Many ages after the fall of the Macedonian empire, Seleucia retained the genuine character of a Greek colony; arts, military virtue, and a love of freedom: and while the republic remained independent, it was governed by a senate consisting of three hundred nobles. The walls were strong; and as long as concord prevailed among the several orders of the state, the power of the Parthians was regarded with indifference, if not with contempt. The madness of faction, however, was sometimes so great, that the common enemy was occasionally implored; and the Parthians[212] were, in consequence, beheld at the gates, to assist sometimes one party, and sometimes the other. Ctesiphon was then but a village[213], on the opposite side of the Tigris, in which the Parthian kings were accustomed to reside during the winter, on account of the mildness of the climate. The summer they passed at Ecbatana. Trajan left Rome A. D. 112, and after subduing several cities in the East, laid siege to Seleucia and Ctesiphon. Chosroes, the king, being absent quelling a revolt in some part of his more eastern dominions, these cities soon surrendered to the Roman hero, and all the neighbouring country. “The degenerate Parthians,” says the Roman historian, “broken by internal discord, fled before his arms. He descended the Tigris in triumph from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian gulf. He enjoyed the honour of being the first, as he was the last, of the Roman generals who ever navigated that remote sea.” At his death, which occurred soon after his return to Rome, most of the cities of Asia, that he had conquered, threw off the Roman yoke; and among these were Seleucia and Ctesiphon. Under the reign of Marcus, A. D. 165, the Roman generals penetrated as far as these celebrated cities. They were received as friends by the Greek colony; they attacked, as enemies, the seat of the Parthian kings; and yet both experienced the same treatment. Seleucia was sacked by the friends they had invited—though it has been alleged in their favour, that the citizens of Seleucia had first violated their faith. More than 300,000 of the inhabitants were put to the sword; and the city itself nearly destroyed by conflagration. Seleucia never recovered this blow: but Ctesiphon, in about thirty-three years, had sufficiently recovered its strength to maintain an obstinate siege against the emperor Severus. It was at last, nevertheless, taken by assault; and the king, who defended it in person, escaped with precipitation. The Romans netted a rich booty, and took captive 100,000 persons[214].