and not seek to revolutionize Asia; it was unsafe,
on the strength of mere unsubstantial hopes, to commence a great
war. Every one should be content with keeping what belonged to him.
Artaxerxes would find war with Rome a very different thing from the
contests in which he had been hitherto engaged with barbarous races like
his own. He should call to mind the successes of Augustus and Trajan,
and the trophies carried off from the East by Lucius Verus and by
Septimius Severus."

The counsels of moderation have rarely much effect in restraining
princely ambition. Artaxerxes replied by an embassy in which he
ostentatiously displayed the wealth and magnificence of Persia; but,
so far from making any deduction from his original demands, he now
distinctly formulated them, and required their immediate acceptance.
"Artaxerxes, the Great King," he said, "ordered the Romans and their
ruler to take their departure forthwith from Syria and the rest of
Western Asia, and to allow the Persians to exercise dominion over Ionia
and Caria and the other countries within the AEgean and the Euxine,
since these countries belonged to Persia by right of inheritance." A
Roman emperor had seldom received such a message; and Alexander,
mild and gentle as he was by nature, seems to have had his equanimity
disturbed by the insolence of the mandate. Disregarding the sacredness
of the ambassadorial character, he stripped the envoys of their
splendid apparel, treated them as prisoners of war, and settled them as
agricultural colonists in Phrygia. If we may believe Herodian, he even
took credit to himself for sparing their lives, which he regarded as
justly forfeit to the offended majesty of the empire.

Meantime the angry prince, convinced at last against his will that
negotiations with such an enemy were futile, collected an army and began
his march towards the East. Taking troops from the various provinces
through which he passed, he conducted to Antioch, in the autumn of A.D.
231, a considerable force, which was there augmented by the legions of
the East and by troops drawn from Egypt and other quarters. Artaxerxes,
on his part, was not idle. According to Soverus himself, the army
brought into the field by the Persian monarch consisted of one hundred
and twenty thousand mailed horsemen, of eighteen hundred scythed
chariots, and of seven hundred trained elephants, bearing on their backs
towers filled with archers; and though this pretended host has