The Provinces of the Roman Empire 11

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 11

Trajan reached even the Persian satrapy of Mesene, and the great mercantile

town at the mouth of the Tigris, Charax Spasinu. This region also seems

to have been incorporated with the empire in such a way that the new

province Mesopotamia embraced the whole region enclosed by the two

rivers. Full of longing, Trajan is said now to have wished for himself the

youth of Alexander, in order to carry from the margin of the Persian

Sea his arms into the Indian land of marvels. But he soon learned that

he needed them for nearer opponents. The great Parthian empire had

hitherto scarcely confronted in earnest his attack, and ofttimes sued

in vain for peace. But now on the way back at Babylon news reached the

emperor of the revolt of Babylonia and Mesopotamia; while he tarried at

the mouth of the Tigris the whole population of these new provinces

had risen against him;[51] the citizens of Seleucia on the Tigris, of

Nisibis, indeed of Edessa itself, put the Roman garrisons to death

or chased them away and closed their gates. The emperor saw himself

compelled to divide his troops, and to send separate corps against the

different seats of the insurrection; one of these legions under Maximus

was, with its general, surrounded and cut to pieces in Mesopotamia. Yet

the emperor mastered the insurgents, particularly through his general

Lusius Quietus, already experienced in the Dacian war, a native sheikh

of the Moors. Seleucia and Edessa were besieged and burnt down. Trajan

went so far as to declare Parthia a Roman vassal-state, and invested

with it at Ctesiphon a partisan of Rome, the Parthian Parthamaspates,

although the Roman soldiers had not set foot on more than the western

border of the great-kingdom.

 

[Sidenote: Death of Trajan.]

 

Then he began his return to Syria by the route along which he had

come, detained on the way by a vain attack on the Arabs in Hatra,

the residence of the king of the brave tribes of the Mesopotamian

desert, whose mighty works of fortification and magnificent buildings

are still at the present day imposing in their ruins. He intended

to continue the war next year, and so to make the subjection of the

Parthians a reality. But the combat in the desert of Hatra, in which

the sixty-year-old emperor had bravely fought with the Arab horsemen,

was to be his last. He sickened and died on the journey home (8th Aug.

117), without being able to complete his victory and to hold the

celebration of it in Rome; it was in keeping with his spirit that even

after death the honour of a triumph was accorded to him, and hence he

is the only one of the deified Roman emperors who even as god still

bears the title of victory.

 

[Sidenote: Trajan’s Oriental policy.]

 

Trajan had not sought war with the Parthians, but it had been forced

upon him; not he, but Chosroes had broken the agreement as to Armenia,

which during the last forty years had been the basis of the state of

peace in the region of the Euphrates. If it is intelligible that the

Parthians did not acquiesce in it, since the continuing suzerainty of

the Romans over Armenia carried in itself the stimulus to revolt, we

must on the other hand acknowledge that in the way hitherto followed

further steps could not be taken than were taken by Corbulo; the

unconditional renunciation of Armenia, and--which was the necessary

consequence of it--the recognition of the Parthian state on a footing

of full equality, lay indeed beyond the horizon of Roman policy as

much as the abolition of slavery and similar ideas that could not be

thought of at that time. But if permanent peace could not be attained

by this alternative, there was left in the great dilemma of Roman

Oriental policy only the other course--the extension of direct Roman

rule to the left bank of the Euphrates. Therefore Armenia now became

a Roman province, and no less Mesopotamia. This was only in keeping

with the nature of the case. The conversion of Armenia from a Roman

vassal-state with a Roman garrison into a Roman governorship made not

much change externally; the Parthians could only be effectively ejected

from Armenia when they lost possession of the neighbouring region; and

above all, the Roman rule as well as the Roman provincial constitution

found a far more favourable soil in the half-Greek Mesopotamia than in

the thoroughly Oriental Armenia. Other considerations fell to be added.

The Roman customs-frontier in Syria was badly constituted, and to get

the international traffic from the great commercial marts of Syria

towards the Euphrates and the Tigris entirely into its power was an

essential gain to the Roman state, as indeed Trajan immediately set to

work to institute the new customs-dues at the Euphrates and Tigris.[52]

Even in a military point of view the boundary of the Tigris was easier

of defence than the previous frontier-line which ran along the Syrian

desert and thence along the Euphrates. The conversion of the region

of Adiabene beyond the Tigris into a Roman province, whereby Armenia

became an inland one, and the transformation of the Parthian empire

itself into a Roman vassal-state were corollaries of the same idea.

It is not meant to be denied that in a policy of conquest consistency

is a dangerous praise, and that Trajan after his fashion yielded in

these enterprises more than was reasonable to the effort after external

success, and went beyond the rational goal;[53] but wrong is done

to him when his demeanour in the East is referred to blind lust of

conquest. He did what Caesar would have done had he lived. His policy

is but the other side of that of Nero’s statesmen, and the two are

as opposite, as they are equally consistent and equally warranted.

Posterity has justified more the policy of conquest than that of

concession.

 

[Sidenote: Reaction under Hadrian and Pius.]

 

For the moment no doubt it was otherwise. The Oriental conquests of

Trajan lit up the gloomy evening of the Roman empire like flashes of

lightning in the darkness of the night; but, like these, they brought

no new morning. His successor found himself compelled to choose between

completing the unfinished work of subduing the Parthians or allowing

it to drop. The extension of the frontier could not be carried out at

all without a considerable increase of the army and of the budget; and

the shifting of the centre of gravity to the East, thereby rendered

inevitable, was a dubious strengthening of the empire. Hadrian and

Pius therefore returned entirely into the paths of the earlier

imperial period. Hadrian allowed the Roman vassal-king of Parthia,

Parthamaspates, to drop, and portioned him off in another way. He

evacuated Assyria and Mesopotamia, and voluntarily gave back these

provinces to their earlier ruler. He sent to him as well his captive

daughter; the permanent token of the victory won, the golden throne

of Ctesiphon, even the pacific Pius refused to deliver up again to

the Parthians. Hadrian as well as Pius earnestly endeavoured to live

in peace and friendship with their neighbour, and at no time do the

commercial relations between the Roman entrepôts on the Syrian east

frontier and the mercantile towns on the Euphrates seem to have been

more lively than at this epoch.

 

[Sidenote: Armenia a vassal-state.]

 

Armenia ceased likewise to be a Roman province, and returned to its

former position as a Roman vassal-state and a Parthian appanage of the

second son.[54] The princes of the Albani, and the Iberians on the

Caucasus, and the numerous small dynasts in the south-eastern corner of

the Black Sea likewise remained dependent.[55] Roman garrisons were

stationed not merely on the coast in Apsarus[56] and on the Phasis,

but, as can be shown, under Commodus in Armenia itself, not far from

Artaxata; in a military point of view all these states belonged to the

district of the commandant of Cappadocia.[57] This supremacy, however,

very indefinite in its nature, seems to have been dealt with generally,

and in particular by Hadrian,[58] in such a way that it appeared more

as a right of protection than as subjection proper, and at least the

more powerful of these princes did, and left undone, in the main what

pleased them. The common interest--which we have formerly brought

out--in warding off the wild trans-Caucasian tribes became still more

definitely prominent in this epoch, and evidently served as a bond in

particular between Romans and Parthians. Towards the end of the reign

of Hadrian the Alani, in agreement apparently with the king of Iberia,

at that time Pharasmanes II., on whom it primarily devolved to bar

the pass of the Caucasus against them, invaded the southern regions,

and pillaged not only the territory of the Albanians and Armenians,

but also the Parthian province of Media and the Roman province of

Cappadocia, though matters did not come to a waging of war in common,

but the gold of the ruler then reigning in Parthia, Vologasus III., and

the mobilising of the Cappadocian army on the part of the Romans,[59]

induced the barbarians to return, yet their interests coincided, and

the complaint which the Parthians lodged in Rome as to Pharasmanes of

Iberia, shows the concert of the two great powers.[60]

 

[Sidenote: Parthian war under Marcus and Verus.]

 

The disturbances of the _status quo_ came again from the Parthian side.

The suzerainty of the Romans over Armenia played a part in history

similar to that of the German empire over Italy; unsubstantial as it

was, it was yet constantly felt as an encroachment, and carried within

it the danger of war. Already under Hadrian the conflict was imminent;

the emperor succeeded in keeping the peace by a personal interview

with the Parthian prince. Under Pius the Parthian invasion of Armenia

seemed once more impending; his earnest dissuasive was in the first

instance successful. But even this most pacific of all emperors, who

had it more at heart to save the life of a burgess than to kill a

thousand foes, was obliged in the last period of his reign to prepare

himself for the attack and to reinforce the armies of the East. Hardly

had he closed his eyes (161), when the long-threatening thunder-cloud

discharged itself. By command of Vologasus IV. the Persian general

Chosroes[61] advanced into Armenia, and placed the Arsacid prince

Pacorus on the throne. The governor of Cappadocia Severianus did what

was his duty, and led on his part the Roman troops over the Euphrates.

At Elegeia, just where a generation before the king Parthomasiris,

likewise placed by the Parthians on the Armenian throne, had humbled

himself in vain before Trajan, the armies encountered each other; the

Roman was not merely beaten but annihilated in a three days’ conflict;

the unfortunate general put himself to death, as Varus had formerly

done. The victorious Orientals were not content with the occupation

of Armenia, but crossed the Euphrates and invaded Syria; the army

stationed there was also defeated, and there were fears as to the

fidelity of the Syrians. The Roman government had no choice. As the

troops of the East showed on this occasion their small capacity for

fighting, and were besides weakened and demoralised by the defeat

which they had suffered, further legions were despatched to the East

from the West, even from the Rhine, and levies were ordered in Italy

itself. Lucius Verus, one of the two emperors who shortly before had

come to govern, went in person to the East (162) to take up the chief

command, and if he, neither warlike nor yet even faithful to his duty,

showed himself unequal to the task, and of his deeds in the East hardly

anything else is to be told than that he married his niece there and

was ridiculed for his theatrical enthusiasm even by the Antiochenes,

the governors of Cappadocia and Syria--in the former case first Statius

Priscus, then Martius Verus, in the latter Avidius Cassius,[62] the

best generals of this epoch--managed the cause of Rome better than

the wearer of the crown. Once more, before the armies met, the Romans

offered peace; willingly would Marcus have avoided the severe war. But

Vologasus abruptly rejected the reasonable proposals; and this time

the pacific neighbour was also the stronger. Armenia was immediately

recovered; already, in the year 163, Priscus took the capital Artaxata,

and destroyed it. Not far from it the new capital of the country,

Kainepolis, in Armenia Nôr-Khalakh or Valarshapat (Etshmiazin) was

built by the Romans and provided with a strong garrison.[63] In the

succeeding year instead of Pacorus Sohaemus, by descent also an

Arsacid, but a Roman subject and Roman senator, was nominated as king of Great Armenia.[64] In a legal point of view nothing was changed in Armenia; yet the bonds which joined it to Rome were drawn tighter.