gue, L. Verus. Marcus
Aurelius had no other brother.

[47] Manilius, the confidential secretary of Avidius Cassius, was
discovered after he had lain concealed several years. The Emperor nobly
relieved the public anxiety by refusing to see him, and burning his
papers without opening them.

[48] The virtuous and even the wise princes forbade the senators and
knights to embrace this scandalous profession, under pain of infamy, or,
what was more dreaded by those profligate wretches, of exile. The
tyrants allured them to dishonor by threats and rewards. Nero once
produced in the arena forty senators and sixty knights.

EVENTFUL REIGN OF SAPOR I, KING OF PERSIA

A.D. 240

GEORGE RAWLINSON

Under Mithradates I the Parthian empire rose to great power, and
that monarch, about B.C. 163, began to make conquests toward the
west. By B.C. 150 he had added to his possessions Media Magna,
Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria proper, and Persia. The Persians appear
to have yielded without resistance to his rule, and he governed
them with a fair degree of moderation, allowing them, as was the
Parthian policy toward subject peoples, a large measure of
self-government under their hereditary native kings, the "King of
Kings" exacting little from them besides regular tribute and the
required number of men for his armies.

The Parthian empire was in turn overthrown by Ardashir or
Artaxerxes, who about B.C. 226 defeated and killed Ardavan, the
last Parthian king, and became the chief founder of the Sassanian
dynasty, which ruled Persia until the Mahometan invasion.

The victories of Artaxerxes had fatal results for the Roman power
in the East, for the new head of the Persian monarchy was no sooner
established on his throne than he sent an embassy to the Roman
Emperor, Alexander Severus, to demand from him the surrender of all
Asia and the withdrawal of Roman arms and authority to the western
shores of the AEgean Sea and of the Propontis, as the Sea of Marmora
was anciently called. From this began a series of wars which
continued at intervals for four centuries, and which ended only
with the Mahometan conquests that overwhelmed Roman and Persian
power alike. The first campaigns of the Romans against Artaxerxes
were indecisive, but the renewal of the war in the reign of his
son, Sapor I, was followed by disaste