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.
Artabanus and Tiberius.
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.