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 been, for Persianism, a graver danger and more present check than Parthian ignorance; or it submerged and abashed, where the other only ignore, the Persian spirit.  So when Seleucia was wiped out, in 165, the chief and real enemy of the National Soul had vanished.  The Persians might no longer look to Hellenism for their cultural inspiration; might no more set up Its light against the Parthian darkness; they must find a light instead proper to their own souls;—­and must look towards mountain Fars to find it.  Within a half-cycle they were up.  They were due to be up, as you will remember, in the two-twenties:  the decade in which we saw the stream in China, as in Rome, diminish.  Troubles had begun in Rome in 162, the second year of Aurelisus. 162 plus 65 are 227.  In 227 Persia rose and Parthia vanished.