rnally and
internally. It was anything rather than a world empire. The
countries west of the Euphrates never owned its dominion, and
even of Iran itself not one half was subject to the Arsacids.
There were indeed vassal states on every hand, but the actual
possessions of the kings--the provinces governed by their
satraps--consisted of a rather narrow strip of land stretching
from the Euphrates and north Babylonia through southern Media and
Parthia as far as north-western Afghanistan... Round these
provinces lay a ring of minor states which as a rule were
dependent on the Arsacids. They might, however, partially
transfer their allegiance on the rise of a new power (e.g.
Tigranes in Armenia) or a Roman invasion. Thus it is not without
justice that the Arsacid period is described, in the later
Persian and Arabian tadition, as the period of the 'kings of the
part-kingdoms'--among which the Ashkanians (i.e. the Arsacids)
had won the first place....

"It may appear surprising that the Aracids made no attempt to
incorporate the minor states in the empire and create a great and
united dominion, such as existed under the Achaemenids and was
afterwards restored by the Sassanians. This fact is the clearest
symptom of the weakness of their empire and of the small power
wielded by their King of kings. In contrast alike with its
predecessors and successors the Arsacid dominion was peculiarly a
chance formation--a state which had come into existence through
fortuitous external circumstances, and had no firm foundation
within itself, or any intrinsic _raison d'etre._"

A Turanian domination over Iran, it had leave to exist only
because the time was pralaya. When a man dies, life does not
depart from his body; but only that which sways and organizes
life; then life, ungoverned and disorganized, takes hold and
riots. So with the seats of civilization. One generally finds
that at such times some foreign power receives, as we are getting
to say, a mandate (but from the Law) to run these dead or
sleeping or disorganized regions,--until such time as they come
to life again, and proceed to evict the mandataries.--As well to
remember this, now that we are proposing, upon a brain-mind
scheme, to arrange for ourselves what formerly the Law saw to:--
the nations that are now to be great and proud manditaries,
shall sometime themselves be mandataried; and those that are
mandataried now, shall then arrange their fate for them; there