Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 147
but, by crossing the Tigris, secured also the fertile
tract of Adiabene between the northern Zab and the
this advance he established the Roman
Adhem. By
power within less than seventy
miles of the Parthian
capital, and provided means for an easy descent,
when necessary, upon the still greater cities of
Babylon and Seleucia. During the whole of this
prolonged conflict in Mesopotamia we do not hear
of any Parthian resistance, and must therefore suppose
either that Vologases IV had not the power to
interfere, or that his people no longer possessed the
enthusiastic bravery of their more youthful empire.
On his death, about A.D. 209, and for the next seven-
teen or eighteen years preceding the revolt of the
Persians,
it is clear from the coins that his two son?,
Artabanus and Vologases were reigning, though it is
impossible to say with certainty over what parts
of the
country. As the Roman writers, after the year A.D. 215,
speak of Artabanus only, and give this name to the
last Parthian it king, may be presumed that in him was
vested the chief power, and that he, at all events,
Was the personage whom the Western nations re-
cognised as the chief ruler. There is little of interest
to notice in these years, except a strange and almost
ludicrous proposal on the part of Caracalla, to wed
a Parthian princess, with the view of dividing the
conquest
Parthia.
of the whole world between Rome and
" The Roman infantry," said he, " is the
best in the world, and, in steady, hand-to-hand
fighting, must be allowed to be unrivalled. The
Parthians surpass all nations in the number of their
cavalry and in the excellence of their archers."