destruction of the army of Crassus, was followed up by the advance of their clouds of horse into Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor-when Apamæa, Antioch, and Jerusalem fell into their hands, when Decidius Saxa was defeated and slain, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Caria, Lydia, and Ionia occupied-it seemed as if Rome had found, not so much an equal, as a superior; it looked as if the power heretofore predominant would be compelled to contract her frontier, and as if Parthia would advance hers to the Egean or the Mediterranean. The history of the contest between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe, is a history of reactions. At one time one of the 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.1 But it turned out that the effort 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 ever modifying their system, ever learning new combinations or new manœuvres 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 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 idea of attempting Western conquests. 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 successively of the Bactrians, the Scythians, the Syro-Macedonians, and the Armenians. She had proceeded 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 into a struggle for

1 Compare on this point Dio Cass. xlix. 20, and 26, with Plut. Anton. § 41. Note especially the statement of Dio :—oi "opevdovñjra, πολλοί τε ὄντες, καὶ μακροτέρω |

τῶν τόξων ιέντες, πάντα καὶ τὸν Karάopakrov ioxvous invμaivovro— and the fact implied in Plutarch that the slingers used leaden bullets (μολυβδεῖς) instead of stones.

influence over the kingdom of Armenia; and her hopes were limited to the reduction of that kingdom into a subject position.

The death of Pacorus is said to have caused Orodes intense grief. For many days he would neither eat nor speak; 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 extreme grief wore itself out, and the aged king began to direct his attention once more to public affairs. He grew anxious 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 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 the claims of primogeniture deserved to be considered, and selected as his successor Phraates, the eldest of the thirty. Not content 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 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,

1 Justin, xlii. 4, §§ 12-13. Compare Dio Cass. xlix. 23.

2 Justin, xlii. 4, § 14. 3 Dio Cass. xlix. 23.

Orodes had married a daughter of Antiochus, king of Commagêné (Dio Cass. 1.s.c.)

and when the ex-monarch ventured to express disapproval of the act, added the crime of parricide to fratricide by putting to death his aged father. Thus perished Orodes, after a reign of eighteen years-the most memorable in the Parthian annals.

CHAPTER XIII.

Reign of Phraates IV. His cruelties. Flight of Monases to Antony. Antony's great Parthian Expedition, or Invasion of Media Atropatêné. Its Complete Failure. Subsequent Alliance of the Median King with Antony. War between Parthia and Media. Rebellion raised against Phraates by Tiridates. Phraates expelled. He recovers his Throne with the help of the Scythians. His dealings with Augustus. His Death and Character.

'Redditum Cyri solio Phraatem

Dissidens plebi numero beatorum

Eximit Virtus.'-Hor. Od. ii. 2, 16-18.

THE shedding of blood is like the letting out of water.' When it once begins, none can say where it will stop. The absolute monarch who, for his own fancied security, commences a system of executions, is led on step by step to wholesale atrocities from which he would have shrunk with horror at the outset. Phraates had removed brothers whose superior advantages of birth made them formidable rivals. He had punished with death a father who ventured to blame his act, and to forget that by abdication he had sunk himself to the position of a subject. Could he have stopped here, it might have seemed that his severities proceeded not so much from cruelty of disposition as from political necessity; and historians, always tender in the judgments which they pass on kings under such circumstances, would probably have condoned or justified his conduct. But the taste for bloodshed grows with the indulgence of it. In a short time, the young