8.] Having entered into communications with this prince, they easily induced him to quit his retirement, and to take up arms against the tyrant.

Vardanes was ambitious, bold and prompt: he had no sooner received the invitation of the Megistanes than he set out, and, having accomplished his journey to the Court in the space of two days, found Gotarzes wholly unprepared to offer resistance.

Thus Vardanes became king without fighting a battle.
Gotarzes fled, and escaped into the country of the Dahse, which lay east of the Caspian Sea, and north of the Parthian province of Hyrcania.

Here he was allowed to reign for some time unmolested by his brother, and to form plans and make preparations for the recovery of his lost power.
The statements of Tacitus are so circumstantial, and his authority as an historian is so great, that we can scarcely hesitate to accept the history as he delivers it, rather than as it is related by the Jewish writer.

It is, however, remarkable that the series of Parthian coins presents an appearance of accordance rather with the latter than the former, since it affords no trace of the supposed first reign of Gotarzes in A.D.42, while it shows Vardanes to have held the throne from Sept.