Policy open to him.The Roman statesman had to reckon with these facts; considering the position, which Antonius took in the East, the policy of action was imperative generally, and doubly so from the preceding miscarriages. Beyond doubt it was desirable soon to undertake the organisation of matters in Rome, but for the undisputed monarch there subsisted no stringent compulsion to do this at once. He found himself after the decisive blows of Actium and Alexandria on the spot and at the head of a strong and victorious army; what had to be done some day was best done at once. A ruler of the stamp of Caesar would hardly have returned to Rome without having restored the protectorate in Armenia, having obtained recognition for the Roman supremacy as far as the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and having settled accounts with the Parthians. A ruler of caution and energy would have now at once organised the defence of the frontier in the East, as the circumstances required; it was from the outset clear that the four Syrian legions, together about 40,000 men, were not sufficient to guard the interests of Rome simultaneously on the Euphrates, on the Araxes, and on the Cyrus, and that the militia of the dependent kingdoms only concealed, and did not cover, the want of imperial troops. Armenia by political and national sympathy held more to the Parthians than to the Romans; the kings of Commagene, Cappadocia, Galatia, Pontus, were inclined doubtless on the other hand more to the Roman side, but they were untrustworthy and weak. Even a policy keeping within bounds needed for its foundation an energetic stroke of the sword, and for its maintenance the near arm of a superior Roman military power.

Inadequate measures.Augustus neither struck nor protected; certainly not because he deceived himself as to the state of the case, but because it was his nature to execute tardily and feebly what he perceived to be necessary, and to let considerations of internal policy exercise a more than due influence on the relations abroad. The inadequacy of the protection of the frontier by the client states of Asia Minor he well perceived; and in connection therewith, already in the year 72925 B.C., after the death of king Amyntas who ruled all the interior of Asia Minor, he gave to him no successor, but placed the land under an imperial legate. Presumably the neighbouring more important client-states, and particularly Cappadocia, were intended to be in like manner converted after the decease of the holders for the time into imperial governorships. This was a step in advance, in so far as thereby the militia of these countries was incorporated with the imperial army and placed under Roman officers; these troops could not exercise a serious pressure on the insecure border-lands or even on the neighbouring great-state, although they now counted among those of the empire. But all these considerations were outweighed by regard to the reduction of the numbers of the standing army and of the expenditure for the military system to the lowest possible measure.

Equally insufficient, in presence of the relations of the moment, were the measures adopted by Augustus on his return home from Alexandria. He gave to the dispossessed king of the Medes the rule of the Lesser Armenia, and to the Parthian pretender Tiridates an asylum in Syria, in order through the former to keep in check the king Artaxes who persevered in open hostility against Rome, by the latter to press upon king Phraates. The negotiations instituted with the latter regarding the restitution of the Parthian trophies of victory were prolonged without result, although Phraates in the year 73123 B.C. had promised their return in order to obtain the release of a son who had accidentally fallen into the power of the Romans.

Augustus in Syria.It was only when Augustus went in person to Syria in the year 734 20 B.C. , and showed himself in earnest, that the Orientals submitted. In Armenia, where a powerful party had risen against king Artaxes, the insurgents threw themselves into the arms of the Romans and sought imperial investiture for Artaxes’s younger brother Tigranes, brought up at the imperial court and living in Rome. When the emperor’s stepson Tiberius Claudius Nero, then a youth of twenty-two years, advanced with a military force into Armenia, king Artaxes was put to death by his own relatives, and Tigranes received the imperial tiara from the hand of the emperor’s representative, as fifty years earlier his grandfather of the same name had received it from Pompeius (iv. 127). Atropatene was again separated from Armenia and passed under the sway of a ruler likewise brought up in Rome, Ariobarzanes, son of the already-mentioned Artavazdes; yet the latter appears to have obtained the land not as a Roman but as a Parthian dependency. Concerning the organisation of matters in the principalities on the Caucasus we learn nothing; but as they are subsequently reckoned among the Roman client-states, probably at that time the Roman influence prevailed here also. Even king Phraates, now put to the choice of redeeming his word or fighting, resolved with a heavy heart on the surrender—keenly as it did violence to the national feelings of his people—of the few Roman prisoners of war still living and the standards won.

Mission of Gaius Caesar to the East.Boundless joy saluted this bloodless victory achieved by this prince of peace. After it there subsisted for a considerable time a friendly relation with the king of the Parthians, as indeed the immediate interests of the two great states came little into contact. In Armenia, on the other hand, the Roman vassal-rule, which rested only on its own basis, had a difficulty in confronting the national opposition. After the early death of king Tigranes his children, or the leaders of the state governing under their name, joined this opposition. Against them another ruler Artavazdes was set up by the friends of the Romans; but he was unable to prevail against the stronger opposing party. These Armenian troubles disturbed also the relation to the Parthians; it was natural that the Armenians antagonistic to Rome should seek to lean on these, and the Arsacids could not forget that Armenia had been formerly a Parthian appanage for the second son. Bloodless victories are often feeble and dangerous. Matters went so far that the Roman government, in the year 7486 B.C., commissioned the same Tiberius, who, fourteen years before had installed Tigranes as vassal-king of Armenia, to enter it once more with a military force and to regulate the state of matters in case of need by arms. But the quarrels in the imperial family, which had interrupted the subjugation of the Germans (I. 35), interfered also here and had the same bad effect. Tiberius declined his stepfather’s commission, and in the absence of a suitable princely general the Roman government for some years looked on, inactive for good or evil, at the doings of the anti-Roman party in Armenia under Parthian protection. At length, in the year 7531 B.C., not merely was the same commission given to the elder adopted son of the emperor, Gaius Caesar, at the age of twenty, but the subjugation of Armenia was to be, as the father hoped, the beginning of greater things; the Oriental campaign of the crown-prince of twenty was, we might almost say, to continue the expedition of Alexander. Literati commissioned by the emperor or in close relations to the court, the geographer Isidorus, himself at home at the mouth of the Euphrates, and king Juba of Mauretania, the representative of Greek learning among the princely personages of the Augustan circle, dedicated—the former his information personally acquired in the East, the latter his literary collections on Arabia—to the young prince, who appeared to burn with the desire of achieving the conquest of that land—over which Alexander had met his death—as a brilliant compensation for a miscarriage of the Augustan government which a considerable time ago had there occurred. In the first instance for Armenia this mission was just as successful as that of Tiberius. The Roman crown-prince and the Parthian great-king Phraataces met personally on an island of the Euphrates; the Parthians once more gave up Armenia, the imminent danger of a Parthian war was averted, and the understanding, which had been disturbed, was at least outwardly re-established. Gaius appointed Ariobarzanes, a prince of the Median princely house, as king over the Armenians, and the suzerainty of Rome was once more confirmed. The Armenians, however, opposed to Rome did not submit without resistance; matters came not merely to the marching in of the legions, but even to fighting. Before the walls of the Armenian stronghold Artageira the young crown-prince received from a Parthian officer through treachery the wound (2 A.D.) of which he died after months of sickness. The intermixture of imperial and dynastic policy punished itself anew. The death of a young man changed the course of great policy; the Arabian expedition so confidently announced to the public fell into abeyance, after its success could no longer smooth the way of the emperor’s son to the succession. Further undertakings on the Euphrates were no longer thought of; the immediate object—the occupation of Armenia and the re-establishment of the relations with the Parthians—was attained, however sad the shadows that fell on this success through the death of the crown-prince.

Mission of Germanicus to the East.The success had no more endurance than that of the more brilliant expedition of 73420 B.C.. The rulers of Armenia installed by Rome were soon hard pressed by those of the counter-party with the secret or open participation of the Parthians, and supplanted. When the Parthian prince Vonones, reared in Rome, was called to the vacant Parthian throne, the Romans hoped to find in him a support; but on that very account he had soon to vacate it, and in his stead came king Artabanus of Media, an energetic man, sprung on the mother’s side from the Arsacids, but belonging to the Scythian people of the Daci, and brought up in native habits (about 10 A.D.). Vonones was then received by the Armenians as ruler, and thereby these were kept under Roman influence. But the less could Artabanus tolerate his dispossessed rival as a neighbour prince; the Roman government must, in order to sustain a man in every respect unfitted for his position, have applied armed force against the Parthians as against his own subjects. Tiberius, who meanwhile had come to reign, did not order an immediate invasion, and for the moment the anti-Roman party in Armenia was victorious; but it was not his intention to abandon the important border-land. On the contrary, the annexation, probably long resolved on, of the kingdom of Cappadocia was carried out in the year 17; the old Archelaus, who had occupied the throne there from the year 71836 B.C., was summoned to Rome and was there informed that he had ceased to reign. Likewise the petty, but on account of the fords of the Euphrates important, kingdom of Commagene came at that time under immediate imperial administration. Thereby the direct frontier of the empire was pushed forward as far as the middle Euphrates. At the same time the crown-prince Germanicus, who had just commanded with great distinction on the Rhine, went with extended full powers to the East, in order to organise the new province of Cappadocia and to restore the sunken repute of the imperial authority.

And its results.This mission also attained its end soon and easily. Germanicus, although not supported by the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Piso, with such a force of troops as he was entitled to ask and had asked, went nevertheless to Armenia, and by the mere weight of his person and of his position brought back the land to allegiance. He allowed the incapable Vonones to fall, and, in accordance with the wishes of the chief men favourable to Rome, appointed as ruler of the Armenians a son of that Polemon whom Antonius had made king in Pontus, Zeno, or, as he was called as king of Armenia, Artaxias; the latter was, on the one hand, connected with the imperial house through his mother queen Pythodoris, a granddaughter of the triumvir Antonius, on the other hand, reared after the manner of the country, a vigorous huntsman and a brave carouser at the festal board. The great-king Artabanus also met the Roman prince in a friendly way, and asked only for the removal of his predecessor Vonones from Syria, in order to check the intrigues concocted between him and the discontented Parthians. As Germanicus responded to this request and sent the inconvenient refugee to Cilicia, where he soon afterwards perished in an attempt to escape, the best relations were established between the two great states. Artabanus wished even to meet personally with Germanicus at the Euphrates, as Phraataces and Gaius had done; but this Germanicus declined, doubtless with reference to the easily excited suspicion of Tiberius. In truth the same shadow of gloom fell on this Oriental expedition as on the last preceding one; from this too the crown-prince of the Roman empire came not home alive.

For a time the arrangements made did their work. So long as Tiberius bore sway with a firm hand, and so long as king Artaxias of Armenia lived, tranquillity continued in the East; but in the last years of the old emperor, when he from his solitary island allowed things to take their course and shrank back from all interference, and especially after the death of Artaxias (about 34), the old game once more began. King Artabanus, exalted by his long and prosperous government and by many successes achieved against the border peoples of Iran, and convinced that the old emperor would have no inclination to begin a heavy war in the East, induced the Armenians to proclaim his own eldest son, Arsaces, as ruler; that is, to exchange the Roman suzerainty for the Parthian. Indeed he seemed directly to aim at war with Rome; he demanded the estate left by his predecessor and rival Vonones, who had died in Cilicia, from the Roman government, and his letters to it as undisguisedly expressed the view that the East belonged to the Orientals, as they called by the right name the abominations at the imperial court, of which people in Rome ventured only to whisper in their most intimate circles. He is said even to have made an attempt to possess himself of Cappadocia. But he had miscalculated on the old lion. Tiberius was even at Capreae formidable not merely to his courtiers, and was not the man to let himself, and in himself Rome, be mocked with impunity. He sent Mission of Vitellius.Lucius Vitellius, the father of the subsequent emperor, a resolute officer and skilful diplomatist, to the East with plenary power similar to that which Gaius Caesar and Germanicus had formerly had, and with the commission in case of need to lead the Syrian legions over the Euphrates. At the same time he applied the often tried means for giving trouble to the rulers of the East by insurrections and pretenders in their own land. To the Parthian prince, whom the Armenian nationalists had proclaimed as ruler, he opposed a prince of the royal house of the Iberians, Mithradates, brother of the Armenian king Pharasmanes, and directed the latter, as well as the prince of the Albanians, to support the Roman pretender to Armenia with military force. Large bands of the Transcaucasian Sarmatae, warlike and easy of access to every wooer, were hired with Roman money for the inroads into Armenia. The Roman pretender succeeded in poisoning his rival through bribed courtiers, and in possessing himself of the country and of the capital Artaxata. Artabanus sent in place of the murdered prince another son Orodes to Armenia, and attempted also on his part to procure Transcaucasian auxiliaries; but only few made good their way to Armenia, and the bands of Parthian horsemen were not a match for the good infantry of the Caucasian peoples and the dreaded Sarmatian mounted archers. Orodes was vanquished in a hard pitched battle, and himself severely wounded in single combat with his rival. Then Artabanus in person set out for Armenia. But now Vitellius also put in motion the Syrian legions, in order to cross the Euphrates and to invade Mesopotamia, and this brought the long fermenting insurrection in the Parthian kingdom to an outbreak. The energetic and, with successes, more and more rude demeanour of the Scythian ruler, had offended many persons and interests, and had especially estranged from him the Mesopotamian Greeks and the powerful urban community of Seleucia, from which he had taken away its municipal constitution, democratic after a Greek type. Roman gold fostered the movement which was in preparation. Discontented nobles had already put themselves in communication with the Roman government, and besought from it a genuine Arsacid. Tiberius had sent the only surviving son of Phraates, of the same name with his father, and—after the old man, accustomed to Roman habits, had succumbed to his exertions while still in Syria—in his stead a grandson of Phraates, likewise living in Rome, by name Tiridates. The Parthian prince Sinnaces, the leader of these plots, now renounced allegiance to the Scythian and set up the banner of the Arsacids. Vitellius with his legions crossed the Euphrates, and in his train the new great-king by grace of Rome. The Parthian governor of Mesopotamia, Ornospades, who had once as an exile shared under Tiberius in the Pannonian wars, placed himself and his troops at once at the disposal of the new ruler; Abdagaeses, the father of Sinnaces, delivered over the imperial treasure; very speedily Artabanus found himself abandoned by the whole country, and compelled to take flight to his Scythian home, where he wandered about in the forests without settled abode, and kept himself alive with his bow, while the tiara was solemnly placed on the head of Tiridates in Ctesiphon by the princes who were, according to the Parthian constitution, called to crown the ruler.

Tiridates superseded.But the rule of the new great-king sent by the national foe did not last long. The government, conducted less by himself, young, inexperienced, and incapable, than by those who had made him king, and chiefly by Abdagaeses, soon provoked opposition. Some of the chief satraps had remained absent even from the coronation festival, and again brought forth the dispossessed ruler from his banishment; with their assistance and the forces supplied by his Scythian countrymen Artabanus returned, and already in the following year (36) the whole kingdom, with the exception of Seleucia, was again in his power. Tiridates was a fugitive, and was compelled to demand from his Roman protectors the shelter which could not be refused to him. Vitellius once more led the legions to the Euphrates; but, as the great-king appeared in person and declared himself ready for all that was asked, provided that the Roman government would stand aloof from Tiridates, peace was soon concluded. Artabanus not merely recognised Mithradates as king of Armenia, but presented also to the effigy of the Roman emperor the homage which was wont to be required of vassals, and furnished his son Darius as a hostage to the Romans. Thereupon the old emperor died; but he had lived long enough to see this victory, as bloodless as complete, of his policy over the revolt of the East.

The East under Gaius.What the sagacity of the old man had attained was undone at once by the indiscretion of his successor. Apart from the fact that he cancelled judicious arrangements of Tiberius, re-establishing, e.g. the annexed kingdom of Commagene, his foolish envy grudged the dead emperor the success which he had gained; he summoned the able governor of Syria as well as the new king of Armenia to Rome to answer for themselves, deposed the latter, and, after keeping him for a time a prisoner, sent him into exile. As a matter of course the Parthian government took action for itself, and once more seized possession of Armenia which was without a master.28 Claudius, on coming to reign in the year 41, had to begin afresh the work that had been done. He dealt with it after the example of Tiberius. Mithradates, recalled from exile, was reinstated, and directed with the help of his brother to possess himself of Armenia. The fraternal war then waged among the three sons of king Artabanus III. in the Parthian kingdom smoothed the way for the Romans. After the murder of the eldest son, Gotarzes and Vardanes contended over the throne for years; Seleucia, which had already renounced allegiance to the father, defied him and subsequently his sons throughout seven years; the peoples of Turan also interfered, as they always did, in this quarrel of princes of Iran. Mithradates was able, with the help of the troops of his brother and of the garrisons of the neighbouring Roman provinces, to overpower the Parthian partisans in Armenia and to make himself again master there;29 the land obtained a Roman garrison. After Vardanes had come to terms with his brother and had at length reoccupied Seleucia, he seemed as though he would march into Armenia; but the threatening attitude of the Roman legate of Syria withheld him, and very soon the brother broke the agreement and the civil war began afresh. Not even the assassination of the brave and, in combat with the peoples of Turan, victorious Vardanes put an end to it; the opposition party now turned to Rome and besought from the government there the son of Vonones, the prince Meherdates then living in Rome, who thereupon was placed by the emperor Claudius before the assembled senate at the disposal of his countrymen and sent away to Syria with the exhortation to administer his new kingdom well and justly, and to remain mindful of the friendly protectorate of Rome (49). He did not reach the position in which these exhortations might be applied. The Roman legions, which escorted him as far as the Euphrates, there delivered him over to those who had called him—the head of the powerful princely family of the Carên and the kings Abgarus of Edessa and Izates of Adiabene. The inexperienced and unwarlike youth was as little equal to the task as all the other Parthian rulers set up by the Romans; a number of his most noted adherents left him so soon as they learned to know him, and went to Gotarzes; in the decisive battle the fall of the brave Carên turned the scale. Meherdates was taken prisoner and not even executed, but only, after the Oriental fashion, rendered incapable of government by mutilation of the ears.

Armenia occupied by the Parthians.Notwithstanding this defeat of Roman policy in the Parthian kingdom, Armenia remained with the Romans, so long as the weak Gotarzes ruled over the Parthians. But so soon as a more vigorous hand grasped the reins of sovereignty, and the internal conflicts ceased, the struggle for that land was resumed. King Vologasus, who after the death of Gotarzes and the short reign of Vonones II. succeeded this his father in the year 51,30 ascended the throne, exceptionally, in full agreement with his two brothers Pacorus and Tiridates. He was an able and prudent ruler—we find him even as a founder of towns, and exerting himself with success to divert the trade of Palmyra towards his new town Vologasias on the lower Euphrates—averse to quick and extreme resolutions, and endeavouring, if possible, to keep peace with his powerful neighbour. But the recovery of Armenia was the leading political idea of the dynasty, and he too was ready to make use of any opportunity for realising it.

Rhadamistus.This opportunity seemed now to present itself. The Armenian court had become the scene of one of the most revolting family tragedies which history records. The old king of the Iberians, Pharasmanes, undertook to eject his brother Mithradates, the king of Armenia, from the throne and to put his own son Rhadamistus in his place. Under the pretext of a quarrel with his father Rhadamistus appeared at the court of his uncle and father-in-law, and entered into negotiations with Armenians of repute in that sense. After he had secured a body of adherents, Pharasmanes, in the year 52, under frivolous pretexts involved his brother in war, and brought the country into his own or rather his son’s power. Mithradates placed himself under the protection of the Roman garrison of the fortress of Gorneae.31 Rhadamistus did not venture to attack this; but the commandant, Caelius Pollio, was well known as worthless and venal. The centurion holding command under him resorted to Pharasmanes to induce him to recall his troops, which the latter promised, but did not keep his word. During the absence of the second in command Pollio compelled the king—who doubtless guessed what was before him—by the threat of leaving him in the lurch, to deliver himself into the hands of Rhadamistus. By the latter he was put to death, and with him his wife, the sister of Rhadamistus, and their children, because they broke out in cries of lamentation at the sight of the dead bodies of their parents. In this way Rhadamistus attained to sovereignty over Armenia. The Roman government ought neither to have looked on at such horrors, of which its officers shared the guilt, nor to have tolerated that one of its vassals should make war on another. Nevertheless the governor of Cappadocia, Julius Paelignus, acknowledged the new king of Armenia. Even in the council of the governor of Syria, Ummidius Quadratus, the opinion preponderated that it might be a matter of indifference to the Romans whether the uncle or the nephew ruled Armenia; the legate, sent to Armenia with a legion, received only instructions to maintain the status quo till further orders. Then the Parthian king, on the assumption that the Roman government would not be zealous to take part for king Rhadamistus, deemed the moment a fit one for resuming his old claims upon Armenia. He invested his brother Tiridates with Armenia, and the Parthian troops marching in possessed themselves, almost without striking a blow, of the two capitals, Tigranocerta and Artaxata, and of the whole land. When Rhadamistus made an attempt to retain the price of his deeds of blood, the Armenians themselves drove him out of the land. The Roman garrison appears to have left Armenia after the giving over of Gorneae; the governor recalled the legion put upon the march from Syria, in order not to fall into conflict with the Parthians.

Corbulo sent to Cappadocia.When this news came to Rome (at the end of 54) the emperor Claudius had just died, and the ministers Burrus and Seneca practically governed for his young successor, seventeen years old. The procedure of Vologasus could only be answered by a declaration of war. In fact the Roman government sent to Cappadocia, which otherwise was a governorship of the second rank and was not furnished with legions, by way of exception the consular legate Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo. He had come rapidly into prominence as brother-in-law of the emperor Gaius, had then under Claudius been legate of lower Germany in the year 47 (I. 125), and was thenceforth regarded as one of the able commanders, not at that time numerous, who energetically maintained the stringency of discipline—in person a Herculean figure, equal to any fatigue, and of unshrinking courage in presence not of the enemy merely but also of his own soldiers. It appeared to be a sign of things becoming better that the government of Nero gave to him the first important command which it had to fill. The incapable Syrian legate of Syria, Quadratus, was not recalled, but was directed to put two of his four legions at the disposal of the governor of the neighbouring province. All the legions were brought up to the Euphrates, and orders were given for the immediate throwing of bridges over the stream. The two regions bordering immediately on Armenia to the westward, Lesser Armenia and Sophene, were assigned to two trustworthy Syrian princes, Aristobulus, of a lateral branch of the Herodian house, and Sohaemus, of the ruling family of Hemesa, and both were placed under Corbulo’s command. Agrippa, the king of the remnant of the Jewish state still left at that time, and Antiochus, king of Commagene, likewise received orders to march.

Character of his troops.At first, however, no fighting took place. The reason lay partly in the state of the Syrian legions; it was a bad testimonial of poverty for the previous administration, that Corbulo was compelled to describe the troops assigned to him as quite unserviceable. The legions levied and doing garrison duty in the Greek provinces had always been inferior to the Occidentals; now the enervating power of the East with the long state of peace and the laxity of discipline completely demoralised them. The soldiers abode more in the towns than in the camps; not a few of them were unaccustomed to carry arms, and knew nothing of pitching camps and of service on the watch; the regiments were far from having their full complement and contained numerous old and useless men; Corbulo had, in the first instance, to dismiss a great number of soldiers, and to levy and train recruits in still larger numbers. The exchange of the comfortable winter quarters on the Orontes for those in the rugged mountains of Armenia, and the sudden introduction of inexorably stern discipline in the camp, brought about various ailments and occasioned numerous desertions. In spite of all this the general found himself, when matters became serious, compelled to ask that one of the better legions of the West might be sent to him. Under these circumstances he was in no haste to bring his soldiers to face the enemy; nevertheless it was political considerations that preponderantly influenced him in this course.

The aims of the war.If it had been the design of the Roman government to drive out the Parthian ruler at once from Armenia, and to put in his place not indeed Rhadamistus, with whose blood-guiltiness the Romans had no occasion to stain themselves, but some other prince of their choice, the military resources of Corbulo would probably have at once sufficed, since king Vologasus, once more recalled by internal troubles, had led away his troops from Armenia. But this was not embraced in the plan of the Romans; they wished, on the contrary, rather to acquiesce in the government of Tiridates there, and only to induce and, in case of need, compel him to an acknowledgment of the Roman supremacy; only for this object were the legions, in case of extremity, to march. This in reality came very near to the cession of Armenia to the Parthians. What told in favour of this course, and what prevented it, has formerly been set forth (p. 34 f.). If Armenia were now arranged as a Parthian appanage for a second son, the recognition of the Roman suzerainty was little more than a formality, strictly taken, nothing but a screen for military and political honour. Thus the government of the earlier period of Nero, which, as is well known, was equalled by few in insight and energy, intended to get rid of Armenia in a decorous way; and that need not surprise us. In fact they were in this case pouring water into a sieve. The possession of Armenia had doubtless been asserted and brought to recognition within the land itself, as among the Parthians, through Tiberius in the year 20 B.C., then by Gaius in the year 2, by Germanicus in the year 18, and by Vitellius in the year 36. But it was just these extraordinary expeditions regularly repeated and regularly crowned with success, and yet never attaining to permanent effect, that justified the Parthians, when in the negotiations with Nero they maintained that the Roman suzerainty over Armenia was an empty name—that the land was, and could be, none other than Parthian. For the vindication of the Roman supreme authority there was always needed, if not the waging of war, at least the threat of it; and the constant irritation thereby produced made a lasting state of peace between the two neighbouring great powers impossible. The Romans had, if they were to act consistently, only the choice between either bringing Armenia and the left bank of the Euphrates in general effectively under their power by setting aside the mere mediate government, or leaving the matter to the Parthians, so far as was compatible with the supreme principle of the Roman government to acknowledge no frontier-power with equal rights. Augustus and the rulers after him had so far decidedly declined the former alternative, and they ought therefore to have taken the second course. But this too they had at least attempted to decline, and had wished to exclude the Parthian royal house from the rule over Armenia, without being able to do so. This the leading statesmen of the earlier Neronian period must have regarded as an error, since they left Armenia to the Arsacids, and restricted themselves to the smallest conceivable measure of rights thereto. When the dangers and the disadvantages, which the retention of this region only externally attached to the empire brought to the state, were weighed against those which the Parthian rule over Armenia involved for the Romans, the decision might, especially in view of the small offensive power of the Parthian kingdom, well be found in the latter sense. But under all the circumstances this policy was consistent, and sought to attain in a clearer and more rational way the aim pursued by Augustus.

Negotiations with Vologasus.From this standpoint we understand why Corbulo and Quadratus, instead of crossing the Euphrates, entered into negotiations with Vologasus; and not less why the latter, informed doubtless of the real designs of the Romans, agreed to submit to the Romans in a similar way with his predecessor, and to deliver to them as a pledge of peace a number of hostages closely connected with the royal house. The return tacitly agreed on for this was that the rule of Tiridates over Armenia should be tolerated, and that a Roman pretender should not be set up. So some years passed in a de facto state of peace. But when Vologasus and Tiridates did not agree to apply to the Roman government for the investing of the latter with Armenia,32 Corbulo took the offensive against Tiridates in the year 58. The very policy of withdrawal and concession, if it was not to appear to friend and foe as weakness, needed a foil, and so either a formal and solemn recognition of the Roman supremacy or, better still, a victory won by arms.

Corbulo in Armenia.In the summer of the year 58 Corbulo led an army, tolerably fit for fighting, of at least 30,000 men, over the Euphrates. The reorganisation and the hardening of the troops were completed by the campaign itself, and the first winter-quarters were taken up on Armenian soil. In the spring of 5933 he began the advance in the direction of Artaxata. At the same time Armenia was invaded from the north by the Iberians, whose king Pharasmanes, to cover his own crimes, had caused his son Rhadamistus to be executed, and now further endeavoured by good services to make his guilt be forgotten; and not less by their neighbours to the north-west, the brave Moschi, and on the south by Antiochus, king of Commagene. King Vologasus was detained by the revolt of the Hyrcanians on the opposite side of the kingdom, and could or would not interfere directly in the struggle. Tiridates offered a courageous resistance, but he could do nothing against the crushing superiority of force. In vain he sought to throw himself on the lines of communication of the Romans, who obtained their necessary supplies by way of the Black Sea and the port of Trapezus. The strongholds of Armenia fell under the attacks of the Roman assailants, and the garrisons were cut down to the last man. Defeated in a pitched battle under the walls of Artaxata, Tiridates gave up the unequal struggle, and went to the Parthians. Artaxata surrendered, and here, in the heart of Armenia, the Roman army passed the winter. In the spring of 60 Corbulo broke up from thence, after having burnt down the town, and marched right across the country to its second capital Tigranocerta, above Nisibis, in the basin of the Tigris. The terrors of the destruction of Artaxata preceded him; serious resistance was nowhere offered; even Tigranocerta voluntarily opened its gates to the victor, who here in a well-calculated way allowed mercy to prevail. Tiridates still made an attempt to return and to resume the struggle, but was repulsed without special exertion. At the close of the summer of 60 all Armenia was subdued, and stood at the disposal of the Roman government.

Tigranes, king of Armenia.It is intelligible that people in Rome now put Tiridates out of account. The prince Tigranes, a great-grandson on the father’s side of Herod the Great, on the mother’s of king Archelaus of Cappadocia, related also to the old Marenian royal house on the female side, and a nephew of one of the ephemeral rulers of Armenia in the last years of Augustus, brought up in Rome, and entirely a tool of the Roman government, was now (60) invested by Nero with the kingdom of Armenia, and at the emperor’s command installed by Corbulo in its rule. In the country there was left a Roman garrison, 1000 legionaries, and from 3000 to 4000 cavalry and infantry of auxiliaries. A portion of the border land was separated from Armenia and distributed among the neighbouring kings, Polemon of Pontus and Trapezus, Aristobulus of Lesser Armenia, Pharasmanes of Iberia and Antiochus of Commagene. On the other hand the new master of Armenia advanced, of course with consent of the Romans, into the adjacent Parthian province of Adiabene, defeated Monobazus the governor there, and appeared desirous of wresting this region also from the Parthian state.

Negotiations with the Parthians.This turn of affairs compelled the Parthian government to emerge from its passiveness; the question now concerned no longer the recovery of Armenia, but the integrity of the Parthian empire. The long-threatened collision between the two great states seemed inevitable. Vologasus in an assembly of the grandees of the empire confirmed Tiridates afresh as king of Armenia, and sent with him the general Monaeses against the Roman usurper of the land, who was besieged by the Parthians in Tigranocerta, which the Roman troops kept in their possession. Vologasus in person collected the Parthian main force in Mesopotamia, and threatened (at the beginning of 61) Syria. Corbulo, who, after Quadratus’s death, held the command for a time in Cappadocia as in Syria, but had besought from the government the nomination of another governor for Cappadocia and Armenia, sent provisionally two legions to Armenia to lend help to Tigranes, while he in person moved to the Euphrates in order to receive the Parthian king. Again, however, they came not to blows, but to an agreement. Vologasus, well knowing how dangerous was the game which he was beginning, declared himself now ready to enter into the terms vainly offered by the Romans before the outbreak of the Armenian war, and to allow the investiture of his brother by the Roman emperor. Corbulo entered into the proposal. He let Tigranes drop, withdrew the Roman troops from Armenia, and acquiesced in Tiridates establishing himself there, while the Parthian auxiliary troops likewise withdrew; on the other hand, Vologasus sent an embassy to the Roman government, and declared the readiness of his brother to take the land in fee from Rome.

The Parthian war under Nero.These measures of Corbulo were of a hazardous kind,34 and led to a bad complication. The Roman general may possibly have been, still more thoroughly than the statesmen in Rome, impressed by the uselessness of retaining Armenia; but, after the Roman government had installed Tigranes as king of Armenia, he could not of his own accord fall back upon the conditions earlier laid down, least of all abandon his own acquisitions and withdraw the Roman troops from Armenia. He was the less entitled to do so, as he administered Cappadocia and Armenia merely ad interim, and had himself declared to the government that he was not in a position to exercise the command at once there and in Syria; whereupon the consular Lucius Caesennius Paetus was nominated as governor of Cappadocia and was already on the way thither. The suspicion can hardly be avoided that Corbulo grudged the latter the honour of the final subjugation of Armenia, and wished before his arrival to establish a definitive solution by the actual conclusion of peace with the Parthians. The Roman government accordingly declined the proposals of Vologasus and insisted on the retention of Armenia, which, as the new governor who arrived in Cappadocia in the course of the summer of 61 declared, was even to be taken under direct Roman administration. Whether the Roman government had really resolved to go so far cannot be ascertained; but this was at all events implied in the consistent following out of their policy. The installing of a king dependent on Rome was only a prolongation of the previous untenable state of things; whoever did not wish the cession of Armenia to the Parthians had to contemplate the conversion of the kingdom into a Roman province. The war therefore took its course; and on that account one of the Moesian legions was sent to the Cappadocian army.

Measures of Paetus.When Paetus arrived, the two legions assigned to him by Corbulo were encamped on this side of the Euphrates in Cappadocia; Armenia was evacuated, and had to be reconquered. Paetus set at once to work, crossed the Euphrates at Melitene (Malatia), advanced into Armenia, and reduced the nearest strongholds on the border. The advanced season of the year, however, compelled him soon to suspend operations and to abandon for this year the intended reoccupation of Tigranocerta; nevertheless, in order to resume his march at once next spring, he, after Corbulo’s example, took up his winter-quarters in the enemy’s country at Rhandeia, on a tributary of the Euphrates, the Arsanias, not far from the modern Charput, while the baggage and the women and children had quarters not far from it in the strong fortress of Arsamosata. But he had underrated the difficulty of the undertaking. One, and that the best of his legions, the Moesian, was still on the march, and spent the winter on this side of the Euphrates in the territory of Pontus; the two others were not those whom Corbulo had taught to fight and conquer, but the former Syrian legions of Quadratus, not having their full complement, and hardly capable of use without thorough reorganisation. He had withal to confront not, like Corbulo, the Armenians alone, but the main body of the Parthians; Vologasus had, when the war became in earnest, led the flower of his troops from Mesopotamia to Armenia, and judiciously availed himself of the strategical advantage that he commanded the inner and shorter lines. Corbulo might, especially as he had bridged over the Euphrates and constructed têtes de pont on the other bank, have at least hampered, or at any rate requited this marching off by a seasonable incursion into Mesopotamia; but he did not stir from his positions and he left it to Paetus to defend himself, as best he could, against the whole force of his foes. The latter was neither himself military nor ready to accept and follow military advice, not even a man of resolute character; arrogant and boastful in onset, despairing and pusillanimous in presence of misfortune.

Capitulation of Rhandeia.Thus there came what could not but come. In the spring of 62 it was not Paetus who assumed the aggressive, but Vologasus; the advanced troops who were to bar the way of the Parthians were crushed by the superior force; the attack was soon converted into a siege of the Roman positions pitched far apart in the winter camp and the fortress. The legions could neither advance nor retreat; the soldiers deserted in masses; the only hope rested on Corbulo’s legions lying inactive far off in northern Syria, beyond doubt at Zeugma. Both generals shared in the blame of the disaster: Corbulo on account of the lateness of his starting to render help,35 although, when he did recognise the whole extent of the danger, he hastened his march as much as possible; Paetus, because he could not take the bold resolution to perish rather than to surrender, and thereby lost the chance of rescue that was near—in three days longer the 5000 men whom Corbulo was leading up would have brought the longed-for help. The conditions of the capitulation were free retreat for the Romans and evacuation of Armenia, with the delivering up of all fortresses occupied by them, and of all the stores that were in their hands, of which the Parthians were urgently in need. On the other hand Vologasus declared himself ready, in spite of this military success, to ask Armenia as a Roman fief for his brother from the imperial government, and on that account to send envoys to Nero.36 The moderation of the victor may have rested on the fact that he had better information of Corbulo’s approach than the enclosed army; but more probably the sagacious man was not concerned to renew the disaster of Crassus and bring Roman eagles again to Ctesiphon. The defeat of a Roman army—he knew—was not the overpowering of Rome; and the real concession, which was involved in the recognition of Tiridates, was not too dearly purchased by the compliance as to form.