116. Death of Trajan, and relinquishment of his Parthian Conquests
by Hadrian. Interview of Chosroes with Hadrian. Its Consequences. Death
of Chosroes and Accession of Volagases II._

The general state of Oriental affairs at the accession of Chosroes seems
to have been the following. Upon the demise of Tiridates (about A.D.
100) Pacorus had established upon the Armenian throne one of his sons,
named Exedares, or Axidares, and this prince had thenceforth reigned as
king of Armenia without making any application to Rome for investiture,
or acknowledging in any way the right of the Romans to interfere with
the Armenian succession. Trajan, sufficiently occupied in the West, had
borne this insult. When, however, in A.D. 114, the subjugation of Dacia
was completed, and the Roman Emperor found his hands free, he resolved
to turn his arms towards Asia, and to make the Armenian difficulty
a pretext for a great military expedition, designed to establish
unmistakably the supremacy of Rome throughout the East. The condition
of the East at once called for the attention of Rome, and was
eminently favorable for the extension of her influence at this period.
Disintegrating forces were everywhere at work, tending to produce a
confusion and anarchy which invited the interposition of a great power,
and rendered resistance to such a power difficult. Christianity, which
was daily spreading itself more and more widely, acted as a dissolvent
upon the previously-existing forms of society, loosening the old ties,
dividing man from man by an irreconcilable division, and not giving much
indication as yet of its power to combine and unite. Judaism, embittered
by persecution, had from a nationality become a conspiracy; and the
disaffected adherents of the Mosaic system, dispersed through all the
countries of the East, formed an explosive element in the population
which involved the constant danger of a catastrophe. The Parthian
political system was also, as already remarked, giving symptoms of
breaking up. Those bonds which for two centuries and a half had sufficed
to hold together a heterogeneous kingdom extending from the Euphrates
to the Indus, and from the Oxus to the Southern Ocean, were beginning
to grow weak, and the Parthian Empire appeared to be falling to pieces.
There seemed to be at once a call and an opportunity for a fresh
arrangement of the East, for the introduction of a unifying power, such
as Rome recognized in her own administr