arts,
military virtue, and the love of freedom. The independent republic was
governed by a senate of three hundred nobles; the people consisted of
six hundred thousand citizens; the walls were strong, and as long as
concord prevailed among the several orders of the state, they viewed
with contempt the power of the Parthian: but the madness of faction was
sometimes provoked to implore the dangerous aid of the common enemy, who
was posted almost at the gates of the colony. [39] The Parthian monarchs,
like the Mogul sovereigns of Hindostan, delighted in the pastoral
life of their Scythian ancestors; and the Imperial camp was frequently
pitched in the plain of Ctesiphon, on the eastern bank of the Tigris,
at the distance of only three miles from Seleucia. [40] The innumerable
attendants on luxury and despotism resorted to the court, and the little
village of Ctesiphon insensibly swelled into a great city. [41] Under the
reign of Marcus, the Roman generals penetrated as far as Ctesiphon
and Seleucia. They were received as friends by the Greek colony; they
attacked as enemies the seat of the Parthian kings; yet both cities
experienced the same treatment. The sack and conflagration of Seleucia,
with the massacre of three hundred thousand of the inhabitants,
tarnished the glory of the Roman triumph. [42] Seleucia, already
exhausted by the neighborhood of a too powerful rival, sunk under the
fatal blow; but Ctesiphon, in about thirty-three years, had sufficiently
recovered its strength to maintain an obstinate siege against the
emperor Severus. The city was, however, taken by assault; the king, who
defended it in person, escaped with precipitation; a hundred thousand
captives, and a rich booty, rewarded the fatigues of the Roman soldiers.
[43] Notwithstanding these misfortunes, Ctesiphon succeeded to Babylon
and to Seleucia, as one of the great capitals of the East. In summer,
the monarch of Persia enjoyed at Ecbatana the cool breezes of the
mountains of Media; but the mildness of the climate engaged him to
prefer Ctesiphon for his winter residence.

[Footnote 38: For the precise situation of Babylon, Seleucia, Ctesiphon,
Moiain, and Bagdad, cities often confounded with each other, see an
excellent Geographical Tract of M. d'Anville, in Mem. de l'Academie,
tom. xxx.]

[Footnote 39: Tacit. Annal. xi. 42. Plin. Hist. Nat. vi.
26.]

[Footnote 40: This may be inferred from Strabo, l. xvi. p. 743.]

[Footnote 41: That most curio