In the later history of north Britain the chief recent addition has been evidence of a serious rising about A.D. 158, which perhaps covered all the land of the Brigantes from Derbyshire to Dumfriesshire. Inscriptions found at Birrens, at Netherby between Birrens and Carlisle, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and at Brough in north Derbyshire, mention a governor Iulius Verus as then specially active, and special reinforcements as then arriving from Germany (Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. xxxviii. 454). It is natural to connect these with the words of Pausanias (cited on p. 188, note 2), and the connection had the approval of Mommsen. For the division of the province into two by Severus see Domaszewski, Rangordnung, p. 173. The boundary between the two provinces is unknown; perhaps a line from the Humber to the Mersey is not altogether improbable. Nor is there evidence to show how long the division lasted.
Of the civil life and Romanisation of Britain (pp. 191–4) I have written somewhat fully in a paper on The Romanisation of Roman Britain. Here I may indicate some points. Mommsen’s view that the cantonal system adopted in Gaul was dropped in Britain is opposed by an inscription found at Caerwent in 1903, which records the erection of a monument by the canton of the Silures after a decree of the local senate—ex decreto ordinis respublica civitatis Silurum (Athenaeum, Sept. 26, 1903; Archaeologia, lix. 290); other inscriptions, if less decisive, suggest that the case of the Silures was not unique in the province. Indeed, a list of the cantonal capitals, and therefore of the cantons, seems to survive mutilated in the Ravennas (ed. Parthey and Pinder, pp. 425 foll.). There we meet, besides three municipalities carefully so labelled, nine or ten towns with tribal affixes—Isca Dumnoniorum, Exeter; Venta Belgarum, Winchester; Venta Silurum, Caerwent; Corinium Dobunorum, Cirencester; Calleva Atrebatum, Silchester; Durovernum Cantiacorum, Canterbury; Viroconium Cornoviorum, Wroxeter; Ratae Coritanorum, Leicester; Venta Icenorum, Caistor-by-Norwich—and perhaps Noviomagus Regentium, Chichester. Add to these Isurium Brigantum, known otherwise by this title, and Dorchester in Dorset, and there emerges a fairly complete list of just those towns which are declared by their remains to have been the chief “country towns” of Roman Britain. The reasons why so little is heard of the cantons are, I think, plain. They were smaller, poorer, and less important than those of Gaul—as, indeed, a comparison of the town-remains shows; there was, further, no British literature to mention them; and, lastly, they quickly fell before the barbarians in the fifth century.
The town-life of Roman Britain (p. 192) was somewhat more extensive than Mommsen allows. There were four coloniae—Colchester or Camulodunum, founded about A.D. 48 (Tac. Ann. xii. 32); Lincoln, Lindum, established after the transference of the Ninth Legion to York, probably in the late first century; Gloucester or Glevum, founded A.D. 96–98 (C. I. L. vi. 3346); York or Eburacum, planted at an unknown date, on the opposite bank of the Ouse to the legionary fortress; and one municipium, Verulamium, outside St. Albans, founded before A.D. 60. There were also about a dozen “country towns,” already enumerated in the last paragraph. These were for the most part not large villages, but actual towns, furnished with temples, fora, houses, and street plans of Roman fashion, and inhabited, so far as our scanty evidence goes, by populations of which both upper and lower classes spoke and wrote Latin. At Bath, Aquae Sulis, were well-built baths, and a stately temple of the goddess of the waters. At London, Londinium (later Augusta), was a prosperous and wealthy trading-centre. But London was the only town of real size or splendour. The rest, like the cantons mentioned above, were small and unimportant as compared with similar towns elsewhere, and though it is not strictly true that Gloucester and Verulam have produced no inscriptions (p. 193; Eph. Epigr. iv. p. 195), the epigraphic yield has been scanty in every town except perhaps York.
The roads of the province (p. 192) are numerous, though fewer than our English antiquaries sometimes suppose. Those in the south, as Mommsen rightly saw, radiate from London: see p. 192 above. The northern military district is traversed by three main routes. One runs up the west coast to the Solway and Carlisle. A second runs through the east of the island, from York to Corbridge and to various points on the eastern part of Hadrian’s Wall. The third, diverging from the second, crossed the Yorkshire and Westmorland hills and thus reached Carlisle. From Corbridge and Carlisle roads ran on northwards, and the eastern, if not the western, of these gave access to the Wall of Pius. The Roman roads of Wales are still imperfectly known, but there was a road from Chester to Carnarvon, another from Caerleon past Neath to Carmarthen, and a third joined the western parts of these two, while others connected the forts in the interior.
More doubt surrounds the Romanisation of the province. Vinogradoff (Growth of the Manor, p. 83) thinks that the Roman civilisation spread like a river with many channels which traverse a wide area, but only affect the immediate neighbourhood of their banks. I agree rather with Mommsen’s conclusion (pp. 193, 194)—though the real difference between the two writers is not so very great. The towns, both municipalities and “country towns,” seem to have been thoroughly Romanised. The numerous farms and country-houses (often styled "villas") are also in nearly every respect Roman, and the very scanty evidence which we possess as to the language used in them favours the idea that it was Latin. Even the villages, such as Pitt-Rivers excavated (Excavations in Cranborne Chase, etc., 1887–98), show little survival of native culture. It is to be noted, too, that Celtic inscriptions of Roman date, such as occur occasionally in Gaul (Rhys, Proc. British Acad. ii. 275 foll.), are wholly wanting in Britain. Probably, therefore, Roman civilisation came to predominate throughout the lowlands, though not in its more elaborate and splendid forms. There were, however, thinly populated areas where we can trace hardly any population of any sort, Romanised or other, as, for example, the Weald of Kent and Sussex, and a large part of the Midlands (Vict. Hist. of Warwickshire, i. 228), while the Cornish, Welsh, and northern hills seem never to have admitted very much Romanisation outside the forts which garrisoned parts of them. The analogies of other western provinces, of Gaul (above, vol. i. p. 101) and Africa (ii. 328), suggest that Celtic speech may have lingered on in such districts for centuries, though not as an element hostile to the Roman; it is also quite probable that Celtic private law and custom survived beside the Roman (L. Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht, p. 8). But we have no distinct evidence of either fact.
The spellings Ordovici (p. 182 and map) and Cartimandus (pp. 182, 183) are Mommsen’s own choice.
FOOTNOTES:
1 The conception that the Roman and the Parthian empires were two great states standing side by side, and indeed the only ones in existence, dominated the whole Roman East, particularly the frontier-provinces. It meets us palpably in the Apocalypse of John, in which there is a juxtaposition as well of the rider on the white horse with the bow and of the rider on the red horse with the sword (vi. 2, 3) as of the Megistanes and the Chiliarchs (vi. 15, comp. xviii. 23, xix. 18). The closing catastrophe, too, is conceived as a subduing of the Romans by the Parthians bringing back the emperor Nero (ix. 14, xvi. 12) and Armageddon, whatever may be meant by it, as the rendezvous of the Orientals for the collective attack on the West. Certainly the author, writing in the Roman empire, hints these far from patriotic hopes more than he expresses them.
2 This holds true even in some measure for the chronology. The official historiography of the Sassanids reduces the space between the last Darius and the first Sassanid from 558 to 266 years (Nöldeke, Tabari, p. 1).
3 The viceroys of Persis are called in their title constantly “Zag Alohin” (at least the American signs correspond to these words, which were presumably in pronunciation expressed in the Persian way), son of God (Mordtmann, Zeitschrift für Numismatik, iv. 155 f.), and to this corresponds the title θεοπάτωρ on the Greek coins of the great-kings. The designation “God” is also found, as with the Seleucids and the Sassanids.—Why a double diadem is attributed to the Arsacids (Herodian, vi. 2, 1) is not cleared up.
4 Τῶν Παρθυαίων συνέδριόν φησιν (Ποσειδώνιος) εἶναι, says Strabo, xi. 9, 3, p. 515, διττόν, τὸ μὲν συγγενῶν, τὸ δὲ σοφῶν καὶ μάγων, ἐξ ὧν ἀμφοῖν τοὺς βασιλεῖς καθίστασθαι (καθίστησιν in MSS.); Justinus, xvii. 3, 1, Mithridates rex Parthorum ... propter crudelitatem a senatu Parthico regno pellitur.
5 In Egypt, whose court ceremonial, as doubtless that of all the states of the Diadochi, is based on that ordained by Alexander, and in so far upon that of the Persian empire, the like title seems to have been conferred also personally (Franz, C. I. Gr. iii. 270). That the same occurred with the Arsacids, is possible. Among the Greek-speaking subjects of the Arsacid state the appellation μεγιστᾶνες seems in the original stricter use to denote the members of the seven houses; it is worthy of notice that megistanes and satrapae are associated (Seneca, Ep. 21; Josephus, Arch. xi. 3, 2; xx. 2, 3). The circumstance that in court mourning the Persian king does not invite the megistanes to table (Suetonius, Gai. 5) suggests the conjecture that they had the privilege of taking meals with him. The title τῶν πρώτων φίλων is also found among the Arsacids just as at the Egyptian and Pontic courts (Bull. de corr. Hell. vii. p. 349).
6 A royal cup-bearer, who is at the same time general, is mentioned in Josephus, Arch. xiv. 13, 7 = Bell. Jud. i. 13, 1. Similar court offices are of frequent occurrence in the states of the Diadochi.
7 Tacitus, Ann. xv. 2, 31. If, according to the preface of Agathangelos (p. 109, Langlois), at the time of the Arsacids the oldest and ablest prince bore rule over the country, and the three standing next to him were kings of the Armenians, of the Indians, and of the Massagetae, there is here perhaps at bottom the same arrangement. That the Partho-Indian empire, if it was combined with the main land, was likewise regarded as an appanage for the second son, is very probable.
8 These are doubtless meant by Justinus (xli. 2, 2), proximus maiestati regum praepositorum ordo est; ex hoc duces in bello, ex hoc in pace rectores habent. The native name is preserved by the gloss in Hesychius, βίσταξ ὁ βασιλεὺς παρὰ Πέρσαις. If in Ammianus, xxiii. 6, 14, the presidents of the Persian regiones are called vitaxae (read vistaxae), id est magistri equitum et reges et satrapae, he has awkwardly referred what is Persian to all Inner Asia (comp. Hermes, xvi. 613); we may add that the designation “leaders of horsemen” for these viceroys may relate to the fact that they, like the Roman governors, united in themselves the highest civil and the supreme military power, and the army of the Parthians consisted preponderantly of cavalry.
9 This we learn from the title σατράπης τῶν σατραπῶν, attributed to one Gotarzes in the inscription of Kermanschahân in Kurdistan (C. I. Gr. 4674). It cannot be assigned to the Arsacid king of the same name as such; but perhaps there may be designated by it, as Olshausen (Monatsbericht der Berliner Akademie, 1878, p. 179) conjectures, that position which belonged to him after his renouncing of the great-kingdom (Tacitus, Ann. xi. 9).
10 Still later a troop of horse in the Parthian army is called that "of the free:" Josephus, Arch. xiv. 13, 5 = Bell. Jud. i. 13, 3.
11 The oldest known coin with Pahlavi writing was struck in Claudius’s time under Vologasus I.; it is bilingual, and gives to the king in Greek his full title, but only the name Arsaces, in Iranian merely the native individual name shortened (Vol.).
12 Usually this is restricted to the large silver money, and the small silver and most of the copper are regarded as of royal coinage. But by this view a singular secondary part in coinage is assigned to the great-king. More correctly perhaps the former coinage is conceived of as predominantly destined for dealings abroad, the latter as predominantly for internal intercourse; the diversities subsisting between the two kinds are also explained in this way.
13 The first ruler that bears it is Phraapates about 188 B.C. (Percy Gardner, Parthian Coinage, p. 27).
14 Thus there stands on the coins of Gotarzes (under Claudius) Γωτέρζης βασιλεὺς βασιλέων ὑὸς κεκαλουμένος Ἀρταβάνου. On the later ones the Greek legend is often quite unintelligible.
15 While the kingdom of Darius, according to his inscriptions, includes in it the Gādara (the Gandhâra of the Indians, Γανδαρῖτις of the Greeks on the Cabul river) and the Hîdu (the dwellers by the Indus), the former are in one of the inscriptions of Asoka adduced among his subjects, and a copy of his great edict has been found in Kapurdi Giri, or rather in Shahbaz Garhi (Yusufzai-district), nearly 27 miles north-west of the point where the Cabul river falls into the Indus at Attock. The seat of the government of these north-west provinces of Asoka’s kingdom was (according to the inscription C. I. Indicar. i. p. 91) Takkhasilâ, Τάξιλα of the Greeks, some 40 miles E.S.E. of Attock, the seat of government for the south-western provinces was Ujjênî (Ὀζήνη). The eastern part of the Cabul valley thus belonged at any rate to Asoka’s empire. It is not quite impossible that the Khyber pass formed the boundary; but probably the whole Cabul valley belonged to India, and the boundary to the south of Cabul was formed by the sharp line of the Suleiman range, and farther to the south-west by the Bolan pass. Of the later Indo-Scythian king Huvishka (Ooerke of the coins), who seems to have resided on the Yamunâ in Mathurâ, an inscription has been found at Wardak not far northward from Cabul (according to information from Oldenberg).
16 The Egyptian merchant named in note 3 makes mention, c. 47, of "the warlike people of the Bactrians, who have their own king." At that time, therefore, Bactria was separated from the Indus-empire that was under Parthian princes. Strabo, too (xi. 11, 1, p. 516) treats the Bactro-Indian empire as belonging to the past.
17 Probably he is the Kaspar—in older tradition Gathaspar—who appears among the holy three kings from the East (Gutschmid, Rhein. Mus. xix. 162).
18 The most definite testimony to the Parthian rule in these regions is found in the description of the coasts of the Red Sea drawn up by an Egyptian merchant under Vespasian, c. 38: “Behind the mouth of the Indus in the interior lies the capital of Scythia Minnagara; but this is ruled by the Parthians, who constantly chase away one another” (ὑπὸ Πάρθων συνεχῶς ἀλλήλους ἐνδιωκόντων). The same is repeated in a somewhat confused way, c. 41; it might here appear as if Minnagara lay in India itself above Barygaza, and Ptolemy has already been led astray by this; but certainly the writer, who speaks as to the interior only from hearsay, has only wished to say that a large town Minnagara lay inland not far from Barygaza, and much cotton was brought thence to Barygaza. The numerous traces also of Alexander, which occur according to the same authority in Minnagara, can be found only on the Indus, not in Gujerat. The position of Minnagara on the lower Indus not far from Hyderabad, and the existence of a Parthian rule there under Vespasian, appear hereby assured.—With this we may be allowed to combine the coins of king Gondopharus or Hyndopherres, who in a very old Christian legend is converted to Christianity by St. Thomas, the apostle of the Parthians and Indians, and in fact appears to belong to the first period of the Roman empire (Sallet, Num. Zeitschr. vi. 355; Gutschmid, Rhein. Mus. xix. 162); of his brother’s son Abdagases (Sallet, ib. p. 365), who may be identical with the Parthian prince of this name in Tacitus, Ann. vi. 36, at any rate bears a Parthian name; and lastly of king Sanabarus, who must have reigned shortly after Hyndopherres, perhaps was his successor. Here belongs also a number of other coins marked with Parthian names, Arsaces, Pacorus, Vonones. This coinage attaches itself decidedly to that of the Arsacids (Sallet, ib. p. 277); the silver pieces of Gondopharus and of Sanabarus—of the others the coins are almost solely copper—correspond exactly to the Arsacid drachmae. To all appearance these belong to the Parthian princes of Minnagara; the appearance here of Indian legend alongside of the Greek, as of Pahlavi writing among the late Arsacids, suits this view. These, however, are not coins of satraps, but, as the Egyptian indicates, of great-kings rivalling those of Ctesiphon; Hyndopherres names himself in very corrupt Greek βασιλεὺς βασιλέων μέγας αὐτοκράτωρ, and in good Indian “Maharajah Rajadi Rajah.” If, as is not improbable, under the Mambaros or Akabaros, whom the Periplus, c. 41, 52, designates as ruler of the coast of Barygaza, there lurks the Sanabarus of the coins, the latter belongs to the time of Nero or Vespasian, and ruled not merely at the mouths of the Indus, but also over Gujerat. Moreover, if an inscription found not far from Peshawur is rightly referred to king Gondopharus, his rule must have extended up thither, probably as far as Cabul.—The fact that Corbulo in the year 60 sent the embassy of the Hyrcanians who had revolted from the Parthians—in order that they might not be intercepted by the latter—to the coast of the Red Sea, whence they might reach their home without setting foot on Parthian territory (Tacitus, Ann. xv. 25), tells in favour of the view that the Indus valley at that time was not subject to the ruler of Ctesiphon.
19 That the great kingdom of the Arsacids of Minnagara did not subsist much beyond the time of Nero, is probable from the coins. It is questionable what rulers followed them. The Bactro-Indian rulers of Greek names belong predominantly, perhaps all of them, to the pre-Augustan epoch; and various indigenous names, e.g. Maues and Azes, fall in point of language and writing (e.g. the form of the ω Ω) before this time. On the other hand the coins of the kings Kozulokadphises and Oemokadphises, and those of the Sacian kings, Kanerku and his successors, while all are clearly characterised as belonging to one coinage by the gold stater of the weight of the Roman aureus, which does not previously occur in the Indian coinage, are to all appearance later than Gondopharus and Sanabarus. They show how the state of the Indus valley assumed a national Indian type in ever increasing measure in contrast to the Hellenes as well as to the Iranians. The reign of these Kadphises will thus fall between the Indo-Parthian rulers and the dynasty of the Sacae, which latter begins with A.D. 78 (Oldenberg, in Sallet’s Zeitschr. für Num. viii. 292). Coins of these Sacian kings, found in the treasure of Peshawur, name in a remarkable way Greek gods in a mutilated form, Ηρακιλο, Σαραπο, alongside of the national Βουδο. The latest of their coins show the influence of the oldest Sassanid coinage, and might belong to the second half of the third century (Sallet, Zeitschr. für Num. vi. 224).
20 The Indo-Greek and the Indo-Parthian rulers, just as the Kadphises, make use on their coins to a large extent of the indigenous Indian language and writing alongside of the Greek: the Sacian kings on the other hand never used the Indian language and Indian alphabet, but employ exclusively the Greek letters, and the non-Greek legends of their coins are beyond doubt Scythian. Thus on Kanerku’s gold pieces there sometimes stands βασιλεὺς βασιλέων Κανήρκου, sometimes ραο νανοραο κανηρκι κορανο, where the first two words must be a Scythian form of the Indian Rajâdi Rajah, and the two following contain the personal and the family name (Gushana) of the king (Oldenberg, l.c. p. 294). Thus these Sacae were foreign rulers in India in another sense than the Bactrian Hellenes and the Parthians. Yet the inscriptions set up under them in India are not Scythian but Indian.
21 Arrian, who, as governor of Cappadocia, had himself wielded command over the Armenians (contra Al. 29), always in the Tactica names the Armenians and Parthians together (4, 3, 44, 1, as respects the heavy cavalry, the mailed κοντοφόροι and the light cavalry, the ἀκροβολισταί or ἱπποτοξόται; 34, 7 as respects the wide hose); and, where he speaks of Hadrian’s introduction of barbaric cavalry into the Roman army, he traces the mounted archers back to the model of “the Parthians or Armenians” (44, 1).
22 Caesar’s illegitimate son Πτολεμαῖος ὁ καὶ Καῖσαρ θεὸς φιλοπάτωρ φιλομήτωρ, as his royal designation runs (C. I. Gr. 4717), entered on the joint rule of Egypt in the Egyptian year 29 Aug. 711/2, as the era shows (Wescher, Bullet. dell’ Inst. 1866, p. 199; Krall, Wiener Studien, v. 313). As he came in place of Ptolemaeus the younger, the husband and brother of his mother, the setting aside of the latter by Cleopatra, of which the particulars are not known, must have taken place just then, and have furnished the occasion to proclaim him as king of Egypt. Dio also, xlvii. 31, places his nomination in the summer of 71242 B.C. before the battle of Philippi. It was thus not the work of Antonius, but sanctioned by the two rulers in concert at a time when it could not but be their object to meet the wishes of the queen of Egypt, who certainly had from the outset ranged herself on their side.
23 This is what Augustus means when he says that he had brought again to the empire the provinces of the East in great part distributed among kings (Mon. Ancyr. 5, 41: provincias omnis, quae trans Hadrianum mare vergunt ad orientem, Cyrenasque, iam ex parte magna regibus eas possidentibus ... reciperavi).
24 The decorum, which was as characteristic of Augustus as its opposite was of his colleague, did not fail him here. Not merely in the case of Caesarion was the paternity, which the dictator himself had virtually acknowledged, afterwards officially denied; the children also of Antonius by Cleopatra, where indeed nothing was to be denied, were regarded doubtless as members of the imperial house, but were never formally acknowledged as children of Antonius. On the contrary the son of the daughter of Antonius by Cleopatra, the subsequent king of Mauretania Ptolemaeus, is called in the Athenian inscription, C. I. A. iii. 555, grandson of Ptolemaeus; for Πτολεμαίου ἔκγονος cannot well in this connection be taken otherwise. This maternal grandfather was invented in Rome, that they might be able officially to conceal the real one. Any one who prefers—as O. Hirschfeld proposes—to take ἔκγονος as great-grandson, and to refer it to the maternal great-grandfather, comes to the same result; for then the grandfather is passed over, because the mother was in the legal sense fatherless.—Whether the fiction, which is in my view more probable, went so far as to indicate a definite Ptolemaeus, possibly to prolong the life of the last Lagid who died in 71242 B.C., or whether they were content with inventing a father without entering into particulars, cannot be decided. But the fiction was adhered to in this respect, that the son of Antonius’s daughter obtained the name of the fictitious grandfather. The circumstance that in this case preference was given to the descent from the Lagids over that from Massinissa may probably have been occasioned more by regard to the imperial house, which treated the illegitimate child as belonging to it, than by the Hellenic inclination of the father.
25 It is in itself credible that Antonius concealed the impending invasion from Phraates as long as possible, and therefore, when sending back Monaeses, declared himself ready to conclude peace on the basis of the restitution of the lost standards (Plutarch, 37; Dio, xlix. 24; Florus, ii. 20 [iv. 10]). But he knew presumably that this offer would not be accepted, and in no case can he have been in earnest with those proposals; beyond doubt he wished for the war and the overthrow of Phraates.
26 The account of the matter given by Strabo, xi. 13, 4, p. 524, evidently after the description of this war compiled by Antonius’s comrade in arms Dellius, and, it may be conjectured, at his bidding (comp. ib. xi. 13, 3; Dio, xlix. 39), is a very sorry attempt to justify the beaten general. If Antonius did not take the nearest route to Ctesiphon, king Artavazdes cannot be brought in for the blame of it as a false guide; it was a military, and doubtless still more a political, miscalculation of the general in chief.
27 The fact of the deposition and execution, and the time, are attested by Dio, xlix. 32, and Valerius Maximus, ix. 15, ext. 2; the cause or the pretext must have been connected with the Armenian war.
28 The account of the seizure of Armenia is wanting, but the fact is clearly apparent from Tacitus, Ann. xi. 9. To this connection probably belongs what Josephus, Arch. xx. 3, 3, tells of the design of the successor of Artabanus to wage war against the Romans, from which Izates the satrap of Adiabene vainly dissuades him. Josephus names this successor, probably in error, Bardanes. The immediate successor of Artabanus III. was, according to Tacitus, Ann. xi. 8, his son of the same name, whom along with his son thereupon Gotarzes put out of the way; and this Artabanus IV. must be here meant.
29 The statement of Petrus Patricius (fr. 3 Müll.) that king Mithradates of Iberia had planned revolt from Rome, but in order to preserve the semblance of fidelity, had sent his brother Cotys to Claudius, and then, when the latter had given information to the emperor of those intrigues, had been deposed and replaced by his brother, is not compatible with the assured fact that in Iberia, at least from the year 35 (Tacitus, Ann. vi. 32) till the year 60 (Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 26), Pharasmanes, and in the year 75 his son Mithradates (C. I. L. iii. 6052) bore rule. Beyond doubt Petrus has confused Mithradates of Iberia and the king of the Bosporus of the same name (I. 316, note 1), and here at the bottom lies the narrative, which Tacitus, Ann. xii. 18, presupposes.
30 If the coins, which, it is true, for the most part admit of being distinguished only by resemblance of effigy, are correctly attributed, those of Gotarzes reach to Sel. 362 Daesius = A.D. 51 June, and those of Vologasus (we know none of Vonones II.) begin with Sel. 362 Gorpiaeus = A.D. 51 Sept. (Percy Gardner, Parthian Coinage, pp. 50, 51), which agrees with Tacitus, Ann. xii. 14, 44.
31 Gorneae, called by the Armenians Garhni, as the ruins (nearly east of Erivân) are still at present named. (Kiepert.)
32 Even after the attack Tiridates complained cur datis nuper obsidibus redintegrataque amicitia ... vetere Armeniae possessione depelleretur, and Corbulo presented to him, in case of his turning as a suppliant to the emperor, the prospect of a regnum stabile (Tacitus, Ann. xii. 37). Elsewhere too the refusal of the oath of fealty is indicated as the proper ground of war (Tacitus, Ann. xii. 34).
33 The report in Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 34–41, embraces beyond doubt the campaigns of 58 and 59, since Tacitus under the year 59 is silent as to the Armenian campaign, while under the year 60, Ann. xiv. 23 joins on immediately to xiii. 41, and evidently describes merely a single campaign; generally, where he condenses in this way, he as a rule anticipates. That the war cannot have begun only in 59, is further confirmed by the fact that Corbulo observed the solar eclipse of 30th April 59 on Armenian soil (Plin. H. N. ii. 70, 180); had he not entered the country till 59, he could hardly have crossed the enemy’s frontier so early in the year. The narrative of Tacitus, Ann. xiii, 34–41, does not in itself show an intercalation of a year, but with his mode of narrating it admits the possibility that the first year was spent in the crossing of the Euphrates and the settling in Armenia, and so the winter mentioned in c. 35 is that of the year 58–9, especially as in view of the character of the army such a beginning to the war would be quite in place, and in view of the short Armenian summer it was militarily convenient thus to separate the marching into the country and the conduct proper of the war.
34 From the representation of Tacitus, Ann. xv. 6, the partiality and the perplexity are clearly seen. He does not venture to express the surrender of Armenia to Tiridates, and only leaves the reader to infer it.
35 This is said by Tacitus himself, Ann. xv. 10: nec a Corbulone properatum, quo gliscentibus periculis etiam subsidii laus augeretur, in naive unconcern at the severe censure which this praise involves. How partial is the tone of the whole account resting on Corbulo’s despatches, is shown among other things by the circumstance that Paetus is reproached in one breath with the inadequate provisioning of the camp (xv. 8) and with the surrender of it in spite of copious supplies (xv. 16), and the latter fact is inferred from this, that the retiring Romans preferred to destroy the stores which, according to the capitulation, were to be delivered to the Parthians. As the exasperation against Tiberius found its expression in the painting of Germanicus in fine colours, so did the exasperation against Nero in the picture of Corbulo.
36 The statement of Corbulo that Paetus bound himself on oath in presence of his soldiers and of the Parthian deputies to send no troops to Armenia till the arrival of Nero’s answer, is declared by Tacitus, Ann. xv. 16, unworthy of credit; it is in keeping with the state of the case, and nothing was done to the contrary.
37 As, according to Tacitus, Ann. xv. 25 (comp. Dio, lxii. 22), Nero dismissed graciously the envoys of Vologasus, and allowed them to see the possibility of an understanding if Tiridates appeared in person, Corbulo may in this case have acted according to his instructions; but this was rather perhaps one of the turns added in the interest of Corbulo. That these events were brought under discussion in the trial to which he was subjected some years after, is probable from the statement that one of the officers of the Armenian campaign became his accuser. The identity of the cohort-prefect, Arrius Varus, in Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 9, and of the primipilus, Hist. iii. 6, has been without reason disputed; comp. on C. I. L. v. 867.
38 In Ziata (Charput) there have been found two inscriptions of a fort, which one of the legions led by Corbulo over the Euphrates, the 3d Gallica, constructed there by Corbulo’s orders in the year 64 (Eph. epigr. v. p. 25).
39 Nero intended inter reliqua bella, an Ethiopian one (Plin. vi. 29, comp. 184). To this the sending of troops to Alexandria (Tacitus, Hist. i. 31, 70) had reference.
40 As the aim of the expedition both Tacitus, Hist. i. 6, and Suetonius, Ner. 19, indicate the Caspian gates, i.e. the pass of the Caucasus between Tiflis and Vladi-Kavkas at Darial, which, according to the legend, Alexander closed with iron gates (Plin. H. N. vi. 11, 30; Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 7, 4; Procopius, Pers. i. 10). Both from this locality and from the whole scheme of the expedition it cannot possibly have been directed against the Albani on the western shore of the Caspian Sea; here, as well as at another passage (Ann. ii. 68, ad Armenios, inde Albanos Heniochosque), only the Alani can be meant, who in Josephus, l.c. and elsewhere appear just at this spot and are frequently confounded with the Caucasian Albani. No doubt the account of Josephus is also confused. If here the Albani, with consent of the king of the Hyrcanians, invade Media and then Armenia through the Caspian gates, the writer has been thinking of the other Caspian gate eastward from Rhagae; but this must be his mistake, since the latter pass, situated in the heart of the Parthian kingdom, cannot possibly have been the aim of the Neronian expedition, and the Alani had their seats not on the eastern shore of the Caspian but to the north of the Caucasus. On account of this expedition the best of the Roman legions, the 14th, was recalled from Britain, although it went only as far as Pannonia (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 11, comp. 27, 66), and a new legion, the 1st Italic, was formed by Nero (Suetonius, Ner. 19). One sees from this what was the scale on which the project was conceived.
41 In what connection he refused to Vespasian the title of emperor (Dio, lxvi. 11) is not clear; possibly immediately after his insurrection, before he had perceived that the Flavians were the stronger. His intercession for the princes of Commagene (Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 7, 3) was attended by success, and so was purely personal, by no means a protest against the conversion of the kingdom into a province.
42 The four Syrian legions were the 3d Gallica, the 6th ferrata (both hitherto in Syria), the 4th Scythica (hitherto in Moesia, but having already taken part in the Parthian as in the Jewish war), and the 16th Flavia (new). The one legion of Palestine was the 10th fretensis (hitherto in Syria). The two of Cappadocia were the 12th fulminata (hitherto in Syria, moved by Titus to Melitene, Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3), and the 15th Apollinaris (hitherto in Pannonia, but having taken part, like the 4th Scythica, in the Parthian as in the Jewish war). The garrisons were thus changed as little as possible, only two of the legions already called earlier to Syria received fixed stations there, and one newly instituted was moved thither.—After the Jewish war under Hadrian the 6th ferrata was despatched from Syria to Palestine.
43 At this time (comp. C. I. L. v. 6988), probably falls also the Cappadocian governorship of C. Rutilius Gallicus, of which it is said (Statius, i. 4, 78): hunc ... timuit ... Armenia et patiens Latii iam pontis Araxes, with reference presumably to a bridge-structure executed by this Roman garrison. That Gallicus served under Corbulo, is from the silence of Tacitus not probable.
44 That war threatened to break out under Vespasian in the year 75 on the Euphrates, while M. Ulpius Trajanus, the father of the emperor, was governor of Syria, is stated by Pliny in his panegyric on the son, c. 14, probably with strong exaggeration; the cause is unknown.
45 There are coins dated, and provided with the individual names of the kings, of (V)ologasus from the years 389 and 390 = 77–78; of Pacorus from the years 389–394 = 77–82 (and again 404–407 = 92–95); of Artabanus from the year 392 = 80–1. The corresponding historical dates are lost, with the exception of the notice connecting Titus and Artabanus in Zonaras, xi. 18 (comp. Suetonius, Ner. 57; Tacitus, Hist. i. 2), but the coins point to an epoch of rapid changes on the throne, and, apparently, of simultaneous coinage by rival pretenders.
46 This is proved by the detached notice from Arrian in Suidas (s. v. ἐπίκλημα): ὁ δὲ Πάκορος ὁ Παρθυαίων βασιλεὺς καὶ ἄλλα τινὰ ἐπικλήματα ἐπέφερε Τραιανῷ τῷ βασιλεῖ, and by the attention which is devoted in Pliny’s report to the emperor, written about the year 112 (ad Trai. 74), to the relations between Pacorus and the Dacian king Decebalus. The time of the reign of this Parthian king cannot be sufficiently fixed. There are no Parthian coins with the king’s name from the whole period of Trajan; the coining of silver seems to have been in abeyance during that period.