The Provinces of the Roman Empire 9

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 9

From this standpoint we understand why Corbulo and Quadratus, instead

of crossing the Euphrates, entered into negotiations with Vologasus;

and not less why the latter, informed doubtless of the real designs of

the Romans, agreed to submit to the Romans in a similar way with his

predecessor, and to deliver to them as a pledge of peace a number of

hostages closely connected with the royal house. The return tacitly

agreed on for this was that the rule of Tiridates over Armenia should

be tolerated, and that a Roman pretender should not be set up. So

some years passed in a _de facto_ state of peace. But when Vologasus

and Tiridates did not agree to apply to the Roman government for the

investing of the latter with Armenia,[32] Corbulo took the offensive

against Tiridates in the year 58. The very policy of withdrawal and

concession, if it was not to appear to friend and foe as weakness,

needed a foil, and so either a formal and solemn recognition of the

Roman supremacy or, better still, a victory won by arms.

 

[Sidenote: Corbulo in Armenia.]

 

In the summer of the year 58 Corbulo led an army, tolerably fit

for fighting, of at least 30,000 men, over the Euphrates. The

reorganisation and the hardening of the troops were completed by

the campaign itself, and the first winter-quarters were taken up on

Armenian soil. In the spring of 59[33] he began the advance in the

direction of Artaxata. At the same time Armenia was invaded from

the north by the Iberians, whose king Pharasmanes, to cover his own

crimes, had caused his son Rhadamistus to be executed, and now further

endeavoured by good services to make his guilt be forgotten; and not

less by their neighbours to the north-west, the brave Moschi, and on

the south by Antiochus, king of Commagene. King Vologasus was detained

by the revolt of the Hyrcanians on the opposite side of the kingdom,

and could or would not interfere directly in the struggle. Tiridates

offered a courageous resistance, but he could do nothing against the

crushing superiority of force. In vain he sought to throw himself on

the lines of communication of the Romans, who obtained their necessary

supplies by way of the Black Sea and the port of Trapezus. The

strongholds of Armenia fell under the attacks of the Roman assailants,

and the garrisons were cut down to the last man. Defeated in a pitched

battle under the walls of Artaxata, Tiridates gave up the unequal

struggle, and went to the Parthians. Artaxata surrendered, and here,

in the heart of Armenia, the Roman army passed the winter. In the

spring of 60 Corbulo broke up from thence, after having burnt down

the town, and marched right across the country to its second capital

Tigranocerta, above Nisibis, in the basin of the Tigris. The terrors

of the destruction of Artaxata preceded him; serious resistance was

nowhere offered; even Tigranocerta voluntarily opened its gates to the

victor, who here in a well-calculated way allowed mercy to prevail.

Tiridates still made an attempt to return and to resume the struggle,

but was repulsed without special exertion. At the close of the summer

of 60 all Armenia was subdued, and stood at the disposal of the Roman

government.

 

[Sidenote: Tigranes, king of Armenia.]

 

It is intelligible that people in Rome now put Tiridates out of

account. The prince Tigranes, a great-grandson on the father’s side

of Herod the Great, on the mother’s of king Archelaus of Cappadocia,

related also to the old Marenian royal house on the female side, and

a nephew of one of the ephemeral rulers of Armenia in the last years

of Augustus, brought up in Rome, and entirely a tool of the Roman

government, was now (60) invested by Nero with the kingdom of Armenia,

and at the emperor’s command installed by Corbulo in its rule. In

the country there was left a Roman garrison, 1000 legionaries, and

from 3000 to 4000 cavalry and infantry of auxiliaries. A portion of

the border land was separated from Armenia and distributed among the

neighbouring kings, Polemon of Pontus and Trapezus, Aristobulus of

Lesser Armenia, Pharasmanes of Iberia and Antiochus of Commagene. On

the other hand the new master of Armenia advanced, of course with

consent of the Romans, into the adjacent Parthian province of Adiabene,

defeated Monobazus the governor there, and appeared desirous of

wresting this region also from the Parthian state.

 

[Sidenote: Negotiations with the Parthians.]

 

This turn of affairs compelled the Parthian government to emerge from

its passiveness; the question now concerned no longer the recovery of

Armenia, but the integrity of the Parthian empire. The long-threatened

collision between the two great states seemed inevitable. Vologasus in

an assembly of the grandees of the empire confirmed Tiridates afresh

as king of Armenia, and sent with him the general Monaeses against

the Roman usurper of the land, who was besieged by the Parthians

in Tigranocerta, which the Roman troops kept in their possession.

Vologasus in person collected the Parthian main force in Mesopotamia,

and threatened (at the beginning of 61) Syria. Corbulo, who, after

Quadratus’s death, held the command for a time in Cappadocia as in

Syria, but had besought from the government the nomination of another

governor for Cappadocia and Armenia, sent provisionally two legions

to Armenia to lend help to Tigranes, while he in person moved to the

Euphrates in order to receive the Parthian king. Again, however, they

came not to blows, but to an agreement. Vologasus, well knowing how

dangerous was the game which he was beginning, declared himself now

ready to enter into the terms vainly offered by the Romans before the

outbreak of the Armenian war, and to allow the investiture of his

brother by the Roman emperor. Corbulo entered into the proposal. He let

Tigranes drop, withdrew the Roman troops from Armenia, and acquiesced

in Tiridates establishing himself there, while the Parthian auxiliary

troops likewise withdrew; on the other hand, Vologasus sent an embassy

to the Roman government, and declared the readiness of his brother to

take the land in fee from Rome.

 

[Sidenote: The Parthian war under Nero.]

 

These measures of Corbulo were of a hazardous kind,[34] and led to a

bad complication. The Roman general may possibly have been, still more

thoroughly than the statesmen in Rome, impressed by the uselessness

of retaining Armenia; but, after the Roman government had installed

Tigranes as king of Armenia, he could not of his own accord fall back

upon the conditions earlier laid down, least of all abandon his own

acquisitions and withdraw the Roman troops from Armenia. He was the

less entitled to do so, as he administered Cappadocia and Armenia

merely _ad interim_, and had himself declared to the government that

he was not in a position to exercise the command at once there and in

Syria; whereupon the consular Lucius Caesennius Paetus was nominated

as governor of Cappadocia and was already on the way thither. The

suspicion can hardly be avoided that Corbulo grudged the latter the

honour of the final subjugation of Armenia, and wished before his

arrival to establish a definitive solution by the actual conclusion of

peace with the Parthians. The Roman government accordingly declined

the proposals of Vologasus and insisted on the retention of Armenia,

which, as the new governor who arrived in Cappadocia in the course of

the summer of 61 declared, was even to be taken under direct Roman

administration. Whether the Roman government had really resolved to go

so far cannot be ascertained; but this was at all events implied in

the consistent following out of their policy. The installing of a king

dependent on Rome was only a prolongation of the previous untenable

state of things; whoever did not wish the cession of Armenia to the

Parthians had to contemplate the conversion of the kingdom into a Roman

province. The war therefore took its course; and on that account one of

the Moesian legions was sent to the Cappadocian army.

 

[Sidenote: Measures of Paetus.]

 

When Paetus arrived, the two legions assigned to him by Corbulo were

encamped on this side of the Euphrates in Cappadocia; Armenia was

evacuated, and had to be reconquered. Paetus set at once to work,

crossed the Euphrates at Melitene (Malatia), advanced into Armenia,

and reduced the nearest strongholds on the border. The advanced season

of the year, however, compelled him soon to suspend operations and

to abandon for this year the intended reoccupation of Tigranocerta;

nevertheless, in order to resume his march at once next spring, he,

after Corbulo’s example, took up his winter-quarters in the enemy’s

country at Rhandeia, on a tributary of the Euphrates, the Arsanias,

not far from the modern Charput, while the baggage and the women

and children had quarters not far from it in the strong fortress of

Arsamosata. But he had underrated the difficulty of the undertaking.

One, and that the best of his legions, the Moesian, was still on

the march, and spent the winter on this side of the Euphrates in

the territory of Pontus; the two others were not those whom Corbulo

had taught to fight and conquer, but the former Syrian legions of

Quadratus, not having their full complement, and hardly capable of

use without thorough reorganisation. He had withal to confront not,

like Corbulo, the Armenians alone, but the main body of the Parthians;

Vologasus had, when the war became in earnest, led the flower of his

troops from Mesopotamia to Armenia, and judiciously availed himself

of the strategical advantage that he commanded the inner and shorter

lines. Corbulo might, especially as he had bridged over the Euphrates

and constructed _têtes de pont_ on the other bank, have at least

hampered, or at any rate requited this marching off by a seasonable

incursion into Mesopotamia; but he did not stir from his positions and

he left it to Paetus to defend himself, as best he could, against the

whole force of his foes. The latter was neither himself military nor

ready to accept and follow military advice, not even a man of resolute

character; arrogant and boastful in onset, despairing and pusillanimous

in presence of misfortune.

 

[Sidenote: Capitulation of Rhandeia.]

 

Thus there came what could not but come. In the spring of 62 it was

not Paetus who assumed the aggressive, but Vologasus; the advanced

troops who were to bar the way of the Parthians were crushed by the

superior force; the attack was soon converted into a siege of the Roman

positions pitched far apart in the winter camp and the fortress. The

legions could neither advance nor retreat; the soldiers deserted in

masses; the only hope rested on Corbulo’s legions lying inactive far

off in northern Syria, beyond doubt at Zeugma. Both generals shared

in the blame of the disaster: Corbulo on account of the lateness of

his starting to render help,[35] although, when he did recognise

the whole extent of the danger, he hastened his march as much as

possible; Paetus, because he could not take the bold resolution to

perish rather than to surrender, and thereby lost the chance of rescue

that was near--in three days longer the 5000 men whom Corbulo was

leading up would have brought the longed-for help. The conditions

of the capitulation were free retreat for the Romans and evacuation

of Armenia, with the delivering up of all fortresses occupied by

them, and of all the stores that were in their hands, of which the

Parthians were urgently in need. On the other hand Vologasus declared

himself ready, in spite of this military success, to ask Armenia as a

Roman fief for his brother from the imperial government, and on that

account to send envoys to Nero.[36] The moderation of the victor may

have rested on the fact that he had better information of Corbulo’s

approach than the enclosed army; but more probably the sagacious man

was not concerned to renew the disaster of Crassus and bring Roman

eagles again to Ctesiphon. The defeat of a Roman army--he knew--was not

the overpowering of Rome; and the real concession, which was involved

in the recognition of Tiridates, was not too dearly purchased by the compliance as to form.