Tigranes the Great

Armenian king (r. 95-55 b.c.e.)

• Born: c. 140 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Armenia
• Died: c. 55 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Armenia

As king of Armenia between 95 and 55 b.c.e., Tigranes the Great defied the growing power of Rome and carved out a vast but short-lived empire that stretched from upper Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean Sea.

Early Life

The Armenia of Tigranes (ti-GRAY-neez) the Great consisted of the uplands that run from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and from the Caucasus Mountains south to the upper Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Armenia had long been politically and culturally related, on one hand, to the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau and, on the other, to those of Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean. Centered on the fertile plain of the Araxes River between the alkaline Lake Van and Lake Sevan, Armenia had maintained a large measure of autonomy despite its status as a satrapy of the Persian Empire and, following the Macedonian conquest of Persia, a nominal part of the Seleucid Empire. After the Roman victory over Antiochus the Great at Magnesia in 190 b.c.e., the Seleucid Empire was stripped of its possessions north of the Taurus Mountains. In the resulting political vacuum, independent kingdoms were established in Lesser Armenia (known in antiquity as Sophene) and in Greater Armenia by the former governors of these regions, Zariadris and Artaxias, the ancestor of Tigranes the Great.

Practically nothing is known about the early life of Tigranes. Second century Greek writer Appian stated that Tigranes’ father was also named Tigranes (Tigranes I) and other scholarship has supported this claim; however, different opinions hold that Tigranes was the son of Artavasdes. Tigranes’ birth date of c. 140 b.c.e. is deduced from the tradition that he was eighty-five years old at the time of his death in 55 b.c.e. It is known that, at some point in his early years, Tigranes was taken hostage by Mithradates II (the Great) of Parthia when that king besieged Armenia. In 95 b.c.e. Mithradates placed Tigranes on the Armenian throne, having made Tigranes cede to Parthia seventy fertile valleys of eastern Armenia.

Tigranes came to power at a time that was ripe for the expansion of the Armenian kingdom. The apparently inexorable growth of Roman power in the east had been severely hampered by Rome’s internal social problems and by the transformation of the Black Sea kingdom of Pontus into a significant military threat under the leadership of Mithradates VI Eupator. The Seleucid Empire had continued to disintegrate and was on the verge of total collapse.

Life’s Work

On his accession to the throne of Greater Armenia in 95 b.c.e., Tigranes began immediately to enlarge his dominion. His first act as king was to invade Sophene and depose its ruler, thus uniting all Armenia under his rule. That same year, Tigranes made an extremely important political alliance by marrying Cleopatra, a daughter of Mithradates VI Eupator. For the next thirty years, the political and military fortunes of Tigranes and Mithradates were to be closely linked in their joint struggle against Rome.

The first conflict between Rome and the alliance of Tigranes and Mithradates was precipitated by Mithradates’ struggle with Nicomedes III of Bithynia for the control of Cappadocia. To forestall a Roman attempt to intervene and appoint a pro-Roman king over Cappadocia, Tigranes overran the country with his Armenian army and secured it for his father-in-law. In 92 b.c.e., the Roman senate dispatched an army under the command of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who cleared Cappadocia and installed the Roman candidate, Ariobarzanes I, as king. As soon as Sulla withdrew from Asia, however, Mithradates deposed both Ariobarzanes and the new Bithynian king, Nicomedes IV, from their thrones. In 89 b.c.e., with the support of another Roman army, both kings were reinstated, and Nicomedes, urged on by the Roman legates, provoked a full-scale war by invading Mithradates’ Pontic homeland.

Mithradates responded to the provocation of Nicomedes IV and, taking advantage of the disruption of the Roman Social War, launched a major attack on the Roman province of Asia. After more than eighty thousand Roman officials and citizens were massacred in the Greek cities of Asia Minor, Mithradates invaded the Aegean. In 87 b.c.e., Sulla once again responded to this threat and swept Mithradates out of Roman territory. As a result of political troubles back in Rome, Sulla was unable to capitalize on his victory, and in 86 b.c.e. a peace between Mithradates and Rome was arranged.

In 88 b.c.e., Mithradates II died, and Tigranes used the opportunity to recover the Armenian territory he had ceded to the Parthians in 95 b.c.e. Tigranes followed this success by invading northern Parthia, taking the important regions of Gordyene and Adiabene and the city of Nisibis. Tigranes then turned his attention to the east and annexed a large tract of Media Atropatene into his growing Armenian Empire. Tigranes now called himself by the archaic title of “King of Kings” and had vassal kings wait on him in his court.

With Mithradates VI Eupator in temporary retirement from active campaigning and with Asia Minor temporarily quiet, Tigranes moved against the tottering Seleucid Dynasty. In 83 b.c.e., the Armenian army defeated the last Seleucid king, Antiochus Eusebius, and the entire eastern Mediterranean coast from Cilicia to the borders of Egypt became a part of Tigranes’ empire. Tigranes was now at the height of his power. He divided his empire into 120 satrapies, following the old Persian model, and set an Armenian feudal lord as governor over each. As the evidence of his silver coinage shows, Tigranes now added the traditional Seleucid title “Divine” to the eastern “King of Kings.”

With his kingdom stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, the old Armenian capital of Artaxas on the Araxes River was far removed from the center of Tigranes’ empire. Thus, Tigranes set about building a new capital in the west, near the head of the Tigris River, and named it Tigranocerta, for himself. Tigranes populated his city by forcibly displacing Greeks and natives from Syria (and later from Cappadocia), in addition to encouraging Jewish and Arab merchants to settle there.

For the next decade, Tigranes apparently was able to govern his massive empire without major incident. When trouble arose, it was once again caused by Mithradates, who dragged Tigranes into his struggle against Rome. In 74 b.c.e., Nicomedes IV died and willed his Bithynian kingdom to Rome. Mithradates responded by invading Bithynia, and Tigranes again invaded Cappadocia. Rome then sent out Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who, in a series of engagements from 74 to 72 b.c.e., was able to drive Mithradates out of Pontus.

When Mithradates fled to the safety of Armenia, Lucullus sent his brother-in-law, Appius Claudius, to Tigranes to ask him to turn over Mithradates. Initially, Tigranes employed a delaying tactic by refusing to give an audience to either Appius Claudius or his father-in-law, who was kept under virtual house arrest in an Armenian castle. When the Roman envoy finally did speak to Tigranes, Appius’s haughty and peremptory tone so infuriated the king that he refused the Roman request. In 69 b.c.e., Lucullus invaded Armenia, with a force that Tigranes is said to have described as “too large for an embassy, too small for an army.” Nevertheless, Lucullus was able to besiege Tigranocerta and, after Tigranes had fled into the Armenian hills and joined forces with Mithradates, inflict a serious defeat on the combined Armenian and Pontic armies. Lucullus’s army was unwilling, however, to fight further, and when the Roman garrison that had been left in Pontus revolted, Lucullus was forced to retire. Both Tigranes and Mithradates were able to recover much of the territory that had been seized, though Tigranes had lost Syria forever.

The final blow to Tigranes’ imperial rule was soon to follow. In 67 b.c.e.Pompey the Great cleared the Mediterranean of pirates by destroying their bases in Cilicia; in the following year, he was awarded the command against Mithradates VI. When Pompey quickly moved against Pontus, Mithradates once again tried to seek refuge in Armenia. In the meantime, however, Tigranes was facing a new enemy. His third son, also named Tigranes, had married into the family of Phraates III, King of Parthia, and, urged on by his father-in-law, raised a revolt against his father.

As Pompey marched into Armenia, the elder Tigranes banished Mithradates from his kingdom and made overtures of submission to the Roman general. Perceiving that a weakened Tigranes would serve Roman interests, Pompey switched his support from Phraates to Tigranes, though he did set Tigranes’ son on the throne of Lesser Armenia. The younger Tigranes soon intrigued again against his father, and Pompey thereupon took him prisoner and brought him back to Rome, where he perished. The next two years witnessed intermittent hostilities between Tigranes and Phraates until Pompey finally negotiated a peace between Armenia and Parthia. Tigranes the Great continued to rule as King of Armenia, albeit a king completely subservient to Rome, until his death.

Significance

The ancient Armenians themselves left no historical records, and the earliest extant Armenian history, written sometime between the fifth and eighth centuries c.e. by Moses of Khorene, presents only a very unreliable legendary account of the reign of Tigranes. Except for a single reference to Tigranes in a Parthian document and the evidence of Tigranes’ coinage, all that is known about this king is what is preserved in the writings of a handful of Greek and Latin authors, who wrote from a Roman perspective.

The main sources for the life of Tigranes are Strabo, Plutarch, Dio Cassius, Appian of Alexandria, and Justin. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Tigranes portrayed by these authors is an arrogant tyrant who through his own stupidity and hubris was unable to maintain his empire. In large part, this negative picture of Tigranes simply reflects a general Greco-Roman hostility toward absolute monarchs. In spite of his sincere philhellenism, which was shared by most of the eastern aristocracy of the Hellenistic age, Tigranes was above all an Oriental ruler.

After the death of Tigranes the Great, his descendants continued to rule as client-kings of Rome until 1 b.c.e., when Augustus attempted to put his own grandson, Gaius, on the throne. When Gaius was killed during an Armenian uprising in 4 c.e., the kingship was reinstated, and the Armenian throne continued to be a matter of contention between Rome and Parthia for another century. Finally, by 114 c.e., the usefulness of Armenia as a buffer state had ended, and Trajan annexed it as a Roman province.

Bibliography

Foss, Clive. “The Coinage of Tigranes the Great: Problems, Suggestions, and a New Find.” Numismatic Chronicle 146 (1986): 19-66. A major reclassification of the silver and bronze coinage of Tigranes based on metrology, iconography, and style. Identifies mints and reassigns one type to Tigranes the Younger.

Lang, David M. Armenia: Cradle of Civilization. 3d ed. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1980. Presents a general overview of Armenia from the Neolithic to the present. In general, the chapters on early Armenia are marred by historical errors and a strong pro-Armenian bias.

McGing, B. C. “The Date of the Outbreak of the Third Mithridatic War.” Phoenix 38 (1984): 12-18. Suggests that the beginning of the war should be downdated from 74 b.c.e. to 73 b.c.e.

Musti, D. “Syria and the East.” In The Hellenistic World, edited by F. W. Walbank, A. E. Astin, M. W. Frederiksen, and R. M. Ogilvie. Vol. 7 in The Cambridge Ancient History. 3d ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984. The best general account available on the relations between the Seleucids and the Eastern kingdoms.

Ormerod, H. A., and M. Cary. “Rome and the East.” In The Roman Republic, 133-44 B.C., edited by S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, and M. P. Charlesworth. Vol. 9 in The Cambridge Ancient History. 2d ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Still the best narrative on the Third Mithradatic War and Tigranes’ battles against Lucullus.

Peters, F. E. The Harvest of Hellenism: A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity. 2d ed. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1996. In this massive history of the Hellenistic East, chapter 8, “The Romans in the Near East,” presents a solid general account of the conflicts between Rome and the Eastern kingdoms from Cynoscephalae to Carrhae.