The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 2

by Theodor Mommsen

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 59[33] 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.