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Rhadamistus, though he had more than once had to fly the country, was found in possession as king, and for some time he opposed the progress of the Parthian arms; but, before the year was out, despairing of success, he again fled, and left Volagases to arrange the affairs of Armenia at his pleasure.
The hero is Artabanes, a Median prince, as usual "richly attired, and proportionately blessed with all the gifts of nature and education." At the Parthian court he becomes enamored of the beautiful Parthenissa, and in her honor performs many distinguished deeds of arms.
It was with special reference to the system thus established that the Parthian monarchs took the title of "King of Kings", so frequent upon their coins, which seems sometimes to have been exchanged for what was regarded as an equivalent phrase, "Satrap of Satraps". This title seems to appear first on the coins of Mithridates I.
Meantime, a great revolution and change of dynasty had been effected in Parthia; the line of the Arsacidae was terminated; the Parthian empire was at an end; and the sceptre of Persia was restored under the new race of the Sassanides.
To have insisted on the restoration of Vonones would have been grievously to offend the Armenians who had expelled him, and at the same time to provoke the Parthians, who could not have tolerated a pretender in a position of power upon their borders; to have allowed the pretensions of the Parthian monarch, and accepted the candidature of his son, Orodes, would have lowered Rome in the opinion of all the surrounding nations, and been equivalent to an abdication of all influence in the affairs of Western Asia.
Presently the arena was cleared, the sand reraked and the Bestiarii advanced Sarmatians, nourished on mares' milk; Sicambrians, their hair done up in chignons; horsemen from Thessaly, Ethiopian warriors, Parthian archers, huntsmen from the steppes, their different idioms uniting in a single cry "Caesar, we salute you."
The war of Verus produced the actual cession to Rome of a Parthian province, which continued thenceforth for centuries to be an integral portion of the Roman Empire.
The Parthian kings took a pride in whetting and sharpening with their own hands the points of their arrows and javelins. But when Demetrius played the workman, it was like a king, and there was magnificence in his handicraft. The articles he produced bore marks upon the face of them not of ingenuity only, but of a great mind and a lofty purpose.
And when the artful Cleopatra feigned illness on the approach of Octavia, pretending to be dying of love, and wasting her body by fasting and weeping by turns, and perhaps tearing her hair in a seeming paroxysm of grief, for an actress can do even this, Antony was totally disarmed, and gave up his Parthian expedition altogether, which was treason to the State, and returned to Alexandria more submissive than ever.
It is not surprising that the proud Parthian nobles were offended by these proceedings, and determined to rid themselves of a monarch whom they at once hated and despised. Within a few years of his obtaining the throne an insurrection broke out against his authority; and after a brief struggle he was deprived of his crown and put to death.
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