vaguest terms by the classical writers. No author of repute appears
to have visited the Parthian Court. We may perhaps best obtain a true
notion of the splendor of the sovereign from the accounts which have
reached us of his relations and officers, who can have reflected only
faintly the magnificence of the sovereign. Plutarch tells us that the
general whom Orodes deputed to conduct the war against Crassus came into
the field accompanied by two hundred litters wherein were contained
his concubines, and by a thousand camels which carried his baggage. His
dress was fashioned after that of the Medes; he wore his hair parted
in the middle and had his face painted with cosmetics. A body of ten
thousand horse, composed entirely, of his clients and slaves, followed
him in battle. We may conclude from this picture, and from the
general tenor of the classical notices, that the Arsacidae revived
and maintained very much such a Court as that of the old Achaemenian
princes, falling probably somewhat below their model in politeness and
refinement, but equalling it in luxury, in extravagant expenditure, and
in display.

Such seems to have been the general character of those practices and
institutions which distinguish the Parthians from the foundation of
their Empire by Mithridates, Some of them, it is probable, he rather
adopted than invented; but there is no good reason for doubting that of
many he was the originator. He appears to have been one of those rare
individuals to whom it has been given to unite the powers which form
the conqueror with those which constitute the successful organizer of a
State. Brave and enterprising in war, prompt to seize an occasion and to
turn it to the best advantage, not even averse to severities where they
seemed to be required, he yet felt no acrimony towards those who had
resisted his arms, but was ready to befriend them so soon as their
resistance ceased. Mild, clement, philanthropic, he conciliated those
whom he subdued almost more easily than he subdued them, and by the
efforts of a few years succeeded in welding together a dominion which
lasted without suffering serious mutilation for nearly four centuries.
Though not dignified with the epithet of "Great," he was beyond all
question the greatest of the Parthian monarchs. Later times did him more
justice than his contemporaries, and, when the names of almost all the
other kings had sunk into oblivion, retained his in honor, and placed it
on a