Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 14!
step towards the disruption of the long sway of the
Arsacidae.
For the first years of his reign Trajan was suf-
ficiently occupied by the nations of the West ; but,
in A.D. 114, having conquered Dacia, he resolved to
reassert the dominion of Rome in Asia, much weak-
ened as this had been during the reigns of his un-
warlike predecessors. The times too had greatly
changed since the conquests of Lucullus and Antony,
and new elements of confusion had arisen, tending
to disintegrate still further the already partially col-
lapsing rule of the Parthians. Christianity
was al-
ready acting " as a dissolvent on the previously
existing forms of society," and Judaism, " embittered
by persecution, had from a nationality become a
conspiracy."
To avert the meditated attack of Trajan, the ambassadors
of the ruler of Armenia, Chosroes, met him
at Athens, and tried by rich gifts to come to any ar-
had resolved
rangement short of invasion ; but Trajan
on a campaign, in which he hoped to emulate, if
not surpass, the deeds of Alexander. His chance,
however, of any such distinction was small, as the
forces of the Eastern princes were no longer what
they had been, when they crushed Crassus and
humbled Antony. No Orodes or Phraates III held
the sceptre of the East ; hence, when Trajan had
passed Samosata, he was not stayed on his onward
course, though Parthamasiris, the Parthian ruler, in
the most abject manner, divesting his brow of his
diadem, laid it at the feet of the emperor. It was
evidently the opinion of Trajan that such submission