arthians. Volagases, after quitting
his capital, seems to have made no effort at all to hamper or harass
his adversary. The prolonged resistance of Hatra, the sufferings of the
Romans, their increasing difficulties with respect to provisions,
the injurious effect of the summer heats upon their unacclimatized
constitutions, would have been irresistible temptations to a prince of
any spirit or energy, inducing him to advance as the Romans retired,
to hang upon their rear, to cut off their supplies, and to render their
retreat difficult, if not disastrous. Volagases appears to have
remained wholly inert and passive. His conduct is only explicable by the
consideration of the rapid decline which Parthia was now undergoing, of
the general decay of patriotic spirit, and the sea of difficulties into
which a monarch was plunged who had to retreat before an invader.

The expedition of Severus was on the whole glorious for Rome, and
disastrous for Parthia, though the glory of the victor was tarnished
at the close by his failure before Hatra. It cost Parthia a second
province. The Roman emperor not only recovered his previous position in
Mesopotamia, but overstepping the Tigris, established the Roman
dominion firmly in the fertile tract between that stream and the Zagros
mountain-range. The title of "Adiabenicus" became no empty boast.
Adiabene, or the tract between the Zab rivers--probably including at
this time the entire low region at the foot of Zagros from the eastern
Khabour on the north to the Adhem towards the south--passed under
the dominion of Rome, the monarch of the country, hitherto a Parthian
vassal, becoming her tributary. Thus the imperial standards were planted
permanently at a distance less than a degree from the Parthian
capital, which, with the great cities of Seleucia and Babylon in its
neighborhood, was exposed to be captured almost at any moment by a
sudden and rapid inroad.

Volagases survived his defeat by Severus about ten or eleven years.
For this space Parthian history is once more a blank, our authorities
containing no notice that directly touches Parthia during the period in
question. The stay of Severus in the East during the years A.D. 200 and
201, would seem to indicate that the condition of the Oriental provinces
was unsettled and required the presence of the Imperator. But we hear
of no effort made by Parthia at this time to recover her losses--of
no further collision between her troops and those