Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals
Alfred John Church, William Jackson Brodribb, Ed.

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After the death of Phraates and the succeeding kings in the bloodshed of civil wars, there came to Rome envoys from the chief men of Parthia, in quest of Vonones, his eldest son. Cæsar thought this a great honour to himself, and loaded Vonones with wealth. The barbarians, too, welcomed him with rejoicing, as is usual with new rulers. Soon they felt shame at Parthians having become degenerate, at their having sought a king from another world, one too infected with the training of the enemy, at the throne of the Arsacids now being possessed and given away among the provinces of Rome. "Where," they asked, "was the glory of the men who slew Crassus, who drove out Antonius, if Cæsar's drudge, after an endurance of so many years' slavery, were to rule over Parthians."

Vonones himself too further provoked their disdain, by his contrast with their ancestral manners, by his rare indulgence in the chase, by his feeble interest in horses, by the litter in which he was carried whenever he made a progress through their cities, and by his contemptuous dislike of their

COMMOTIONS IN THE EAST

national festivities. They also ridiculed his Greek attendants and his keeping under seal the commonest household articles. But he was easy of approach; his courtesy was open to all, and he had thus virtues with which the Parthians were unfamiliar, and vices new to them. And as his ways were quite alien from theirs they hated alike what was bad and what was good in him.