hose of Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Pergamus--
incessantly interfered in the affairs of Syria and fostered disputes
as to the succession, so that civil war and the division of the
sovereignty de facto among two or more pretenders became almost
standing calamities of the country. The Roman protecting power,
if it did not instigate these neighbours, was an inactive spectator.
In addition to all this the new Parthian empire from the eastward
pressed hard on the aliens not merely with its material power, but
with the whole superiority of its national language and religion
and of its national military and political organization. This is
not yet the place for a description of this regenerated empire of
Cyrus; it is sufficient to mention generally the fact that powerful
as was the influence of Hellenism in its composition, the Parthian
state, as compared with that of the Seleucids, was based on a national
and religious reaction, and that the old Iranian language, the order
of the Magi and the worship of Mithra, the Oriental feudatory system,
the cavalry of the desert and the bow and arrow, first emerged there
in renewed and superior opposition to Hellenism. The position of the
imperial kings in presence of all this was really pitiable. The family
of the Seleucids was by no means so enervated as that of the Lagids
for instance, and individuals among them were not deficient in
valour and ability; they reduced, it may be, one or another of those
numerous rebels, pretenders, and intermeddlers to due bounds; but
their dominion was so lacking in a firm foundation, that they were
unable to impose even a temporary check on anarchy. The result was
inevitable. The eastern provinces of Syria under their unprotected
or even insurgent satraps fell into subjection to the Parthians;
Persia, Babylonia, Media were for ever severed from the Syrian
empire; the new state of the Parthians reached on both sides of the
great desert from the Oxus and the Hindoo Coosh to the Tigris and
the Arabian desert--once more, like the Persian empire and all the
older great states of Asia, a pure continental monarchy, and once
more, just like the Persian empire, engaged in perpetual feud on
the one side with the peoples of Turan, on the other with the
Occidentals. The Syrian state embraced at the most Mesopotamia
in addition to the region of the coast, and disappeared, more in
consequence of its internal disorganization than of its diminished
size, for ev