The Roman Withdrawal to the Rhine

In 53 BC, the Parthians had more or less annihilated a papistic army of 44,000 men at a lower place Crassus. On the material level alone this was a casualty twice as great as that of Varus in the Teutoburger forest.

Moreover, piece the Germanic tribal confederation that destroyed Varus and forced the papistical withdrawal to the Rhine was dissolved within a few years, the Parthian challenge was permanent. Mark Antony also take oned an invasion of Parthia, nevertheless while he avoided a disaster like Crassus's, and indeed sacked the Parthian capital, he could not effect a permanent conquest nor even overlordship, and was forced to retreat in some disarray. (burney and lang 200) Later, dynastic quarrels might temporarily distract the Parthians, besides they always re-emerged, and posed an ongoing threat, at least potentially, to the client- offers and provinces of Syria, and in the end to the entire East. Parthia thus posed a unique bother to Roman statecraft. The primary solution to that problem, the ingestance and utilization of the office of Armenia as a buffer state between the Roman and Parthian spheres of domination, was likewise unique. In one way or another, Armenia would play this buffer-state role for about half a millenium, from the introductory century BC into the fifth century AD. The scope of the interest discussion will be narrower, considering the role of Armenia in Romano-Parthian relations under the Julio-Claudian emperors, from Augustus to Nero, though some reference will be

The deficiency of the Julio-Claudian hegemonic system was governmental: it was essentially unstable. This essential instability lay not at the center, in spite of the turmoil that makes such colorful learning in the pages of Tacitus and Suetonius, but in the hegemonic gradient. Moreover, the instability was a subdued one, only occasionally erupting in spectacular outbreaks such as the Jewish War. The exercise of authority through client states tended to turn over progressively unsatisfactory; a strong client formula was always a potential threat, while the more ghost weak ones were unable to maintain an acceptable minimum of domination in their own territories.

Luttwak, Edward N.

The Grand Strategy of the Roman conglomerate from the First Century AD to the Third. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1976.

What followed was an elaborate and mysterious chronological succession of events. Rhadamistes went to Armenia as a feigned supplicant, pretending to be fleeing his father's court, and was stock in friendship by his uncle Mithradates. While at Mithradates' court, he set to work subverting the Armenian nobles. Then, pretending to a reconciliation with his father Farsman, he went back to Iberia--only to return, this time at the genius of an army. Mithradates fled into the Roman garrison fortress at Gorniae.

The Julio-Claudian era forms a natural period within the overall development of the Armenian buffer-state function. At the beginning of this period, Augustus, concerned primarily with the stabilization instead than expansion of the Roman orbit, implicitly elected not to attempt to repeat Mark Antony's attempted conquest of Parthia, and further to accept an independent Armenia, albeit under Roman influence, as buffer state between the Roman and Parthian spheres of influence. At the end of the period, Nero acquiesced in the establishment of a branch of the Parthian royal family as rulers of Armenia, insisting only on the nominal expression of overlordship conveyed by the Armenian
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