lve years obstructed their ambitious projects.

On the other hand, there was already among the Asiatic princes generally
a deep distrust of Rome--a fear that in the new people, which had
crept so quietly into Asia, was to be found a power more permanently
formidable than the Macedonians, a power which would make up for want
of brilliancy and dash by a dogged perseverance in its aims, and a
stealthy, crafty policy, sure in the end to achieve great and striking
results. The acceptance of the kingdom of Attalus had not, perhaps,
alarmed any one; but the seizure of Phrygia during the minority of
Mithridates, without so much as a pretext, and the practice, soon
afterwards established, of setting up puppet kings, bound to do the
bidding of their Roman allies, had raised suspicions; the ease with
which Mithridates notwithstanding his great power and long preparation,
had been vanquished in the first war (B.C. 88-84) had aroused fears; and
Sanatroeces could not but misdoubt the advisability of lending aid to
the Romans, and so helping them to obtain a still firmer hold on Western
Asia. Accordingly we find that when the final war broke out, in B.C. 74,
his inclination was, in the first instance, to stand wholly aloof, and
when that became impossible, then to temporize. To the application
for assistance made by Mithridates in B.C. 72 a direct negative was
returned; and it was not until, in B.C. 69, the war had approached his
own frontier, and both parties made the most earnest appeals to him for
aid, that he departed from the line of pure abstention, and had recourse
to the expedient of amusing, both sides with promises, while he
helped neither. According to Plutarch, this line of procedure offended
Lucullus, and had nearly induced him to defer the final struggle with
Mithridates and Tigranes, and turn his arms against Parthia. But the
prolonged resistance of Nisibis, and the successes of Mithridates in
Pontus, diverted the danger; and the war rolling northwards, Parthia was
not yet driven to take a side, but was enabled to maintain her neutral
position for some years longer.

Meanwhile the aged Sanatroeces died, and was succeeded by his son,
Phraates III. This prince followed at first his father's example, and
abstained from mixing himself up in the Mithridatic war; but in B.C.
66, being courted by both sides, and promised the restoration of the
provinces lost to Tigranes, he made alliance with Pompey, and undertook,
while the