Still, if we may believe Justin, he entertained the design of carrying his arms across the Euphrates and invading Syria, in order to avenge the attack of Antiochus upon his territories.  But events occurred which forced him to relinquish this enterprise.  The Scythians, whom he had called to his aid under the pressure of the Syrian invasion, and who had arrived too late to take part in the war, demanded the pay which they had been promised, and suggested that their arms should be employed against some other enemy.  Phraates was unwilling either to requite services not rendered, or to rush needlessly into a fresh war merely to gratify the avarice of his auxiliaries.  He therefore peremptorily refused to comply with either suggestion.  Upon this, the Scythians determined to take their payment into their own hands, and began to ravage Parthia and to carry off a rich booty.  Phraates, who had removed the headquarters of his government to Babylonia, felt it necessary to entrust affairs there to an officer, and to take the field in person against this new enemy, which was certainly not less formidable than the Syrians.  He selected for his representative at the seat of Empire a certain Himerus (or Evemerus), a youth with whom he had a disgraceful connection, and having established him as a sort of viceroy, marched away to the northeast, and proceeded to encounter the Scythians in that remote region.  Besides his native troops, he took with him a number of Greeks, whom he had made prisoners in his war with Antiochus.  Their fidelity could not but be doubtful; probably, however, he thought that at a distance from Syria they would not dare to fail him, and that with an enemy so barbarous as the Scythians they would have no temptation to fraternize.  But the event proved him mistaken.  The Greeks were sullen at their captivity, and exasperated by some cruel treatment which they had received when first captured.  They bided their time; and when, in a battle with the Scythians, they saw the Parthian soldiery hard pressed and in danger of defeat, they decided matters by going over in a body to the enemy.  The Parthian army was completely routed and destroyed, and Phraates himself was among the slain.  We are not told what became of the victorious Greeks; but it is to be presumed that, like the Ten Thousand, they fought their way across Asia, and rejoined their own countrymen.

Thus died Phraates I., after a reign of about eight or nine years.  Though not possessing the talents of his father, he was a brave and warlike prince, active, enterprising, fertile in resources, and bent on maintaining against all assailants the honor and integrity of the Empire.  In natural temperament he was probably at once soft and cruel.  But, when policy required it, he could throw his softness aside and show himself a hardy and intrepid warrior.  Similarly, he could control his natural harshness, and act upon occasion with clemency and leniency.  He was not, perhaps, without a grim humor, which led