ative system, which should compel
the crumbling atoms of the Oriental world once more into cohesion.

To this call Trajan responded. His vast ambition had been whetted,
rather than satiated, by the conquest of a barbarous nation, and a
single, not very valuable, province. In the East he might hope to add to
the Roman State half a dozen countries of world-wide repute, the seats
of ancient empires, the old homes of Asiatic civilization, countries
associated with the immortal names of Sennacherib and Sardanapalus,
Cyrus, Darius, and Alexander. The career of Alexander had an attraction
for him, which he was fain to confess; and he pleased himself by
imitating, though he could not hope at his age to equal it. His Eastern
expedition was conceived very much in the same spirit as that of
Crassus; but he possessed the military ability in which the Triumvir
was deficient, and the enemy whom he had to attack was grown less
formidable.

Trajan commenced his Eastern expedition in A.D. 114, seven years after
the close of the Dacian War. He was met at Athens in the autumn of
that year by envoys from Chosroes, who brought him presents, and made
representations which, it was hoped, would induce him to consent to
peace. Chosroes stated that he had deposed his nephew, Exedares, the
Armenian prince whose conduct had been offensive to Rome; and proposed
that, as the Armenian throne was thereby vacant, it should be filled by
the appointment of Parthamasiris, Exedares's brother. This prince would
be willing, he said, to receive investiture at the hands of Rome; and he
requested that Trajan would transmit to him the symbol of sovereignty.
The accommodation suggested would have re-established the relations of
the two countries towards Armenia on the basis on which they had been
placed by the agreement between Volagases and Nero. It would have
saved the credit of Rome, while it secured to Parthia the substantial
advantage of retaining Armenia under her authority and protection.
Trajan might well have consented to it, had his sole object been to
reclaim the rights or to vindicate the honor of his country. But he had
distinctly made up his mind to aim, not at the re-establishment of any
former condition of things, but at the placing of matters in the East on
an entirely new footing. He therefore gave the ambassadors of Chosroes
a cold reception, declined the gifts offered him, and replied to the
proposals of accommodation that the friendship of k