Almost at the same time, as Mithridates among the Parthians so Eucratides amongst the Bactrians, both princes of great merit, began to reign. But the uncommon good fortune of the Parthians brought them, under this monarch, to the highest pitch of greatness. The Bactrians, on the other hand, being distressed by several wars, not only lost their sovereignty, but their liberty; for being exhausted by wars with the Sogdians, Drangians, and Indians, were, like a people quite enfeebled and expiring, subdued by the Persians, who had been a little before much weaker than they. However, Eucratides carried on many wars with great vigour; and though his losses had much weakened him, yet being besieged by Demetrius, king of the Indians, with only three hundred soldiers he made continual sallies, and so fatigued the enemy, consisting of forty thousand men, that he obliged them to raise the siege. Wherefore, being delivered from the siege, in the fifth month he reduced India under his power; but in his return from thence, he was assassinated by his son, whom he had made his partner in the kingdom; who was so far from concealing the parricide that, as if he had killed an enemy and not his father, he drove his chariot through his blood, and ordered his body to be thrown out unburied. During these transactions in Bactria, a war broke out between the Parthians and the Medes. After the success of this war had for some time been various, victory at last fell to the Parthians. Mithridates, enforced with this addition to his strength, set Bacasis over Media, and went himself into Hyrcania; from whence returning, he made war upon the king of the Elymæans; and, after the conquest of him, he added this nation likewise to his dominions; and so extended the Parthian Empire from Mount Caucasus as far as the river Euphrates, by reducing many nations under his yoke. After this, being seized with an illness, he died in an honourable old age, not at all inferior in glory to his great-grandfather Arsaces. After the death of Mithridates, king of Parthia, Phraates his son succeeded to the kingdom; who being resolved to revenge himself upon Antiochus for attacking the kingdom of Parthia, was recalled by disturbances from Scythia, to defend his own country. For the Scythians, being invited by promises to assist the Parthians against Antiochus, king of Syria, having arrived after the war was ended, were frustrated of their promised reward, under the idle pretence of their coming too late; and it made the Scythians so angry that they should have had so long a march for nothing, that they demanded either pay for their trouble or that some other enemy should be allotted them. The haughty reply given to this demand so enraged them, that they began to ravage the country of the Parthians.