weak character, controlled
in a great measure by his mother, Julia Mamaea, and as yet quite
undistinguished as a general. The Roman forces in the East were known
to be licentious and insubordinate; corrupted by the softness of the
climate and the seductions of Oriental manners, they disregarded the
restraints of discipline, indulged in the vices which at once enervate
the frame and lower the moral character, had scant respect for their
leaders, and seemed a defence which it would be easy to overpower
and sweep away. Artaxerxes, like other founders of great empires,
entertained lofty views of his abilities and his destinies; the monarchy
which he had built up in the space of some five or six years was far
from contenting him; well read in the ancient history of his nation, he
sighed after the glorious days of Cyrus the Great and Darius Hystaspis,
when all Western Asia from the shores of the AEgean to the Indian
desert, and portions of Europe and Africa, had acknowledged the sway
of the Persian king. The territories which these princes had ruled he
regarded as his own by right of inheritance; and we are told that he
not only entertained, but boldly published, these views. His emissaries
everywhere declared that their master claimed the dominion of Asia as
far as the AEgean Sea and the Propontis. It was his duty and his
mission to recover to the Persians their pristine empire. What Cyrus
had conquered, what the Persian kings had held from that time until the
defeat of Codomannus by Alexander, was his by indefeasible right, and he
was about to take possession of it.

Nor were these brave words a mere _brutum fulmen_. Simultaneously with
the putting forth of such lofty pretensions the troops of the Persian
monarch crossed the Tigris and spread themselves over the entire Roman
province of Mesopotamia, which was rapidly overrun and offered scarcely
any resistance. Severus learned at the same moment the demands of his
adversary and the loss of one of his best provinces. He heard that his
strong posts upon the Euphrates, the old defences of the empire in this
quarter, were being attacked, and that Syria daily expected the passage
of the invaders. The crisis was one requiring prompt action; but the
weak and inexperienced youth was content to meet it with diplomacy, and,
instead of sending an army to the East, despatched ambassadors to his
rival with a letter. "Artaxerxes," he said, "ought to confine himself to
his own territories