The change would have been like that which passed over the Empire of the West, when Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, Heruli, depopulated its fairest provinces and laid its civilization in the dust.

The East would have been barbarized; the gains of centuries would have been lost; the work of Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, and other great benefactors of Asiatic humanity, have been undone; Western Asia would have sunk back into a condition not very much above that from which it was raised two thousand years earlier by the primitive Chaldaeans and the Assyrians.
Artabanus II., the Parthian monarch who succeeded Phraates II., appears to have appreciated aright the perils of his position.

He was not content, when the particular body of barbarians which had defeated and slain his predecessor, having ravaged Parthia Proper, returned home, to fold his arms and wait until he was again attacked.

According to the brief, but expressive words of Justin, he assumed the aggressive, and invaded the country of the Tochari, one of the most powerful of the Scythic tribes, which was now settled in a portion of the region that had, till lately, belonged to the Bactrian kingdom.

Artabanus evidently felt that what was needed was to roll back the flood of invasion which had advanced so near to the sacred home of his nation; that the barbarians required to be taught a lesson; that they must at least be made to understand that Parthia was to be respected; or that, if this could not be done, the fate of the Empire was sealed.