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Thus Artaxerxes obtained his object without having to pay the price that he had agreed upon; his dreaded rival was removed; Armenia lay at his mercy; and he had not to weaken his power at home by sharing it with an Arsacid partner. The Persian monarch allowed the Armenians no time to recover from the blow which he had treacherously dealt them.
Still this division of the empire must naturally have tended to weaken it; and the position of Volagases has to be taken into account in estimating the difficulties under which the last monarch of the Arsacid series found himself placed difficulties to which, after a struggle, he was at last forced to succumb.
The Arsacid race, with which the idea of the empire was bound up, instead of clinging together with that close "union" which is "strength," allowed itself to be torn to pieces by dissensions, to waste its force in quarrels, and to be made a handle of by every foreign invader, or domestic rebel, who chose to use its name in order to cloak his own selfish projects.
Altogether he has more character than most Oriental monarchs; and the monotony of Arsacid biography is agreeably interrupted by the idiosyncrasy which his words and conduct indicate. Accession of Artabanus II. Position of Parthia. Growing pressure upon her, and general advance towards the south, of the Saka or Scyths. Causes and extent of the movement. Character and principal tribes of the Saka.
The larger portion, which consisted of the regions lying towards the east, passed under the suzerainty of Persia, and was confided by Sapor III., who had succeeded Artaxerxes II., to an Arsacid, named Chosroes, a Christian, who was given the title of king, and received in marriage at the same time one of Sapor's sisters.
Again, the Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon and were worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private member of the Arsacid family in a brawl. The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, sacrifices were offered to them, and their worship was celebrated in special temples and by special priests.
Some military expeditions which he undertook, moreover, failed of success, and the crime of defeat caused the cup of his offences to brim over. "They were not ignorant," they said, "of the treaty which bound the Romans to Parthia, nor did they ask Claudius to infringe it." Their desire was not to throw off the authority of the Arsacidse, but only to exchange one Arsacid for another.
Artabanus, they said, among his other cruelties had put to death almost all the adult males of the Arsacid family; a successful revolution could not be hoped for without an Arsacid leader; if Tiberius, however, would deliver to them the prince for whom they asked, this difficulty would be removed, and there was then every reason to expect a happy issue to the rebellion.
Meanwhile feuds raged between the different branches of the Arsacid family; civil wars were frequent; two or three monarchs at a time claimed the throne, or actually ruled in different portions of the Empire.
In contrast alike with its predecessors and successors the Arsacid dominion was peculiarly a chance formation a state which had come into existence through fortuitous external circumstances, and had no firm foundation within itself, or any intrinsic raison d'etre." A Turanian domination over Iran, it had leave to exist only because the time was pralaya.
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