After Vardanes had come to terms with his brother and had at length reoccupied Seleucia, he seemed as though he would march into Armenia; but the threatening attitude of the Roman legate of Syria withheld him, and very soon the brother broke the agreement and the civil war began afresh. Not even the assassination of the brave and, in combat with the peoples of Turan, victorious Vardanes put an end to it; the opposition party now turned to Rome and besought from the government there the son of Vonones, the prince Meherdates then living in Rome, who thereupon was placed by the emperor Claudius before the assembled senate at the disposal of his countrymen and sent away to Syria with the exhortation to administer his new kingdom well and justly, and to remain mindful of the friendly protectorate of Rome (49). He did not reach the position in which these exhortations might be applied. The Roman legions, which escorted him as far as the Euphrates, there delivered him over to those who had called him--the head of the powerful princely family of the Carên and the kings Abgarus of Edessa and Izates of Adiabene. The inexperienced and unwarlike youth was as little equal to the task as all the other Parthian rulers set up by the Romans; a number of his most noted adherents left him so soon as they learned to know him, and went to Gotarzes; in the decisive battle the fall of the brave Carên turned the scale. Meherdates was taken prisoner and not even executed, but only, after the Oriental fashion, rendered incapable of government by mutilation of the ears. [Sidenote: Armenia occupied by the Parthians.] Notwithstanding this defeat of Roman policy in the Parthian kingdom, Armenia remained with the Romans, so long as the weak Gotarzes ruled over the Parthians. But so soon as a more vigorous hand grasped the reins of sovereignty, and the internal conflicts ceased, the struggle for that land was resumed. King Vologasus, who after the death of Gotarzes and the short reign of Vonones II. succeeded this his father in the year 51,[30] ascended the throne, exceptionally, in full agreement with his two brothers Pacorus and Tiridates. He was an able and prudent ruler--we find him even as a founder of towns, and exerting himself with success to divert the trade of Palmyra towards his new town Vologasias on the lower Euphrates--averse to quick and extreme resolutions, and endeavouring, if possible, to keep peace with his powerful neighbour. But the recovery of Armenia was the leading political idea of the dynasty, and he too was ready to make use of any opportunity for realising it. [Sidenote: Rhadamistus.]