and governor appointed by Alexander over the conquered Iberians, and ruled in the northern mountains as well as over the Black Sea.  Ardasches then took Croesus the king of the Lydians prisoner, subdued the mainland between the two great seas (Asia Minor), and crossed the sea with innumerable vessels to subjugate the west.  As there was anarchy at that time in Rome, he nowhere encountered serious resistance, but his soldiers killed each other and Ardasches fell by the hands of his own troops.  After Ardasches’ death his successor Dicran marched against the army of the Greeks (i. e. the Romans) who now in turn invaded the Armenian land; he set a limit to their advance, handed over to his brother-in-law Mihrdates the administration of Madschag (Mazaca in Cappadocia) and of the interior along with a considerable force, and returned to Armenia.  Many years afterwards there were still pointed out in the Armenian towns statues of Greek gods by well-known masters, trophies of this campaign.

We have no difficulty in recognizing here various facts of the first Mithradatic war, but the whole narrative is evidently confused, furnished with heterogeneous additions, and in particular transferred by patriotic falsification to Armenia.  In just the same way the victory over Crassus is afterwards attributed to the Armenians.  These Oriental accounts are to be received with all the greater caution, that they are by no means mere popular legends; on the contrary the accounts of Josephus, Eusebius, and other authorities current among the Christians of the fifth century have been amalgamated with the Armenian traditions, and the historical romances of the Greeks and beyond doubt the patriotic fancies also of Moses himself have been laid to a considerable extent under contribution.  Bad as is cur Occidental tradition in itself, to call in the aid of Oriental tradition in this and similar cases—­as has been attempted for instance by the uncritical Saint-Martin—­can only lead to still further confusion.

19.  III.  X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War

Chapter IX

1.  The whole of the representation that follows is based in substance on the recently discovered account of Licinianus, which communicates a number of facts previously unknown, and in particular enables us to perceive the sequence and connection of these events more clearly than was possible before.

2.  IV.  VII.  The Bestowal of the Franchise and Its Limitations.  That there was no confirmation by the comitia, is clear from Cic.  Phil. xii. 11, 27.  The senate seems to have made use of the form of simply prolonging the term of the Plautio- Papirian law (iv.  VII.  Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts), a course which by use and wont (i. 409) was open to it and practically amounted to conferring the franchise on all Italians.

3. “-Ad flatus sidere-,” as Livy (according to Obsequens, 56) expresses it, means “seized by the pestilence” (Petron.  Sat. 2; Plin.  H. N. ii. 41, 108; Liv. viii. 9, 12), not “struck by lightning,” as later writers have misunderstood it.