s towards the south, throwing them thereby
upon the east and the south-east. Danger to Parthia from the Scyths
seems after his reign to have passed away. They found a vent for their
superabundant population in Seistan, Afghanistan, and India, and ceased
to have any hopes of making an impression on the Arsacid kingdom.
Mithridates, it is probable, even took territory from them. The
acquisition of parts of Bactria by the Parthians from the Scyths, which
is attested by Strabo, belongs, in all likelihood, to his reign; and
the extension of the Parthian dominion to Seistan may well date from the
same period. Justin tells us that he added many nations to the Parthian
Empire. The statements made of the extent of Parthia on the side of
Syria in the time of Mithridates the First render it impossible for us
to discover these nations in the west: we are, therefore, compelled to
regard them as consisting of races on the eastern frontier, who could at
this period only be outlying tribes of the recent Scythic immigration.

The victories of Mithridates in the East encouraged him to turn his
arms in the opposite direction, and to make an attack on the important
country of Armenia, which bordered his north-western frontier. Armenia
was at the time under the government of a certain Ortoadistus, who seems
to have been the predecessor, and was perhaps the father, of the great
Tigranes. Ortoadistus ruled the tract called by the Romans "Armenia
Magna," which extended from the Euphrates on the west to the mouth of
the Araxes on the east, and from the valley of the Kur northwards to
Mount Niphates and the head streams of the Tigris towards the south. The
people over which he ruled was one of the oldest in Asia and had on many
occasions shown itself impatient of a conqueror. Justin, on reaching
this point in his work, observes that he could not feel himself
justified if, when his subject brought before him so mighty a kingdom,
he did not enter at some length on its previous history. The modern
historian would be even less excusable than Justin if he omitted such
a review, since, while he has less right to assume a knowledge of early
Armenian history on the part of his readers, he has greater means of
gratifying their curiosity, owing to the recent discovery of sources of
information unknown to the ancients.

Armenia first comes before us in Genesis, where it is mentioned as the
country on whose mountains the ark rested. A recollection of it was