ot born in
itself. The Parthian writ had never run there much; nor had the
Median in the days when the Medes were in power; though of that
empire, as of the Parthian, it had been more or less nominally a
dependent province. It was from these mountains that a chieftain
came, in the five-fifties B.C., to over turn Astyages the Mede's
sovereignty, and replace it with his own Achaemenian Persian;
and to take Persianism out of mountain Fars, and spread it over
all West Asia. Back to Fars, when the Achaemenians fell, that
Persianism receded; there to maintain itself unimportantly aloof
through the Seleucid and Arsacid ages; probably never very
seriously menaced by Greekism, even in Seleucid times, because so
remote from the routes of trade and armies. The conquests of the
Yueh Chi put Fars still nearer the circumference of Parthia:
threw the center of that more definitely into Mesopotamia, and
closed the avenues eastward. The change made Fars the more
conscious of herself.

But there were Persians all over the Parthian domain; and had
been ever since they first went down out of their mountains under
Cyhrus to conquer. It was in accordance with what I may call the
Law of Cyclic Backwashes, that the rise of Yueh Chi should have
stirred up Persian feeling in them everywhere. Thus: the
impulse of Han Wuti's westward activities passed as a quickening
into the Yueh Chi; and on from them, not into the Parthians, who
were but an unreality and mirage of empire, but into these
Persians, the true possessors of the land whose turn it was to be
quickened. They began remembering, now, their ancient greatness;
and turning their eyes to their still half-independent ancestral
mountains, whence--dared they hope it?--another Cyrus might appear.

Then came another psychic impulse, from the west: when Trajan's
eastward victories shook the Parthian power again. Then,--you
will remember how the Roman world was shaken at the time
of Marcus Aurelius' accession: how Vologaeses seized the
opportunity to attack; how Verus the co-emperor went against
him, and made a mess of things; how Avidius Casius (who brought
back the plague to Rome) saved the situation. In doing so, he
conferred unwittingly untold benefits on the Persian subjects of
Parthia. He destroyed Seleucia as a punitive measure. Now
Seleucia had been the cultureal capital of the Parthian empire;
and it was a Greek city. Its culture was Greek; and Greek
culture had ever be