THE AUGUSTEAN EMPIRE (44 B.C.—A.D. 70)

CHAPTER XXII.

THE EASTERN FRONTIER FROM TIBERIUS TO NERO

I.

EGYPT. THE MISSION OF GERMANICUS TO THE EAST AND THE RESTORATION OF ROMAN PRESTIGE

BETWEEN the death of Augustus and that of Nero one or two changes of some importance took place in Egypt. It has been mentioned that the legionary establishment was reduced to two legions some time before AD 23, but that the reduction was in all probability made in the later years of Augustus. The position which the third legion had held at the southern apex of the Delta was still guarded by an auxiliary regiment. Another change was the concentration of the two remaining legions at Alexandria, evidently with the object of overawing the turbulent Alexandrians: the capital of Egypt thus came to share the lot of Rome, which had the praetorian cohorts barracked outside its gates. The legion now brought to Nicopolis, to be quartered with that already there, was III Cyrenaica, which had probably been stationed either at Coptos or at Thebes. Both these towns continued to have garrisons, composed of legionary detachments and some auxiliary troops, from which soldiers were doubtless drawn to man the military posts in the Arabian Desert. The exact date of the transference of the legion is not certain, but probability points to the reign of Gaius or the early years of Claudius, when the disturbed situation resulting from the anti-Semitic outbreak of AD 38 would naturally suggest the strengthening of the garrison as a measure of precaution. The barracking of two legions together in one fortress led to the appointment of a single praefectus castrorum, who is described in an epitaph set up outside Egypt as “prefect of the Egyptian army”.

In the East the reign of Tiberius opened with confusion. Armenia had no recognized ruler. On his expulsion from Parthia Vonones, as has been seen, fled thither in the hope of securing the crown, and having been accepted as king by a section of the nobility, sent envoys to ask the consent of the Roman government. Naturally, however, his presence in Armenia could not be tolerated by his victorious rival Artabanus, who threatened war, and Tiberius, who had the meanest opinion of his spirit, refused to recognize him and about AD 16 ordered the governor of Syria, Creticus Silanus, to intern him in Antioch, where he was allowed to retain his royal title and enjoy the wealth he had brought with him from Parthia.

Cappadocia also was without a ruler. Soon after his accession Tiberius summoned to Rome the aged king Archelaus and brought him to trial before the Senate on a charge of revolutionary activities, the precise nature of which is not recorded. In 20 BC Archelaus had had his dominions enlarged by the addition of Lesser Armenia, left vacant by the death of Artavasdes, and of eastern Lycaonia with the adjacent mountainous region of Cilicia Tracheia. About AD 10 he became temporarily insane, and Augustus appointed a procurator to take charge of his kingdom and withdrew from him part of his Cilician territory, the districts of Cennatis and Lalassis in the valley of the Calycadnus, which he gave to Ajax, high-priest of Olba (Oura), a member of an old priestly family. Tiberius bore the king no goodwill. Although in his early manhood he had secured his acquittal when brought to trial before Augustus by his subjects, Archelaus had paid him no attention during his stay in Rhodes (on the advice, says Tacitus, of the intimate friends of Augustus), but had courted the young Gaius during his mission to the East. The result of the trial is not recorded, but the king died shortly afterwards in AD 17.

About the same time two other client-kings died, Antiochus III of Commagene, and Philopator, king of a Cilician vassal state bordering on north Syria, a descendant of Tarcondimotus, whom Pompey in 63 BC had recognized as ruler of a district round Hieropolis-Castabala (Budrum). Confirmed in his principality by Caesar, Tarcondimotus received from Antony the title of king, and fell fighting for him in the campaign of Actium. His son Philopator transferred his allegiance to Augustus, but he was nevertheless deposed, and it was not until 20 BC that his brother Tarcondimotus II received back the greater part of his father’s dominion. He was succeeded by Philopator, probably his son, who died in AD 17. “The deaths of Antiochus and Philopator”, says Tacitus, “unsettled their people, the majority of whom desired a Roman governor and the minority a king. The provinces, too, of Syria and Judaea, exhausted by their burdens, were asking for a reduction of their tribute”.

Such was the position of affairs. The task of settling them was entrusted by Tiberius to Germanicus, who was invested by decree of the Senate with proconsular authority superior to that of the governors of imperial and senatorial provinces beyond the sea. He arrived in the East in AD 18. Tiberius had decided to annex Cappadocia and Commagene. This was a step in the right direction, which extended Roman territory to the Euphrates along its middle course. The change to Roman administration was carried out by two members of Germanicus’ suite. Commagene was organized by Q. Servaeus and added to the province of Syria, to which it naturally belonged both geographically and strategically; its incorporation was essential for the defence of the frontier. Cappadocia was organized by Q. Veranius. Its treatment hardly justified its annexation. Instead of being utilized for the establishment of a military frontier along the upper Euphrates, which would have exerted a decisive influence on the maintenance of Roman authority in Armenia, it was constituted a third-class province governed by a procurator of equestrian rank, who merely took the place of the king and had no regular troops under his command. This personal form of government was, no doubt, naturally suggested by the backward state of the country’s development. A land which had a political and social system of a feudal character did not lend itself to the type of provincial organization which was based on city communities. But it is clear that what made Cappadocia an attractive acquisition was its financial rather than its military value. Although some of the royal taxes were reduced in amount—a measure calculated to win the goodwill of the feudal aristocracy—the revenues received by the imperial exchequer were such as to permit Tiberius to reduce by half the unpopular tax of one per cent, on public sales, which was one of the mainstays of the military treasury. Besides the tribute, a considerable revenue was derived from the extensive royal domains, which passed to the emperor, and from the numerous mines (some of them at least royal properties), which yielded crystal, onyx, mica (lapis specularis) for glazing, rock salt, the famous ‘Sinopic’ miltos (probably cinnabar) and argentiferous ore, which supplied the mint at Caesarea Mazaca with metal for the silver coinage issued by the kings and by the Roman emperors from the time of Tiberius. The new province probably included all the territory held by the late king except eastern Lycaonia and Cilicia Tracheia, which were left in the possession of his son Archelaus, who was still king of that region in AD 36, when he caused a revolt by ordering a census on the Roman model to be taken for taxation purposes.

The fate of the Cilician principality is not recorded, but an inscription erected at Hieropolis in honour of Styrax, ‘father of the kings,’ probably implies that it continued to exist under the rule of a collateral branch of the old royal family.

The most urgent matter, however, with which Germanicus had to deal was the succession to the Armenian throne. He had ordered Piso, the recently appointed governor of Syria, to bring or send under his son’s command a legionary force to Armenia, but the order was insolently ignored, and he proceeded without it to Artaxata, where he crowned as king a member of the Pontic royal family, Zeno, son of Polemo I by his second wife Pythodoris, who had lost her husband in 8 BC but continued to rule the greater part of his kingdom with distinguished success. Zeno was the choice of the Armenians themselves. The young man had been brought up by his sagacious mother in the Armenian fashion and had endeared himself to the aristocracy by his love of hunting and feasting and the other recreations of that class. Before a great concourse of nobles and people Germanicus placed the tiara on his head and the crowd acclaimed him as King Artaxias, the name borne by the founder of Armenian independence. The Parthian king Artabanus acquiesced, and sent envoys to express his desire for a renewal of pledges of friendship with Rome and to suggest a personal meeting on the bank of the Euphrates, at the same time requesting that Vonones should not be kept in Syria to carry on intrigues with Parthian nobles. Germanicus sent a courteous reply and removed Vonones to Pompeiopolis in Cilicia. The interview was apparently not declined, but it did not take place. In the following year Vonones bribed his guards and attempted to escape, but he was captured and killed, without authority, by the officer who had been responsible for his safe custody.

II

THE RENEWAL OF PARTHIAN INTERFERENCE IN ARMENIA AND THE REPRISALS OF TIBERIUS

The choice of Zeno proved a happy one, and peace reigned in the East until his death about AD 34. Then trouble arose again. A long and prosperous reign and successful wars against bordering peoples had made Artabanus arrogant, and he determined to challenge Roman authority in Armenia, convinced that no vigorous opposition would be offered by the aged Tiberius from his secluded retreat in Capreae. Placing his eldest son Arsaces on the Armenian throne, he sent an insulting message to the Emperor, demanding the restoration of the treasure left by Vonones in Syria and Cilicia and claiming, under threat of invasion, all the old territories of the Persian and Seleucid empires. But he reckoned without his host. He had already alienated his grandees. In 35 a deputation of Parthian nobles went secretly to Rome and begged Tiberius to send them as a candidate for the throne Phraates, the youngest of the four sons of the former king of that name, who had resided in Rome for nearly half a century. This suited the plans of Tiberius, who resolved to teach Artabanus a lesson without undertaking a war against Parthia. He furnished Phraates with everything necessary for his enterprise and sent him off to Syria. The old man, on arriving there, made a brave attempt to throw off his Roman habits and adapt himself to those of Parthia, but the change was too much for him, and he fell ill and died. Tiberius replaced him by a younger Arsacid, also resident in Rome, Tiridates by name, a grandson of the old king Phraates; and he appointed as governor of Syria a capable administrator, L. Vitellius, who had been consul in 34, with authority to take charge of the situation. Meanwhile he had taken steps to set up a counter king of Armenia in the person of Mithridates, brother of the Iberian king Pharasmanes; the two had been at strife, but Pharasmanes was reconciled by the prospect of the honourable removal of his brother and was induced1 to aid him in seizing the throne. Mithridates began his enterprise by bribing the attendants of Arsaces to poison him. Then an Iberian host burst into Armenia and seized Artaxata. To retrieve the situation, Artabanus sent another son Orodes with a Parthian force, which was to be supplemented by hired auxiliaries; and when he was routed by the Iberians, aided by the Albanians and by Sarmatians called in from beyond the Caucasus, he marched himself in full strength against the allies. But he fared little better, and he was forced to retire by the news that Vitellius was about to invade Mesopotamia. His failure proved disastrous to him. Vitellius used the arts of diplomacy to foment the disaffection of leading Parthian magnates, and Artabanus was obliged to flee to Hyrcania, with which he was connected by family ties; there he wandered in destitution, supporting life by his bow. Tiridates now had his chance, and Vitellius escorted him with an imposing force of legionaries and auxiliaries across the Euphrates, where he was joined by Ornospades, the governor of Mesopotamia, who had won Roman citizenship as a reward for his services in the great Pannonian-Dalmatian revolt, and by other Parthian notables. Here the Roman legate left him to make or mar his fortune, and returned with his troops to Syria. Tiridates enjoyed a triumphal progress to Ctesiphon, where he was crowned by the competent authority, Surenas. But Parthian disunion once more turned the tables. Two governors of very important provinces who had asked for a short postponement of the coronation and then failed to attend it, returned to their allegiance to Artabanus, who, thus encouraged, rapidly collected a ‘Scythian’ force of Dahae and Sacae, and pushed southward towards Seleuceia. Tiridates, himself a coward in the face of danger, listened to the advice of his chief supporter to retreat to Mesopotamia, where reinforcements could be collected and the arrival of Roman troops awaited; but his forces melted away, and Tiridates made his way back to Syria with a few followers. He had humiliated the King of Kings, and presumably no more was expected of him.

Tiberius judged that Artabanus would now be ready to make his peace, and on his instructions Vitellius marched again to the Euphrates, where the pageantry of AD 1 was repeated. At an interview on the middle of a bridge thrown across the river—a symbol of the equal status of the contracting parties—the king, in return for the recognition of his independent sovereignty, accepted the Roman settlement in Armenia; and not long afterwards he appears to have sent to Rome as a hostage his son Darius, whose name recalled his father’s arrogant claim to all Roman territory which had once been Persian. It was a signal triumph of astute diplomacy, as effective as any that could have been won by the expenditure of blood and money. Tiberius did not long survive his victory; and hatred of his memory and flattery of his successor distorted the facts about the conference by representing that it was due to the desire of Artabanus to win the friendship of Gaius (or, inconsistently, to the consummate diplomacy of Vitellius), and that the king crossed the river to do obeisance to the Roman standards and the images of the emperors (Augustus and Gaius), an admission of vassalage which no Parthian king would have made save with the sword at his throat. The truth has been preserved by Josephus.

III. 

THE EAST UNDER GAIUS AND CLAUDIUS. THE BOSPORAN KINGDOM

The brief reign of Gaius had a disturbing effect on Eastern affairs. The equilibrium secured by the successful policy of Tiberius he destroyed by summoning the Armenian king Mithridates to Rome for some unrecorded reason and setting up no one in his place. After keeping him in custody for a time, he allowed him to go into voluntary exile. Armenia remained without a king for the rest of Gaius’ reign, and was thus abandoned to the Parthians, who appear to have taken possession of it. The able L. Vitellius was recalled from Syria and forced to descend to the most abject servility to save his head.

Gaius also set back the development of frontier defence, slow enough as it was, by his policy of restoring to the status of dependencies territories which had been incorporated in the empire by his predecessor, in order to provide kingdoms for the Oriental princes who had been the playmates and companions of his youth in Rome. In 37 Commagene, now for twenty years part of the province of Syria, was re-established as a client-kingdom for Antiochus, son of the former king, who shared with Herod Agrippa the reputation of being the Emperor’s instructor in tyranny; and, in accordance with Gaius’ practice when he restored client-states, the new king was refunded the revenue, amounting to 100 million sesterces, which the exchequer had received in the interval. There were also added to his dominions two regions in southern Asia Minor, which till then had been under the rule of Archelaus, son of the last Cappadocian king, the greater part of Cilicia Tracheia and eastern Lycaonia. But hardly had he been installed when he was deposed (AD 40), to be reinstated Joy Claudius.

On the north of Cappadocia Gaius recreated client-kingdoms for other two of his youthful friends, Polemo and Cotys, sons of Antonia Tryphaena, daughter of Polemo I of Pontus, who had married the Thracian king Cotys. The former was granted the Pontic kingdom which had been ruled by his grandmother, queen Pythodoris, till about AD 23. After her death her kingdom, if not actually annexed, was placed under wardship in default of male heirs of an age to succeed. It was now restored in AD 38 to Polemo II despite his youth, and he was also given the kingdom of Bosporus, once part of his grandfather’s dominions, but it is doubtful whether he ever set foot in the country, since its coinage shows that sovereign rights were exercised by queen Gepaepyris, widow of the late king Aspurgus, till AD 39 and thereafter, at least for a time, conjointly by her and her stepson Mithridates. At the same time Polemo’s younger brother Cotys was made king of Armenia Minor, once ruled by Polemo I and subsequently included in the kingdom of Cappadocia, with which it had probably been annexed.

In Syria a fragment of the old Ituraean principality, a so-called tetrarchy centring round Area in the northern Lebanon, was granted in 38 to a native prince Sohaemus, who held it till his death in 49, when it was incorporated in the province. This was probably no more than a change of personnel, but farther south territory was withdrawn in 37 from Roman administration to provide a kingdom for another of Gaius’ friends, Herod Agrippa (M. Julius Agrippa), grandson of Herod the Great. Released from custody shortly after the death of Tiberius, he was made king of the Hauran and the adjacent regions east of the Jordan, which had formed the north-eastern portion of Herod’s kingdom and had then passed to his son, the tetrarch Philip, on whose death in 34 it had been incorporated in the province of Syria, although the incorporation was probably intended to be temporary, since the tribute accruing from the tetrarchy was kept in it. To Agrippa’s dominion was added at the same time another portion of the old Ituraean principality, the ‘tetrarchy’ of Abilene in the Anti-Lebanon, north-west of Damascus; and three years later (40) his kingdom was further enlarged by the addition of Galilee and Peraea, the tetrarchy of his brother-in-law Herod Antipas, who was deposed through his influence and exiled to Lugdunum in Aquitania.

The policy of establishing protectorates on the fringe of the empire, even at the expense of incorporated territory, was maintained by Claudius. On his accession he reinstated Antiochus in Commagene and left the other vassal princes in possession of their dominions, making only some territorial rearrangements. In 41 he revoked the grant of the Bosporan kingdom to Polemo and recognized the sovereignty of its de facto ruler Mithridates, bestowing on Polemo by way of compensation the Cilician principality of Olba, Cennatis and Lalassis in the valley of the Calycadnus. In the same year he rewarded Herod Agrippa for the help he had given him in securing the throne by adding to his realm Judaea and Samaria, which had been governed by a Roman procurator since AD 6, thereby making his kingdom co-extensive with that of Herod the Great. Simultaneously he bestowed on Agrippa’s brother Herod the kingdom of Chalcis, the central portion of the old Ituraean principality. In reconstituting Herod’s kingdom, Claudius was actuated not merely by personal motives but by the desire to remove the danger of direct contact between Romans and Jews; but he did not adhere to this wise policy. When Agrippa died three years later (44) and his son was too young to succeed, his kingdom was reconverted into the procuratorial province of Judaea; but in 50 the young Agrippa was appointed to succeed his uncle Herod of Chalcis, who had died two years before, and ruled the kingdom till 53, when Claudius created a new realm for him by separating most of the Transjordan region from the province of Judaea and adding to it the two Syrian fiefs of Abilene and Area. This kingdom, which Nero seems to have enlarged in 61 by the inclusion of Peraea and a strip of Galilee, he held till nearly the end of the first century.

Mithridates, king of the Bosporus, did not long retain his crown. Dreaming of the glory of his ancestor the great Mithridates, he made preparations to free himself from dependence on Rome, disregarding the protests of his stepmother, queen Gepaepyris. His rebellious attitude is reflected by his gold coins, on which he boldly placed his full name and title, in defiance of established practice. When Gepaepyris threatened flight, he sought to conceal his purpose by sending his half-brother Cotys with a friendly message to Claudius; but Cotys betrayed his whole ambitious scheme and was rewarded with the kingdom, to which he was conducted, in  AD44 or 45, by a Roman force under Didius Gallus, governor of Moesia, who was decorated with the triumphal insignia for his service. After installing the youthful king, Didius withdrew the bulk of his army, leaving only a few auxiliary cohorts under a Roman knight, Julius Aquila, to support him. Scorning both of them, Mithridates attempted to recover his throne. With the aid of Maeotian and Sarmatian tribes, particularly the Siraci who occupied the valley of the Achardeus (probably the Jegorlyk, a tributary of the Manytch), he drove out the king of the Dandaridae, who inhabited the delta of the Hypanis (Kuban) and bordered on the Siraci, and prepared to invade the Bosporan kingdom. On learning this, Aquila and Cotys secured the alliance of Eunones, king of the Sarmatian Aorsi, who adjoined the Siraci in the region between the lower Tanais (Don) and the north-west coast of the Caspian. With the assistance of his cavalry, the Roman troops defeated the enemy, overran Dandarica and stormed Uspe, a stronghold of the Siraci, slaughtering the inhabitants; whereupon Zorsines, king of the Siraci, made peace, gave hostages, and prostrated himself before the image of Claudius, while Mithridates threw himself on the mercy of Eunones, who sent envoys to the Emperor asking that he should not be led in triumph nor suffer the death penalty. Claudius consented, and Mithridates was taken as a prisoner to Rome, where he displayed a defiant attitude on being exhibited to the people; but he was set free and lived in the capital till the reign of Galba, who put him to death as an accomplice of Nymphidius Sabinus.

IV. 

THE RECOVERY AND LOSS OF ARMENIA

The Armenian question was tackled by Claudius as soon as political conditions in Parthia offered an opportunity of recovering control without a serious military effort. At the opening of his reign there were dynastic troubles in the Arsacid kingdom. In or just before AD 40 Artabanus died, and was succeeded by Vardanes, probably the eldest of his numerous sons. Within a few months he was deposed by his brother Gotarzes, but the cruelties of the new king soon alienated his subjects and led to the restoration of Vardanes in June, AD 42, at the latest. Gotarzes retired to his father’s old home in the far north, where he collected reinforcements from the Dahae and Hyrcanians and renewed the contest in the following year, causing Vardanes to withdraw to ’the plains of Bactria’ (the land of Margiana on the Bactrian border). News of this state of anarchy was sent by the Iberian king Pharasmanes, brother of the exiled Mithridates, with a promise of help in regaining Armenia, and Claudius encouraged the ex-king to seize the opportunity, sending a Roman force with him. With the aid of the Iberians, who broke Armenian resistance by a single battle, Mithridates secured the throne, and the Roman troops remained in Armenia to support him, being placed in garrison at Gorneae within a short distance of Artaxata.

Meanwhile the two Parthian princes were preparing for a decisive battle when they suddenly became reconciled on discovering that a plot was being hatched against them by their own countrymen, and they came to an agreement whereby Vardanes retained the throne, while Gotarzes accepted the position of a vassal king and retired to Hyrcania. Vardanes now aspired to the recovery of Armenia, but he desisted when C. Vibius Marsus, governor of Syria from AD 42 to 45, threatened an invasion of Mesopotamia. Gotarzes did not long remain quiescent. At the solicitation of discontented Parthian nobles he attemped to win back the throne, but he was defeated on the banks of the Erindes and took refuge, no doubt, among the Dahae. Elated by success, Vardanes became overbearing and fell by the hand of assassins in 45. Gotarzes was then called again to the throne, but his cruelty made him intolerable to nobles and people, and in 47 a secret embassy arrived in Rome to request Claudius to send out as king Meherdates, son of Vonones and grandson of Phraates, who lived as a hostage in the capital. Claudius consented and instructed the governor of Syria, C. Cassius Longinus, to escort him to the Euphrates.

At Zeugma he was received by his Parthian supporters, but once more the Parthians “were readier to ask a king from Rome than to keep him”. Meherdates allowed himself to be lured by his false friend Abgar, king of Osroene, to waste time in Edessa, and then to make a long detour across the snow-clad mountains of southern Armenia towards the Tigris, despite the earnest entreaties of the governor of Mesopotamia, a member of the great Parthian family of the Karen, to make haste and take the direct route. When he reached Adiabene, he found another false friend in its king Izates, who declared in his favour but was secretly a supporter of Gotarzes. Continuing his march towards Ctesiphon, he captured Nineveh and Gaugamela and came up against Gotarzes in a defensive position behind the river Corma (perhaps the el-Adhem), which covered the approach to the capital. Gotarzes played for time to increase his forces and to tempt the fidelity of his opponent’s allies. Izates and Abgar deserted with their troops, and Meherdates, fearing further desertions, resolved to stake his fortunes on a decisive battle, which was hotly contested until his most capable supporter, the Karen, pushing his advantage too far, was intercepted by the enemy. In despair Meherdates trusted the promises of a client of his father, to find himself treacherously handed over to the victor, who contented himself with cutting off his ears, a mutilation which disqualified him for the Parthian throne. Not long afterwards Gotarzes died, in or soon after May 51. Following a regular custom of the Arsacids, he had put to death all the members of that family on whom he could lay his hands, and the throne passed to Vonones, king of Media (Atropatene), who after a reign of two or three months was succeeded in August 51 by his son Vologases, the offspring of a Greek concubine. The new monarch was to prove an able, vigorous, and sagacious ruler.

The civil war in Parthia and the adventure of Meherdates assured Armenia some eight years of immunity from Arsacid interference. Then the land became once more a scene of turmoil, which continued till the death of Claudius and ended in the annihilation of Roman influence. The history of these years casts a lurid light on the character of the central government during the later years of Claudius’ reign, and affords a striking illustration of the disastrous effect produced by laxity of control on the behaviour of Roman officials on the outskirts of the empire.

It opens with a gruesome story of heartless treachery and cold­blooded family murder. The Iberian king Pharasmanes, who had taken the main part in establishing and restoring his brother Mithridates as king of Armenia, had a son Radamistus, a tall, handsome and popular prince, whose impatience to succeed to the throne drove his old father to suggest to him the seizure of Armenia, which was easily to be won by craft. The son swallowed the bait and, under pretext of a quarrel with his father, paid a visit to his uncle—who was also his father-in-law and brother-in-law—and being received with every mark of kindness used his opportunity to tempt the Armenian notables from their allegiance to the king, whose severe regime had earned him the dislike of all classes of the people. He then feigned reconciliation with his father, and returned home to demand and receive a military force for a coup d’état. Mithridates, caught unawares, was driven to take refuge in the fort of Gorneae, held by the Roman garrison under the command of an auxiliary prefect, Caelius Pollio, a man with a reputation for shameless venality, who had as his second in command a centurion named Casperius. Unable to storm the fort, Radamistus laid siege to it, and offered a bribe to Pollio, who was ready to accept it. The honest centurion protested against the betrayal of a client-king set up by Rome and, stipulating for a truce, departed for Iberia with the resolve to deter Pharasmanes from prosecuting the war, if he could, and in case of failure to report the state of affairs to the governor of Syria, Ummidius Quadratus. Freed from the centurion’s restraint, Pollio urged Mithridates to come to terms, but the king hesitated, guessing his intentions. Meanwhile the centurion failed to extract anything but vague promises from Pharasmanes, who sent a secret message to his son to press the attack by every possible means. Radamistus raised his price, and Pollio bribed his soldiers to threaten to abandon the defence of the fort. The unfortunate king was obliged to agree to a conference and left the fort, only to be murdered together with his wife—the sister of the murderer—and his sons. When the news reached Syria, the aged governor summoned his council. Most of his advisers, careless of the honour of Rome, advocated leaving things alone, and this view was adopted; but to avoid the appearance of condoning the crime and to save their faces, if Claudius should send other orders, they sent a message to Pharasmanes requiring him to withdraw from Armenian territory and remove his son.

Then the procurator of Cappadocia, Julius Paelignus, a favourite of Claudius, whose idle hours in earlier life he used to amuse, took it upon himself to intervene, without the knowledge of the responsible authority, the governor of Syria. He collected a force of provincial militia, as though to recover Armenia (in the ironical phrase of Tacitus), but he soon found himself left defence­less by the desertion of his men, and made his way to Radamistus, who bribed him to authorize his assumption of the royal insignia and to attend his coronation. On hearing of these disgraceful proceedings, Quadratus dispatched Helvidius Priscus with a legion to deal discreetly with the situation. Meantime Vologases, convinced no doubt that Radamistus could not count on Roman support, prepared to seize the opportunity of securing the throne for his brother Tiridates, who might prove a menace to him, unless he were provided with a kingdom; whereupon Quadratus hastily re­called the legion, lest its continued presence in Armenia should provoke a war with Parthia. In the year 52, in all probability, Vologases advanced into Armenia, which submitted without resistance, both capitals, Artaxata and Tigranocerta, falling into his hands. Radamistus fled and Tiridates was installed in his place, but the severity of the following winter and a deficiency of supplies led to an outbreak of pestilence, which forced Vologases to withdraw. Tiridates also retired, and the following year saw Radamistus back again in his kingdom, ruling with an increased harshness which was intended to cow the people but goaded them into insurrection. He found safety in headlong flight to his Iberian home. The Parthians then re-occupied Armenia and Tiridates recovered the throne. All this time the somnolent imperial government remained wholly passive and only awoke from its torpor when Claudius quitted the scene (Oct. 13, AD 54).

V. 

THE ARMENIAN WAR OF NERO’S REIGN: THE FIRST PHASE

The news of the final expulsion of Radamistus and of the re­occupation of Armenia by the Parthians reached Rome soon after the accession of Nero. An Armenian embassy arrived in the capital; it was evidently sent by the Romanizing party, and its mission can only have been to solicit the intervention of the government. The youthful emperor’s advisers, Seneca and Burrus, handled the situation with a vigour characteristic of the accession of new men to power. Preparations for war were immediately set on foot. Orders were sent to Syria to bring up the legions to their proper strength by the enrolment of recruits from the adjoining provinces. The two neighbouring client-kings, Antiochus IV of Commagene and Herod Agrippa II, were instructed to get forces ready for the invasion of Parthia, while two districts adjoining Armenia on either side of the northern Euphrates, Armenia Minor on the west and Sophene on the east, were placed under client-kings, the former being given to Aristobulus, son of Herod of Chalcis and cousin of Herod Agrippa, and the latter to Sohaemus, a prince of the royal house of Emesa in Syria. While Quadratus was allowed to retain his post as governor of Syria, the conduct of the war was entrusted to a capable soldier, Cn. Domitius Corbulo, who had won a reputation under Claudius as a vigorous officer and a strict disciplinarian, and whose appointment was welcomed by the Roman public as a token of serious determination to restore the influence and prestige of Rome in the East. For a war against Armenia the natural base of operations was Cappadocia, and this province was placed under Corbulo’s control together with the adjacent province of Galatia, which contained the best fighting material in the East. For the administration of Galatia C. Rutilius Gallicus was appointed a subordinate legatin. The war was to be carried on with an army consisting of half the legionary and auxiliary troops in Syria, with the addition of some auxiliary regiments of foot and horse which were then wintering in Cappadocia.

Early in AD 55 Corbulo hastened to take up his command. At Aegeae on the Cilician coast he found Quadratus awaiting his arrival with half the Syrian army; the old man was jealous of the new commander and feared a loss of prestige if the transfer of the troops were made in Syria itself. The legions handed over were III Gallica and VI Ferrata. Both legates then proceeded to dispatch messages to the Parthian king offering peace on condition that he was prepared to show the same respect to Rome as his predecessors had done by giving hostages. Vologases was not in a position to fight. The threat of war, conveyed by the military preparations of Rome, had awakened once more the spirit of discord in the Parthian empire, and the king was faced by a rival who is usually thought to have been his own son Vardanes, and who appears to have been already in open revolt, for the Parthian troops had been withdrawn from Armenia. Vologases accordingly yielded to the demand, which enabled him to get rid of a number of suspected nobles of Arsacid stock, without tying his hands. The delivery of the hostages led to an unedifying exhibition of the jealousy between Quadratus and Corbulo. The former sent a centurion to receive them, and they were handed over to him, whereupon Corbulo dispatched a higher officer to take them over, and an altercation ensued which ended in leaving the decision to the hostages themselves and the envoys who had brought them; and they gave the preference to Corbulo. The quarrel between the two legates was diplomatically composed by Nero, who assigned equal credit to each by a proclamation that for the successes won by Quadratus and Corbulo the imperial fasces should be wreathed with laurel.

The struggle against the pretender to the throne, about whose fortunes Tacitus is strangely silent, and the revolt of Hyrcania, which broke out at the latest in 58 and may have started in support of the pretender, kept Vologases fully occupied. Fortune could have offered no more favourable opportunity for the reconquest of Armenia. Yet Tiridates remained in undisturbed possession of his kingdom for more than two years after Corbulo’s arrival in the East. The cause of Corbulo’s inaction was that his troops were in a state of utter demoralization; they contained veterans who had no proper equipment and knew nothing of the practice of arms, but had devoted themselves to carrying on a petty traffic in the towns where their time had been spent. Corbulo’s first task was to discharge the old and infirm and to fill up the units with recruits levied in Galatia and Cappadocia; his next was to drill, discipline, and harden his troops. An additional legion, X Fretensis, was brought up from Syria, where it was replaced by IV Scythica from Moesia, which was accompanied by its auxiliary complement of horse and foot.

Late in AD 57 this reorganized and partially disciplined force was led across the frontier into Armenia, where it was to complete its training under canvas amid the snow and frost and piercing cold of that Alpine land. It was a trying ordeal for the soldiers, most of them softened by the Syrian climate; the winter was more than usually severe: sentries died at their posts, men lost limbs by frost-bite, but iron discipline was maintained and desertions were relentlessly punished by death.

The site selected by Corbulo for his winter camp is not recorded, but it may well have been the lofty plateau of Erzerum, over 6000 feet above the sea, the watershed between the northern Euphrates and the Araxes, which was within easy reach of his base in Cappadocia and well on the way towards Artaxata, which was to be his first objective when active operations began. In any case this was the route he followed when in 58 he struck his camp as soon as spring was well advanced (not earlier than the end of May) and marched against Tiridates, who was already in the field, supported by a force sent by Vologases, and was engaged in plundering districts which he suspected of Roman sympathies.

Corbulo hoped to bring him to an engagement, but he was too wise to risk a pitched battle and with his mobile horsemen kept up a guerilla warfare, eluding every force sent against him, until he forced the Roman commander to change his tactics. Dividing his army into separate columns, which were sent to attack several points at the same time, he arranged with various allies to make simultaneous raids into Armenia from the south-west and north­east. Antiochus of Commagene was instructed to invade the districts nearest to his kingdom; Pharasmanes of Iberia, who was anxious to reinstate himself in the good graces of Rome and with that object had disavowed and put to death his son Radamistus, did not wait for an invitation to fall upon his hated neighbours; while the adjoining tribe of the Moschi (or perhaps rather the Heniochi1) were won over to the Roman side and raided Armenia from the north.

Thus harried on nearly every side, Tiridates opened communications with Corbulo. But his tone was not that of a suppliant: his message was a remonstrance against the invasion as a breach of the friendship which had been renewed between Rome and Parthia by the delivery of hostages, and a threat that, if Rome persisted in seeking to drive him from the kingdom that had long been in his possession, she would have cause to regret once more her challenge of Arsacid valour and good fortune. If Vologases had not yet moved, it was because he, like Tiridates himself, preferred to rely on the justice of their cause. Corbulo knew that Vologases was occupied by the Hyrcanian revolt, and he advised Tiridates to address a petition to Nero, to whom he should look for recognition and security of tenure.

Corbulo’s reply discloses the policy of the Neronian government, for it can hardly be doubted that he was acting on instructions. Tiridates was to be permitted to retain the kingship, provided that he was prepared to accept it as a gift from Rome and thereby to acknowledge her overlordship. This was a departure from the policy laid down by Augustus: for effective suzerainty was now to be substituted a nominal suzerainty, whereby the country was to become an appanage for a Parthian prince of the ruling house on condition that all concerned accepted investiture by the Roman emperor. Of the wisdom of this compromise there can be no doubt: it was recommended by past experience, it sacrificed no vital Roman interest, and it saved the time-honoured Roman claim to overlordship, while suiting the conditions of the problem.

Neither Tiridates, however, nor Vologases1 was yet prepared to accept this solution. As the parleys led to no result, Tiridates proposed an interview with Corbulo under conditions which betrayed a treacherous purpose, and when the Roman general required that it should take place in the presence of both armies, Tiridates failed to attend. On the renewal of hostilities he attempted to intercept the Roman supply trains as they wended their way from Trapezus (Trebizond) over the mountains to Erzerum, but the attempt was foiled by the chain of military posts established to guard the line of communications. Corbulo now determined to force the elusive king to stand on the defensive by marching against Artaxata. Several forts which no doubt defended the approaches to the capital were first stormed; the strongest of all, Volandum, was taken under the direction of the commander­in-chief, and it was treated with great severity, the non-com­batants being sold by auction and the place given over to plunder. Moving then against the capital, Corbulo avoided the direct road which crossed the Araxes by a bridge under the walls of the city, and was therefore within range of the defenders’ missiles, and forded the river higher up. As he approached the city, Tiridates appeared and sought by the usual Parthian tactics to lure the Roman troops to break formation and isolate themselves by rash pursuit, but he failed in his efforts and vanished at nightfall. Corbulo, supposing he had retired to the capital, ordered a camp to be entrenched, intending to invest the city under cover of darkness; but when his scouts discovered that the king had fled to Media or Albania, he deferred his advance till the morning. Then the city, warned by the fate of Volandum, opened its gates; its surrender saved the lives of its inhabitants, but as the Roman army was too small both to hold the city and to carry on the war, and as its capture would have been valueless if it were left ungarrisoned, Corbulo set fire to it and levelled it with the ground.

The news of the capture of Artaxata reached Rome in 58, doubtless towards the end of the year, and was received with great rejoicing. Nero was saluted Imperator for the fifth, or more probably the sixth time, and the Senate surpassed itself in the extravagance of its decrees in celebration of the victory. Besides a vote of statues and triumphal arches and consulships for a series of years to Nero, it was resolved that the day of the victory, the day of its announcement, and that on which it had been brought before the Senate should all be added to the number of festival days; and other resolutions of like tenor were adopted, till C. Cassius Longinus, the famous jurist, was moved to the observa­tion (which was not taken amiss) that, as the whole year would not suffice for the rendering of due thanks to the gods, it was advisable to keep some days free for business.

With the fall of Artaxata the campaign of 58 appears to have ended. Where the Roman army passed the winter is not stated; but the locality is indicated by Corbulo’s next movement, which started from the region of Artaxata. As the city would have furnished welcome winter-quarters in a most inclement climate, it is difficult to believe that Tacitus’ narrative is exact in recording its destruction immediately after its surrender; it is probable that, in order to complete the story of its fate, he has anticipated an event which took place in the following spring.

Next year Corbulo determined to march against the second Armenian capital, Tigranocerta, in the basin of the upper Tigris. This involved cutting himself adrift from his lines of communication and supply, and traversing some 300 miles of difficult country, where his troops would have to depend on what provisions they could find. The route he chose may be guessed from two geographical data given by Tacitus, that he passed along the borders of the Mardi and traversed the regio Tauraunitium, the district of Mush. He probably crossed the Egri-Masis range on the west of Mt Ararat, which forms its eastern limit, to the upper waters of the southern arm of the Euphrates, the Arsanias (Murad Su), and followed the course of that river to the vale of Mush, whence the pass of Bitlis, the gate of the Armenian highlands, offered easy access through the Taurus range to the lowlands of Mesopotamia.

On the march the army encountered no serious resistance; flank attacks by the Mardi, a robber tribe which dwelt in the mountain region north-east and east of the Lake of Van, were met fry launching the Iberian horsemen against them; but the troops suffered severely from the fierce summer heat, the lack of any but animal food, and scarcity of water (a surprising and perhaps a rhetorical touch) until they reached the rich grain-growing districts on the north of lake Van, where the corn stood ripe in the fields. After reducing two forts in this region, Corbulo advanced into the fertile plain of Mush, which fringes the northern slopes of Taurus. On the southern side of the mountain Tigranocerta was reported to be waiting to open its gates, and the inhabitants sent the Roman general a propitiatory gift of a golden crown; but before he arrived, the Armenian notables changed their minds and were contemplating resistance, until the head of a captured grandee, hurled from a ballista, chanced to fall in the midst of their council of war and terrified them into surrender. The conqueror prudently abstained from penal measures, but resistance was still offered by the outlying fort of Legerda, which has been identified with Lidja, a town on the higher slopes of Taurus, to the south of the easy pass which is traversed by the southward road from Erzerum.

With its reduction the season’s campaign probably closed. Its success had been facilitated by the revolt of the Hyrcanians, who had sent an embassy to Rome to ask for alliance in recognition of their service in detaining Vologases. The envoys were now on their way home, and to prevent their capture by the Parthians when they crossed the Euphrates, Corbulo gave them an escort to the Persian Gulf, whence they reached Hyrcania by a route which avoided territory under effective Parthian rule, probably by way of the kingdom of Persis and its dependency Carmania. About the result of the embassy nothing is recorded.

The Roman army doubtless passed the winter in Tigranocerta. In the spring of 60 Tiridates made a final attempt to invade Armenia from Media Atropatene, but he was repulsed without serious difficulty and forced to abandon the struggle. Corbulo then proceeded to complete the subjugation of the country by a series of punitive expeditions against disaffected districts. Meantime the home government had been considering the situation created by Corbulo’s successes and the disappearance of Tiridates from the scene, and it decided to revert to the old policy of setting a Romanized prince on the Armenian throne. Its choice fell on an Oriental long resident in Rome, Tigranes, a nephew of Tigranes IV and a great-grandson of both Herod the Great and Archelaus, the last king of Cappadocia. This return to a policy which past experience had discredited was foredoomed to failure. The new king was naturally welcomed only by the minority which leaned to Rome. A Roman force of a thousand legionaries, three auxiliary regiments of infantry and two of cavalry was left in Armenia to support him, while the neighbouring client-kings who had co-operated in the war—Antiochus, Aristobulus, Polemo and Pharasmanes—were rewarded by the grant of portions of Armenia adjoining their territories, a measure which may have interested them in the maintenance of the new regime but which could not fail to increase the ill-will of many of the Armenian nobles towards Tigranes. These arrangements made, Corbulo withdrew to the province of Syria, which had been assigned to him on the death of Quadratus.

VI.

 THE PARTHIAN INTERVENTION AND ITS RESULTS

Vologases had remained a passive spectator of the expulsion of Tiridates and the installation of a Roman nominee in his stead. His hands were still tied by the Hyrcanian revolt and by many wars arising out of it; but at the outset he had renewed the treaty of friendship with Rome by the delivery of hostages, and when his hands were freed, he studied to avoid a direct conflict with Roman troops; indeed, both powers affected to treat the Armenian question as a side-issue between Tiridates and Rome. Now, however, he was goaded into action by the unprovoked aggression of Tigranes, who proceeded in 615 to violate Parthian sovereignty by invading and systematically plundering the feudatory kingdom of Adiabene, apparently with the intention of occupying it permanently. The narrative of Tacitus conveys the impression that Tigranes acted on his own initiative, hoping (we may suppose) to raise himself in the esteem of his subjects and to mitigate the effect produced by the curtailment of Armenian territory. But the presence of a Roman force in Armenia suggests a doubt whether he could have ventured on such an enterprise without the approval of the Roman commandant and of Corbulo and without the sanction of the Roman government, and has led to the conjecture that the invasion was designed to relieve Parthian pressure on Hyrcania. However that may have been—and it is to be noted that the Roman troops appear to have taken no part in the invasion—the resentment of the injured king Monobazus, the successor of Izates, and of the Parthian nobility, reinforced by the plaints of the exiled Tiridates, forced Vologases to intervene. In the presence of his council he bound the diadem round his brother’s head and sent a Parthian magnate Monaeses, with a body of horse which formed the king’s customary escort, and Monobazus with his Adiabenian levies to drive Tigranes out of Armenia, while he himself settled his differences with the Hyrcanians, apparently by conceding them independence1, and mobilized his forces to threaten Syria.

On receipt of this intelligence, Corbulo took such measures as were possible to assist Tigranes. He could not defend his province and at the same time be responsible for the conduct of military operations in Armenia. He, therefore, promptly wrote to Nero to say that Armenia needed a separate general for her defence in view of the Parthian threat to Syria; and he then dispatched to the aid of Tigranes the two legions he could best spare, IV Scythica and XII Fulminata, under the command of two experienced officers, Verulanus Severus and Vettius Bolanus.These legions had taken no part in the war, and the twelfth, which had long been in Syria, was presumably in no better condition for active service than the other Syrian legions had been six years before; but, as the real danger point was Syria, the seasoned legions were quite properly retained for its defence. As it was plainly advisable not to engage in serious fighting in Armenia pending the arrival of a new commander, Corbulo gave the two legates secret instructions to act with deliberation and not to hurry matters: they were to do no more than might be necessary to ensure the king’s safety. He then hastened to put Syria in a state of defence, moving his legions forward to the Euphrates, mobilizing the provincial militia, fortifying the river crossings and guarding the wells.

Meanwhile Monaeses had shut up Tigranes in Tigranocerta, which he vainly attempted to take; while Vologases fixed his headquarters at Nisibis, whence he could menace Syria or assist Monaeses. Here he received a message from Corbulo remonstrating against the siege of a Roman protégé and Roman soldiers and requiring him to raise it, otherwise he would himself invade Mesopotamia. Vologases was not in a happy position. He was anxious, then as always, to avoid war with Rome. The Parthians were making no progress at Tigranocerta, which was well provisioned; his own horsemen could find no fodder for their mounts, a swarm of locusts having devoured every green thing; and he was threatened with attack from two sides. So he sent a conciliatory reply: he would send envoys to Rome to ask for Armenia and conclude a lasting peace—thereby expressing his willingness to accept the conditions originally offered; and he called off Monaeses and retired himself. An armistice was arranged, but not without concessions on the Roman side, which were not publicly announced at the time. When it became known that Tigranes had quitted Armenia and that the Roman legions had been withdrawn and sent to winter in hurriedly constructed huts in Cappadocia, a section of the Roman public inferred (rightly enough) that these concessions were part of the armistice terms, and surmised that they had been made by Corbulo on his own responsibility to allow time for the arrival of another general, who should relieve him of the risk of losing the glory he had already won. The motive suggested was wholly unjust to Corbulo, who, though as jealous of his reputation as other worthy Romans, was not the man to flinch from risks. If Corbulo really acted on his own responsibility in withdrawing the Roman troops and letting Tigranes fall, his action was at any rate endorsed by the imperial government, which realized the blunder it had made—and was preparing to plunge into another. The Parthian embassy received an evasive answer, and Nero embarked on a new policy, the implications of which can hardly have been understood either by him or his advisers, Seneca and Burrus. Armenia was to be annexed, and L. Caesennius Paetus, who had just held the consulship, was appointed to annex it. A worse choice could not have been made: Paetus was an incompetent soldier, an insufferable braggart, and an absolute poltroon. Reaching Cappadocia in 62, he signalized his arrival by pouring contempt on the achievements of Corbulo and proclaiming that the rule of a phantom king in Armenia would soon be replaced by Roman administration. After that, it was natural that there should be no love lost between the two legates.

The legions at Paetus’ disposal were the Fourth and Twelfth, which had wintered in Cappadocia, and a new legion, V Macedonica, which had been ordered to the East from Moesia and had reached Pontus, together with auxiliaries from Galatia, Cappadocia and Pontus. Without awaiting the arrival of the new legion, Paetus determined to begin his offensive. His plan was to strike at Tigranocerta, which had been evacuated by the Roman troops and was not held by the Parthians; and he took the direct route which crossed the Euphrates at Isoghli, opposite Tomisa, and ran to the fertile plain of Kharput, the Kalon Pedion of antiquity, whence it ascended the ridge of Taurus by the easy pass that skirts Lake Geuljik and debouches on the Mesopotamian side at Arghana. In the plain of Kharput lay the fortified city of Arsa- mosata (Tacitus calls it castellum merely) on the southern bank of the Arsanias, at some distance to the east of its junction with the tributary now called Peri Su. On reaching the plain, Paetus proceeded to construct a base camp, choosing for its site Rhandeia, a place near Arsamosata but on the north bank of the river, which was not connected with Cappadocia by any good route and left unsecured his line of communications along the south bank. Nor could he wait to complete the camp: it was only half finished when he led his troops across Taurus to ravage districts which Corbulo had left untouched. After long marches, which resulted in nothing beyond the capture of some strongholds and the collection of considerable plunder, he retired on the near approach of winter to Rhandeia and sent a pompous despatch to Nero to announce the practical completion of the war, with the result that the emperor assumed his ninth imperatorial acclamation. Then he granted indiscriminate furloughs to his soldiers.

But the campaigning season was not yet over. Vologases had been making demonstrations against the Syrian frontier, but when Corbulo strengthened his defence of the river by constructing a pontoon bridge, doubtless at Zeugma, in face of the Parthian horsemen, and occupying the hills on the opposite side with auxiliary and legionary troops, the king abandoned all hope of forcing the passage of the river, and turned northwards to launch his army against Paetus. On the news of his approach, Paetus concentrated his two weakened legions in the unfinished camp; then, changing his mind and scorning the advice of his officers, he marched out to meet the Parthians, but when a small reconnoitring party was cut off, he returned in dismay. Recovering confidence when he found the Parthian advance slower than he expected, he thought to stop it by dispersing his forces. On the crest of the pass, north of Lake Geuljik, he posted 3000 picked infantry (nearly half his legionary force), and in the plain of Kharput he placed his best cavalry, while he detached a cohort to protect his wife and son and other non-combatants in Arsamosata. The rest of his troops he kept in camp at Rhandeia. Then he was prevailed upon to let Corbulo know that he was pressed. Corbulo got ready a force of some 8000 men, but made no haste to dispatch it: the message was not urgent, and it would not occur to him that an army of two legions with auxiliaries could not defend a fortified camp against Parthians, who were notoriously incapable of pressing a siege and would be unable, from lack of supplies and forage, to maintain a blockade in winter.

Vologases was not deterred by the attempt to block the road by isolated detachments. He crushed the legionaries, swept the cavalry aside, and appeared before the camp, which was a scene of utter demoralization. The men were panic-stricken; their general lost his head, and sent a piteous appeal to Corbulo, who now hurried to the rescue, marching by day and night through Commagene and Cappadocia, to find on his arrival at the Euphrates that Rhandeia had capitulated by agreement when he was only three days’ march distant. Vologases, hearing of his approach, had pressed the siege, and although he made no attempt to storm the camp, he succeeded in driving Paetus to surrender on terms. The legions were allowed to depart on condition that all Roman troops should quit Armenia and that all forts and supplies should be handed over; when these conditions were carried out, Vologases was to be free to send an embassy to Nero. To complete his humiliation, the king ordered Paetus to build a bridge over the river as a monument of his victory; which done, the Roman soldiers fled pell-mell to safety, keeping to the northern bank until they were out of sight of the enemy, with their general at their head covering 40 miles in a day and abandoning his wounded as he fled. Yet this prince of cowards was lightly dismissed by his emperor with an ironical jest. The man was not unworthy of his master.

Such was the issue of the only direct collision between Roman and Parthian troops during the whole course of the war. In a brief interview with Paetus on the bank of the Euphrates Corbulo behaved with moderation, but rejected his suggestion of a joint invasion of Armenia, as being outside his instructions: it was his duty to return to his province, which might be attacked by the Parthians. Paetus then retired to pass the winter in Cappadocia, and to send to Rome a false report, which implied that all was well on the Eastern front. In his memoirs Corbulo did not spare his disgraced rival. Among other statements, one of them perhaps exaggerated, he said that Paetus had sworn before the standards and in presence of the king’s witnesses that no Roman should set foot in Armenia until it was known whether Nero assented to the peace. Tacitus doubts this statement—which shows that he did not regard the memoirs as wholly trustworthy—but it corresponded to what actually happened, and he admits that there was no uncertainty about the shameful details of the flight. Arrived in Syria, Corbulo received a message from Vologases requesting him to destroy his fortifications on the east bank of the Euphrates and treat the river as the boundary as hitherto, and to this he agreed on the king’s yielding to his counter-demand for the withdrawal of Parthian garrisons from Armenia. Once more the Armenians were left without a ruler.

VII.

 THE CONCLUSION OF PEACE

At the beginning of the following spring (AD 63) Parthian envoys appeared in Rome with a letter from Vologases, which revealed the true state of affairs and made a moderate proposal  which amounted to an acceptance of the terms offered by Rome in 55. His claim, he said, to Armenia had been decided by the fortune of war, but Tiridates was ready to do homage for it before the Roman standards and the effigies of the Emperor, and, but for the obligation of his priestly office, he would even have been willing to go to Rome to receive the diadem. It was not, however, the Roman way to treat with a triumphant foe, even though he offered the terms which had originally been offered to him, and Nero’s advisers counselled the resumption of hostilities, but the presentation of gifts to the envoys conveyed a plain hint that the issue was narrowed down to a point of ceremony: if Tiridates presented his petition in person, he would not ask in vain. To extort compliance with this condition, an imposing display of force was arranged. Paetus was recalled, and Corbulo was appointed commander-in-chief of all the forces in the East, which were reinforced by the addition of a third Danubian legion, XV Apollinaris from Pannonia, and by detachments of picked troops from Illyricum and Egypt. While his official title was the normal one of legatus Augusti pro praetore, he was granted an authority overriding that of all governors of neighbouring provinces (maius imperium) and placing client-kings and princes under his orders. In Syria he was succeeded by C. Cestius Gallus, who took over the administration of the province but had no independent military authority, although the troops left in Syria remained under his charge; these consisted of the Tenth legion and the two demoralized legions, IV and XII, sent back from Cappadocia. The other two Syrian units, the seasoned Third and Sixth, were dispatched to Melitene, where they were joined by V Macedonia from Pontus and the recently transferred XV Apollinaris. These four, with the auxiliary horse and foot and the contingents furnished by client-princes, made up a force of some 50,000 men, the most powerful yet assembled on the eastern front.

With this army Corbulo crossed the Euphrates, but he had not advanced far along the route once followed by Lucullus and recently by Paetus, when envoys of Tiridates and Vologases met him with overtures of peace. He received them in a friendly manner and sent them back with a message of advice: it was for the advantage of Tiridates to accept Armenia undevastated as a gift, and Vologases would best consult Parthian interests by an alliance with Rome. This counsel he drove home by an immediate attack on the Armenians who had been the first to turn against Rome, which had the desired effect. Vologases asked for a truce for the provinces attacked, and Tiridates requested an interview, suggesting Rhandeia as the meeting-place, to which Corbulo did not object, as the contrast between the present and the past would enhance his glory and, it may be added, the prestige of Rome. Tiridates declared himself willing to go to Rome and ‘bring the Emperor a novel glory, an Arsacid as a suppliant while Parthia flourished’; and it was agreed that he should lay his diadem before Nero’s effigy and only resume it from his hand. The ceremony took place amid a brilliant military display, and Tiridates left to visit his brothers, Vologases and Pacorus, and his mother before undertaking the long journey to Rome, handing over his daughter as a hostage. The only stipulation made by the Parthian king, who had already gone to Ecbatana, was that Tiridates should not be subjected to any indignity on his way to Rome or in the capital itself.

The preparations for the journey of an eastern potentate were naturally not made in a day, and during the interval Corbulo kept at least part of his army together and continued to occupy some of the frontier districts: in 64-5 the presence of the Third legion at Kharput (Ziata) is attested by three inscriptions, which record in the same formula the completion of what was no doubt a fort. Itwas not till 66 that Tiridates arrived in Italy after a nine months’ journey, escorted by bodies of Parthian and Roman cavalry and accompanied by his wife and sons, the sons of Vologases and Pacorus and Monobazus, and a great retinue. The journey was made overland by way of the Hellespont, because a long voyage would have entailed defilement of the divine waters of the sea, which was forbidden by the Mazdean religion; and it cost the huge sum of 800,000 sesterces a day, which was charged (very improperly) to the public treasury. From North Italy Tiridates was conveyed in an imperial chariot to Naples, where Nero entertained him, afterwards accompanying him to Rome for the coronation ceremony. The capital was gaily decorated with festoons and lights, and crowded with people who filled the streets and the forum and climbed to the housetops to get a view, while the route was lined by soldiers with gleaming arms and standards. Next morning Nero in triumphal garb, accompanied by the Senate and the Praetorian guard, entered the forum and seated himself on the rostra, to which Tiridates and his suite advanced through lines of troops, and did obeisance to the Emperor, hailing him as his master and adoring him as an emanation of Mithras. Then Nero proclaimed him king of Armenia and placed the diadem on his head as he sat at his feet; he was saluted imperator and in celebration of the triumph of the Roman arms he deposited a laurel wreath in the Capitol. From this time, as his coins attest, he assumed the praenomen of Imperator. The ceremony of investiture was followed by a special performance in Pompey’s theatre, the whole interior having been gilded for the occasion and the properties adorned with gold—a display which led the people to apply the adjective ‘golden’ to the day itself. A costly banquet and public exhibitions by Nero of his favourite arts completed the entertainment of the guest, whose parting was sped by a princely gift from the Emperor (estimated variously at one or two hundred million sesterces) and a number of skilled workmen to rebuild Artaxata, which arose from its ruins under the short-lived name of Neroneia.

VIII.

THE SEQUEL OF THE WAR AND THE MILITARY PROJECTS OF NERO

So ended ten years of marches and talk, punctuated by a disgraceful episode, which went by the name of war. The public homage done in Rome by an Arsacid prince was certainly a triumph such as no emperor had hitherto enjoyed, and it duly impressed the public, which hardly realized that the price paid for it was the virtual abandonment of Armenia to Parthia. The Arsacids were now recognized as the legitimate rulers of that harassed land, which really became—what Armenian historical tradition wrongly supposed it had been since the third century BC—an appanage of the Parthian crown; and Rome’s right of enfeoffment left her only the shadow of the authority she had claimed for a century. It is not surprising that Nero’s concession, crowned by the splendour of the reception accorded to Tiridates, won him popularity in Parthia, which lasted for many years after his death. Yet the compromise, reached after several oscillations of policy which showed that the Roman statesmen of the day had no clear grasp of the conditions of the problem, was a reasonable settlement: it saved Roman prestige, satisfied the well-founded claim of the Parthian empire, and led to a stable peace on the eastern frontier, which lasted for half a century, disturbed only by an occasional passing cloud. This result showed that the settlement suited the conditions imposed by the geographical situation of Armenia and by its social and cultural ties with Parthia.

The removal of the one real obstacle to friendly relations between the two empires did not, however, remove the need of a proper system of frontier defence. The establishment of such a system was left to Vespasian, but the way was prepared by Nero when he annexed in 64-5 the vassal kingdom of Pontus, ruled since 38 by Polemo II. Polemo retired to the Cilician kingdom (Olba, Cennatis and Lalassis) which had been given him in 41 in lieu of Bosporus, and his Pontic realm was added to the province of Galatia, which was the important frontier province of Asia Minor in the Julio-Claudian period and grew to a vast size by the attachment to it of each fresh annexation (except Cappadocia). The incorporation of Polemo’s Pontus advanced Roman territory to the frontier of Lesser Armenia and placed under direct imperial rule the whole of the Black Sea coast from Amisus (Samsun) to the slopes of the Caucasus, with the ports of Side (Polemonium), Cerasus and Trapezus.

The annexation was hardly prompted by a realization of the need of organizing the frontier towards Armenia; otherwise Armenia Minor, which was of paramount importance from that point of view, would not have been left, as it was, under the rule of a client-prince. It seems to have been rather part of a policy, initiated in the previous year, which aimed at securing direct control of the coast lands of the Black Sea. The Euxine was to become a Roman lake, which would be made safe for navigation and from whose shores watch could be kept on the Sarmatian tribes that occupied the whole hinterland from the region of the Danube delta to the Caucasus and the Caspian. Commerce apart, the sea routes from Moesia and Thrace and from the Bosporan kingdom to Trapezus were of great military importance.

For Roman troops operating in Armenia or stationed near its borders the Euxine provided the chief line of communication with their centres of supply and reinforcement; the land route from the Thracian Bosporus through Bithynia-Pontus to the Euphrates was still undeveloped, at least in its eastern section, and transport over it was at best slow and laborious. But the Euxine needed vigilant policing; piracy had always been rife on its waters, and its prevalence in the Augustan age has already been noted. Till AD 64 the task of keeping it in check had been left to the kings of Pontus and the Bosporus; with the annexation of Polemo’s realm the responsibility was taken over by Rome, the royal squadron being utilized to form the nucleus of a Pontic fleet, which some years later numbered forty ships and had its head­quarters at Trapezus.

More formidable, however, was the Sarmatian menace, which had been brought home to the Roman government by the events of the last few years. The various Sarmatian tribes in the steppes of South Russia had been steadily moving westwards towards the Danube, driven forward by the advance of fresh swarms from central Asia. Before AD 50 the Iazyges had established themselves at the expense of the Dacians in the great plain between Theiss and Danube, and by AD 62 the Roxolani (the Blond Alans) are found not far from the region of the lower Danube in contact and in friendly relations with the Germanic Bastarnae and the Thracian Dacians. The increasing pressure of these tribes on the Danube frontier is attested by the epitaph of Plautius Silvanus Aelianus, governor of Moesia in the years following AD 6o2. About 62 Plautius had to suppress a threatening movement of the Sarmatians, in which the adjoining tribes were involved, and after restoring order in what is now Rumanian territory, he had to intervene in the Crimea, where the Scythians who held the interior of the peninsula were besieging the Greek city of Chersonesus, close to Sebastopol. By dispatching a force, which could easily be transported by sea, or possibly by the mere threat of war, he compelled the Scythian king to raise the siege. His intervention appears to have been followed by a drastic curtailment of the nominal independence of the Bosporan kingdom, which had been ruled since 45/6 by Cotys I. This is an inference which may reasonably be drawn from a solitary gold coin of AD62/3 which is devoid of any reference to the king—his royal monogram being replaced by an imperial one, Nep(an') K(atcrap)—and from a copper coin bearing Nero’s head and name without any allusion to the king. Whether Cotys had died or whether, if still alive, he was deposed or more probably reduced to the position of a Roman functionary, cannot be determined; his last coin belongs to AD 62, and he is heard of no more. The next extant coin, an aureus of his son Rhescuporis, bearing the date 68-9 and the heads of Vespasian and Titus, shows that the monarchy was re-established with its old rights after Nero’s death.

A natural sequel to the virtual incorporation of the Bosporan kingdom would be a Roman military occupation, and such an occupation not only of Bosporan territory but of the whole Caucasian coast has been inferred from the speech which Josephus puts into the mouth of the Jewish king Agrippa in AD 66. In the course of a survey of the legionary forces at the disposal of the Roman emperor, designed to impress on the Jews the folly of rebellion, Agrippa is made to say that the Heniochi, Colchi and Tauri, the Bosporani and the tribes that dwell round the Euxine and the Sea of Azov are kept in subjection by 3000 legionary troops, and that 40 ships of war ‘now maintain peace on that hitherto savage and unnavigable sea.’ Josephus’ information was plainly drawn from an official source, but as there are reasons for believing that the document in question really belonged to the reign of Vespasian3, it can hardly be regarded as good evidence for military measures taken by Nero.

Nevertheless the territories brought under direct control in 63 and 64 were to be used by Nero as a base of operations for an offensive against the Sarmatians, which was said to be part of an ambitious scheme of conquest in the East. In 66 (or perhaps 67) military preparations began with the creation of a new legion, composed of Italians six feet tall, which was given the title of Legio I Italica. Nero dubbed it the 'Phalanx of Alexander the Great’ a description which reveals the grandiose ideas that were fermenting in his brain. Other legions could be drawn from the Eastern army, now that peace was established on the Parthian frontier. The objective of the campaign was the Caspian Gates, and Tacitus specifies the Albani as the foe who was to be attacked. By the Caspian Gates was obviously not meant the famous pass south of the Caspian Sea, on the road which led from Mediate Parthyene and central Asia. The name was also commonly given to the pass of Darial, the Gate of the Alans—properly, says Pliny, called the Caucasian Gates—through which ran the main route over the central Caucasus from Harmozica (or Harmastus), near Tiflis, in Iberia to the valley of the river Terek. This was the 'Caspian route' (Caspia via) by which in AD 35 the Iberians had brought a horde of Sarmatians over the Caucasus to attack the Parthians. These Sarmatians were, as Josephus states, the Alani, whose name was not known to the Romans till AD 64—5 and was easily confused with Albani, as it evidently was by Tacitus’ authority. The Alans were the latest wave of the barbarian flood which had been moving westwards from central Asia, and at this time they were settled in the steppes between the Caucasus and the Caspian. When the migratory movement was stemmed on the west by Plautius Silvanus, it threatened to seek an outlet towards the south, and an overflow in this direction took place within a few years, when the floodgates on the Danube, temporarily opened by the denudation of the frontier during the civil war, were closed again by a strengthened defence.

These conditions are sufficient to account for Nero’s projected campaign; but what precisely his purpose was, cannot be said. Certain it is that an offensive, even had it been successful, would have had no permanent effect in removing the Sarmatian pressure on the Roman provinces and vassal kingdoms; while the maintenance of a military frontier in the steppes of South Russia, added to all its other commitments, would have been wholly beyond the power of the Roman Empire.

Besides the Caucasian expedition Nero is said to have contemplated a campaign against the kingdom of Ethiopia. As early as the autumn of 61 he sent a party of praetorian soldiers with a tribune and two centurions (the latter perhaps belonging to the Egyptian army) to explore the country; and about a year after their return, in 64, he meditated a visit to the provinces of the East, especially Egypt, but was deterred by a bad omen. The exploratory mission was, ostensibly at any rate, a friendly one, and it met with a friendly reception. With the help of the ‘king’ of Ethiopia (evidently a sub-king, since the ruler of Meroe at this time was, as Pliny states, a queen-regent Candace) and the letters of recommendation which he gave them to neighbouring ‘kings,’ the explorers accomplished a long journey up the Nile beyond Meroe to the marshes of the White Nile, and brought back geographical and zoological information, together with a map and a report to the effect that the Ethiopian kingdom was in a state of utter decay: Meroe itself was sparsely inhabited. Plainly this poverty-stricken country was not a desirable acquisition; it was friendly towards Rome; and Seneca, who was still at the helm when the expedition was sent out, says nothing of any military policy, but states that its purpose was to discover the source of the Nile.

These facts cast suspicion on the truth of the report that the object of the expedition was to collect information for an Ethiopian campaign. In all probability Pliny is the only ultimate authority for it, and it is notorious that he was animated by a fierce hatred of Nero and lost no opportunity of placing him in the most unfavourable light. Pliny’s statement may indeed derive support from the dispatch of certain bodies of troops to Alexandria: in the summer of 66 there were in the Egyptian capital 2000 men of the African army, including the ala Siliana which was to play a part in the war between Otho and Vitellius; later in the same year arrived one of Corbulo’s legions, XV Apollinaris, and in the following year came legionary detachments from Germany. The African troops had been sent on to await the Emperor’s arrival, but the presence of the rest may be otherwise explained. If Tacitus is to be trusted, the legionary detachments were destined for the Caucasus campaign, and they may have been sent by way of Egypt to avoid the slow and laborious march by land, while the legion may (as in 71) have been on its way back to Pannonia. On these points certainty is not attainable; but if Nero’s programme really included an Ethiopian war, it is difficult to divine the motives that prompted him. It. may be that he was allured by the prospect of a cheap triumph. The view that his object was to safeguard the commercial interests of the empire by securing the decaying Meroitic kingdom against the encroachment of the expanding Axumite kingdom of Abyssinia, which threatened to monopolize the African ivory trade, will hardly bear close scrutiny.

Whatever Nero’s intentions may have been, his plans were disturbed by the outbreak of the serious rebellion in Judaea, for the suppression of which three legions had to be detailed. But they were not abandoned. Steps were taken to restore the military balance by ordering reinforcements from the West. From Britain was summoned the Fourteenth legion, which had distinguished itself in crushing the revolt of Boudicca, and was selected as a ‘crack’ regiment, while detachments were drawn from the other three British legions and from the legions of Germany and Illyricum. But the storm-clouds gathering in the West forced the emperor to return to Italy at the beginning of 68 and to recall the troops for the protection of his throne. Fortunately for Rome the founder of the next dynasty was a man of robust practical sense who realized that what the empire needed was, not enlargement, but consolidation and defence, and who immediately set about the establishment of a scientific frontier in the East and sought to meet the Sarmatian peril by assisting the king of Iberia to hold the gate of the Caucasus and by strengthening the kingdom of Bosporus.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE NORTHERN FRONTIERS FROM TIBERIUS TO NERO