was for the most part unknown to the Romans.  When Persia, about A.D. 220, revolted from Artabanus, it was no doubt with a conviction that the Parthians were no longer the terrible warriors who under Mithridates I. had driven all the armies of the East before them like chaff, or who under Orodes and Phraates IV. had gained signal victories over the Romans.  It is true that Artabanus had contended not unsuccessfully with Macrinus.  But the prestige of Parthia was far from being re-established by the result of his three days’ battle.  Rome retained as her own, notwithstanding his success, the old Parthian province of Mesopotamia, and was thus, even in the moment of her weakness, acknowledged by Parthia to be the stronger.  The Persians are not likely to have been braver or more warlike at the time of their revolt from Artabanus than in the days when they were subjected by Mithridates.  Any alteration, therefore, in the relative strength of the two peoples must be ascribed to Parthian decline, since it cannot have been owing to Persian advance and improvement.  To conclude, we may perhaps allow something to the personal qualities of Artaxerxes, who appears to have possessed all the merits of the typical Oriental conqueror.  Artabanus was among the most able of the later Parthian monarchs; but his antagonist was more than this, possessing true military genius.  It is quite possible that, if the leaders on the two sides had changed places, the victory might have rested, not with the Persians, but with the Parthians.

CHAPTER XXII.

On the Architecture and Ornamental Art of the Parthians.

The modern historian of Architecture observes, when he reaches the period with which we have had to deal in this volume, that, with the advent of Alexander, Oriental architecture disappears, and that its history is an absolute blank from the downfall of the Achaemenians in B.C. 331 to the rise of the Sassanians, about A.D. 226.  The statement made involves a certain amount of exaggeration; but still it expresses, roughly and strongly, a curious and important fact.  The Parthians were not, in any full or pregnant sense of the word, builders.  They did not aim at leaving a material mark upon the world by means of edifices or other great works.  They lacked the spirit which had impelled successively the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians to cover Western Asia with architectural monuments, proofs at once of the wealth, and the grand ideas, of those who raised them.  Parthia, compared to these pretentious empires, was retiring and modest.  The monarchs, however rich they may have been, affected something of primitive rudeness and simplicity in their habits and style of life, their dwellings and temples, their palaces and tombs.  It is difficult indeed to draw the line in every case between pure Parthian work and Sassanian; but on the whole there is, no doubt, reason to believe that the architectural