seems to have claimed the throne, and
to have been accepted as king, at least by a portion of the Parthians,
in the year following the death of Artabanus (A.D. 227), when he
certainly issued coins. The Armenian monarch, who had been set on his
throne by Artabanus, and was uncle to the young princes, was especially
anxious to maintain the Arsacids in power; he gave them a refuge in
Armenia, collected an army on their behalf, and engaging Artaxerxes, is
even said to have defeated him in a battle. But his efforts, and those
of Artavasdes, were unavailing. The arms of Artaxerxes in the end
everywhere prevailed. After a struggle, which cannot have lasted more
than a few years, the provinces of the old Parthian empire submitted;
the last Arsacid prince fell into the hands of the Persian king; and
the founder of the new dynasty sought to give legitimacy to his rule by
taking to wife an Arsacid princess.

Thus perished the great Parthian monarchy after an existence of nearly
five centuries. Its end must be attributed in the main to internal
decay, working itself out especially in two directions. The Arsacid
race, with which the idea of the empire was bound up, instead of
clinging together with that close "union" which is "strength," allowed
itself to be torn to pieces by dissensions, to waste its force in
quarrels, and to be made a handle of by every foreign invader, or
domestic rebel, who chose to use its name in order to cloak his
own selfish projects. The race itself does not seem to have become
exhausted. Its chiefs, the successive occupants of the throne, never
sank into mere weaklings or faineants, never shut themselves up in their
seraglios, or ceased to take a leading part, alike in civil broils, and
in struggles with foreign rivals. But the hold which the race had on
the population, native and foreign, was gradually weakened by the feuds
which raged within it, by the profusion with which the sacred blood was
shed by those in whose veins it ran, and the difficulty of knowing which
living member of it was its true head, and so entitled to the allegiance
of those who wished to be faithful Parthian subjects. Further, the
vigor of the Parthian soldiery must have gradually declined, and their
superiority over the mass of the nations under their dominion have
diminished. We found reasons for believing that, as early as A.D. 58,
Hyrcania succeeded in throwing off the Parthian yoke, and thus setting
an example of successful re