Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/20

 and designed to advance on India. Although not uniformly victorious, he transformed the kingdom of Armenia into a Roman province, and almost reduced Parthia to the condition of a vassal state. Death, or the more pressing claims of home affairs, imposed a term to his activity in the field, and his great schemes of conquest were never again entertained; but several later emperors, notably Severus, Carus, and Galerius, often demonstrated the superiority of the Roman forces under competent generalship over their Oriental antagonists. But after the Graeco-Roman supremacy had declined to the stagnant mediocrity of Byzantinism this ascendancy could no longer be maintained; and as often as East and West came into collision the honours of war almost invariably rested with the Asiatic power.

For more than five centuries after the overthrow of Darius by the armies of Macedon the remnants of the Persian race languished in the Province of Persis, a small state lying east of the Persian Gulf, to which was allowed a semi-independence by the supreme government. Here was the original home of Cyrus, and here he matured his plans