[Sidenote: A.D. 213(?)] [Sidenote:--12--] Now we shall state what sort
of person he showed himself in war. [Abgarus, king of the Osrhoeni, when
he had once got control of the kindred tribes, inflicted the most
outrageous treatment upon his superiors. Nominally he was compelling
them to change to Roman customs, but in fact he was making the most of
his authority over them in an unjustifiable way.] He tricked the king of
the Osrhoeni, Abgarus, inducing him to visit him as a friend, and then
arrested and imprisoned him. This left Osrhoene without a ruler and he
subdued it.

The king of the Armenians had a dispute with his own children and
Antoninus summoned him in a friendly letter with the avowed purpose of
making peace between them: he treated these princes in the same fashion
as he had Abgarus. The Armenians, however, instead of yielding to him
had recourse to arms and not one of them thereafter would trust him in
the slightest particular. Thus he was brought by experience to
understand how great the penalty is for an emperor's practicing deceit
toward friends. [The same ruler assumed the utmost credit for the fact
that at the death of Vologæsus, king of the Parthians, his children
proceeded to fight about the sovereignty; what was purely accidental he
pretended had come about through his own connivance. He ever took
vehement delight in the actions and dissensions of the brothers and
generally in the mutual slaughter of foreign potentates.] He did not
hesitate, either, to write to the senate regarding the rulers of the
Parthians (who were brothers and at variance) that the brothers' quarrel
would work great harm to the Parthian state. Just as if barbarian
governments could be destroyed by such procedure and yet the Roman state
had been preserved! Just as if it had not been, on the contrary, almost
utterly overthrown! It was not merely that the great sums of blood money