magnificence, and to make
him an unheard-of proposition. "The Roman Emperor," said the despatch
with which they were intrusted, "could not fitly wed the daughter of a
subject or accept the position of son-in-law to a private person. No
one could be a suitable wife to him who was not a princess." He therefore
asked the Parthian monarch for the hand of his daughter. Rome and
Parthia divided between them the sovereignty of the world; united, as
they would be by this marriage, no longer recognizing any boundary as
separating them, they would constitute a power that could not but be
irresistible. It would be easy for them to reduce under their sway all
the barbarous races on the skirts of their empires, and to hold them in
subjection by a flexible system of administration and government. The
Roman infantry was the best in the world, and in steady hand-to-hand
fighting must be allowed to be unrivalled. The Parthians surpassed all
nations in the number of their cavalry and in the excellency of their
archers. If these advantages, instead of being separated, were combined,
and the various elements on which success in war depends were thus
brought into harmonious union, there could be no difficulty in
establishing and maintaining a universal monarchy. Were that done,
the Parthian spices and rare stuffs, as also the Roman metals and
manufactures, would no longer need to be imported secretly and in small
quantities by merchants, but, as the two countries would form together
but one nation and one state, there would be a free interchange among
all the citizens of their various products and commodities.

The recital of this despatch threw the Parthian monarch into extreme
perplexity. He did not believe that the proposals made to him were
serious, or intended to have an honorable issue. The project broached
appeared to him altogether extravagant, and such as no one in his senses
could entertain for a moment. Yet he was anxious not to offend the
master of two-and-thirty legions, nor even to give him a pretext for
a rupture of amicable relations. Accordingly he temporized, contenting
himself with setting forth some objections to the request of Caracallus,
and asking to be excused compliance with it. "Such a union, as
Caracallus proposed, could scarcely," he said, "prove a happy one. The
wife and husband, differing in language, habits, and mode of life,
could not but become estranged from one another. There was no lack of
patricians at