ris and
the Arabian desert--once more, like the Persian empire and all the
older great states of Asia, a pure continental monarchy, and once
more, just like the Persian empire, engaged in perpetual feud on
the one side with the peoples of Turan, on the other with the
Occidentals. The Syrian state embraced at the most Mesopotamia
in addition to the region of the coast, and disappeared, more in
consequence of its internal disorganization than of its diminished
size, for ever from the ranks of the great states. If the danger--
which was repeatedly imminent--of a total subjugation of the land by
the Parthians was averted, that result must be ascribed not to the
resistance of the last Seleucids and still less to the influence of
Rome, but rather to the manifold internal disturbances in the Parthian
empire itself, and above all to the incursions of the peoples of the
Turanian steppes into its eastern provinces.

Reaction of the East against the West

This revolution in the relations of the peoples in the interior of
Asia is the turning-point in the history of antiquity. The tide of
national movement, which had hitherto poured from the west to the east
and had found in Alexander the Great its last and highest expression,
was followed by the ebb. On the establishment of the Parthian state
not only were such Hellenic elements, as may still perhaps have
been preserved in Bactria and on the Indus, lost, but western Iran
also relapsed into the track which had been abandoned for centuries
but was not yet obliterated. The Roman senate sacrificed the first
essential result of the policy of Alexander, and thereby paved the
way for that retrograde movement, whose last offshoots ended in
the Alhambra of Granada and in the great Mosque of Constantinople.
So long as the country from Ragae and Persepolis to the Mediterranean
obeyed the king of Antioch, the power of Rome extended to the border
of the great desert; the Parthian state could never take its place
among the dependencies of the Mediterranean empire, not because
it was so very powerful, but because it had its centre far from
the coast, in the interior of Asia. Since the time of Alexander
the world had obeyed the Occidentals alone, and the east seemed to
be for these merely what America and Australia afterwards became
for the Europeans; with Mithradates I the east re-entered the sphere
of political movement. The world had again two masters.

Maritime Relations
Piracy