an ordinary Oriental monarch might have
despised the distant Republic, and have thought it beneath his dignity
to make overtures to so strange and anomalous a power. Whether he
definitely foresaw the part which Rome was about to play in the East,
we may doubt; but at any rate he must have had a prevision that the
part would not be trifling or insignificant. Of the private character of
Mithridates we have no sufficient materials to judge. If it be true that
he put his envoy, Orobazus, to death on account of his having allowed
Sulla to assume a position at their conference derogatory to the dignity
of the Parthian State, we must pronounce him a harsh master; but the
tale, which rests wholly on the weak authority of the gossip-loving
Plutarch, is perhaps scarcely to be accepted.

CHAPTER X.

_Dark period of Parthian History. Doubtful succession of the Monarchs.
Accession of Sanatrceces, ab. B.C. 76. Position of Parthia during the
Mithridatic Wars. Accession of Phraates III. His relations with Pompey.
His death. Civil War between his two sons, Mithridates and Orodes. Death
of Mithridates._

The successor of Mithridates II. is unknown. It has been argued, indeed,
that the reigns of the known monarchs of this period would not be unduly
long if we regarded them as strictly consecutive, and placed no blank
between the death of Mithridates II. and the accession of the next
Arsaces whose name has come down to us. Sanatrodoeces, it has been said,
may have been, and may, therefore, well be regarded as, the successor
of Mithridates. But the words of the epitomizer of Trogus, placed at
the head of this chapter, forbid the acceptance of this theory. The
epitomizer would not have spoken of "many kings" as intervening between
Mithridates II. and Orodes, if the number had been only three. The
expression implies, at least, four or five monarchs; and thus we have
no choice but to suppose that the succession of the kings is here
imperfect, and that at least one or two reigns were interposed between
those of the second Mithridates and of the monarch known as Sanatroeces,
Sinatroces, or Sintricus.

A casual notice of a Parthian monarch in a late writer may supply the
gap, either wholly or in part. Lucian speaks of a certain Mnasciras as
a Parthian king, who died at the advanced age of ninety-six. As there
is no other place in the Parthian history at which the succession is
doubtful, and as no such name as Mnascris occurs elsewhe