Alexander the Great, after his conquest, put a native governor named Mihran over it; but on Alexander's death, five years later (323 B.C.), his generals partitioned the Macedonian Empire among themselves, and Armenia fell to Neoptolemus. His government was at once so oppressive, and so contemptuous of native feeling (he and his court were Greeks, and despised all Asiatics), that the people rose and drove him out in 317, under the lead of one Arduat (Ardvates), who remained their king for thirty-three years; but he left no successor, and Armenia was conquered by and became part of the great Syrian Empire founded by Seleucus. It remained so in the main for about three quarters of a century, though the eastern part (Kurdistan), fell under the Parthian kings. Armenia was never a very quiet province, however, and its revolts against the Syrian satraps kept it much of the time in a half-anarchic state. About 210 B.C. Antiochus the Great quelled one of these uprisings, and divided the country into Greater and Lesser Armenia (whose boundaries I have described), putting a separate deputy over each. But after his crushing defeat by the Romans at Magnesia in 189 B.C., and having to buy peace by giving up everything beyond the Halys, each governor proclaimed his province an independent kingdom. Zadriades (Zadreh), in Lesser Armenia founded a family which kept their hold for almost exactly a century, when Tigranes II once more united the two Armenias. Artaxias (Ardashes), in Greater Armenia was powerful as long as he lived, and sheltered Hannibal at his court when the Romans had set a price on the head of their great foe; but about the middle of the century his family was dispossessed by Mithridates of Parthia, who conquered the country. The family name of this Parthian house was Arshag, rendered by the Greeks Arsakes, spelled by the Romans Arsaces. Mithridates made Greater Armenia a kingdom for his brother Wagh-arshag (Val-arsaces), whose family remained in succession to the throne, though sometimes eclipsed for long periods from actual occupation of it, for six hundred years. The new king had the great hereditary ability both in war and statesmanship which characterized the whole Arsacid line, and the Mithridates in particular, and its great knowledge of men. He knew an able man when he saw him, and liked to raise him up; he promoted industry and built cities; he reformed the system of laws and their administration as well.