and Ctesiphon; the Parthian king saved himself with a few horsemen by flight, the crown-treasure became the spoil of the victors, the Parthian capital was abandoned to the pillage of the Roman soldiers, and more than 100,000 captives were brought to the Roman slave market. The Arabians indeed in Hatra defended themselves better than the Parthian state itself; in vain Severus endeavoured in two severe sieges to reduce the desert-stronghold. But in the main the success of the two campaigns of 198 and 199 was complete. By the erection of the province of Mesopotamia and of the great command there, Armenia lost the intermediate position which it hitherto had; it might remain in its previous relations and apart from formal incorporation. The land retained thus its own troops, and the imperial government even paid for these subsequently a contribution from the imperial chest.[69] [Sidenote: The change of government in the West and in the East.] The further development of these relations as neighbours was essentially influenced by the changes which internal order underwent in the two empires. If under the dynasty of Nerva, and not less under Severus, the Parthian state, often torn asunder by civil war and contention for the crown, had been confronted by the relatively stable Roman monarchy as superior, this order of things broke down after Severus’s death, and almost for a century there followed in the western empire mostly wretched and thoroughly ephemeral regents, who in presence of other countries were constantly hesitating between arrogance and weakness. While the scale of the West thus sank that of the East rose. A few years after the death of Severus (211) a revolution took place in Iran, which not merely, like so many earlier crises, overthrew the ruling regent, nor even merely called to the government another dynasty instead of the decayed Arsacids, but, unchaining the national and religious elements for a mightier upward flight, substituted for the bastard civilisation--pervaded by Hellenism--of the Parthian state the state-organisation, faith, manners, and princes of that province which had created the old Persian empire, and, since its transition to the Parthian dynasty, preserved within it as well the tombs of Darius and Xerxes as the germs of the regeneration of the people. The re-establishment of the great-kingdom of the Persians overthrown by Alexander ensued through the emergence of the dynasty of the Sassanids. Let us cast a glance at this new shape of things before we pursue further the course of Romano-Parthian relations in the East. [Sidenote: The Sassanids.]