The Provinces of the Roman Empire 10

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 10

The Roman government once more declined the offer of the Parthian king

and ordered the continuance of the war. It could not well do otherwise;

if the recognition of Tiridates was hazardous before the recommencement

of war, and hardly capable of being accepted after the Parthian

declaration of war, it now, as a consequence of the capitulation

of Rhandeia, appeared directly as its ratification. From Rome the

resumption of the struggle against the Parthians was energetically

promoted. Paetus was recalled; Corbulo, in whom public opinion, aroused

by the disgraceful capitulation, saw only the conqueror of Armenia,

and whom even those who knew exactly and judged sharply the state

of the matter could not avoid characterising as the ablest general

and one uniquely fitted for this war, took up again the governorship

of Cappadocia, and at the same time the command over all the troops

available for this campaign, who were further reinforced by a seventh

legion brought up from Pannonia; accordingly all the governors and

princes of the East were directed to comply in military matters with

his orders, so that his official authority was nearly equivalent to

that which had been assigned to the crown-princes Gaius and Germanicus

for their missions to the East. If these measures were intended to

bring about a serious reparation of the honour of the Roman arms they

missed their aim. How Corbulo looked at the state of affairs, is

shown by the very agreement which he made with the Parthian king not

long after the disaster of Rhandeia; the latter withdrew the Parthian

garrisons from Armenia, the Romans evacuated the fortresses constructed

on Mesopotamian territory for the protection of the bridges. For

the Roman offensive the Parthian garrisons in Armenia were just as

indifferent as the bridges of the Euphrates were important; whereas,

if Tiridates was to be recognised as a Roman vassal-king in Armenia,

the latter certainly were superfluous and Parthian garrisons in

Armenia impossible. In the next spring (63) Corbulo certainly entered

upon the offensive enjoined upon him, and led the four best of his

legions at Melitene over the Euphrates against the Partho-Armenian

main force stationed in the region of Arsamosata. But not much came

of the fighting; only some castles of Armenian nobles opposed to

Rome were destroyed. On the other hand, this encounter led also to

agreement. Corbulo took up the Parthian proposals formerly rejected

by his government, and that, as the further course of things showed,

in the sense that Armenia became once for all a Parthian appanage for

the second son, and the Roman government, at least according to the

spirit of the agreement, consented to bestow this crown in future only

on an Arsacid. It was only added that Tiridates should oblige himself

to take from his head the royal diadem publicly before the eyes of the

two armies in Rhandeia, just where the capitulation had been concluded,

and to deposit it before the effigy of the emperor, promising not to

put it on again until he should have received it from his hand, and

that in Rome itself. This was done (63). By this humiliation there

was no change in the fact that the Roman general, instead of waging

the war intrusted to him, concluded peace on the terms rejected by

his government.[37] But the statesmen who formerly took the lead had

meanwhile died or retired, the personal government of the emperor

was installed in their stead, and the solemn act in Rhandeia and the

spectacle in prospect of the investiture of the Parthian prince with

the crown of Armenia in the capital of the empire failed not to produce

their effect on the public, and above all on the emperor in person.

The peace was ratified and fulfilled. In the year 66 the Parthian

prince appeared according to promise in Rome, escorted by 3000 Parthian

horsemen, bringing as hostages the children of his three brothers as

well as those of Monobazus of Adiabene. Falling on his knees he saluted

his liege lord seated on the imperial throne in the market-place of the

capital, and here the latter in presence of all the people bound the

royal chaplet round his brow.

 

[Sidenote: The East under the Flavians.]

 

The conduct on both sides, cautious, and we might almost say

peaceful, of the last nominally ten years’ war, and its corresponding

conclusion by the actual transfer of Armenia to the Parthians, while

the susceptibilities of the mightier western empire were spared, bore

good fruit. Armenia, under the national dynasty recognised by the

Romans, was more dependent on them than formerly under the rulers

forced upon the country. A Roman garrison was left at least in the

district of Sophene, which most closely bordered on the Euphrates.[38]

For the re-establishment of Artaxata the permission of the emperor was

sought and granted, and the building was helped on by the emperor Nero

with money and workmen. Between the two mighty states separated from

each other by the Euphrates at no time has an equally good relation

subsisted as after the conclusion of the treaty of Rhandeia in the last

years of Nero and onward under the three rulers of the Flavian house.

Other circumstances contributed to this. The masses of Transcaucasian

peoples, perhaps allured by their participation in the last wars,

during which they had found their way to Armenia as mercenaries, partly

of the Iberians, partly of the Parthians, began then to threaten

especially the western Parthian provinces, but at the same time the

eastern provinces of the Roman empire. Probably in order to check them,

immediately after the Armenian war in the year 63, the annexation was

ordained of the so-called kingdom of Pontus, _i.e._ the south-east

corner of the coast of the Black Sea, with the town of Trapezus and the

region of the Phasis. The great Oriental expedition, which this emperor

was just on the point of beginning when the catastrophe overtook him

(68), and for which he already had put the flower of the troops of the

West on the march, partly to Egypt, partly along the Danube, was meant

no doubt to push forward the imperial frontier in other directions;[39]

but its proper aim was the passes of the Caucasus above Tiflis,

and the Scythian tribes settled on the northern slope, in the first

instance the Alani.[40] These were just assailing Armenia on the one

side and Media on the other. So little was that expedition of Nero

directed against the Parthians that it might rather be conceived of as

undertaken to help them; overagainst the wild hordes of the north a

common defensive action was at any rate indicated for the two civilised

states of the West and East. Vologasus indeed declined with equal

friendliness the amicable summons of his Roman colleague to visit him,

just as his brother had done, at Rome, since he had no liking on his

part to appear in the Roman forum as a vassal of the Roman ruler; but

he declared himself ready to present himself before the emperor when

he should arrive in the East, and the Orientals doubtless, though not

the Romans, sincerely mourned for Nero. King Vologasus addressed to the

senate officially an entreaty to hold Nero’s memory in honour, and,

when a pseudo-Nero subsequently emerged, he met with sympathy above all

in the Parthian state.

 

[Sidenote: Arrangements of Vespasian.]

 

Nevertheless the Parthian was not so much concerned about the

friendship of Nero as about that of the Roman state. Not merely

did he refrain from any encroachment during the crises of the

four-emperor-year,[41] but correctly estimating the probable result of

the pending decisive struggle, he offered to Vespasian, when still in

Alexandria, 40,000 mounted archers for the conflict with Vitellius,

which, of course, was gratefully declined. But above all he submitted

without more ado to the arrangements which the new government made

for the protection of the east frontier. Vespasian had himself as

governor of Judaea become acquainted with the inadequacy of the

military resources statedly employed there; and, when he exchanged

this governorship for the imperial power, not only was Commagene again

converted, after the precedent of Tiberius, from a kingdom into a

province, but the number of the standing legions in Roman Asia was

raised from four to seven, to which number they had been temporarily

brought up for the Parthian and again for the Jewish war. While,

further, there had been hitherto in Asia only a single larger military

command, that of the governor of Syria, three such posts of high

command were now instituted there. Syria, to which Commagene was added,

retained as hitherto four legions; the two provinces hitherto occupied

only by troops of the second order, Palestine and Cappadocia, were

furnished, the first with one, the second with two legions.[42] Armenia

remained a Roman dependent principality in possession of the Arsacids,

but under Vespasian a Roman garrison was stationed beyond the Armenian

frontier in the Iberian fortress Harmozika near Tiflis,[43] and

accordingly at this time Armenia also must have been militarily in the

Roman power. All these measures, however little they contained even a

threat of war, were pointed against the eastern neighbour. Nevertheless

Vologasus was after the fall of Jerusalem the first to offer to

the Roman crown-prince his congratulations on the strengthening of

the Roman rule in Syria, and he accepted without remonstrance the

encampment of the legions in Commagene, Cappadocia, and Lesser Armenia.

Nay, he even once more incited Vespasian to that Transcaucasian

expedition, and besought the sending of a Roman army against the Alani

under the leadership of one of the imperial princes; although Vespasian

did not enter into this far-seeing plan, that Roman force can hardly

have been sent into the region of Tiflis for any other object than for

closing the pass of the Caucasus, and in so far it represented there

also the interests of the Parthians. In spite of the strengthening of

the military position of Rome on the Euphrates, or even perhaps in

consequence of it--for to instil respect into a neighbour is a means

of preserving the peace--the state of peace remained essentially

undisturbed during the whole rule of the Flavians. If--as cannot be

surprising, especially when we consider the constant change of the

Parthian dynasts--collisions now and then occurred, and war-clouds

even made their appearance, they disappeared again as quickly.[44] The

emergence of a pseudo-Nero in the last years of Vespasian--he it was

who gave the impulse to the Revelation of John--might almost have led

to such a collision. The pretender, in reality a certain Terentius

Maximus from Asia Minor, but strikingly resembling the poet-emperor

in face, voice, and address, found not merely a conflux of adherents

in the Roman region of the Euphrates, but also support among the

Parthians. Among these at that time, as so often, several rulers seem

to have been in conflict with each other, and one of them, Artabanus,

because the emperor Titus declared against him, seems to have adopted

the cause of the Roman pretender. This, however, had no consequences;

on the contrary, soon afterwards the Parthian government delivered up

the pretender to the emperor Domitian.[45] The commercial intercourse,

advantageous for both parties between Syria and the lower Euphrates,

where just then king Vologasus called into existence the new emporium

Vologasias or Vologasocerta, not far from Ctesiphon, must have

contributed its part towards promoting the state of peace.

 

[Sidenote: The Parthian war of Trajan.]

 

Things came to a conflict under Trajan. In the earlier years of his

government he had made no essential change in eastern affairs, apart

from the conversion of the two client-states hitherto subsisting

on the border of the Syrian desert--the Nabataean of Petra and the

Jewish of Caesarea Paneas--into administrative districts directly

Roman (A.D. 106). The relations with the ruler of the Parthian kingdom

at that time, king Pacorus, were not the most friendly,[46] but it

was only under his brother and successor Chosroes that a rupture

took place, and that again concerning Armenia. The Parthians were to

blame for it. When Trajan bestowed the vacated throne of the Armenian

king on Axidares the son of Pacorus, he kept within the limits of

his right; but king Chosroes described this personage as incapable

of governing, and arbitrarily installed in his stead another son of

Pacorus, Parthomasiris, as king.[47] The answer to this was the Roman

declaration of war. Trajan left the capital towards the end of the year

114,[48] to put himself at the head of the Roman troops of the East,

which were certainly once more found in the deepest degeneracy, but

were reorganised in all haste by the emperor, and reinforced besides by

better legions brought up from Pannonia.[49]

 

Envoys of the Parthian king met him at Athens; but they had nothing

to offer except the information that Parthomasiris was ready to accept

Armenia as a Roman fief, and were dismissed. The war began. In the

first conflicts on the Euphrates the Romans fared worst;[50] but when

the old emperor, ready to fight and accustomed to victory, placed

himself at the head of the troops in the spring of 115, the Orientals

submitted to him almost without resistance. Moreover, among the

Parthians civil war once more prevailed, and a pretender, Manisarus,

had appeared against Chosroes. From Antioch the emperor marched to

the Euphrates and farther northward as far as the most northerly

legion-camp Satala in Lesser Armenia, whence he advanced into Armenia

and took the direction of Artaxata. On the way Parthomasiris appeared

in Elegeia and took the diadem from his head, in the hope of procuring

investiture through this humiliation, as Tiridates had once done.

But Trajan was resolved to make this vassal-state a province, and to

shift the eastern frontier of the empire generally. This he declared

to the Parthian prince before the assembled army, and directed him

with his suite to quit at once the camp and the kingdom; thereupon

a tumult took place, in which the pretender lost his life. Armenia

yielded to its fate, and became a Roman governorship. The princes also

of the Caucasian tribes, the Albani, the Iberi, farther on toward the

Black Sea the Apsilae, the Colchi, the Heniochi, the Lazi, and various

others, even those of the trans-Caucasian Sarmatae, were confirmed in

the relation of vassalage, or now subjected to it. Trajan thereupon

advanced into the territory of the Parthians and occupied Mesopotamia.

Here, too, all submitted without a blow; Batnae, Nisibis, Singara came

into the power of the Romans; in Edessa the emperor received not merely

the subjection of Abgarus, the ruler of the land, but also that of the

other dynasts, and, like Armenia, Mesopotamia became a Roman province.

Trajan took up once more his winter quarters in Antioch, where a

violent earthquake demanded more victims than the campaign of the

summer. In the next spring (116) Trajan, the “victor of the Parthians,”

as the senate now saluted him, advanced from Nisibis over the Tigris,

and occupied, not without encountering resistance at the crossing and

subsequently, the district of Adiabene; this became the third new Roman

province, named Assyria. The march went onward down the Tigris to Babylonia; Seleucia and Ctesiphon fell into the hands of the Romans, and with them the golden throne of the king and his daughter;