a supplement to the ancient History of the West, as that history is
ordinarily presented to moderns under its two recognized divisions of
"Histories of Greece" and "Histories of Rome." Especially, it seemed to
the writer that the picture of the world during the Roman period,
commonly put before students in "Histories of Rome," was defective, not
to say false, in its omission to recognize the real position of Parthia
during the three most interesting centuries of that period, as a
counterpoise to the power of Rome, a second figure in the picture not
much inferior to the first, a rival state dividing with Rome the
attention of mankind and the sovereignty of the known earth. Writers of
Roman history have been too much in the habit of representing the later
Republic and early Empire as, practically, a Universal Monarchy, a Power
unchecked, unbalanced, having no other limits than those of the civilized
world, engrossing consequently the whole attention of all thinking men,
and free to act exactly as it pleased without any regard to opinion
beyond its own borders. One of the most popular enlarges on the idea--an
idea quite inconsistent with the fact--that for the man who provoked the
hostility of the ruler of Rome there was no refuge upon the whole face of
the earth but some wild and barbarous region, where refinement was
unknown, and life would not have been worth having. To the present
writer the truth seems to be that Rome never was in the position
supposed--that from first to last, from the time of Pompey's Eastern
Conquests to the Fall of the Empire, there was always in the world a
Second Power, civilized or semi-civilized, which in a true sense balanced
Rome, acted as a counterpoise and a check, had to be consulted or
considered, held a place in all men's thoughts, and finally furnished a
not intolerable refuge to such as had provoked Rome's master beyond
forgiveness.

This Power for nearly three centuries (B.C. 64 - A.D. 225) was Parthia,