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The Christian party, under the guidance of the Archbishop of Artaxata, the immediate successor of St. Gregory the Illuminator, had recourse to the piety of Constantius.
But while the troublesome temper of the government and of the soldier thus threatened the victorious general with recall and mutiny, he himself continued like a desperate gambler to increase his stake and his risk. He hoped, by threatening the king's hereditary residence, to compel him to fight either on the way or at any rate before Artaxata.
On the tableland of Armenia, which lies 5000 feet and more above the level of the sea, the corn at Erzeroum only germinates in the beginning of June, and the winter sets in with the harvest in September; Artaxata had to be reached and the campaign had to be ended in four months at the utmost.
But while the troublesome temper of the government and of the soldier thus threatened the victorious general with recall and mutiny, he himself continued like a desperate gambler to increase his stake and his risk. He hoped, by threatening the king's hereditary residence, to compel him to fight either on the way or at any rate before Artaxata.
But when, after doing all he could to provoke the enemy to fight, by drawing entrenchments round their camp and by burning the country before them, he could by no means bring them to venture out, after their frequent defeats before, he rose up and marched to Artaxata, the royal city of Tigranes, where his wives and young children were kept, judging that Tigranes would never suffer that to go without the hazard of a battle.
As monuments of two extreme events in this historic period, two spots might have attracted our attention—one right below us, the ruins of Artaxata, which, according to tradition, was built, as the story goes, after the plans of the roving conqueror Hannibal, and stormed by the Roman legions, A. D. 58; and farther away to the north, the modern fortress of Kars, which so recently reverberated with the thunders of the Turkish war.
He reached Lake Van, he marched round Mount Ararat and advanced to Artaxata. But Asia was a scene of dangerous temptation for a Roman commander. Cicero, though he did not name Lucullus, was transparently alluding to him when he told the assembly in the Forum that Rome had made herself abhorred throughout the world by the violence and avarice of her generals.
The king suspecting the plot did not come, so he sent Deillius to have another talk with him and marched with undiminished haste toward Artaxata. In this way, after a long time, partly by persuading him through friends, and partly by scaring him through his soldiers, and writing and acting toward him in every way as thoroughly friendly, he induced him to come into his camp.
Tigranes did not let Lucullus quietly march against Artaxata, but, moving with his forces on the fourth day, he encamped opposite to the Romans, placing the river Arsanias between him and the enemy, which river the Romans must of necessity cross on their route to Artaxata.
The Iberian supporters of Rhadamistus fled without risking a battle; his Armenian subjects resisted weakly; Artaxata and Tigranocerta opened their gates; and the country generally submitted.
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