as his son-in-law, and invited him to come and fetch home his bride.  Herodian describes with much minuteness, and with a good deal of picturesque effect, the stately march of the Imperial prince through the Parthian territory, the magnificent welcome which he received, and the peaceful meeting of the two kings in the plain before Ctesiphon, which was suddenly interrupted by the meditated treason of the crafty Roman.  Taken at disadvantage, the Parthian monarch with difficulty escaped, while his soldiers and other subjects, incapable of making any resistance, were slaughtered like sheep by their assailants, who then plundered and ravaged the Parthian territory at their will, and returned laden with spoil into Mesopotamia.  In general, Dio is a more trustworthy authority than Herodian, and most moderns have therefore preferred his version of the story.  But it may be questioned whether in this particular case the truth has not been best preserved by the historian on whom under ordinary circumstances we place less dependence.  If so disgraceful an outrage as that described by Herodian was, indeed, committed by the head of the Roman State on a foreign potentate, Dio, as a great State official, would naturally be anxious to gloss it over.  There are, moreover, internal difficulties in his narrative; and on more than one point of importance he contradicts not only Herodian, but also Spartianus.  It is therefore not improbable that Herodian has given with most truth the general outline of the expedition of Caracallus, though, with that love of effect which characterizes him, he may have unduly embellished the narrative.

The advance of Caracallus was, if Spartianus is to be believed, through Babylonia.  The return may have been (as Dio seems to indicate that it was) by the way of the Tigris, through Adiabene and Upper Mesopotamia.  It was doubtless on the return that Caracallus committed a second and wholly wanton outrage upon the feelings of his adversary, by violating the sanctity of the Parthian royal sepulchres, and dispersing their contents to the four winds.  These tombs were situated at Arbela, in Adiabene, a place which seems to have been always regarded as in some sort a City of the Dead.  The useless insult and impiety were worthy of one who, like Caracallus, was “equally devoid of judgment and humanity,” and who has been pronounced by the most unimpassioned of historians to have been “the common enemy of mankind.”  A severe reckoning was afterwards exacted for the indignity, which was felt by the Parthians with all the keenness wherewith Orientals are wont to regard any infringement of the sanctity of the grave.