it with an Arsacid partner.

The Persian monarch allowed the Armenians no time to recover from the
blow which he had treacherously dealt them. His armies at once entered
their territory and carried everything before them. Chosroes seems to
have had no son of sufficient age to succeed him, and the defence of the
country fell upon the satraps, or governors of the several provinces.
These chiefs implored the aid of the Roman emperor, and received a
contingent; but neither were their own exertions nor was the valor of
their allies of any avail. Artaxerxes easily defeated the confederate
army, and forced the satraps to take refuge in Roman territory. Armenia
submitted to his arms, and became an integral portion of his empire.
It probably did not greatly trouble him that Artavasdes, one of the
satraps, succeeded in carrying off one of the sons of Chosroes, a
boy named Tiridates, whom he conveyed to Rome, and placed under the
protection of the reigning emperor.

Such were the chief military successes of Artaxerxes. The greatest of
our historians, Gibbon, ventures indeed to assign to him, in addition,
"some easy victories over the wild Scythians and the effeminate
Indians." But there is no good authority for this statement; and on the
whole it is unlikely that he came into contact with either nation. His
coins are not found in Afghanistan; and it may be doubted whether he
ever made any eastern expedition. His reign was not long; and it
was sufficiently occupied by the Roman and Armenian wars, and by the
greatest of all his works, the reformation of religion.

The religious aspect of the insurrection which transferred the headship
of Western Asia from the Parthians to the Persians, from Artabanus to
Artaxerxes, has been already noticed; but we have now to trace, so far
as we can, the steps by which the religious revolution was accomplished,
and the faith of Zoroaster, or what was believed to be such, established
as the religion of the State throughout the new empire. Artaxerxes,
himself (if we may believe Agathias) a Magus, was resolved from the
first that, if his efforts to shake off the Parthian yoke succeeded,
he would use his best endeavors to overthrow the Parthian idolatry
and install in its stead the ancestral religion of the Persians.
This religion consisted of a combination of Dualism with a qualified
creature-worship, and a special reverence for the elements, earth,
air, water, and fire. Zoroastrianism, in the earlie