Accordingly we find that when the final war broke out, in B.C.

74, his inclination was, in the first instance, to stand wholly aloof, and when that became impossible, then to temporize.

To the application for assistance made by Mithridates in B.C.72 a direct negative was returned; and it was not until, in B.C.69, the war had approached his own frontier, and both parties made the most earnest appeals to him for aid, that he departed from the line of pure abstention, and had recourse to the expedient of amusing, both sides with promises, while he helped neither.

According to Plutarch, this line of procedure offended Lucullus, and had nearly induced him to defer the final struggle with Mithridates and Tigranes, and turn his arms against Parthia.

But the prolonged resistance of Nisibis, and the successes of Mithridates in Pontus, diverted the danger; and the war rolling northwards, Parthia was not yet driven to take a side, but was enabled to maintain her neutral position for some years longer.
Meanwhile the aged Sanatroeces died, and was succeeded by his son, Phraates III.