; but
the generals of Marcus, the emperor Severus, and his son, erected many
trophies in Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria. Among their exploits, the
imperfect relation of which would have unseasonably interrupted the
more important series of domestic revolutions, we shall only mention the
repeated calamities of the two great cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon.

Seleucia, on the western bank of the Tigris, about forty-five miles
to the north of ancient Babylon, was the capital of the Macedonian
conquests in Upper Asia. Many ages after the fall of their empire,
Seleucia retained the genuine characters of a Grecian colony, arts,
military virtue, and the love of freedom. The independent republic was
governed by a senate of three hundred nobles; the people consisted of
six hundred thousand citizens; the walls were strong, and as long as
concord prevailed among the several orders of the state, they viewed
with contempt the power of the Parthian: but the madness of faction was
sometimes provoked to implore the dangerous aid of the common enemy,
who was posted almost at the gates of the colony. The Parthian monarchs,
like the Mogul sovereigns of Hindostan, delighted in the pastoral
life of their Scythian ancestors; and the Imperial camp was frequently
pitched in the plain of Ctesiphon, on the eastern bank of the Tigris,
at the distance of only three miles from Seleucia. The innumerable
attendants on luxury and despotism resorted to the court, and the little
village of Ctesiphon insensibly swelled into a great city. Under the
reign of Marcus, the Roman generals penetrated as far as Ctesiphon
and Seleucia. They were received as friends by the Greek colony; they
attacked as enemies the seat of the Parthian kings; yet both cities
experienced the same treatment. The sack and conflagration of Seleucia,
with the massacre of three hundred thousand of the inhabitants,
tarnished the glory of the Roman triumph. Seleucia, already exhausted by
the neighborhood of a too powerful rival, sunk under the fatal blow; but
Ctesiphon, in about thirty-three years, had sufficiently recovered its
strength to maintain an obstinate siege against the emperor Severus.
The city was, however, taken by assault; the king, who defended it in
person, escaped with precipitation; a hundred thousand captives, and a
rich booty, rewarded the fatigues of the Roman soldiers. Notwithstanding
these misfortunes, Ctesiphon succeeded to Babylon and to Seleucia, as
one of the