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.

[Sidenote: Conclusion of peace.]

[Sidenote: Tiridates in Rome.]

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; 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.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Seleucia, and its siege.]

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.

[Sidenote: Conflicts in Syria and Mesopotamia.]

The conflicts in Syria and Mesopotamia were more serious. The line

of the Euphrates was obstinately defended by the Parthians; after a

keen combat on the right bank at Sura the fortress of Nicephorium

(Ragga) on the left was stormed by the Romans. Still more vehemently

was the passage at Zeugma contested; but here too victory remained

with the Romans in the decisive battle at Europus (Djerabis to the

south of Biredjik). They now advanced on their part into Mesopotamia.

Edessa was besieged, Dausara not far from it stormed; the Romans

appeared before Nisibis; the Parthian general saved himself by

swimming over the Tigris. The Romans might from Mesopotamia undertake

the march to Babylon. The satraps forsook in part the banners of the

defeated great-king; Seleucia, the great capital of the Hellenes on

the Euphrates, voluntarily opened its gates to the Romans, but was

afterwards burnt down by them, because the burgesses were rightly

or wrongly accused of an understanding with the enemy. The Parthian

capital, Ctesiphon, was also taken and destroyed; with good reason at

the beginning of the year 165 the senate could salute the two rulers

as the Parthian grand-victors. In the campaign of this year Cassius

even penetrated into Media; but the outbreak of a pestilence, more

especially in these regions, decimated the troops and compelled them to

return, accelerating perhaps even the conclusion of peace. The result

of the war was the cession of the western district of Mesopotamia; the

princes of Edessa and of Osrhoene became vassals of Rome, and the town

of Carrhae, which had for long Greek leanings, became a free town under

Roman protection.[65] As regards extent, especially in presence of the

complete success of the war, the increase of territory was moderate,

but yet of importance, inasmuch as thereby the Romans gained a footing

on the left bank of the Euphrates. We may add that the territories

occupied were given back to the Parthians and the _status quo_ was

restored. On the whole, therefore, the policy of reserve adopted by

Hadrian was now abandoned once more, and there was a return to the

course of Trajan. This is the more remarkable, as the government of

Marcus certainly cannot be reproached with ambition and longing after

aggrandisement; what it did it did under compulsion and in modest

limits.

[Sidenote: Parthian wars under Severus.]

The emperor Severus pursued the same course further and more decidedly.

The year of the three emperors, 193, had led to the war between the

legions of the West and those of the East, and with Pescennius Niger

the latter had succumbed. The Roman vassal-princes of the East, and

as well the ruler of the Parthians, Vologasus V., son of Sanatrucius,

had, as was natural, recognised Niger, and even put their troops at

his disposal; the latter had at first gratefully declined, and then,

when his cause took a turn to the worse, invoked their aid. The other

Roman vassals, above all the prince of Armenia, cautiously kept back;

only Abgarus, the prince of Edessa, sent the desired contingent.

The Parthians promised aid, and it came at least from the nearest

districts, from the prince Barsemias of Hatra in the Mesopotamian

desert, and from the satrap of the Adiabeni beyond the Tigris. Even

after Niger’s death (194) these strangers not merely remained in the

Roman Mesopotamia, but even demanded the withdrawal of the Roman

garrisons stationed there and the giving back of this territory.[66]

[Sidenote: Province of Mesopotamia.]

Thereupon Severus advanced into Mesopotamia and took possession of the

whole extensive and important region. From Nisibis an expedition was

conducted against the Arab prince of Hatra, which, however, did not

succeed in taking the fortified town; even beyond the Tigris against

the satrap of Adiabene the generals of Severus accomplished nothing

of importance.[67] But Mesopotamia, _i.e._ the whole region between

the Euphrates and Tigris as far as the Chaboras, became a Roman

province, and was occupied with two legions newly created on account

of this extension of territory. The principality of Edessa continued

to subsist as a Roman fief, but was now no longer border-territory

but surrounded by land directly imperial. The considerable and strong

city of Nisibis, thenceforth called after the name of the emperor and

organised as a Roman colony, became the capital of the new province

and seat of the governor. After an important portion of territory had

thus been torn from the Parthian kingdom, and armed force had been

used against two satraps dependent on it, the great-king made ready

with his troops to oppose the Romans. Severus offered peace, and ceded

for Mesopotamia a portion of Armenia. But the decision of arms was

thereby only postponed. As soon as Severus had started for the West,

whither the complication with his co-ruler in Gaul recalled him, the

Parthians broke the peace[68] and advanced into Mesopotamia; the prince

of Osrhoene was driven out, the land was occupied, and the governor,

Laetus, one of the most excellent warriors of the time, was besieged

in Nisibis. He was in great danger, when Severus once more arrived

in the East in the year 198, after Albinus had succumbed. Thereupon

the fortune of war turned. The Parthians retreated, and now Severus

took the offensive. He advanced into Babylonia, and won Seleucia

and Ctesiphon; the Parthian king saved himself with a few horsemen

by flight, the crown-treasure became the spoil of the victors, the

Parthian capital was abandoned to the pillage of the Roman soldiers,

and more than 100,000 captives were brought to the Roman slave market.

The Arabians indeed in Hatra defended themselves better than the

Parthian state itself; in vain Severus endeavoured in two severe sieges

to reduce the desert-stronghold. But in the main the success of the

two campaigns of 198 and 199 was complete. By the erection of the

province of Mesopotamia and of the great command there, Armenia lost

the intermediate position which it hitherto had; it might remain in

its previous relations and apart from formal incorporation. The land

retained thus its own troops, and the imperial government even paid for

these subsequently a contribution from the imperial chest.[69]

[Sidenote: The change of government in the West and in the East.]

The further development of these relations as neighbours was

essentially influenced by the changes which internal order underwent

in the two empires. If under the dynasty of Nerva, and not less

under Severus, the Parthian state, often torn asunder by civil war

and contention for the crown, had been confronted by the relatively

stable Roman monarchy as superior, this order of things broke down

after Severus’s death, and almost for a century there followed in the

western empire mostly wretched and thoroughly ephemeral regents, who

in presence of other countries were constantly hesitating between

arrogance and weakness. While the scale of the West thus sank that

of the East rose. A few years after the death of Severus (211)

a revolution took place in Iran, which not merely, like so many

earlier crises, overthrew the ruling regent, nor even merely called

to the government another dynasty instead of the decayed Arsacids,

but, unchaining the national and religious elements for a mightier

upward flight, substituted for the bastard civilisation--pervaded

by Hellenism--of the Parthian state the state-organisation, faith,

manners, and princes of that province which had created the old Persian

empire, and, since its transition to the Parthian dynasty, preserved

within it as well the tombs of Darius and Xerxes as the germs of the

regeneration of the people. The re-establishment of the great-kingdom

of the Persians overthrown by Alexander ensued through the emergence of

the dynasty of the Sassanids. Let us cast a glance at this new shape of

things before we pursue further the course of Romano-Parthian relations

in the East.

[Sidenote: The Sassanids.]

It has already been stated that the Parthian dynasty, although it had

wrested Iran from Hellenism, was yet regarded by the nation as, so to

speak, illegitimate. Artahshatr, or in new Persian Ardashir--so the

official biography of the Sassanids reports--came forward to revenge

the blood of Dara murdered by Alexander, and to bring back the rule to

the legitimate family and re-establish it, such as it had been at the

time of his forefathers before the divisional kings. Under this legend

lies a good deal of reality. The dynasty which bears the name of Sasan,

the grandfather of Ardashir, was no other than the royal dynasty of the

Persian province; Ardashir’s father, Papak or Pabek,[70] and a long

list of his ancestors had, under the supremacy of the Arsacids, swayed

the sceptre in this ancestral land of the Iranian nation,[71] had

resided in Istachr, not far from the old Persepolis, and marked their

coins with Iranian language and Iranian writing, and with the sacred

emblems of the Persian national faith, while the great-kings had their

abode in the half-Greek border-land, and had their coins stamped in the

Greek language and after the Greek style. The fundamental organisation

of the Iranian state-system--the great-kingdom holding superiority

over the divisional kings--was under the two dynasties as little

different as that of the empire of the German nation under the Saxon

and the Suabian emperors. Only for this reason in that official version

the time of the Arsacids is designated as that of the divisional-kings,

and Ardashir as the first common head of all Iran after the last

Darius, because in the old Persian empire the Persian province stood

related alike to the other provinces and to the Parthians, as in the

Roman state Italy stood related to the provinces, and the Persian

disputed with the Parthian the legitimate title to the great-kingdom

connected _de jure_ with his province.[72]

[Sidenote: Extent of the Sassanid kingdom.]

What was the relation of the Sassanid kingdom to that of the Arsacids

in point of extent, is a question to which tradition gives no

sufficient answer. The provinces of the west collectively remained

subject to the new dynasty after it sat firm in the saddle, and the

claims which it set up against the Romans went, as we shall see, far

beyond the pretensions of the Arsacids. But how far the rule of the

Sassanids reached towards the West, and when it advanced to the Oxus

which was subsequently regarded as the legitimate boundary between Iran

and Turan, are matters withdrawn from our field of vision.[73]

[Sidenote: The state of the Sassanids.]

The state-system of Iran did not undergo quite a fundamental

transformation in consequence of the coming in of the new dynasty. The

official title of the first Sassanid ruler, as it is given uniformly

in three languages under the rock-relief of Nakshi-Rustam, “The

Mazda-servant God Artaxares, king of kings of the Arians, of divine

descent,”[74] is substantially that of the Arsacids, except that the

Iranian nation, as already in the old native regal title, and the

indigenous god are now expressly named. That a dynasty having its

home in Persis came in lieu of one originally alien in race and only

nationalised, was a work and a victory of national reaction; but the

force of circumstances placed various insurmountable barriers in the

way of the consequences thence resulting. Persepolis, or, as it is now

called, Istachr, becomes again nominally the capital of the empire,

and there on the same rock-wall, alongside of the similar monuments of

Darius, the remarkable statues and still more remarkable inscriptions

just mentioned proclaim the fame of Ardashir and Shapur; but the

administration could not well be conducted from this remote locality,

and Ctesiphon continued still to be its centre. The new Persian

government did not resume the _de jure_ prerogative of the Persians,

as it had subsisted under the Achaemenids; while Darius named himself

“a Persian son of a Persian, an Arian from Arian stock,” Ardashir named

himself, as we saw, simply king of the Arians. We do not know whether

Persian elements were introduced afresh into the great houses apart

from the royal; in any case several of them remained, like the Surên

and the Carên; only under the Achaemenids, not under the Sassanids

these were exclusively Persian.

[Sidenote: Church and priesthood under the Sassanids.]

Even in a religious point of view no change, strictly so called, set

in; but the faith and the priests gained under the Persian great-kings

an influence and a power such as they had never possessed under

the Parthian. It may well be that the twofold diffusion of foreign

worships in the direction of Iran--of Buddhism from the East and

of the Jewish-Christian faith from the West--brought by their very

hostility a regeneration to the old religion of Mazda. The founder of

the new dynasty, Ardashir, was, as is credibly reported, a zealous

fire-worshipper, and himself took priestly orders; therefore, it is

further said, from that time the order of the Magi became influential

and arrogant, while it had hitherto by no means had such honour and

such freedom, but on the contrary had not been held in much account

by the rulers. “Thenceforth all the Persians honour and revere the

priests; public affairs are arranged according to their counsels and

oracles; each treaty and each law-dispute undergoes their inspection

and their judgment, and nothing appears to the Persian right and legal

which has not been confirmed by a priest.” Accordingly we encounter

an arrangement of spiritual administration which reminds us of the

position of the Pope and the bishops alongside of the Emperor and

the princes. Each circle is placed under a chief-Magian (Magupat,

lord of Magians, in new Persian Mobedh), and these all in turn under

the chiefest of the chief Magians (Mobedhan-Mobedh), the counterpart

of “the king of kings,” and now it is he who crowns the king. The

consequences of this priestly dominion did not fail to appear: the

rigid ritual, the restrictive precepts as to guilt and expiation,

science resolving itself into a wild system of oracles and of magic,

while belonging from the first to Parsism, in all probability only

attained to their full development at this epoch.

[Sidenote: The languages of the country under the Sassanids.]

Traces of the national reaction appear also in the use of the native

language and the native customs. The largest Greek city of the Parthian

empire, the ancient Seleucia, continued to subsist, but it was

thenceforth called not after the name of the Greek marshal, but after

that of its new master, Beh, or better, Ardashir. The Greek language

hitherto at any rate always in use, although debased and no longer

ruling alone, disappears on the emergence of the new dynasty at once

from the coins, and only on the inscriptions of the first Sassanids

is it still to be met with by the side of, and behind, the language

proper of the land. The “Parthian writing,” the Pahlavî, maintains its

ground, but alongside of it comes a second little different and indeed,

as the coins show, as properly official, probably that used hitherto in

the Persian province, so that the oldest monuments of the Sassanids,

like those of the Achaemenids, are trilingual, somewhat as in the

German middle ages Latin, Saxon, and Franconian were employed side by

side. After king Sapor I. († 272) the bilingual usage disappears, and

the second mode of writing alone retains its place, inheriting the

name Pahlavî. The year of the Seleucids, and the names of the months

belonging to it, disappear with the change of dynasty; in their stead

come, according to old Persian custom, the years of the rulers and the

native Persian names of months.[75] Even the old Persian legend is

transferred to the new Persia. The still extant “history of Ardashir,

son of Papak,” which makes this son of a Persian shepherd arrive at

the Median court, perform menial offices there, and then become the

deliverer of his people, is nothing but the old tale of Cyrus changed

to the new names. Another fable-book of the Indian Parsees is able to

tell how king Iskander Rumi, _i.e._ “Alexander the Roman,” had caused

the holy books of Zarathustra to be burnt, and how they were then

restored by the pious Ardaviraf when king Ardashir had mounted the

throne. Here the Romano-Hellene confronts the Persian; the legend has,

as might be expected, forgotten the illegitimate Arsacid.

[Sidenote: Government of the Sassanids.]

In other respects the state of things remained essentially the same.

In a military point of view in particular, the armies of the Sassanids

were certainly not regular and trained troops, but the levy of men

capable of arms, into which with the national movement a new spirit

may doubtless have passed, but which afterwards, as before, was based

in the main on the cavalry-service of the nobility. The administration

too remained as it was; the able ruler took steps with inexorable

sternness against the highway-robber as against the exacting official,

and, compared at least with the later Arabic and the Turkish rule, the

subjects of the Sassanid empire found themselves prosperous and the

state-chest full.

[Sidenote: The new Persians and the Romans.]

But the alteration in the position of the new kingdom with reference

to the Roman is significant. The Arsacids never felt themselves quite

on a level with the Caesars. Often as the two states encountered each

other in war and peace as powers equal in weight, and decidedly as

the view of two great-powers dominated the Roman East (p. 1), there

remained with the Roman power a precedence similar to that which the

holy Roman empire of the German nation possessed throughout centuries,

very much to its hurt. Acts of subjection, such as the Parthian kings

took upon themselves in presence of Tiberius (p. 44) and of Nero (52),

without being compelled to them by extreme necessity, cannot be at

all conceived of on the Roman side. It cannot be accident that a gold

coin was never struck under the government of the Arsacids, and the

very first Sassanid ruler practised coining in gold; this is the most

palpable sign of sovereignty unrestricted by any duties of a vassal.

To the claim of the empire of the Caesars alone to the power of

coining money for universal circulation the Arsacids without exception

yielded, at least in so far that they themselves refrained generally

from coining, and left coinage in silver and copper to the towns or the

satraps; the Sassanids again struck gold pieces, as did king Darius.

The great-kingdom of the East at length demanded its full right; the

world no longer belonged to the Romans alone. The submissiveness of

the Orientals and the supremacy of the Occidentals were of the past.

Accordingly, in place of the relations between Romans and Parthians,

as hitherto, always reverting afresh to peace, there now came for

generations embittered hostility.

[Sidenote: Parthian war of Severus Antoninus.]

After having set forth the new state organisation, with which the

sinking Rome was soon to contend, we resume the thread of our

narrative. Antoninus, son and successor of Severus, not a warrior and

statesman like his father, but a dissolute caricature of both, must

have had the design--so far as in the case of such personages we can

speak of design at all--to bring the East entirely into the Roman

power. It was not difficult to place the princes of Osrhoene and of

Armenia, after they had been summoned to the imperial court, under

arrest, and to declare their fiefs forfeited. But on the arrival of the

news a revolt broke out in Armenia. The Arsacid prince Tiridates was

proclaimed king, and invoked the protection of the Parthians. Thereupon

Antoninus put himself at the head of a large military force, and

appeared in the East in the year 216, to put down the Armenians, and

in case of need also the Parthians. Tiridates himself at once gave up

the cause as lost, although the division sent to Armenia subsequently

encountered vehement resistance there; and he fled to the Parthians.

The Romans demanded his surrender. The Parthians were not inclined on

his account to enter into a war, the more especially as just then the

two sons of king Vologasus V., Vologasus VI. and Artabanus, were in

bitter feud over the succession to the throne. The former yielded when

the Roman demand was imperiously repeated, and delivered up Tiridates.

Thereupon the emperor desired from Artabanus, who had meanwhile

obtained recognition, the hand of his daughter for the express object

of thus obtaining the kingdom by marriage, and of bringing East and

West under one rule. The rejection of this wild proposal[76] was the

signal for war; the Romans declared it, and crossed the Tigris. The

Parthians were unprepared; without encountering resistance the Romans

burnt down the towns and villages in Adiabene, and ruthlessly destroyed

even the old royal tombs at Arbela.[77] But Artabanus made the utmost

exertions for the next campaign, and put into the field a powerful

force in the spring of 217. Antoninus, who had spent the winter in

Edessa, was assassinated by his officers just as he was setting out

for this second campaign. His successor Macrinus, unconfirmed in the

government and held in little repute, at the head, moreover, of an

army defective in discipline and tone and shaken by the murder of the

emperor, would gladly have rid himself of a war wantonly instigated

and assuming very serious proportions. He sent the prisoners back to

the Parthian king, and threw the blame of the outrages committed on

his predecessor. But Artabanus was not content with this; he demanded

compensation for all the devastation committed, and the evacuation

of Mesopotamia. Thus matters came to a battle at Nisibis, in which

the Romans had the worst. Nevertheless the Parthians, partly because

their levy seemed as though it would break up, perhaps also under

the influence of Roman money, granted peace (218) on comparatively

favourable terms. Rome paid a considerable war compensation (50,000,000

denarii), but retained Mesopotamia. Armenia remained with Tiridates,

but the latter took it as in dependency on the Romans. In Osrhoene also

the old princely house was reinstated.

[Sidenote: King Ardashir.]

This was the last treaty of peace which the Arsacid dynasty concluded

with Rome. Almost immediately afterwards, and perhaps partly in

consequence of this bargain, which certainly, as things stood, might be

looked upon by the Orientals as an abandonment by their own government

of the victories achieved, the insurrection began, which converted the

state of the Parthians into a state of the Persians. Its leader, king

Ardashir or Artaxares (A.D. 224-241) strove for several years with

the adherents of the old dynasty before he attained full success;[78]

after three great battles, in the last of which king Artabanus fell,

he was master in the Parthian empire proper, and could march into the

Mesopotamian desert to subdue the Arabs of Hatra and thence to advance

against the Roman Mesopotamia. But the brave and independent Arabs

defended themselves now against the Persians as formerly against the

Roman invasion, in their huge walls with good success; and Artaxares

found himself led to operate in the first instance against Media and

Armenia, where the Arsacids still maintained themselves, and the sons

of Artabanus had found a refuge. It was not till about the year 230

that he turned against the Romans, and not merely declared war against

them, but demanded back all the provinces which had formerly belonged

to the kingdom of his predecessors, Darius and Xerxes--in other words,

the cession of all Asia. To emphasise his threatening words, he led a

mighty army over the Euphrates; Mesopotamia was occupied and Nisibis

besieged; the enemy’s cavalry appeared in Cappadocia and in Syria.

[Sidenote: Severus Alexander.]

The Roman throne was then occupied by Severus Alexander, a ruler in

whom nothing was warlike but the name, and for whom in reality his

mother Mamaea conducted the government. Urgent, almost humble proposals

of peace on the part of the Roman government remained without effect;

nothing was left but the employment of arms. The masses of the Roman

army gathered together from all the empire were divided; the left wing

took the direction of Armenia and Media, the right that of Mesene at

the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris, perhaps in the calculation that

they might in the former as in the latter quarter have the support

of the adherents of the Arsacids; the main army went to Mesopotamia.

The troops were numerous enough, but without discipline and tone; a

Roman officer of high position at this time himself testifies that

they were pampered and insubordinate, refused to fight, killed their

officers, and deserted in crowds. The main force did not get beyond

the Euphrates,[79] for his mother represented to the emperor that it

was not his business to fight for his subjects, but theirs to fight

for him. The right wing, assailed in the level country by the Persian

main force and abandoned by the emperor, was cut up. Thereupon, when

the emperor issued orders to the wing which had pushed forward towards

Media to draw back, the latter also suffered severely in the winter

retreat through Armenia. If the matter went no further than this sorry

return of the great Oriental army to Antioch, if no complete disaster

occurred, and even Mesopotamia remained in Roman power, this appears

due, not to the merit of the Roman troops or their leaders but to the

fact that the Persian levy was weary of the conflict and went home.[80]

But they went not for long, the more especially as soon after, upon

the murder of the last offshoot of the dynasty of Severus, the several

army-commanders and the government in Rome began to fight about the

occupation of the Roman throne, and consequently were at one in their

concern for the affairs of external foes. Under Maximinus (235-238) the

Roman Mesopotamia fell into the power of Ardashir, and the Persians

once more prepared to cross the Euphrates.[81]

[Sidenote: The Persian war of Gordian.]

After the internal troubles were in some measure pacified, and Gordian

III., almost still a boy, under the protection of the commandant of

Rome and soon of his father-in-law Furius Timesitheus, bore undisputed

sway in the whole empire, war was solemnly declared against the

Persians, and in the year 242 a great Roman army advanced under the

personal conduct of the emperor, or rather of his father-in-law, into

Mesopotamia. It had complete success; Carrhae was recovered, at Resaina

between Carrhae and Nisibis the army of the Persian king Shahpuhr or

Sapor (reigning 241-272), who shortly before had followed his father

Ardashir, was routed, and in consequence of this victory Nisibis was

occupied. All Mesopotamia was reconquered; it was resolved to march

back to the Euphrates, and thence down the stream against the enemy’s

capital Ctesiphon. Unhappily Timesitheus died, and his successor,

Marcus Julius Philippus, a native of Arabia from the Trachonitis,

used the opportunity to set aside the young ruler. When the army had

accomplished the difficult march through the valley of the Chaboras

towards the Euphrates, the soldiers in Circesium, at the confluence of

the Chaboras with the Euphrates, did not find--in consequence, it is

alleged, of arrangements made by Philippus--the provisions and stores

which they had expected, and laid the blame of this on the emperor.

Nevertheless the march in the direction of Ctesiphon was begun, but at

the very first station, near Zaitha (somewhat below Mejadîn), a number

of insurgent guards killed the emperor (in the spring or summer of

244), and proclaimed their commandant, Philippus, as Augustus in his

stead. The new ruler did what the soldiers or at least the guardsmen

desired, and not merely gave up the intended expedition against

Ctesiphon, but led the troops at once back to Italy. He purchased

the permission to do so from the conquered enemy by the cession of

Mesopotamia and Armenia, and so of the Euphrates frontier. But this

conclusion of peace excited such indignation that the emperor did not

venture to put it in execution, and allowed the garrisons to remain

in the ceded provinces.[82] The fact that the Persians, at least

provisionally, acquiesced in this, gives the measure of what they

were then able to do. It was not the Orientals, but the Goths, the

pestilence that raged for fifteen years, and the dissensions of the

corps-leaders quarrelling with one another for the crown, that broke

the last strength of the empire.

[Sidenote: Palmyra.]

At this point, when the Roman East in its struggle with the Persian

is left to its own resources, it will be appropriate to make mention

of a remarkable state, which, created by and for the desert-traffic,

now for a short time takes up a leading part in political history.

The oasis of Palmyra, in the native language Tadmor, lies half-way

between Damascus and the Euphrates. It is of importance solely as

intermediate station between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean;

this significance it was late in acquiring, and early lost again, so

that the flourishing time of Palmyra coincides nearly with the period

which we are here describing. As to the rise of the town there is an

utter absence of tradition.[83] It is mentioned first on occasion

of the abode of Antonius in Syria in the year 713 {41 B.C.}, when he

made a vain attempt to possess himself of its riches; the documents

found there--the oldest dated Palmyrene inscription is of the year 745

{9 B.C.}--hardly reach much further back. It is not improbable that

its flourishing was connected with the establishment of the Romans

in the Syrian coast-region. So long as the Nabataeans and the towns

of Osrhoene were not directly Roman, the Romans had an interest in

providing another direct communication with the Euphrates, and this

thereupon led necessarily by way of Palmyra. Palmyra was not a Roman

foundation; Antonius took as the occasion for that predatory expedition

the neutrality of the merchants who were the medium of traffic between

the two great states, and the Roman horsemen turned back, without

having performed their work, before the chain of archers which the

Palmyrenes opposed to the attack. But already in the first imperial

period the city must have been reckoned as belonging to the empire,

because the tax-ordinances of Germanicus and of Corbulo issued for

Syria applied also for Palmyra; in an inscription of the year 80 we

meet with a Claudian _phyle_ there; from Hadrian’s time the city calls

itself Hadriana Palmyra, and in the third century it even designates

itself a colony.

[Sidenote: Military independence of Palmyra.]

The subjection of the Palmyrenes to the empire was, however, of a

different nature to the ordinary one, and similar in some measure to

the client-relation of the dependent kingdoms. Even in Vespasian’s time

Palmyra is called an intermediate region between the two great powers,

and in every collision between the Romans and Parthians the question

was asked, what policy the Palmyrenes would pursue. We must seek the

key to its distinctive position in the relations of the frontier and

the arrangements made for frontier-protection. The Syrian troops, so

far as they were stationed on the Euphrates itself, had their chief

position at Zeugma, opposite to Biredjik, at the great passage of the

Euphrates. Further down the stream, between the immediately Roman and

the Parthian territory was interposed that of Palmyra, which reached to

the Euphrates and included the next important place of crossing at Sura

opposite to the Mesopotamian town Nicephorium (later Callinicon, now

er-Ragga). It is more than probable that the guarding of this important

border-fortress as well as the securing of the desert-road between the

Euphrates and Palmyra, and also perhaps of a portion of the road from

Palmyra to Damascus, was committed to the community of Palmyra, and

that it was thus entitled and bound to make the military arrangements

necessary for this far from slight task.[84] Subsequently doubtless

the imperial troops were brought up closer to Palmyra, and one of the

Syrian legions was moved to Danava between Palmyra and Damascus, and

the Arabian legion to Bostra; after Severus united Mesopotamia with

the empire, even here both banks of the Euphrates were in the Roman

power, and the Roman territory on the Euphrates ended no longer at

Sura but at Circesium, at the confluence of the Chaboras with the

Euphrates above Mejadîn. Then Mesopotamia also was strongly occupied

with imperial troops. But the Mesopotamian legions lay on the great

road in the north near Resaina and Nisibis, and even the Syrian and

Arabian troops did not supersede the need for the co-operation of the

Palmyrenes. Even the protection of Circesium and of this part of the

bank of the Euphrates may have been entrusted to the Palmyrenes. It was

not till after the decline of Palmyra, and perhaps in compensation for

it, that Circesium[85] was made by Diocletian a strong fortress, which

thenceforth was here the basis of frontier-defence.

[Sidenote: Administrative independence of Palmyra.]

The traces of this distinctive position of Palmyra are demonstrable

also in its institutions. The absence of the emperor’s name on the

Palmyrene coins is probably to be explained not from it, but from the

fact that the community issued almost nothing but small money. But

the treatment of the language speaks clearly. From the rule elsewhere

followed almost without exception by the Romans--of allowing in their

immediate territory only the use of the two imperial languages--Palmyra

was excepted. Here that language, which in the rest of Syria and

not less after the exile in Judaea was the usual medium of private

intercourse, but was restricted to the latter, maintained its ground in

public use, so long as the city existed at all. Essential differences

cannot be shown between the Palmyrene Syriac and that of the other

regions just named; the proper names, having not seldom an Arabic or

Jewish, or even Persian form, show the striking mixture of peoples, and

numerous words borrowed from Greek or Latin show the influence of the

Occidentals. It becomes subsequently a rule to append to the Syrian

text a Greek one, which in a decree of the Palmyrene common-council

of the year 137 is placed after the Palmyrene, but afterwards usually

precedes it; but mere Greek inscriptions of native Palmyrenes are

rare exceptions. Even in votive inscriptions which Palmyrenes set up

to their native gods in Rome,[86] and in tombs of Palmyrene soldiers

that died in Africa or Britain, the Palmyrene rendering is added. So

too in Palmyra--while the Roman year was made the basis of dating

as in the rest of the empire--the names of the months were not the

Macedonian officially received in Roman Syria, but those which were

current in it in common intercourse at least among the Jews, and were

in use, moreover, among the Aramaean tribes living under Assyrian and

subsequently Persian rule.[87]

[Sidenote: Palmyrene magistrates.]

The municipal organisation was moulded in the main after the pattern

of the Greek municipality of the Roman empire; the designations for

magistrates and council[88] and even those of the colony are in

the Palmyrene texts retained for the most part from the imperial

languages. But in administration the district retained a greater

independence than is elsewhere assigned to urban communities. Alongside

of the civic officials we find, at least in the third century, the city

of Palmyra with its territory under a separate “headman” of senatorial

rank and Roman appointment, but chosen from the family of most repute

in the place; Septimius Hairanes, son of Odaenathus, is substantially a

prince of the Palmyrenes,[89] who was doubtless not otherwise dependent

on the legate of Syria than were the client-princes on the neighbouring

imperial governors generally. A few years later we meet with his

son,[90] Septimius Odaenathus, in the like position--indeed even

raised in rank--of hereditary prince.[91] Similarly, Palmyra formed a

customs-district apart, in which the customs were leased on account,

not of the state, but of the community.[92]

[Sidenote: Commercial position of Palmyra.]

The importance of Palmyra depended on the caravan-traffic. The heads

of the caravans (συνοδιάρχαι), which went from Palmyra to the great

entrepôts on the Euphrates, to Vologasias, the already mentioned

Parthian foundation not far from the site of the ancient Babylon,

and to Forath or Charax Spasinu, twin towns at its mouth, close on

the Persian Gulf, appear in the inscriptions as the most respected

city-burgesses,[93] and fill not merely the magistracies of their

home, but in part also imperial offices; the great traders (ἀρχέμποροι)

and the guild of workers in gold and silver testify to the importance

of the city for trade and manufactures, and not less is its prosperity

attested by the still standing temples of the city and the long

colonnades of the city halls, as well as the massy and richly decorated

tombs. The climate is little favourable to agriculture--the place lies

near to the northern limit of the date palm, and does not derive its

Greek name from it--but there are found in the environs the remains of

great subterranean aqueducts and huge water-reservoirs artificially

constructed of square blocks, with the help of which the ground, now

destitute of all vegetation, must once upon a time have artificially

developed a rich culture. This riches, this national idiosyncrasy

not quite set aside even under Roman rule, and this administrative

independence, explain in some measure the part of Palmyra about the

middle of the third century in the great crisis, to the presentation of

which we now return.

[Sidenote: Capture of the emperor Valerian.]

After the emperor Decius had fallen in the year 251 when fighting

against the Goths in Europe, the government of the empire, if at that

time there was still an empire and a government at all, left the East

entirely to its fate. While the pirates from the Black Sea ravaged

the coasts far and wide and even the interior, the Persian king Sapor

again assumed the aggressive. While his father had been content

with calling himself lord of Iran, he first designated himself--as

did the succeeding rulers after his example--the great-king of Iran

and non-Iran (p. 83, note), and thereby laid down, as it were, the

programme of his policy of conquest. In the year 252 or 253 he

occupied Armenia, or it submitted to him voluntarily, beyond doubt

carried likewise away by that resuscitation of the old Persian faith

and Persian habits; the legitimate king Tiridates sought shelter with

the Romans, the other members of the royal house placed themselves

under the banners of the Persian.[94] After Armenia thus had become

Persian, the hosts of the Orientals overran Mesopotamia, Syria, and

Cappadocia; they laid waste the level country far and wide, but the

inhabitants of the larger towns, first of all the brave Edessenes,

repelled the attack of enemies little equipped for besieging. In the

West, meanwhile at least, a recognised government had been set up. The

emperor Publius Licinius Valerianus, an honest and well-disposed ruler,

but not resolute in character or equal to dealing with difficulties,

appeared at length in the East and resorted to Antioch. Thence he went

to Cappadocia, which the Persian roving hordes evacuated. But the

plague decimated his army, and he delayed long to take up the decisive

struggle in Mesopotamia. At length he resolved to bring help to the

sorely pressed Edessa, and crossed the Euphrates with his forces.

There, not far from Edessa, occurred the disaster which had nearly the

same significance for the Roman East as the victory of the Goths at the

mouth of the Danube and the fall of Decius--the capture of the emperor

Valerianus by the Persians (end of 259 or beginning of 260).[95] As to

the more precise circumstances the accounts are conflicting. According

to one version, when he was attempting with a weak band to reach

Edessa, he was surrounded and captured by the far superior Persians.

According to another, he, although defeated, reached the beleaguered

town, but, as he brought no sufficient help and the provisions came to

an end only the more rapidly, he dreaded the outbreak of a military

insurrection, and therefore delivered himself voluntarily into the

hands of the enemy. According to a third, he, reduced to extremities,

entered into negotiations with Sapor; when the Persian king declined

to treat with envoys, he appeared personally in the enemy’s camp, and

was perfidiously made a prisoner.

[Sidenote: The East without an emperor.]

Whichever of these narratives may come nearest to the truth, the

emperor died in the captivity of the enemy,[96] and the consequence of

this disaster was the forfeiture of the East to the Persians. Above all

Antioch, the largest and richest city of the East, fell for the first

time since it was Roman into the power of the public foe, and in good

part through the fault of its own citizens. Mareades, an Antiochene

of rank, whom the council had expelled for the embezzlement of public

monies, brought the Persian army to his native town; whether it be a

fable that the citizens were surprised in the theatre itself by the

advancing foes, there is no doubt that they not merely offered no

resistance, but that a great part of the lower population, partly in

consideration of Mareades, partly in the hope of anarchy and pillage,

saw with pleasure the entrance of the Persians. Thus the city with all

its treasures became the prey of the enemy, and fearful ravages were

committed in it; Mareades indeed also was--we know not why--condemned

by king Sapor to perish by fire.[97] Besides numerous smaller places,

the capitals of Cilicia and Cappadocia--Tarsus and Caesarea, the

latter, it is stated, a town of 400,000 inhabitants--suffered the same

fate. Endless trains of captives, who were led like cattle once a day

to the watering, covered the desert-routes of the East. On the return

home the Persians, it is alleged, in order the more rapidly to cross

a ravine, filled it up with the bodies of the captives whom they

brought with them. It is more credible that the great “imperial dam”

(Bend-i-Kaiser) at Sostra (Shuster) in Susiana, by which still at the

present day the water of the Pasitigris is conveyed to the higher-lying

regions, was built by these captives; as indeed the emperor Nero’s

architects had helped to build the capital of Armenia, and generally in

this domain the Occidentals always maintained their superiority. The

Persians nowhere encountered resistance from the empire; but Edessa

still held out, and Caesarea had bravely defended itself, and had only

fallen by treachery. The local resistance gradually passed beyond

a mere defensive behind the walls of towns, and the breaking up of

the Persian hosts, brought about by the wide extent of the conquered

territory, was favourable to the bold partisan. A self-appointed Roman

leader, Callistus,[98] succeeded in a happy _coup de main_; with the

vessels which he had brought together in the ports of Cilicia he sailed

for Pompeiopolis--which the Persians were just besieging, while they

at the same time laid waste Lycaonia,--killed several thousand men,

and possessed himself of the royal harem. This induced the king, under

pretext of celebrating a festival that might not be put off, to go home

at once in such haste that, in order not to be detained, he purchased

from the Edessenes free passage through their territory in return for

all the Roman gold money which he had captured as booty. Odaenathus,

prince of Palmyra, inflicted considerable losses on the bands returning

home from Antioch before they crossed the Euphrates. But hardly was the

most urgent danger from the Persians obviated, when two of the most

noted among the army leaders of the East, left to themselves, Fulvius

Macrianus, the officer who administered the chest and the depot of the

army in Samosata,[99] and the Callistus just mentioned, renounced

allegiance to the son and co-regent and now sole ruler Gallienus--for

whom, it is true, the East and the Persians were non-existent--and,

themselves refusing to accept the purple, proclaimed the two sons of

the former, Fulvius Macrianus and Fulvius Quietus, emperors (261).

This step taken by the two distinguished generals had the effect of

obtaining recognition for the two young emperors in Egypt and in all

the East, with the exception of Palmyra, the prince of which took the

side of Gallienus. One of them, Macrianus, went off with his father to

the West, in order to install this new government also there. But soon

fortune turned; in Illyricum Macrianus lost a battle and his life, not

against Gallienus, but against another pretender. Odaenathus turned

against the brother who remained behind in Syria; at Hemesa, where the

armies met, the soldiers of Quietus replied to the summons to surrender

that they would rather submit to anything than deliver themselves

into the hands of a barbarian. Nevertheless Callistus, the general of

Quietus, betrayed his master to the Palmyrene,[100] and thus ended also

his short government.

[Sidenote: Government of Odaenathus in the East.]

Therewith Palmyra stepped into the first place in the East. Gallienus,

more than sufficiently occupied by the barbarians of the West and the

military insurrections everywhere breaking out there, gave to the

prince of Palmyra, who alone had preserved fidelity to him in the

crisis just mentioned, an exceptional position without a parallel,

but under the prevailing circumstances readily intelligible; he, as

hereditary prince, or, as he was now called, king of Palmyra, became,

not indeed joint ruler, but independent lieutenant of the emperor for

the East.[101] The local administration of Palmyra was conducted under

him by another Palmyrene, at the same time as imperial procurator

and as his deputy.[102] Therewith the whole imperial power, so far

as it still subsisted at all in the East, lay in the hand of the

“barbarian,” and the latter with his Palmyrenes, who were strengthened

by the remains of the Roman army corps and the levy of the land,

re-established the sway of Rome alike rapidly and brilliantly. Asia

and Syria were already evacuated by the enemy. Odaenathus crossed

the Euphrates, relieved at length the brave Edessenes, and retook

from the Persians the conquered towns Nisibis and Carrhae (264).

Probably Armenia also was at that time brought back under Roman

allegiance.[103] Then he took--for the first time since Gordianus--the

offensive against the Persians, and marched on Ctesiphon. In two

different campaigns the capital of the Persian kingdom was invested by

him, and the neighbouring region laid waste, and there was a successful

battle with the Persians under its walls.[104] Even the Goths, whose

predatory raids extended into the interior, retired when he set out for

Cappadocia. A development of power of this sort was a blessing for the

hard-pressed empire, and at the same time a serious danger. Odaenathus

no doubt observed all due formalities towards his Roman lord-paramount,

and sent the captured officers of the enemy and the articles of booty

to Rome for the emperor, who did not disdain to triumph over them; but

in fact the East under Odaenathus was not much less independent than

the West under Postumus, and we can easily understand how the officers

favourably disposed towards Rome made opposition to the Palmyrene

vice-emperor,[105] and on the one hand there was talk of attempts of

Odaenathus to attach himself to the Persians, which were alleged to

have broken down only through Sapor’s arrogance,[106] while on the

other hand the assassination of Odaenathus at Hemesa in 266-7 was

referred to instigation of the Roman government.[107] The real murderer

was a brother’s son of Odaenathus, and there are no proofs of the

participation of the government. At any rate the crime made no change

in the position of affairs.

[Sidenote: Government of Zenobia.]

The wife of the deceased, the queen Bat Zabbai, or in Greek, Zenobia,

a beautiful and sagacious woman of masculine energy,[108] in virtue of

the hereditary right to the principate claimed for the son of herself

and Odaenathus, still in boyhood, Vaballathus or Athenodorus[109]--the

elder, Herodes, had perished with his father--the position of the

deceased, and in fact carried her point as well in Rome as in the East:

the regnal years of the son are reckoned from the death of the father.

For the son, not capable of government, the mother took part in counsel

and action,[110] and she did not restrict herself to preserving the

state of possession, but on the contrary her courage or her arrogance

aspired to mastery over the whole imperial domain of the Greek tongue.

In the command over the East, which was committed to Odaenathus and

inherited from him by his son, the supreme authority over Asia Minor

and Egypt may doubtless have been included; but _de facto_ Odaenathus

had in his power only Syria and Arabia, and possibly Armenia, Cilicia,

and Cappadocia. Now an influential Egyptian, Timagenes, summoned the

queen to occupy Egypt; accordingly she despatched her chief general

Zabdas with an army of, it is alleged, 70,000 men to the Nile. The land

resisted with energy; but the Palmyrenes defeated the Egyptian levy

and possessed themselves of Egypt. A Roman admiral Probus attempted to

dislodge them again, and even vanquished them, so that they set out

for Syria; but, when he attempted to bar their way at the Egyptian

Babylon not far from Memphis, he was defeated by the better local

knowledge of the Palmyrene general Timagenes, and he put himself to

death.[111] When about the beginning of the year 270, after the death

of the emperor Claudius, Aurelian came in his stead, the Palmyrenes

bore sway over Alexandria. In Asia Minor too they made preparations to

establish themselves; their garrisons were pushed forward as far as

Ancyra in Galatia, and even in Chalcedon opposite Byzantium they had

attempted to assert the rule of their queen. All this happened without

the Palmyrenes renouncing the Roman government, nay probably on the

footing that the control of the East committed by the Roman government

to the prince of Palmyra was realised in this way, and they taxed the

Roman officers, who resisted the extension of the Palmyrene rule, with

rebellion against the imperial orders; the coins struck in Alexandria

name Aurelianus and Vaballathus side by side, and give the title of

Augustus only to the former. In substance, no doubt, the East here

detached itself from the empire, and the latter was divided into two

in the execution of an ordinance wrung from the wretched Gallienus by

necessity.

[Sidenote: Aurelian against the Palmyrenes.]

The vigorous and prudent emperor, to whom the dominion now had fallen,

broke at once with the Palmyrene co-ordinate government, which then

could not but have and had as its consequence, that Vaballathus himself

was proclaimed by his people as emperor. Egypt was already, at the

close of the year 270, brought back to the empire after hard struggles

by the brave general Probus, afterwards the successor of Aurelian.[112]

It is true that the second city of the empire, Alexandria, paid for

this victory almost with its existence, as will be set forth in the

following section. More difficult was the reduction of the remote

Syrian oasis. All other Oriental wars of the imperial period had

chiefly been waged by imperial troops having their home in the East;

here, where the West had once more to subdue the revolted East, there

fought once more, as in the time of the free republic, Occidentals

against Orientals,[113] the soldiers of the Rhine and of the Danube

with those of the Syrian desert. The mighty expedition began,

apparently towards the close of the year 271; without encountering

resistance the Roman army arrived at the frontier of Cappadocia; here

the town of Tyana, which barred the Cilician passes, gave serious

opposition. After it had fallen, and Aurelian, by gentle treatment of

the inhabitants, had smoothed his way to further successes, he crossed

the Taurus, and, passing through Cilicia, arrived in Syria. If Zenobia,

as is not to be doubted, had reckoned on active support from the side

of the Persian king, she found herself deceived. The aged king Shapur

did not interfere in this war, and the mistress of the Roman East

continued to be left to her own military resources, of which perhaps

even a portion took the side of the legitimate Augustus. At Antioch the

Palmyrene chief force under the general Zabdas stopped the emperor’s

way; Zenobia herself was present. A successful combat against the

superior Palmyrene cavalry on the Orontes delivered into the hands of

Aurelian the town, which not less than Tyana received full pardon--he

justly recognised that the subjects of the empire were hardly to be

blamed, when they had submitted to the Palmyrene prince appointed as

commander in chief by the Roman government itself. The Palmyrenes,

after having engaged in a conflict on their retreat at Daphne, the

suburb of Antioch, marched off, and struck into the great route which

leads from the capital of Syria to Hemesa and thence through the desert

to Palmyra.

[Sidenote: Battle at Hemesa.]

Aurelian summoned the queen to submit, pointing to the notable losses

endured in the conflicts on the Orontes. These were Romans only,

answered the queen; the Orientals did not yet admit that they were

conquered. At Hemesa[114] she took her stand for the decisive battle.

It was long and bloody; the Roman cavalry gave way and broke up in

flight; but the legions decided, and victory remained with the Romans.

The march was more difficult than the conflict. The distance from

Hemesa to Palmyra amounts in a direct line to seventy miles, and,

although at that epoch of highly developed Syrian civilisation the

region was not waste in the same degree as at present, the march of

Aurelian still remains a considerable feat, especially as the light

horsemen of the enemy swarmed round the Roman army on all sides.

Aurelian, however, reached his goal, and began the siege of the strong

and well-provisioned city; more difficult than the siege itself was

the bringing up of provisions for the besieging army. At length the

courage of the princess sank, and she escaped from the city to seek

aid from the Persians. Fortune still further helped the emperor. The

pursuing Roman cavalry took her captive with her son, just when she had

arrived at the Euphrates and was about to embark in the rescuing boat;

and the town, discouraged by her flight, capitulated (272). Aurelian

granted here too, as in all this campaign, full pardon to the subdued

burgesses. But a stern punishment was decreed over the queen and her

functionaries and officers. Zenobia, after she had for years borne

rule with masculine energy, did not now disdain to invoke a woman’s

privileges, and to throw the responsibility on her advisers, of whom

not a few, including the celebrated scholar, Cassius Longinus, perished

under the axe of the executioner. She herself might not be wanting

from the triumphal procession of the emperor, and she did not take

the course of Cleopatra, but marched in golden chains, as a spectacle

to the Roman multitude, before the chariot of the victor to the Roman

capitol. But before Aurelian could celebrate his victory he had to

repeat it.

[Sidenote: Destruction of Palmyra.]

A few months after the surrender the Palmyrenes once more rose,

killed the small Roman garrison serving there, and proclaimed one

Antiochus[115] as ruler, while they at the same time attempted to

induce the governor of Mesopotamia, Marcellinus, to revolt. The

news reached the emperor when he had just crossed the Hellespont.

He returned at once, and stood, earlier than friend or foe had

anticipated, once more before the walls of the insurgent city.

The rebels had not been prepared for this; there was this time no

resistance, but also no mercy. Palmyra was destroyed, the commonwealth

dissolved, the walls razed, the ornaments of the glorious temple of the

sun transferred to the temple which, in memory of this victory, the

emperor built to the sun-god of the East in Rome; only the forsaken

halls and walls remained, as they still stand in part at the present

day. This occurred in the year 273.[116] The flourishing of Palmyra

was artificial, produced by the routes assigned to traffic and the

great public buildings dependent on it. Now the government withdrew

its hand from the unhappy city. Traffic sought and found other paths;

as Mesopotamia was then viewed as a Roman province and soon came again

to the empire, and the territory of the Nabataeans as far as the

port of Aelana was in Roman hands, this intermediate station might be

dispensed with, and the traffic may have betaken itself instead to

Bostra or Beroea (Aleppo). The short meteor-like splendour of Palmyra

and its princes was immediately followed by the desolation and silence

which, from that time down to the present day, enwrap the miserable

desert-village and the ruins of its colonnades.

[Sidenote: Persian war of Carus.]

The ephemeral kingdom of Palmyra was in its origin as in its fall

closely bound up with the relations of the Romans to the non-Roman

East, but not less a part of the general history of the empire. For,

like the western empire of Postumus, the eastern empire of Zenobia

was one of those masses into which the mighty whole seemed then about

to resolve itself. If during its subsistence its leaders endeavoured

earnestly to set limits to the onset of the Persians, and indeed the

development of its power was dependent on that very fact, not merely

did it in its collapse seek deliverance from those same Persians,

but probably in consequence of the revolt of Zenobia Armenia and

Mesopotamia were lost to the Romans, and after the subjugation of

Palmyra the Euphrates again for a time formed the frontier. The queen,

when she arrived at it, hoped to find a reception among the Persians;

and Aurelian omitted to lead the legions over it, seeing that Gaul,

along with Spain and Britain, still at that time refused to recognise

the government. He and his successor Probus were not able to take

up this struggle. But when in the year 282, after the premature end

of the latter, the troops proclaimed the commander next in rank,

Marcus Aurelius Carus, as emperor, it was the first saying of the new

ruler that the Persians should remember this choice, and he kept it.

Immediately he advanced with the army into Armenia and re-established

the earlier order there. At the frontier of the land he was met by

Persian envoys, who declared themselves ready to grant all that was

reasonable;[117] but they were hardly listened to, and the march

went on incessantly. Mesopotamia too became once more Roman, and the

Parthian residential cities Seleucia and Ctesiphon were again occupied

by the Romans without encountering lengthened resistance--to which the

war between brothers then raging in the Persian empire contributed its

part.[118] The emperor had just crossed the Tigris, and was on the

point of penetrating into the heart of the enemy’s country, when he

met his death by violence, presumably by the hand of an assassin, and

thereby the campaign also met its end. But his successor obtained in

peace the cession of Armenia and Mesopotamia;[119] although Carus wore

the purple little more than a year, he re-established the imperial

frontier of Severus.

[Sidenote: Persian war under Diocletian.]

Some years afterwards (293) a new ruler, Narseh, son of king Shapur,

ascended the throne of Ctesiphon, and declared war on the Romans in

the year 296 for the possession of Mesopotamia and Armenia.[120]

Diocletian, who then had the supreme conduct of the empire generally,

and of the East in particular, entrusted the management of the war to

his imperial colleague Galerius Maximianus, a rough but brave general.

The beginning was unfavourable. The Persians invaded Mesopotamia and

reached as far as Carrhae; the Caesar led against them the Syrian

legions over the Euphrates at Nicephorium; between these two positions

the armies encountered each other, and the far weaker Roman force

gave way. It was a hard blow, and the young general had to submit

to severe reproaches, but he did not despair. For the next campaign

reinforcements were brought up from the whole empire, and both rulers

personally took the field; Diocletian took his position in Mesopotamia

with the chief force, while Galerius, reinforced by the flower of

the Illyrian troops that had in the meantime come up, met, with a

force of 25,000 men, the enemy in Armenia, and inflicted on him a

decisive defeat. The camp and the treasure, nay, even the harem, of the

great-king fell into the hands of the warriors, and with difficulty

Narseh himself escaped from capture. In order to recover the women and

the children the king declared himself ready to conclude peace on any

terms; his envoy Apharban conjured the Romans to spare the Persians,

saying that the two empires, the Roman and the Parthian, were, as it

were, the two eyes of the world, and neither could dispense with the

other. It would have lain in the power of the Romans to add one more

to their Oriental provinces; the prudent ruler contented himself with

regulating the state of possession in the north-east. Mesopotamia

remained, as a matter of course, in the Roman possession; the important

commercial intercourse with the neighbouring foreign land was placed

under strict state-control and essentially directed to the strong

city of Nisibis, the basis of the Roman frontier-guard in eastern

Mesopotamia. The Tigris was recognised as boundary of the direct Roman

rule, to such an extent, however, that the whole of southern Armenia as

far as the lake Thospitis (lake of Van) and the Euphrates, and so the

whole upper valley of the Tigris, should belong to the Roman empire.

This region lying in front of Mesopotamia did not become a province

proper, but was administered after the previous fashion as the Roman

satrapy of Sophene. Some decades later the strong fortress of Amida

(Diarbekir) was constructed here, thenceforth the chief stronghold

of the Romans in the region of the upper Tigris. At the same time

the frontier between Armenia and Media was regulated afresh, and

the supremacy of Rome over that land, as over Iberia, was once more

confirmed. The peace did not impose important cessions of territory on

the conquered, but it established a frontier favourable to the Romans,

which for a considerable time served in these much contested regions

as a demarcation of the two empires.[121] The policy of Trajan thereby

obtained its complete accomplishment; at all events the centre of

gravity of the Roman rule shifted itself just at this time from the

West to the East.