The Provinces of the Roman Empire 6

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 6

The sagacious and clear-seeing man, to whom it fell to liquidate

the undertakings of Antonius and to settle the relations of the two

portions of the empire, needed moderation quite as much as energy.

It would have been the gravest of errors to enter into the ideas of

Antonius as to conquering the East, or even merely making further

conquests there. Augustus perceived this; his military arrangements

show clearly that, while he viewed the possession of the Syrian coast

as well as that of Egypt as an indispensable complement to the empire

of the Mediterranean, he attached no value to inland possessions there.

Armenia, however, had now been for a generation Roman, and could, in

the nature of the circumstances, only be Roman or Parthian; the country

was by its position, in a military point of view, a sally-port for each

of the great powers into the territory of the other. Augustus had no

thought of abandoning Armenia and leaving it to the Parthians; and, as

things stood, he could hardly think of doing so. But, if Armenia was

retained, the matter could not end there; the local relations compelled

the Romans further to bring under their controlling influence the basin

of the river Cyrus, the territories of the Iberians on its upper, and

of the Albanians on its lower course--that is, the inhabitants of the

modern Georgia and Shirvan, skilled in combat on horseback and on

foot--and not to allow the domain of the Parthian power to extend to

the north of the Araxes beyond Atropatene. The expedition of Pompeius

had already shown that the settlement in Armenia necessarily led

the Romans on the one hand as far as the Caucasus, on the other as

far as the western shore of the Caspian Sea. The initial steps were

everywhere taken. The legates of Antonius had fought with the Iberians

and Albanians; Polemon, confirmed in his position by Augustus, ruled

not merely over the coast from Pharnacea to Trapezus, but also over the

territory of the Colchians at the mouth of the Phasis. To this general

state of matters fell to be added the special circumstances of the

moment, which most urgently suggested to the new monarch of Rome not

merely to show his sword in presence of the Orientals, but also to draw

it. That king Artaxes, like Mithradates formerly, had given orders to

put to death all the Romans within his bounds, could not be allowed to

remain unrequited. The exiled king of Media also had now sought help

from Augustus, as he would otherwise have sought it from Antonius. Not

merely did the civil war and the conflict of pretenders in the Parthian

empire facilitate the attack, but the expelled ruler Tiridates likewise

sought protection with Augustus, and declared himself ready as a Roman

vassal to accept his kingdom in fief from the latter. The restitution

of the Romans who had fallen into the power of the Parthians at the

defeats of Crassus and of the Antonians, and of the lost eagles, might

not in themselves seem to the ruler worth the waging of war; the

restorer of the Roman state could not allow this question of military

and political honour to drop.

 

[Sidenote: Policy open to him.]

 

The Roman statesman had to reckon with these facts; considering the

position, which Antonius took in the East, the policy of action was

imperative generally, and doubly so from the preceding miscarriages.

Beyond doubt it was desirable soon to undertake the organisation of

matters in Rome, but for the undisputed monarch there subsisted no

stringent compulsion to do this at once. He found himself after the

decisive blows of Actium and Alexandria on the spot and at the head of

a strong and victorious army; what had to be done some day was best

done at once. A ruler of the stamp of Caesar would hardly have returned

to Rome without having restored the protectorate in Armenia, having

obtained recognition for the Roman supremacy as far as the Caucasus

and the Caspian Sea, and having settled accounts with the Parthians.

A ruler of caution and energy would have now at once organised the

defence of the frontier in the East, as the circumstances required;

it was from the outset clear that the four Syrian legions, together

about 40,000 men, were not sufficient to guard the interests of Rome

simultaneously on the Euphrates, on the Araxes, and on the Cyrus, and

that the militia of the dependent kingdoms only concealed, and did not

cover, the want of imperial troops. Armenia by political and national

sympathy held more to the Parthians than to the Romans; the kings of

Commagene, Cappadocia, Galatia, Pontus, were inclined doubtless on the

other hand more to the Roman side, but they were untrustworthy and

weak. Even a policy keeping within bounds needed for its foundation an

energetic stroke of the sword, and for its maintenance the near arm of

a superior Roman military power.

 

[Sidenote: Inadequate measures.]

 

Augustus neither struck nor protected; certainly not because he

deceived himself as to the state of the case, but because it was his

nature to execute tardily and feebly what he perceived to be necessary,

and to let considerations of internal policy exercise a more than due

influence on the relations abroad. The inadequacy of the protection of

the frontier by the client states of Asia Minor he well perceived; and

in connection therewith, already in the year 729 {25 B.C.}, after

the death of king Amyntas who ruled all the interior of Asia Minor,

he gave to him no successor, but placed the land under an imperial

legate. Presumably the neighbouring more important client-states,

and particularly Cappadocia, were intended to be in like manner

converted after the decease of the holders for the time into imperial

governorships. This was a step in advance, in so far as thereby the

militia of these countries was incorporated with the imperial army and

placed under Roman officers; these troops could not exercise a serious

pressure on the insecure border-lands or even on the neighbouring

great-state, although they now counted among those of the empire. But

all these considerations were outweighed by regard to the reduction

of the numbers of the standing army and of the expenditure for the

military system to the lowest possible measure.

 

Equally insufficient, in presence of the relations of the moment, were

the measures adopted by Augustus on his return home from Alexandria.

He gave to the dispossessed king of the Medes the rule of the Lesser

Armenia, and to the Parthian pretender Tiridates an asylum in Syria,

in order through the former to keep in check the king Artaxes who

persevered in open hostility against Rome, by the latter to press upon

king Phraates. The negotiations instituted with the latter regarding

the restitution of the Parthian trophies of victory were prolonged

without result, although Phraates in the year 731 {23 B.C.} had

promised their return in order to obtain the release of a son who had

accidentally fallen into the power of the Romans.

 

[Sidenote: Augustus in Syria.]

 

It was only when Augustus went in person to Syria in the year 734 {20

B.C.}, and showed himself in earnest, that the Orientals submitted. In

Armenia, where a powerful party had risen against king Artaxes, the

insurgents threw themselves into the arms of the Romans and sought

imperial investiture for Artaxes’s younger brother Tigranes, brought up

at the imperial court and living in Rome. When the emperor’s stepson

Tiberius Claudius Nero, then a youth of twenty-two years, advanced with

a military force into Armenia, king Artaxes was put to death by his

own relatives, and Tigranes received the imperial tiara from the hand

of the emperor’s representative, as fifty years earlier his grandfather

of the same name had received it from Pompeius (iv. 127). Atropatene

was again separated from Armenia and passed under the sway of a ruler

likewise brought up in Rome, Ariobarzanes, son of the already-mentioned

Artavazdes; yet the latter appears to have obtained the land not as

a Roman but as a Parthian dependency. Concerning the organisation

of matters in the principalities on the Caucasus we learn nothing;

but as they are subsequently reckoned among the Roman client-states,

probably at that time the Roman influence prevailed here also. Even

king Phraates, now put to the choice of redeeming his word or fighting,

resolved with a heavy heart on the surrender--keenly as it did violence

to the national feelings of his people--of the few Roman prisoners of

war still living and the standards won.

 

[Sidenote: Mission of Gaius Caesar to the East.]

 

Boundless joy saluted this bloodless victory achieved by this prince

of peace. After it there subsisted for a considerable time a friendly

relation with the king of the Parthians, as indeed the immediate

interests of the two great states came little into contact. In Armenia,

on the other hand, the Roman vassal-rule, which rested only on its own

basis, had a difficulty in confronting the national opposition. After

the early death of king Tigranes his children, or the leaders of the

state governing under their name, joined this opposition. Against them

another ruler Artavazdes was set up by the friends of the Romans; but

he was unable to prevail against the stronger opposing party. These

Armenian troubles disturbed also the relation to the Parthians; it was

natural that the Armenians antagonistic to Rome should seek to lean on

these, and the Arsacids could not forget that Armenia had been formerly

a Parthian appanage for the second son. Bloodless victories are often

feeble and dangerous. Matters went so far that the Roman government, in

the year 748 {6 B.C.}, commissioned the same Tiberius, who, fourteen

years before had installed Tigranes as vassal-king of Armenia, to

enter it once more with a military force and to regulate the state

of matters in case of need by arms. But the quarrels in the imperial

family, which had interrupted the subjugation of the Germans (I. 35),

interfered also here and had the same bad effect. Tiberius declined

his stepfather’s commission, and in the absence of a suitable princely

general the Roman government for some years looked on, inactive for

good or evil, at the doings of the anti-Roman party in Armenia under

Parthian protection. At length, in the year 753 {1 B.C.}, not merely

was the same commission given to the elder adopted son of the emperor,

Gaius Caesar, at the age of twenty, but the subjugation of Armenia

was to be, as the father hoped, the beginning of greater things; the

Oriental campaign of the crown-prince of twenty was, we might almost

say, to continue the expedition of Alexander. Literati commissioned

by the emperor or in close relations to the court, the geographer

Isidorus, himself at home at the mouth of the Euphrates, and king

Juba of Mauretania, the representative of Greek learning among the

princely personages of the Augustan circle, dedicated--the former his

information personally acquired in the East, the latter his literary

collections on Arabia--to the young prince, who appeared to burn with

the desire of achieving the conquest of that land--over which Alexander

had met his death--as a brilliant compensation for a miscarriage of the

Augustan government which a considerable time ago had there occurred.

In the first instance for Armenia this mission was just as successful

as that of Tiberius. The Roman crown-prince and the Parthian great-king

Phraataces met personally on an island of the Euphrates; the Parthians

once more gave up Armenia, the imminent danger of a Parthian war was

averted, and the understanding, which had been disturbed, was at least

outwardly re-established. Gaius appointed Ariobarzanes, a prince of the

Median princely house, as king over the Armenians, and the suzerainty

of Rome was once more confirmed. The Armenians, however, opposed to

Rome did not submit without resistance; matters came not merely to

the marching in of the legions, but even to fighting. Before the walls

of the Armenian stronghold Artageira the young crown-prince received

from a Parthian officer through treachery the wound (A.D. 2) of which

he died after months of sickness. The intermixture of imperial and

dynastic policy punished itself anew. The death of a young man changed

the course of great policy; the Arabian expedition so confidently

announced to the public fell into abeyance, after its success could no

longer smooth the way of the emperor’s son to the succession. Further

undertakings on the Euphrates were no longer thought of; the immediate

object--the occupation of Armenia and the re-establishment of the

relations with the Parthians--was attained, however sad the shadows

that fell on this success through the death of the crown-prince.