and a better appointed army than before. But the inhabitants met him with a determination equal to his own. They had a powerful cavalry which hung upon the skirts of his army and crippled his movements in every way, often inflicting severe loss upon his foragers; they were excellent archers, and shot further and with greater force than the Romans; they possessed military engines of their own, of no contemptible character; and they had at their disposal a particular kind of fire, which did considerable damage, and created yet greater alarm. Flames believed to be inextinguishable were hurled both against the Roman machines and against their soldiers with an effect that is said to have been remarkable. A great number of the machines were burnt; and it the soldiers were more frightened than hurt, the advantage to the defenders was still almost as great. Still the Romans persevered. The presence of the Emperor, who watched the combat from a lofty platform, encouraged every man to do his best; and at length it was announced that a practicable breach had been effected in the outer wall of the place, and the soldiers were ready, and indeed eager, to be led at once to the assault. But now Severus hung back. By Roman usage a town taken by storm must be given up to the soldiery for indiscriminate pillage; and thus, if the soldiers had their way, he would lose the great treasures on which his heart was set. He therefore refused to give the word, and resolved to wait a day; and see whether the Hatreni would not now, seeing further resistance to be useless, surrender their town. The delay was fatal. In the night the Hatreni rebuilt the wall where it had been battered down, and manning the battlements, stood boldly on their defence. Severus, seeing that they had no intention of sur­rendering, repented of his resolve of the day before, and commanded the soldiers to attack. But the legionaries declined. They probably suspected the Emperor’s motive. At any rate they were unwilling to imperil their lives for an object which but yesterday they might have attained without incurring any peril at all. Severus, not to lose a chance, commanded his Asiatic auxiliaries to see if they could not force an entrance, but with no other result than the slaughter of a vast number. At last he desisted from his attempt. The summer was far advanced; the heat was intense; and disease had broken out among his troops, who suffered from drought, from malaria, and from a plague of insects. Above all, his army was thoroughly demoralised, and could not be depended on to carry out the orders given it. Severus himself told one of his officers that he had not six hundred European troops on whom he could place any reliance. The second siege of Hatra by Severus lasted twenty days, and terminated in an ignominious withdrawal. Severus returned to Rome with a slur upon his military reputation which was not regarded as cancelled by all his previous successes.

Still, actual disaster was escaped. Had Vologases been an active and energetic prince, or had the spirit and audacity of the Parthian nation been such as once characterised it, the result might have been widely different. The prolonged resistance of Hatra, the sufferings of the Romans, their increasing difficulties with respect to provisions, the injurious effect of the summer heats upon their unacclimatised constitutions, would have presented irresistible temptations to a prince, or even a general, of any boldness and capacity, inducing him to pursue the retreating enemy, to hang upon their flanks and upon their rear, to fall on their stragglers, to cut off their supplies, to harass and annoy them in ten thousand ways, and render their withdrawal to their own territory a matter of extreme difficulty. A Surena of the temper and calibre of the general opposed to Crassus might not improbably have annihilated the Imperial army, and the disaster of Carrhae might have repeated itself at the distance of between two and three centuries. But Vologases IV was a degenerate descendant of the great Arsacids, and remained inert and apathetic when the circumstances of the time called for the most vigorous action.

As it was, the expedition of Severus must be pronounced glorious for Rome and disastrous for Parthia. It exposed for the third time within a century the extreme weakness of the great Asiatic power. It lost her such treasures as had escaped the cupidity of Avidius Cassius. It both exhausted and disgraced her. Moreover, it cost her a second and most valuable province. Severus was not content with fully re-establishing the Roman sway in Mesopotamia. He overstepped the Tigris, and firmly planted Roman authority in the rich and fertile region between that river and the Zagros mountains. Henceforth the title of “Adiabenicus” became no empty boast. Adiabene, or the tract between the two Zab rivers—the most productive and valuable part of the ancient Assyria—became a Roman dependency under Severus, and continued to be Roman till after the destruction of the Parthian Empire. For the remainder of the time during which Parthia maintained her independence, the Roman standards were planted within less than two degrees of her capital.

Vologases reigned for the space of about eleven years (197-208) after his defeat by Severus. Parthian history is for this interval a blank. The decline of national feeling and of the military spirit went on, no doubt, without a pause, and the power of Parthia must continually have grown less and less. No pretenders arose, since there was probably no one who coveted the position of ruler over a state evidently nodding to its fall. Rome abstained from further attack, content, it would seem, with the gains which she had made, and a brief calm heralded the storm in which Parthian nationality was to perish.

 

ARTABANUS IV. AND CARACALLUS—THE LAST WAR WITH ROME—DEFEAT OF MACRINUS.

 

The death of Vologases IV was immediately followed by a dispute between his two sons, Vologases V and Artabanus IV, for the succession. We do not know which was the elder; but it would seem that at first the superiority in the struggle rested with Vologases, who was recognised by the Romans as sole king in 212, and must have then ruled in the western capital, Ctesiphon. Afterwards Artabanus acquired the preponderance, and from the year 216 we find no more mention of Vologases by the classical writers. It is Artabanus who negotiates with Caracallus, who is treacherously attacked by him, who contends with Macrinus, and is ultimately defeated and slain by the founder of the New Persian monarchy, Artaxerxes. Similarly, the Persian historians ignore Vologases altogether, and represent the contest for empire, which once more carried Persia to the front, as one between Ardeshir and Ardevan. Still, the Parthian coins show that Vologases, equally with his brother, both claimed and exercised sovereignty in Parthia to the close of the kingdom. The probability would therefore appear to be that about 216 a partition of the kingdom was amicably made, and that while Artabanus reigned over the western provinces, the eastern were ceded to Vologases.

It was while the struggle between the two brothers continued that the Emperor Severus died, and the period of tranquillity inaugurated by him, on his return from the East in 198, came to an end. His son and successor, Caracallus, a weak .and vain prince, nourished an inordinate ambition, and was scarcely seated on the throne when he let it be known that in his own judgment he was a second Alexander, and that he was bent on imitating the marvellous exploits of that mighty hero. He adopted the Macedonian costume, formed his best troops into a “Macedonian phalanx,” made the captains of the phalanx take the names of Alexander’s best generals, and caused statues to be made with a double head, presenting the countenance of Alexander on one side and his own upon the other. As Alexander, he was bound to conquer the East; and, as early as his second year, he began his predetermined aggressions. Summoning Abgarus, the tributary monarch of Osrhoene, or north-western Mesopotamia, into his presence, he seized upon his person, committed him to prison, declared his territories forfeited, and reduced Osrhoene into the form of a Roman province. Soon afterwards he attempted to repeat the proceeding with Armenia; but, although the Armenian king was weak enough to fall into the trap, the nation was on the alert, and frustrated his efforts. No sooner did they learn that their king was arrested and imprisoned than they flew to arms, placed their country in a position of defence, and made themselves ready to resist all aggression. Caracallus hesitated, and when, three years later (215), he sent Theocritus, one of his favourites, to effect their subjugation, they met him in arms, and inflicted a severe defeat on the utterly incompetent general. It was perhaps this disaster which suggested to Caracallus a change in his method of proceeding. Professing to put away from him all thoughts of war and conquest, he propounded a grand scheme for the permanent pacification of the East, and the establishment of a reign of universal happiness and tranquillity. Having transferred his residence from Nicomedia to Antioch, the luxurious capital of the Roman Oriental provinces, he sent am­bassadors with presents of unusual magnificence to the Parthian monarch, Artabanus, who were to make him a proposal of a novel and unheard-of character. “The Roman Emperor,” said the despatch in question, “could not fitly wed the daughter of a subject, or accept the position of son-in-law to a private person.”

No one could be a suitable wife for him who was not a princess. He therefore asked the Parthian monarch for the hand of his daughter. Rome and Parthia divided between them the sovereignty of the world; united, as they would be by this marriage, no longer recognising any boundary as separating them, they would constitute a power which could not but be irresistible. It would be easy for them to reduce under their sway all the barbarous races on the skirts of their empires, and to hold them in subjection by a flexible system of administration and government The Roman infantry was the best in the world, and in steady hand-to-hand fighting must be allowed to be unrivalled. The Parthians surpassed all nations in the number of their cavalry and the excellence of their archers. If these advantages, instead of being separated, were combined, and the various elements on which success in war depends were thus brought into harmonious union, there could be no difficulty in establishing and maintaining a universal monarchy. Were that done, the Parthian spices and rare stuffs, as also the Roman metals and manufactures, would no longer need to be imported secretly and in small quantities by merchants, but, as the two countries would form together but one nation and one state, there would be a free interchange among all the citizens of their various products and commodities. To the Parthian king and his advisers the proposition was as unwelcome as it was strange. The whole project appeared to them monstrous. Artabanus himself misdoubted the Emperor’s sincerity, and did not believe that he would persevere in it. But it threw him into a state of extreme perplexity. Bluntly to reject the overture was to offend the master of thirty-two legions, and to provoke a war the results of which might be ruinous. To accept it was to depart from all Parthian traditions, and to plunge into the unknown and the unconjecturable. Artabanus therefore temporised. Without giving a positive refusal, he stated certain objections to the proposal, which made it, he thought, inexpedient, and begged to be excused from complying with it. “Such a union as was suggested could scarcely,” he said, “prove a happy one. The wife and husband, differing in language, habits, and modes of thought, could not but become estranged one from another. There was no lack of patricians at Rome, possessing daughters with whom the Emperor might wed as suitably as the Parthian kings did with the females of their own royal house. It was not fit that either family should sully its blood by mixture with a foreign stock.”

Upon this answer reaching him, Caracallus, according to the Court historian, Dio Cassius, immediately declared war, and invaded the Parthian territory with a large army. Herodian, however, who seems here to be more trustworthy, gives a different account. Caracallus, he declares, instead of quarrelling with Artabanus for his qualified refusal, followed up his first embassy with a second; his envoys brought rich gifts to Ctesiphon, and assured the Parthian monarch that the Emperor was serious in his proposals, and had the most friendly intentions possible. Hereupon Artabanus yielded, either satisfied with the assurances given him, or else afraid to give offence; he addressed Caracallus as his future son-in-law, and invited him to come with all speed, and fetch home his bride. “And then,” continues the historian, “when this was noised abroad, the Parthians made ready to give the Roman Emperor a fit reception, being transported with joy at the prospect of an eternal peace. Caracallus thereupon crossed the rivers without hindrance and entered Parthia, just as if it were his own land. Everywhere along his route the people greeted him with sacrifices, and dressing their altars with garlands, offered upon them all manner of spices and incense, whereat he made pretence of being vastly pleased. As his journey now approached its close, and he drew near to the Parthian Court, Artabanus, instead of awaiting his arrival, Went out and met him in the spacious plain before the city, with intent to entertain his daughter’s bridegroom and his own son-in­law. Meanwhile, the whole multitude of the bar­barians, crowned with freshly gathered flowers, and clad in garments embroidered with gold and variously dyed, were keeping holiday, and dancing gracefully to the sound of the flute, the pipe, and the drum—an amusement wherein they take great delight after they have indulged freely in wine. Now, when all the people had come together, they dismounted from their horses, hung up their quivers and their bows, and gave themselves wholly to libations and revels. The concourse of barbarians was very great, and they stood arranged in no sort of order, since they did not apprehend any danger, but were all en deavouring to catch a sight of the bridegroom.

Suddenly the Emperor gives his men the signal to fall on and massacre the barbarians. These, amazed at the attack, and finding themselves struck and wounded, forthwith took to flight. Artabanus was hurried away by his guards, and lifted on a horse, whereby he escaped with a few followers. The rest of the barbarians were cut to pieces, since they could not reach their horses, which, when they dismounted, they had allowed to graze freely over the plain; nor were they able to make use of their legs, since these were entangled in the long flowing garments which descended to their heels. Many, too, had come without quivers or bows, which were not wanted at a wedding. Caracallus, when he had made a vast slaughter, and taken a multitude of prisoners and a rich booty, moved off without meeting with any resistance. In his retreat he allowed his soldiers to burn all the cities and villages and to carry away as plunder whatever they chose.”

The advance of Caracallus had been through Babylonia, probably along the course of the Euphrates; his return was through Adiabend and Mesopotamia. In Adiabene he still further outraged and offended the Parthians by violating the sanctity of the royal burial-place at Arbela, where, as a rule, the Parthian kings were interred. Arbela had been regarded from of old as a City of the Dead; and the Arsacidae had made it their ordinary place of sepulture. Caracallus caused the tombs to be opened, the bodies dragged forth from them, and the remains dispersed to the four winds. No insult could be greater than this, and the act seems rather that of a madman than of a mere ordinary tyrant. We are reminded of Aristotle’s observation, that “families of brilliant talents go off after a time into disposition bordering upon madness,” and see that that of the Antonines was no exception. Caracallus can scarcely have been in his senses to have committed an action from which no possible good could arise, and for which, as he might have anticipated, a severe reckoning was afterwards to be exacted.

Meanwhile, however, he was pursuing his gay career, no whit alarmed, and no whit abashed. He wrote to the Senate in the lightest possible tone, to declare, without giving any details, that the whole East was subject to him, and that there was not a kingdom in those parts but had submitted to his authority. The Senate, though not imposed upon, wrote back in flattering terms, and granted him all the honours that would have been suitable to a veritable conqueror. For his own part, he remained in Mesopotamia, pass­ing the winter there, and amusing himself with hunting and chariot-driving. There were still lions in the Mesopotamian region, as in Assyrian times, and the young Antonine, though a poor soldier, seems to have been a bold hunter. He had, apparently, persuaded himself that no external danger threatened him, and was content to idle away his time in the grassy Mesopotamian plains, which now—in early spring—must have been an earthly paradise. April was reached, and it was high time for an active commander to have commenced the marshalling and exercising of his troops, or even the initiatory movements of the designed campaign; but Caracallus continued impassive, occupied in his amusements, his suspicions of his officers, and his consultations of augurs, magicians, and oracles as to what fate was in store for him. He was on his way to visit an oracle in the Temple of the Moon-God, near Carrhae, when some of his inquiries having leaked out, a conspiracy was formed against him in the camp, and he was murdered by Julius Martialis, one of his guards, on April 8, AD 217.

In the place of Caracallus, a new emperor had to be appointed. The choice of the soldiery fell upon Macrinus, one of the Praetorian Prefects, the chief mover in the recent conspiracy. His elevation almost exactly coincided with the advance of Artabanus, who, having reunited and increased his army during the course of the winter months, and brought it into excellent condition, had now conducted it into Roman Mesopotamia, and was anxious to engage the Romans in a pitched battle, in order to exact a heavy retribution for the treacherous massacre of Ctesiphon and the wanton impiety of Arbela. But Macrinus was scarcely prepared to meet him. Though Praetorian Prefect, he had none of the instincts of a soldier, but was far more versed in civil affairs, and adapted to hold office in the civil administration or in the judiciary. Ac­cordingly, no sooner did he find himself menaced by the Parthian monarch than he hastily sent ambassadors to his camp with an offer to surrender all the prisoners carried off in the late campaign as the price of peace. But Artabanus had higher aims. “ The Roman Emperor,” he said in reply, “must not only restore the prisoners unjustly captured in a time of peace, but must also consent to rebuild all the towns and castles which Caracallus had laid in ruins, must make compensation for the wanton injury done to the tombs of the kings, and must further cede Mesopotamia to the Parthians, and retire behind the line of the Euphrates.” It was morally impossible for a Roman Emperor to consent to such demands as these without first trying the fortune of war; and accordingly Macrinus felt himself compelled, much against his will, to risk a battle. He had with him a large army, which, if not exactly flushed with victory, had at any rate not known defeat; and he had, besides, the prestige of the Roman name, always a source of confidence to those who boasted it, and of terror to their adversaries.

Artabanus, on his part, had done his best to make his army formidable. He had collected it from all quarters, had made it strong in cavalry and archers, and had attached to it a novel force of considerable importance, consisting of a corps of picked soldiers, clad in complete armour, and carrying spears or lances of unusual length, who were mounted on camels. The Romans had, besides the ordinary legionaries, in which their strength mainly consisted, a large number of light-armed troops, and a powerful body of Mauretanian cavalry. The battle, which lasted three days, and was fought near Nisibis, in Upper Mesopotamia, began at daybreak on the first day by a rapid advance of the Parthians, who, after saluting the rising sun, rushed with loud shouts to the combat, and, under cover of a sleet of arrows, delivered charge after charge. The Romans, receiving their own light-armed within the ranks of the legionaries, stood firm, but suffered greatly from the bows of the horse-archers and from the lances of the corps mounted on camels; and though, whenever they could reach their enemy, and engage in close combat, they had always the advantage, yet after a while their losses from the cavalry and the camels forced them to retreat. As they retired they strewed the ground with spiked balls (or caltrops) and other contrivances for injuring the feet of animals, and this stratagem was so far successful that the pursuers soon found themselves in difficulties, and the two armies respectively returned, without any decisive result, to their camps.

On the following day there was again a combat, which is said to have lasted from morning till night, and to have been equally indecisive with the preceding one; but of this, which is wholly ignored by Dio, we do not possess any description. The third day arrived, and the fight was once more renewed; but this time the Parthians had recourse to new tactics. Hitherto it had been their aim to rout and disperse their enemies; now they directed all their efforts towards surrounding them, and so capturing the entire force. Their troops, which were far more numerous than those of the Romans, spread themselves to right and left, threatening to turn the Roman flanks and envelop the whole army. Macrinus, to meet these tactics and baffle them, was forced more and more to extend his own line, and consequently to attenuate it unduly, so that at last it broke up. Confusion once begun was speedily increased by the cowardice of the Roman Emperor, who was among the first to take to flight, and hurry back to his camp. As a matter of course his army followed his example, and having a refuge so close at hand, suffered no very severe losses. The defeat, however, was acknowledged, even by the Romans themselves; and, in the negotiations which followed the battle, Macrinus had to accept terms of peace, which, though less disgraceful than those at first proposed, must be regarded as sufficiently onerous. The cession of Mesopotamia was not, indeed, insisted on; but, besides restoring the captives and the booty carried off by Caracallus in his raid, Macrinus had to pay, as compensation for the damages inflicted, no less a sum than a million and a half of our money. The transactions of Rome with Parthia were thus brought to an end, after nearly three centuries of struggle, by the ignominious purchase of a peace. Macrinus retired within his own frontier in the summer of 217, and before Rome was again called upon to make war in these parts the sovereignty of the Parthians had terminated.

 

REVOLT OF TIIE PERSIANS—DOWNFALL OF THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE.

 

The tendency of the Parthian Empire to disin­tegration has been frequently noted in these pages. From the first there was a want of attachment among its parts, and a looseness of organisation which boded ill for the prolonged existence of the body politic. It was not only that the races composing it were so various, the character and conditions of the provinces so unlike, the ideas prevalent in different parts so diverse, but the entire system by which it was sought to give compactness and unity to the disjecta membra was so deficient in vigour and efficacy, that a long continuance of cohesion was almost impossible. “Kingdom-Empires,” as they have been called, are always unstable; and, unless the dominant power possesses a very marked preponderance, they are sure sooner or later to break up. In the widespread empire built up by the Arsacidae the Parthians could not really claim any very decided superiority over the other principal component parts, either in physical or in mental characteristics. They were not braver than the Medes, the Hyrcanians, the Armenians, or the Persians ; they were not more intelligent than the Babylonians, the Bactrians, or the Assyrians. That they had some qualities which brought them to the front, cannot, of course, be denied; but these were not such as to strike the minds of men very strongly, or to obtain universal and unqualified recognition. Their rule was acquiesced in so long, rather because the Oriental appreciates the advantages bf settled and quiet government, than because the subject races regarded them as having any special aptitude or capacity for governing. Each of the principal nations probably thought itself quite as fit to hold the first place in the commonwealth as the Parthians; and under favourable circumstances each secondary monarch was quite ready to assert and maintain his independence.

Revolts of subject kingdoms or tribes were thus of frequent occurrence during the entire period of the Parthian monarchy; but, as time went on, they became more frequent, more determined, and more difficult to subdue. It has been already related how, as early as the time of Vologases I, Hyrcania broke off from the empire, and was probably not reduced subsequently.1 Bactria was also from time to time a sort of separate appanage, conceded to a prince of the Royal House, who accepted it in satisfaction of his claims to the chief authority. Armenia was still more loosely attached to the empire, being more often and for longer periods reckoned an independent state than a subjected one. At one time Babylonia is found almost independent under Hymerus. The single tie of a nominal subjection to a distant suzerain proved a weak bond when any strain was put upon it, and there was constant danger of this or that province detaching itself from the great mass of the empire, and entering upon a separate existence.

We are thus entitled to say that there was something like a general discontent of the provinces with their condition under the central government, at any rate for the last century and a half of Parthian rule. It is difficult, however, to analyse the grounds of this discontent, or to decide what elements in it had the greater weight, and which were of minor importance. An alien rule must always be more or less irksome to those who have to submit to it, and must more or less chafe and gall them, as they exceed or fall short in pride and sensibility. The friction will be increased or diminished by the character of the rule fits consonance with justice, its regard for promises and engagements, its care for its subjects, its clemency, its power and will to protect, its general fairness and equity. It cannot be said that the Parthians fell flagrantly short in any of these particulars, or deserve to be regarded as either on the one hand weak and careless, or on the other harsh, unjust, and oppressive. They no doubt took the lion’s share of pomp, power, and privilege ; but beyond this advantage, which is one taken by all dominant peoples, it does not appear that their subjects had any special grievances of which to complain. The Parthians were tolerant; they did not interfere with the religious prejudices of their subjects, or attempt to enforce uniformity of creed or worship. Their military system did not press over-heavily on the subject races ; nor is there any reason to believe that the scale of their taxation was excessive. Such tyranny as is charged upon certain Parthian monarchs is not of a kind that would have been sensibly felt by the conquered nations, since it was exercised on none who were not Parthians. If at any time the rulers of the country failed to perform the great duties of civil government, it was rather in the way of laxity that they erred than of tension, rather by loosening the bonds of authority than by over-tightening them.

Some tangible ground for the general discontent, beyond the “ignorant impatience” of a dominant race which is so usual, may perhaps be made out by careful consideration, in two respects, but in two only. In the first place, there were times when the Parthian government very imperfectly accomplished its great duty of preserving internal order and tranquillity. The history of Anilai and Asinai, which has been dwelt upon at some length in a former chapter, brings out very strongly this defect in the Parthian governmental system, and reveals a condition of things which, if it had been permanent, must have been intolerable. We can only suppose that the anarchical times, of which we have so melancholy a picture, were occasional and exceptional, the result of internal disorders, which ere long came to a head, and then passed away ; or we should have to imagine a government, which fulfilled none of the functions of a government, lasting for centuries, and some of the most spirited nations on the earth submitting to it and seeking no better.

The other failure of the Parthians belongs to the later period only of their history. It consisted in the general decline of the vigour of the nation, which rendered it less competent, than it had been previously, to afford adequate protection to the conquered states —especially protection against the wholly alien power, which had intruded itself into Asia, and which sought to bring all the nations of Asia under subjection. The suzerainty of Parthia had been accepted by the other Asiatic powers as that of the one out of their number which was most competent to make head against European invaders, and to secure the native races in continued independence of an influence which they recognised as antagonistic, and felt to be hateful. It may well have appeared at this time to the various vassal states that the Parthian vigour had become effete, that the qualities which had advanced the race to the leadership of Western Asia were gone, and that unless some new power could be raised up to act energetically against Rome, the West would obtain complete dominion over the East, and Asia be absorbed into Europe. Vague thoughts would arise as to which nation might be conceived to be the fittest to take the lead, if Parthia had to be deposed; and the instinct of self-aggrandisement would lead the more eminent to contemplate the possibility of themselves aspiring to the position, if not even to take measures to push their claims. Probably for some considerable time before the movement headed by Artaxerxes, son of Babek, commenced, such thoughts had been familiar to the wiser men among many of the Asiatic nations, and a long preparation had thus been made for the revolution, which seemed to break out so suddenly at last

If, again, we ask, what peculiar grounds of grievance had the Persians above the other subject races, or why did the burden of raising the standard of revolt fall especially upon them, we have a further difficulty in obtaining an answer. There is no appearance of the Persians having been in any way singled out by the Parthians for oppression, or having had any more grounds of complaint against them than any other of the subject nations. The complaints which are made are negative rather than positive, and amount to little more than the following : — 1. That high offices, whether civil or military, were for the most part con­fined to those of Parthian blood, and not thrown open in any fair proportion to the Persians. 2. That the priests of the Persian religion were not held in sufficient honour, being even less accounted of in the later than in the earlier times; and. 3. That no advantage in any respect was allowed to the Persians over the rest of the conquered peoples, notwithstanding that they had for so many years exercised supremacy over Western Asia, and given to the list of Asiatic worthies such names as those of Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis. It was thus not because they were worse treated than their brother subjects that the Persians were dissatisfied, but because their pretensions were higher. They thought themselves deserving of exceptional treat­ment, and, since they did not receive it, they murmured. In fact, the Persians had at no time ever forgotten that they had once been “ lords of Asia,” and it angered them that their conquerors seemed to have forgotten it. They had at all times submitted to Parthian hegemony as it were under protest; now they were no longer inclined to submit to it. They believed, and probably with justice, that, under the changed circumstances of the time, they were better suited than the Parthians to direct the affairs of Western Asia, and they resolved at any rate to make the attempt. Their justification is to be found in their success. As the Parthians had no right to their position but such as arose out of the law of the strongest, so, when the time came that they had lost this pre-eminence, superiority in strength having passed to a nation hitherto counted among their subjects, it was natural and right that the seat of authority should shift with the shift in the balance of power,-and that the leadership of the Persians should be once more recognised. 

In one respect the Parthian rule must always have grated upon the feelings of their Persian subjects more than upon those of the generality, since there was in the Parthians an ingrained coarseness and savagery which could not but be especially distasteful to a people of such comparative refinement as the Persians. Persian art, Persian manners, Persian literature had a delicacy and a polish which the rude Parthians, with their Tatar breeding, could not appreciate; and the countrymen of Cyrus and Darius, of Firdausi and Hafiz, must have had an instinctive aversion from the nomadic race whose manners were still deeply tinged with Scythicism.

It may also be suspected, though of this there is less evidence, that the revolution which transferred the dominion of Western Asia from the Parthians to the Persians, from the Arsacidae to the Sassanidae, was to some extent a religious one. The “Book-Religion” of Zoroaster, with its dualism, its complicated spiritualism, and its elaborate ritual, was unsuited for the rough times through which Western Asia had to pass between the invasion of Alexander and the foundation of the Neo-Persian state, and it appears to have been superseded, except in Persia Proper, by a ruder system, of which the principal elements were devotion to the Sun and Moon and the worship of ancestral images. But the time was now again come when more complicated ideas were in the ascendant. The various forms of Gnosticism show how mysticism once more asserted itself among the Western Asiatics in the first and second centuries of our era, and how speculations were rife which reopened all the deepest problems of spiritual religion. The stir had begun which issued ultimately in Manicheism, and the Persian aspirations after leadership may have been partly caused by a desire to push their religion to the front, and to take advantage of the popular favour with which dualistic tenets were beginning to be regarded. It is certain that among the principal changes consequent upon the success of the Persians was a religious revolution in Western Asia—the substitution for Parthian tolerance of all faiths and worships, of a rigidly enforced uniformity in religion, the establishment of the Magi in power, and the bloody persecution of all such as declined obedience to the precepts of Zoroaster.

The space of about six or seven years seems to have separated the conclusion of peace with Rome from the outbreak of rebellion under Artaxerxes. During this time the division of sovereignty between Artabanus V and Vologases V continued without interruption, and the power of Parthia was still further weakened by Arsacid intrigues originating with branches of the royal family which were settled in Bactria. No doubt internal debility showed itself in various ways, and the tributary king of Persia, a young, active, and energetic prince, became daily more convinced of his ability, if not to recover the empire of Cyrus, at any rate to shake off the rude yoke which had galled and chafed his nation for so many centuries. Independence was probably all that he originally looked for; but, in course of time, as the struggle went on, wider views with respect to the possibilities of the situation opened themselves before him, and the contest became one for life or death between the two kingdoms. After establishing his authority in Persia Proper, he turned his arms eastward against Carmania (Kerman), and in a short space of time easily reduced that sparsely peopled and not very desirable country. He next took in hand a more daring enterprise. The valuable and fertile country of Media adjoined Persia to the north. Artaxerxes proceeded to make war in this quarter, and to annex to his dominions portions of the Median territory. But this was to attack the Parthian kingdom at its heart, since Media, Assyria (Adiabene), and Babylonia formed the main strength and the central mass of the Empire. Artabanus, who had thought but lightly of a Persian revolt, and had probably regarded incursions into Carmania with absolute indifference, as concerning his brother rather than himself, was now effectually roused. Collecting his forces, he took the field in person, invaded Persia Proper, and engaged in a desperate struggle with his rival. Three great battles are said to have been fought between the contending powers. In the last, which took place, according to the Persian authorities, in the plain of Hormuz, between Bebahan and Shuster, on the course of the Jerahi river, Artabanus was, after a desperate conflict, completely defeated by his antagonist (AD 226), and lost his life in the battle.

The struggle, however, was not yet over. Artavasdes, the eldest son of Artabanus, claimed the crown, and was supported by a large number of adherents. His uncle, Chosroes, who had received the throne of Armenia from Artabanus, espoused his cause, gave the Parthian refugees an asylum in his kingdom, and even fought a battle with Artaxerxes in their defence. In this he was so far victorious that the Persian found it necessary to retreat, and retire to his own dominions in order to augment his forces. But the struggle was too unequal for long continuance. Within a very few years of its commencement the contest was everywhere ended; the arms of Artaxerxes prevailed, and the Parthian Empire was overthrown. All the provinces submitted; the last Arsacid prince fell into the hands of the Persian king; and the founder of the new dynasty sought to give legitimacy to his rule by taking to wife an Arsacid princess.

The duration of the Parthian monarchy was a little short of five centuries. It commenced about BC 250, and it terminated in AD 227. It was the rule of a vigorous tribe of Tatar or Turkic extraction over a mixed population, chiefly of Semitic or Arian race, and, for the most part, more advanced in civilisation than their rulers. Though its organisation was loose, it was not ill-adapted for Orientals, who prefer a flexible system to one where everything is “cut and dry,” and are opposed to all that is stiff and bureaucratic. Western Asia must be considered to have enjoyed a time of comparative rest under the Parthian sovereignty, and to have been as prosperous as at almost any other period of its history. The savage hordes of Northern Asia and Europe were, in the main, kept off; and, though the arms of Rome from time to time ravaged the more western provinces, and even occasionally penetrated to the capital, yet this state of things was exceptional; for the most part European aggression was averted, or quickly repulsed ; very few conquests were made, and when they were made, they were not always retained; and to the last the limits of the Parthian dominion remained almost the same as they had been under the first Mithridates. Still, there was no doubt a gradual internal decay, which worked itself out especially in two directions. The Arsacid race, with which the idea of the empire was closely bound up, instead of clinging together in that close “union” which constitutes true “strength,” allowed itself to be torn to pieces by dissensions, to waste its force in quarrels, and to be made a handle of by every foreign invader or domestic rebel who chose to use its' name in order to cloak his own selfish projects. The race itself does not seem to have become exhausted. Its chiefs, the successive occupants of the throne, never sank into mere weaklings or faineants, never shut themselves up in their seraglios, or ceased to take an active and leading part, alike in civil broils and in struggles with foreign princes. Artabanus, the adversary of Artaxerxes, was as brave and capable a monarch as had ever sat upon the Parthian throne in previous ages. But the hold which the race had on the population, native and foreign, was gradually weakened by the feuds which raged within it, by the profusion with which the sacred blood was shed by those in whose veins it ran, and the difficulty of knowing which living member of it was its true head, and so entitled to the allegiance of all those who wished to be faithful Parthian subjects. Further, the vigour of the Parthian soldiery must have gradually declined, and their superiority over the mass of the nations under their dominion must have diminished. Marked evidence was given of this when, about AD 75, Hyrcania became independent; and it is possible that there may have been other cases of successful rebellions in the remoter eastern regions. Oriental races, when they are suddenly lifted to power, almost always decline in strength, and sometimes with extreme rapidity. The Parthians cannot be said to have experienced a rapid deterioration; but they too, like the dominant races of Western Asia, both before and after them, felt in course of time the softening influence of luxury, and had to yield their place to those who had maintained manlier and hardier habits.