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Updated: June 26, 2025
The best general in the Persian army was a Rhodian named Memnon, who wanted to starve out Alexander by burning and destroying all before him; but the satrap Arsaces would not consent to this, and chose to collect his forces, and give battle to the Greeks on the banks of the river Granicus, a stream rising in Mount Ida and falling into the Euxine.
So far as we hear, he took no steps to re-establish his authority; and Arsaces, like Diodotus, was left undisturbed to consolidate his power at his leisure. Arsaces lived, however, but a short time after obtaining the crown. His authority was disputed within the limits of Parthia itself; and he had to engage in hostilities with a portion of his own subjects.
On the 9th of July it was produced in French at the Académie, Paris, as "Semiramis," with Carlotta Marchisio as Semiramide, Barbara, her sister, as Arsaces, and M. Obin as Assur. At Rossini's request M. Carafa arranged the recitatives and wrote the ballet music.
One of the Queen's warriors, Arsaces, supposed to be of Scythian origin, but in reality her own son, returns from a foreign expedition and is loaded with honors for the victory he has won. Semiramis, ignorant of his parentage, has a secret passion for him, he in the mean time being devoted to Azema, one of the princesses royal.
As for Arsaces, since Pacurius could by no means bring himself to kill a man of the royal blood, he confined him in the Prison of Oblivion. After a time, when the Persians were marching against a barbarian nation, they were accompanied by an Armenian who had been especially intimate with Arsaces and had followed him when he went into the Persian land.
Thus Artabanus found himself in greater peril than ever, and if he had really indulged in the silly effusion ascribed to him was rightly punished. Having by corruption succeeded in bringing about the murder of Arsaces by his attendants, he marched into Armenia, and became master of the capital without meeting any resistance.
After the death of Arsaces, the Romans suppressed the regal government, and imposed on their allies the condition of subjects.
It has been argued, indeed, that the reigns of the known monarchs of this period would not be unduly long if we regarded them as strictly consecutive, and placed no blank between the death of Mithridates II. and the accession of the next Arsaces whose name has come down to us. Sanatrodoeces, it has been said, may have been, and may, therefore, well be regarded as, the successor of Mithridates.
We have seen that the emperor, when he set out upon his expedition, regarded Armenia as an ally, and in forming his plans placed considerable dependence on the contingent which he expected from Arsaces, the Armenian monarch. It was his intention to attack Ctesiphon with two separate armies, acting upon two converging lines.
The Persians broke and dispersed so entirely that no army was left in Asia Minor, and the satrap Arsaces killed himself in despair. Alexander forbade his troops to plunder the country, telling them that it was his own, and that the people were as much his subjects as they were; and all the difference he made was changing the Persian governors for Greek ones.
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