He was succeeded by his son, Artavasdes (Ardvash) II, who inherited that most dreadful of legacies, a place between the hammer and the anvil. For the next quarter of a century the Romans, and the steadily growing and consolidating power of the Parthian Empire were alternately irresistible in Eastern Anatolia; it was impossible to avoid taking sides, for neutrality meant invasion by one party or the other; and whichever side he took he was sure to be punished for as soon as the other came uppermost. If Artavasdes had been as dexterous as Alexius Comnenus himself, he could hardly have escaped ruin; that he kept his throne for over twenty years is proof that he was not unworthy of his father. First came the invasion of Parthia by Crassus; Artavasdes, faithful to his father's Roman allegiance; asked him to make the invasion by way of Armenia, and offered to help him. Crassus refused, but the Parthian king, Orodes, invaded Armenia; however, he made peace, and betrothed his eldest son, Pacorus, to Artavasdes' daughter, just before news was brought him of the annihilation of Crassus' army, guaranteed by Crassus' severed head and hand. The civil wars at Rome for years to come broke the Roman power, and the Parthians (with the good-will of the inhabitants, who detested the Roman proconsuls), swept westward, compelled submission or alliance from all the countries to the Taurus, and even annexed all Syria for a time, just as seven centuries later the Syrians, from hate of the Byzantine governors, gave up their cities to the Saracens. But the Roman power once more rallied; the Parthians were driven out of Syria, and Pacorus was killed; the aged Orodes, under whom the Parthian Empire proper reached its pinnacle, died, leaving the throne to one of those jealous murderous despots so familiar in Eastern history, who made a general slaughter of his brothers, and even murdered his son, to remove any possible leader of a revolt, and Artavasdes once more returned to the Roman alliance. In the year 36 A.D., Mark Antony undertook the task Crassus had so terribly failed in seventeen years before, of striking at the heart of Parthia; but this time the invasion was by way of Armenia. It was almost as frightful a disaster as the former; a third of the army of 100,000 men was destroyed by the enemy, 8,000 died of cold and storm in the Armenian mountains, the wounded died in enormous numbers; but that Artavasdes let the army winter in his country it would have perished as completely as Crassus' did. In spite of this, the Romans, wanting a scapegoat, laid the whole blame on Artavasdes, without a shadow of reason that can be shown. It was the last time for a century and a half that the Romans attacked Parthia. In default of that plunder, they resolved to have Armenia, and a couple of years later, in the year 33 A.D., they seized Artavasdes by treachery, and occupied the country. The Parthians at once took up the cause of his son, Artaxes, and made war on the Romans to seat him on the throne; and when the Roman troops were withdrawn to help Antony's cause, which was lost in the battle of Actium, the Parthians overran Armenia, and killed all the Romans in the country, and made their candidate king as Artaxes II. This was in 30 B.C., and in the same year his father, Artavasdes, who had been carried to Alexandria by Antony, was beheaded by Cleopatra. But the very next year the worthless tyrant Phraates of Parthia was driven from the throne by a rebellion, and Artaxes made peace with Rome.