We have already seen the differences between the position of the Eastern and Western Empires during this period. While in the West the provinces were gradually lopped away by the Teutonic settlements, the provinces of the East, though often traversed by Teutonic armies, or rather nations, did not become the seats of lasting Teutonic settlements. ♦The Tetraxite Goths.♦ We can hardly count as an exception the settlement of the _Tetraxite Goths_ in the Tauric Chersonêsos, a land which was rather in alliance with the Empire than actually part of it. ♦Rivalry with Persia.♦ The distinctive history of the Eastern Empire consists, as has been already said, in the long struggle between East and West, in which Rome had succeeded to the mission of Alexander and the Seleukids as the representative of Western civilization. To this mission was afterwards added the championship of Christianity, first against the Fire-worshipper and then against the Moslem. In Eastern history no event is more important and more remarkable than the uprising of the regenerate _Persian_ nation against its Parthian masters. ♦Revival of the Persian kingdom. A.D. 226.♦ But, as far as either the history or the geography of Rome is concerned, the Persian simply steps into the place of the Parthian as the representative of the East against the West. From our point of view, the long wars on the Eastern frontier of Rome, and the frequent shiftings of that frontier, form one unbroken story, whether the enemy that was striven against is the successor of Arsakes or the successor of Artaxerxes. ♦Position of Armenia.♦ And besides the natural rivalry of two great powers in such a position, the border kingdom of _Armenia_, a name which has changed its meaning and its frontiers almost as often as Burgundy or Austria, supplied constant ground for dispute between Rome and her eastern rival, whether Parthian or Persian.