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Updated: June 22, 2025
Phraates, who had removed the headquarters of his government to Babylonia, felt it necessary to entrust affairs there to an officer, and to take the field in person against this new enemy, which was certainly not less formidable than the Syrians. Besides his native troops, he took with him a number of Greeks, whom he had made prisoners in his war with Antiochus.
To such terms it was, of course, impossible that Phraates should listen; and his ambassadors, therefore, returned without further parley. Soon afterwards the day appointed for the outbreak arrived. Apparently, no suspicion had been excited.
There was a hope at the Pontic court that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by the recent considerable successes which the allies had achieved over Rome to enter into the Pontic-Armenian alliance. To counteract this, Roman envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles, which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid.
The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata; but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little inclined to fight with the freshly-victorious Romans, and least of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates; whom he trusted less than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son intended to betake himself to his grandfather.
But, after all that had previously taken place, this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception; Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans, and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient foreigner fought out their strife.
Under these circumstances Phraates, considering that the time was come when it was necessary for him to submit or to create a diversion by raising troubles in the enemy's territory, released Demetrius from his confinement, and sent him, supported by a body of Parthian troops, to reclaim his kingdom.
The absolute monarch who, for his own fancied security, commences a system of executions, is led on step by step to wholesale atrocities from which he would have shrunk with horror at the outset. Phraates had removed brothers whose superior advantages of birth made them formidable rivals.
He accordingly released Monaeses, apparently supposing the latter was going to bring the Parthian affairs under his control, and sent envoys with him to Phraates.
These nomads, nothing loth, took up arms, and without any great difficulty restored Phraates to the throne from which his people had expelled him.
There is reason to believe that Phraates had no sooner conquered the Mardians than he cast his eyes on an adjacent district, and resolved to add it to his territories. This was the tract lying immediately to the West of the Caspian Gates, which was always reckoned to Media, forming, however, a distinct district, know as Media Rhagiana.
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