e a threat than
a violation of etiquette. Since Rome had entered on the heritage
of the Seleucids, it seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert
at a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran and Turan
were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet no Parthian empire
but merely a Parthian satrapy. The court of Ctesiphon would thus
have had reason enough for going to war with Rome; it seemed
the prelude to its doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia
on account of the question of the frontier. But Phraates had not
the courage to come to an open rupture with the Romans at a time
when the dreaded general with his strong army was on the borders
of the Parthian empire. When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle
amicably the dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded
to the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in their
award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene and northern
Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards his daughter with her son and her
husband adorned the triumph of the Roman general. Even the Parthians
trembled before the superior power of Rome; and, if they had not,
like the inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the Roman
arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had not ventured
to stand the conflict.

Organization of the Provinces

There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating
the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and of removing
as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years' desolating war.
The work of organization begun in Asia Minor by Lucullus
and the commission associated with him, and in Crete by Metellus,
received its final conclusion from Pompeius. The former province
of Asia, which embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was converted
from a frontier province into a central one. The newly-erected
provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus, which was formed
out of the whole former kingdom of Nicomedes and the western half
of the former Pontic state as far as and beyond the Halys;
that of Cilicia, which indeed was older, but was now for the first
time enlarged and organized in a manner befitting its name,
and comprehended also Pamphylia and Isauria; that of Syria,
and that of Crete. Much was no doubt wanting to render that mass
of countries capable of being regarded as the territorial possession
of Rome in the modern sense of the term. The form and order
of the government remained substantially as th