Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/271

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 247 the country, and a Roman garrison was fixed in the CHAP, strong town of Nisibis. During the troubles that fol- ^^^^" lowed the death of Commodus, the princes of Osrhoene attempted to shake off the yoke : but the stern policy of Severus confirmed their dependence y, and the per- fidy of Caracalla completed the easy conquest. Abga- A.D.216. rus, the last king of Edessa, was sent in chains to Rome, his dominions reduced into a province, and his capital dignified with the rank of colony ; and thus the Romans, about ten years before the fall of the Parthian monarchy, obtained a firm and permanent establish- ment beyond the Euphrates ^ Prudence as well as glory might have justified a war Artaxerxes on the side of Artaxerxes, had his views been confined ^^^^^}^ ^^^ ' ... provinces to the defence or the acquisition of a useful frontier, of Asia, and But the ambitious Persian openly avowed a far more ^Tragabst extensive design of conquest; and he thought himself ^heRo- able to support his lofty pretensions by the arms of a. D. 230. reason as well as by those of power. Cyrus, he al- leged, had first subdued, and his successors had for a long time possessed, the whole extent of Asia, as far as the Propontis and the Egaean sea ; the provinces of Caria and Ionia, under their empire, had been go- verned by Persian satraps, and all Egypt, to the con- fines of Ethiopia, had acknowledged their sovereignty^ Their rights had been suspended, but not destroyed, by a long usurpation ; and as soon as he received the Persian diadem, which birth and successful valour had placed upon his head, the first great duty of his station called upon him to restore the ancient limits and splen- dour of the monarchy. The great king, therefore, (such was the haughty style of his embassies to the emperor Alexander,) commanded the Romans instantly y Dion, 1. Ixxv. p. 1248, 1249, 1250. M. Bayer has neglected to use this most important passage. the last Abgarus, had lasted three hundred and fifty-three years. See the learned work of M. Bayer, Historia Osrhoena et Edessena. a Xenophon, in the preface to the Cyropaedia, gives a clear and magnifi- cent idea of the extent of the empire of Cyrus. Herodotus (1. iii. c. 79, etc.) enters into a curious and particular description of the twenty great satrapies into which the Persian empire was divided by Darius Hystaspes.
 * This kingdom, from Osrhoes, who gave a new name to the country, to