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Part turned northwards into Commagene, and there took refuge with the king, Antiochus, who refused to surrender them to the demand of Ventidius, and no doubt allowed them to return to their own country. Thus ended the great Parthian invasion of Syria, and with it ended the prospect of any further spread of the Arsacid dominion towards the west.
Vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid, and intrigued against his father there.
But the personal character of Artaxerxes was, unfortunately, bad; the Armenian nobles were, perhaps, capricious; and after a trial of six years it was resolved that the rule of the Arsacid monarch could not be endured, and that Varahran should be requested to make Armenia a province of his empire, and to place it under the government of a Persian satrap.
The nobles then elected an Arsacid, named Orodes, whose residence at the time and relationship to the former monarchs are uncertain.
At any rate he was an Arsacid; and he felt keenly the diminution of his own influence involved in the transfer to an alien race of the sovereignty wielded for five centuries by the descendants of the first Arsaces. He had set his forces in motion, while the contest between Artabanus and Artaxerxes was still in progress, in the hope of affording substantial help to his relative.
The coinage of Artaxerxes, and of the other Sassanian monarchs, is based, in part upon Roman, in part upon Parthian, models. The Roman aureus furnishes the type which is reproduced in the Sassanian gold coins, while the silver coins follow the standard long established in Western Asia, first under the Seleucid, and then under the Arsacid princes.
It appears that something of a divine character was regarded as attaching to the race. In the civil contentions, which occur so frequently throughout the later history, combatants abstained from lifting their hands knowingly against an Arsacid, to kill or wound one being looked upon as sacrilege. Of the Parthian Court and its customs we have no account that is either complete or trustworthy.
In Armenia an Arsacid that is, Parthian house has survived and holds sovereignty: and Armenia is a sort of weak Belgium between Persia and Rome; inclining to the latter, of course, because ruled by Arsacids, who are the natural dynastic enemies of the Sassanids of Persia.
Still a certain number, which have about them indications of greater antiquity than the rest, or which belong to sites famous in Parthian rather than in Persian times, may reasonably be regarded as in all probability structures of the Arsacid period; and from these we may gather at least the leading characteristics of the Parthian architecture, its aims and resources, its style and general effect, while from other remains scanty indeed, and often mutilated we may obtain a tolerable notion of their sculpture and other ornamental art.
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