horities.--M.]

[Footnote 133a: According to M. St. Martin, Sapor, though supported by
the two apostate Armenian princes, Meroujan the Ardzronnian and Vahan
the Mamigonian, was gallantly resisted by Arsaces, and his brave though
impious wife Pharandsem. His troops were defeated by Vasag, the high
constable of the kingdom. (See M. St. Martin.) But after four years'
courageous defence of his kingdom, Arsaces was abandoned by his nobles,
and obliged to accept the perfidious hospitality of Sapor. He was
blinded and imprisoned in the "Castle of Oblivion;" his brave general
Vasag was flayed alive; his skin stuffed and placed near the king in
his lonely prison. It was not till many years after (A.D. 371) that
he stabbed himself, according to the romantic story, (St. M. iii. 387,
389,) in a paroxysm of excitement at his restoration to royal honors.
St. Martin, Additions to Le Beau, iii. 283, 296.--M.]

[Footnote 134: Perhaps Artagera, or Ardis; under whose walls Caius,
the grandson of Augustus, was wounded. This fortress was situate above
Amida, near one of the sources of the Tigris. See D'Anville, Geographie
Ancienue, tom. ii. p. 106. * Note: St. Martin agrees with Gibbon, that
it was the same fortress with Ardis Note, p. 373.--M.]

[Footnote 134a: Artaxata, Vagharschabad, or Edchmiadzin, Erovantaschad,
and many other cities, in all of which there was a considerable Jewish
population were taken and destroyed.--M.]

[Footnote 134b: Pharandsem, not Olympias, refusing the orders of her
captive husband to surrender herself to Sapor, threw herself into
Artogerassa St. Martin, iii. 293, 302. She defended herself for fourteen
months, till famine and disease had left few survivors out of 11,000
soldiers and 6000 women who had taken refuge in the fortress. She then
threw open the gates with her own hand. M. St. Martin adds, what even
the horrors of Oriental warfare will scarcely permit us to credit, that
she was exposed by Sapor on a public scaffold to the brutal lusts of his
soldiery, and afterwards empaled, iii. 373, &c.--M.]

[Footnote 135: Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 701) proves,
from chronology, that Olympias must have been the mother of Para. Note
*: An error according to St. M. 273.--M.]

[Footnote 135a: According to Themistius, quoted by St. Martin, he once
advanced to the Tigris, iii. 436.--M.]

[Footnote 136: Ammianus (xxvii. 12, xix. 1. xxx. 1, 2) has described the
events, without the dates, of the Pers