United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The force which Orodes committed to his brave and skillful lieutenant consisted entirely of horse. This was not the ordinary character of a Parthian army, which often comprised four or five times as many infantry as cavalry. It was, perhaps, rather fortunate accident than profound calculation that caused the sole employment against the Romans of this arm.
In the absence of any personal ground of preference, Orodes who seems to have regarded himself as possessing a right to nominate the son who should succeed him thought the claims of primogeniture deserved to be considered, and selected as his successor, Phraa-tes, the eldest of the thirty.
Parthian affairs with no outside interference underwent a severe revolution from the following cause. Orodes their king succumbed to age and grief for Pacorus combined, and while still alive delivered the government to Phraates, the eldest of his remaining children. He in his discharge of it proved himself the most impious of men.
King Orodes was just celebrating the marriage of his son Pacorus with the sister of his new ally, Artavasdes the king of Armenia, when the announcement of the victory of his vizier arrived, and along with it, according to Oriental usage, the cut-off head of Crassus.
The nobles then elected an Arsacid, named Orodes, whose residence at the time and relationship to the former monarchs are uncertain.
A thousand horseman clad in mail, and a still greater number of light-armed, formed his bodyguard. At the coronation of a Parthian monarch, it was his hereditary right to place the diadem on the brow of the new sovereign. When Orodes was driven into banishment it was he who brought him back to Parthia in triumph.
More than a year elapsed between the assignment to Crassus of Syria as his province, and his first overt act of hostility against Orodes. It cannot be doubted that this breathing-time was well spent by the Parthian monarch.
The credit which Mithridates had acquired by his conduct of the Armenian war he lost soon afterwards by the severity of his home administration. There is reason to believe that he drove his brother, Orodes, into banishment.
Occupation of Antioch and Jerusalem. Parthians driven out of Syria by Ventidius. Death of Pacorus. Death of Orodes. The civil troubles that had seemed to threaten Parthia from the ambition of the youthful Pacorus passed away without any explosion.
Orodes sent his son, Pacorus, the young bridegroom, to win his spurs in Syria, at the head of a considerable force, and supported by the experience and authority of an officer of ripe age, named Osaces.
Word Of The Day