Trajan, who had quite thrown over the principle of the Julii and Flavii (that the Danube and the Euphrates were the boundaries of the empire) and was fully embarked on the old Chauvinist traditions of the republic, would not let such an occasion slip; and refusing an answer to an embassy that met him at Athens, he entered Armenia and took Arsamosata without battle, after receiving the homage of western Armenia (114 A.D.). Parthamasiris submitted himself to the emperor, but Trajan declared that Armenia must be a Roman province, appointed an escort to see the Parthian over the border, and when he resisted and tried to escape ordered his execution--a brutal act, meant to inspire terror and show that the Arsacids should no longer be treated with on equal terms. Armenia and the neighbouring kings to the north having given in their submission, Trajan marched back to Edessa, receiving the homage of Abgar. The campaign of 115 A.D. was in Mesopotamia. At its close Mesopotamia was made a Roman province; the Cardueni and the Marcomedi of the Armenian frontier had also been reduced, and Trajan received the title of “Parthicus.” In 116 A.D. the Tigris was crossed in the face of the enemy, and a third new province of Assyria absorbed the whole kingdom of Mebarsapes. Once more the Tigris was crossed and Babylonia invaded, still without resistance from the Parthians. [Sidenote: [116-166 A.D.]] A Roman fleet descended the Euphrates and the ships were conveyed across on rollers to the Tigris, to co-operate with the army; and now Ctesiphon fell and Osroes fled to Armenia, the northeast parts of which cannot have been thoroughly subdued. The Roman fleet descended the Tigris and received the submission of Mesene; but now, while Trajan was engaged in a voyage of reconnaissance in the Persian Gulf, plainly aiming at Bahrein, all the new provinces revolted and destroyed or expelled the Roman garrisons. The rebellion was at length put down, but Trajan now saw what it would cost to maintain direct Roman rule over such wide and distant conquests, and Parthamaspates was solemnly crowned in the great plain by Ctesiphon in the presence of Romans and Parthians (winter of 117 A.D.). An unsuccessful siege of Atra (Hatrá) in the Mesopotamian desert was Trajan’s next undertaking; illness and the revolt of the Jews prevented him from resuming the campaign, and after Trajan’s death (7th of August, 117 A.D.) Hadrian wisely withdrew the garrisons from the new provinces, which would have demanded the constant presence of the imperial armies, and again made the Euphrates the limit of the empire. Parthamaspates, too, had soon to leave Parthia, and Hadrian gave him Orrhoene. Thus Trajan’s Chauvinist policy had no other result than to show to the world the miserable weakness to which discord had reduced the Parthians. Osroes died soon after, and Volagases II became sole monarch, dying in November, 148 A.D., at the age of about ninety-six, after a reign of seventy-one years.