Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/256

 CHAPTER VIII. OF THE STATE OF PERSIA AFTER THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY BY ARTAXERXES. Thebarba- WHENEVER Tacitus indulges himself in those eaTand^tf beautiful episodes, in which he relates some domestic the north, transaction of the Germans or of the Parthians, his principal ohject is to relieve the attention of the reader from a uniform scene of vice and misery. From the reign of Augustus to the time of Alexander Severus, the enemies of Rome were in her bosom ; the tyrants, and the soldiers ; and her prosperity had a very dis- tant and feeble interest in the revolutions that might happen beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates. But when the military order had levelled, in wild anarchy, the power of the prince, the laws of the senate, and even the discipHne of the camp; the barbarians of the north and of the east, who had long hovered on the frontier, boldly attacked the provinces of a dechning monarchy. Their vexatious inroads were changed into formidable irruptions; and, after a long vicissitude of mutual calamities, many tribes of the victorious invaders established themselves in the provinces of the Roman empire. To obtain a clearer knowledge of these great events, we shall endeavour to form a previous idea of the character, forces, and designs of those nations who avenged the cause of Hannibal and Mithridates. Revolutions In the more early ages of the world, whilst the forests that covered Europe afforded a retreat to a few wandering savages, the inhabitants of Asia were al- ready collected into populous cities, and reduced under extensive empires, the seat of the arts, of luxury, and of despotism. The Assyrians reigned over the east % » An ancient chronologist, quoted by Velleius Paterculus, (1. i. c. 6.) ob- serves, that the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Macedonians, reigned over Asia one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five years, from the accession of Ninus to the defeat of Antiochus by the Romans. As the