ian monarchs is not of a kind that would have been sensibly felt
by the conquered nations, for it was exercised upon none who were not
Parthians. If we endeavor to form a distinct notion of the grievances
under which the Persians suffered, they seem to have amounted to no more
than this: 1. That high offices, whether military or civil, were for the
most part confined to those of Parthian blood, and not thrown open to
Parthian subjects generally; 2. That the priests of the Persian religion
were not held in any special honor, but placed merely on a par with the
religious ministers of the other subject races; 3. That no advantage in
any respect was allowed to the Persians over the rest of the conquered
peoples, notwithstanding that they had for so many years exercised
supremacy over Western Asia, and given to the list of Asiatic worthies
such names as those of Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis. It must, however,
be confessed that the account which has come down to us of the times
in question is exceedingly meagre and incomplete; that we cannot say
whether the Persians had not also other grounds of complaint besides
those that are known to us; and, more especially, that we have no means
of determining what the actual pressure of the grievances complained
of was, or whether it did not reach to that degree of severity which
moderns mostly hold to justify disaffection and rebellion. On the whole,
perhaps, our conclusion must be, that the best justification of the
outbreak is to be found in its success. The Parthians had no right to
their position but such as arose out of the law of the stronger--

The ancient rule, the good old plan,
That those shall take who have the power,
And those shall keep who can--

when the time came that they had lost this pre-eminence, superiority
in strength having passed from them to a nation hitherto counted among
their subjects, it was natural and right that the seat of authority
should shift with the shift in the balance of power, and that the
leadership of the Persians should be once more recognized.

If the motives which actuated the nation of the Persians in rising
against their masters are thus obscure and difficult to be estimated,
still less can we form any decided judgment upon those which caused
their leader, Artaxerxes, to attempt his perilous enterprise. Could we
trust implicitly the statement of Agathias, that Artaxerxes was himself
a Magus, initiated in the deepest mysterie