o; that he enlarged and beautified Otesiphon;
that he held friendly communications with Decebalus, the great Dacian
chief, who was successively the adversary of Domitian and Trajan; and
that he sold the sovereignty of Osrhoene at a high price to the Edessene
prince who was cotemporary with him. The Pseudo-Nero in question appears
to have taken refuge with the Parthians in the year A.D. 89, and to have
been demanded as an impostor by Domitian. Pacorus was at first inclined
to protect and to even assist him, but after a while was induced to give
him up, probably by a threat of hostilities. The communication with
the Dacian chief was most likely earlier. The Dacians, in one of
those incursions into Maesia which they made during the first years of
Domitian, took captive a certain Callidromus, a Greek, if we may judge
by his name, slave to a Roman of some rank, named Liberius Maximus. This
prisoner Decebalus (we are told) sent as a present to Pacorus, in whose
service and favor he remained for a number of years. This circumstance,
insignificant enough in itself, acquires an interest from the indication
which it gives of intercommunication between the enemies of Rome, even
when they were separated by vast spaces, and might have been thought
to have been wholly ignorant of each other's existence. Decebalus can
scarcely have been drawn to Pacorus by any other attraction than that
which always subsists between enemies of any great dominant power. He
must have looked to the Parthian monarch as a friend who might make a
diversion on his behalf upon occasion; and that monarch, by accepting
his gift, must be considered to have shown a willingness to accept this
kind of relation.

The sale of the Osrhoene territory to Abgarus by Pacorus was not a fact
of much consequence. It may indicate an exhaustion of his treasury,
resulting from the expenditure of vast sums on the enlargement and
adornment of the capital, but otherwise it has no bearing on the general
condition of the Empire. Perhaps the Parthian feudatories generally paid
a price for their investiture. If they did not, and the case of Abgarus
was peculiar, still it does not appear that his purchase at all altered
his position as a Parthian subject. It was not until they transferred
their allegiance to Rome that the Osrhoene princes struck coins, or
otherwise assumed the status of kings. Up to the time of M. Aurelius
they continued just as much subject to Parthia as before, and we