Fortunately for the Parthians, the folly or moderation of their enemies rendered any great effort on their part unnecessary.

The Greeks, content with having revenged themselves, gave the new monarch no trouble at all: the Scythians were satisfied with plundering and wasting the open country, after which they returned quietly to their homes.

Artabanus found himself quit of the immediate danger which had threatened him almost without exertion of his own, and could now bend his thoughts to the position of his country generally, and the proper policy to pursue under the circumstances.
For there was a second and more formidable danger impending over the State--a danger not casual and temporary like the one just escaped, but arising out of a condition of things in neighboring regions which had come about slowly, and which promised to be permanent.

To give the reader the means of estimating this danger aright, it will be necessary to take a somewhat wide view of the state of affairs on the northern and north-eastern frontiers of Parthia for some time previously to the accession of Artabanus, to trace out the causes which were at work, producing important changes in these regions, and to indicate the results which threatened, and those which were accomplished.

The opportunity will also serve for giving such an account of the chief races which here bordered the empire as will show the nature of the peril to which Parthia was exposed at this period.
In the wide plains of Northern Asia, extending from the Arctic Ocean to the Thian Chan mountains and the Jaxartes, there had been nurtured from a remote antiquity a nomadic population, at no time very numerous in proportion to the area over which it was spread, but liable on occasions to accumulate, owing to a combination of circumstances, in this or that portion of the region occupied, and at such times causing trouble to its neighbors.