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Updated: June 8, 2025
The position of this huge town on the very borders of the Parthian kingdom, in a province which had till very recently been Parthian, could be no otherwise understood that as a standing menace to Parthia itself, the proclamation of an intention to extend the Armenian dominion southwards, and to absorb at any rate all the rich and fertile country between Gordyene and the sea.
Lucullus did not forget all this; and, on entering Gordyene, he made a funeral for Zarbienus, and, ornamenting the pile with vests, and the king's gold, and the spoils got from Tigranes, he set fire to it himself, and poured libations on the pile, with the friends and kinsmen of the king, and gave him the name of friend and ally of the Roman people.
By such causes as these the army of Lucullus was corrupted, and his soldiers refused to follow him either against Tigranes or against Mithridates, who immediately made an irruption from Armenia into Pontus, and endeavoured to recover his power; but alleging the winter as an excuse, the soldiers lingered in Gordyene, expecting every moment that Pompeius, or some other commander, would arrive to supersede Lucullus.
He sent, therefore, into Pontus to Sornatius and his colleagues, bidding them bring the army thence, and join with him in his expedition out of Gordyene. The soldiers there, however, who had been restive and unruly before, now openly displayed their mutinous temper.
Hostilities were commenced by attacks in two directions southward against the tract known as Anthemusia, between the Euphrates and the Khabour; and eastward against Batnas, Nisibis, and the mountain region known as Gordyene, or the Mons Masius.
He retired to the Less Armenia; and he returned a friendly answer to the Kings of the Elymæi and Medes who sent ambassadors, but against the Parthian king who had invaded Gordyene and was plundering the people of Tigranes, he sent Afranius with a force who drove him out and pursued him as far as the territory of Arbela.
But to engage in so great a matter with a good prospect of success it was necessary that the war should be approved, not only by himself, but by his principal feudatories. The most important of these was now Izates, king of Adiabene and Gordyene who in the last reign had restored Artabanus to his lost throne.
He was assassinated by his two sons, Mithridates and Orodes; for what cause we are not told. The object of the war was probably the recovery of the lost province of Gordyene, which, having been delivered to the elder Tigranes by Pompey, had remained in the occupation of the Armenians. Mithridates seems to have succeeded in his enterprise.
Soon after this Tigranes appears to have renewed his attacks upon Parthia, which in the interval between B.C. 92 and B.C. 83 he greatly humbled, depriving it of the whole of Upper Mesopotamia, at this time called Gordyene, and under rule of one of the Parthian tributary kings.
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