ases III. ascended the throne in A.D. 148 or 149,
and reigned till A.D. 190 or 191--a space of forty-two years. We may
assume that he was a tolerably young man at his accession, though the
effigy upon his earliest coins is well bearded, and that he was somewhat
tired of the long inactivity which had characterized the period of his
father's rule. He seems very early to have meditated a war with Rome,
and to have taken certain steps which betrayed his intentions; but, upon
their coming to the knowledge of Antoninus, and that prince writing to
him on the subject, Volagases altered his plans, and resolved to wait,
at any rate, until a change of Emperor at Rome should give him a
chance of taking the enemy at a disadvantage. Thus it was not till A.D.
161--twelve years after his accession--that his original design was
carried out, and the flames of war were once more lighted in the East to
the ruin and desolation of the fairest portion of Western Asia.

The good Antoninus was succeeded in the spring of A.D. 161 by his
adopted son, Marcus Aurelius, who at once associated with him in the
government the other adopted son of Antoninus, Lucius Verus. Upon this,
thinking that the opportunity for which he had been so long waiting had
at last arrived, Volagases marched his troops suddenly into Armenia,
expelled Sosemus, the king protected by the Romans, and established in
his place a certain Tigranes, a scion of the old royal stock, whom the
Armenians regarded as their rightful monarch. News of this bold
stroke soon reached the governors of the adjacent Roman provinces,
and Severianus, prefect of Cappadocia, a Gaul by birth, incited by
the predictions of a pseudo-prophet of those parts, named Alexander,
proceeded at the head of a legion into the adjoining kingdom, in the
hope of crushing the nascent insurrection and punishing at once the
Armenian rebels and their Parthian supporters. Scarcely, however, had
he crossed the Euphrates, when he found himself confronted by an
overwhelming force, commanded by a Parthian called Chosroes, and was
compelled to throw himself into the city of Elegeia, where he was
immediately surrounded and besieged. Various tales were told of his
conduct under these circumstances, and of the fate which overtook him
the most probable account being that after holding out for three days
he and his troops were assailed on all sides, and, after a brave
resistance, were shot down almost to a man. The Parthians then cro