The Provinces of the Roman Empire 7

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 7

The success had no more endurance than that of the more brilliant

expedition of 734 {20 B.C.}. The rulers of Armenia installed by

Rome were soon hard pressed by those of the counter-party with the

secret or open participation of the Parthians, and supplanted. When

the Parthian prince Vonones, reared in Rome, was called to the vacant

Parthian throne, the Romans hoped to find in him a support; but on

that very account he had soon to vacate it, and in his stead came king

Artabanus of Media, an energetic man, sprung on the mother’s side from

the Arsacids, but belonging to the Scythian people of the Daci, and

brought up in native habits (about A.D. 10). Vonones was then received

by the Armenians as ruler, and thereby these were kept under Roman

influence. But the less could Artabanus tolerate his dispossessed rival

as a neighbour prince; the Roman government must, in order to sustain

a man in every respect unfitted for his position, have applied armed

force against the Parthians as against his own subjects. Tiberius, who

meanwhile had come to reign, did not order an immediate invasion, and

for the moment the anti-Roman party in Armenia was victorious; but it

was not his intention to abandon the important border-land. On the

contrary, the annexation, probably long resolved on, of the kingdom of

Cappadocia was carried out in the year 17; the old Archelaus, who had

occupied the throne there from the year 718 {36 B.C.}, was summoned to

Rome and was there informed that he had ceased to reign. Likewise the

petty, but on account of the fords of the Euphrates important, kingdom

of Commagene came at that time under immediate imperial administration.

Thereby the direct frontier of the empire was pushed forward as far as

the middle Euphrates. At the same time the crown-prince Germanicus,

who had just commanded with great distinction on the Rhine, went

with extended full powers to the East, in order to organise the new

province of Cappadocia and to restore the sunken repute of the imperial

authority.

 

[Sidenote: And its results.]

 

This mission also attained its end soon and easily. Germanicus,

although not supported by the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Piso, with

such a force of troops as he was entitled to ask and had asked, went

nevertheless to Armenia, and by the mere weight of his person and

of his position brought back the land to allegiance. He allowed the

incapable Vonones to fall, and, in accordance with the wishes of the

chief men favourable to Rome, appointed as ruler of the Armenians a

son of that Polemon whom Antonius had made king in Pontus, Zeno, or,

as he was called as king of Armenia, Artaxias; the latter was, on the

one hand, connected with the imperial house through his mother queen

Pythodoris, a granddaughter of the triumvir Antonius, on the other

hand, reared after the manner of the country, a vigorous huntsman and

a brave carouser at the festal board. The great-king Artabanus also

met the Roman prince in a friendly way, and asked only for the removal

of his predecessor Vonones from Syria, in order to check the intrigues

concocted between him and the discontented Parthians. As Germanicus

responded to this request and sent the inconvenient refugee to Cilicia,

where he soon afterwards perished in an attempt to escape, the best

relations were established between the two great states. Artabanus

wished even to meet personally with Germanicus at the Euphrates, as

Phraataces and Gaius had done; but this Germanicus declined, doubtless

with reference to the easily excited suspicion of Tiberius. In truth

the same shadow of gloom fell on this Oriental expedition as on the

last preceding one; from this too the crown-prince of the Roman empire

came not home alive.

 

[Sidenote: Artabanus and Tiberius.]

 

[Sidenote: Mission of Vitellius.]

 

For a time the arrangements made did their work. So long as Tiberius

bore sway with a firm hand, and so long as king Artaxias of Armenia

lived, tranquillity continued in the East; but in the last years of

the old emperor, when he from his solitary island allowed things to

take their course and shrank back from all interference, and especially

after the death of Artaxias (about 34), the old game once more began.

King Artabanus, exalted by his long and prosperous government and

by many successes achieved against the border peoples of Iran, and

convinced that the old emperor would have no inclination to begin a

heavy war in the East, induced the Armenians to proclaim his own eldest

son, Arsaces, as ruler; that is, to exchange the Roman suzerainty for

the Parthian. Indeed he seemed directly to aim at war with Rome; he

demanded the estate left by his predecessor and rival Vonones, who

had died in Cilicia, from the Roman government, and his letters to

it as undisguisedly expressed the view that the East belonged to the

Orientals, as they called by the right name the abominations at the

imperial court, of which people in Rome ventured only to whisper in

their most intimate circles. He is said even to have made an attempt

to possess himself of Cappadocia. But he had miscalculated on the

old lion. Tiberius was even at Capreae formidable not merely to his

courtiers, and was not the man to let himself, and in himself Rome,

be mocked with impunity. He sent Lucius Vitellius, the father of the

subsequent emperor, a resolute officer and skilful diplomatist, to

the East with plenary power similar to that which Gaius Caesar and

Germanicus had formerly had, and with the commission in case of need

to lead the Syrian legions over the Euphrates. At the same time

he applied the often tried means for giving trouble to the rulers

of the East by insurrections and pretenders in their own land. To

the Parthian prince, whom the Armenian nationalists had proclaimed

as ruler, he opposed a prince of the royal house of the Iberians,

Mithradates, brother of the Armenian king Pharasmanes, and directed

the latter, as well as the prince of the Albanians, to support the

Roman pretender to Armenia with military force. Large bands of the

Transcaucasian Sarmatae, warlike and easy of access to every wooer,

were hired with Roman money for the inroads into Armenia. The Roman

pretender succeeded in poisoning his rival through bribed courtiers,

and in possessing himself of the country and of the capital Artaxata.

Artabanus sent in place of the murdered prince another son Orodes to

Armenia, and attempted also on his part to procure Transcaucasian

auxiliaries; but only few made good their way to Armenia, and the

bands of Parthian horsemen were not a match for the good infantry

of the Caucasian peoples and the dreaded Sarmatian mounted archers.

Orodes was vanquished in a hard pitched battle, and himself severely

wounded in single combat with his rival. Then Artabanus in person

set out for Armenia. But now Vitellius also put in motion the Syrian

legions, in order to cross the Euphrates and to invade Mesopotamia,

and this brought the long fermenting insurrection in the Parthian

kingdom to an outbreak. The energetic and, with successes, more and

more rude demeanour of the Scythian ruler, had offended many persons

and interests, and had especially estranged from him the Mesopotamian

Greeks and the powerful urban community of Seleucia, from which he had

taken away its municipal constitution, democratic after a Greek type.

Roman gold fostered the movement which was in preparation. Discontented

nobles had already put themselves in communication with the Roman

government, and besought from it a genuine Arsacid. Tiberius had sent

the only surviving son of Phraates, of the same name with his father,

and--after the old man, accustomed to Roman habits, had succumbed

to his exertions while still in Syria--in his stead a grandson of

Phraates, likewise living in Rome, by name Tiridates. The Parthian

prince Sinnaces, the leader of these plots, now renounced allegiance

to the Scythian and set up the banner of the Arsacids. Vitellius with

his legions crossed the Euphrates, and in his train the new great-king

by grace of Rome. The Parthian governor of Mesopotamia, Ornospades,

who had once as an exile shared under Tiberius in the Pannonian wars,

placed himself and his troops at once at the disposal of the new

ruler; Abdagaeses, the father of Sinnaces, delivered over the imperial

treasure; very speedily Artabanus found himself abandoned by the whole

country, and compelled to take flight to his Scythian home, where he

wandered about in the forests without settled abode, and kept himself

alive with his bow, while the tiara was solemnly placed on the head

of Tiridates in Ctesiphon by the princes who were, according to the

Parthian constitution, called to crown the ruler.

 

[Sidenote: Tiridates superseded.]

 

But the rule of the new great-king sent by the national foe did

not last long. The government, conducted less by himself, young,

inexperienced, and incapable, than by those who had made him king, and

chiefly by Abdagaeses, soon provoked opposition. Some of the chief

satraps had remained absent even from the coronation festival, and

again brought forth the dispossessed ruler from his banishment; with

their assistance and the forces supplied by his Scythian countrymen

Artabanus returned, and already in the following year (36) the whole

kingdom, with the exception of Seleucia, was again in his power.

Tiridates was a fugitive, and was compelled to demand from his Roman

protectors the shelter which could not be refused to him. Vitellius

once more led the legions to the Euphrates; but, as the great-king

appeared in person and declared himself ready for all that was asked,

provided that the Roman government would stand aloof from Tiridates,

peace was soon concluded. Artabanus not merely recognised Mithradates

as king of Armenia, but presented also to the effigy of the Roman

emperor the homage which was wont to be required of vassals, and

furnished his son Darius as a hostage to the Romans. Thereupon the old

emperor died; but he had lived long enough to see this victory, as

bloodless as complete, of his policy over the revolt of the East.

 

[Sidenote: The East under Gaius.]

 

What the sagacity of the old man had attained was undone at once by the

indiscretion of his successor. Apart from the fact that he cancelled

judicious arrangements of Tiberius, re-establishing, _e.g._ the annexed

kingdom of Commagene, his foolish envy grudged the dead emperor the

success which he had gained; he summoned the able governor of Syria

as well as the new king of Armenia to Rome to answer for themselves,

deposed the latter, and, after keeping him for a time a prisoner, sent

him into exile. As a matter of course the Parthian government took

action for itself, and once more seized possession of Armenia which

was without a master.[28] Claudius, on coming to reign in the year

41, had to begin afresh the work that had been done. He dealt with

it after the example of Tiberius. Mithradates, recalled from exile,

was reinstated, and directed with the help of his brother to possess

himself of Armenia. The fraternal war then waged among the three sons

of king Artabanus III. in the Parthian kingdom smoothed the way for

the Romans. After the murder of the eldest son, Gotarzes and Vardanes

contended over the throne for years; Seleucia, which had already

renounced allegiance to the father, defied him and subsequently his

sons throughout seven years; the peoples of Turan also interfered, as

they always did, in this quarrel of princes of Iran. Mithradates was

able, with the help of the troops of his brother and of the garrisons

of the neighbouring Roman provinces, to overpower the Parthian

partisans in Armenia and to make himself again master there;[29] the

land obtained a Roman garrison. After Vardanes had come to terms with

his brother and had at length reoccupied Seleucia, he seemed as though

he would march into Armenia; but the threatening attitude of the Roman

legate of Syria withheld him, and very soon the brother broke the

agreement and the civil war began afresh. Not even the assassination of

the brave and, in combat with the peoples of Turan, victorious Vardanes

put an end to it; the opposition party now turned to Rome and besought

from the government there the son of Vonones, the prince Meherdates

then living in Rome, who thereupon was placed by the emperor Claudius

before the assembled senate at the disposal of his countrymen and sent

away to Syria with the exhortation to administer his new kingdom well

and justly, and to remain mindful of the friendly protectorate of

Rome (49). He did not reach the position in which these exhortations

might be applied. The Roman legions, which escorted him as far as the

Euphrates, there delivered him over to those who had called him--the

head of the powerful princely family of the Carên and the kings Abgarus

of Edessa and Izates of Adiabene. The inexperienced and unwarlike youth

was as little equal to the task as all the other Parthian rulers set up

by the Romans; a number of his most noted adherents left him so soon as

they learned to know him, and went to Gotarzes; in the decisive battle

the fall of the brave Carên turned the scale. Meherdates was taken prisoner and not even executed, but only, after the Oriental fashion, rendered incapable of government by mutilation of the ears.