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Updated: June 11, 2025
Those Asiatic provinces consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of domanial possessions, urban territories de facto or de jure autonomous, lordships pertaining to princes and priests, and kingdoms, all of which were as regards internal administration more or less left to themselves, and in other respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its proconsuls very much as formerly on the great-king and his satraps.
In Asia Cappadocia adhered to the great-king; Prusias of Bithynia on the other hand took, as always, the side of the stronger. King Eumenes remained faithful to the old policy of his house, which was now at length to yield to him its true fruit.
The new "city of Tigranes," Tigrano-certa, founded on the borders of Armenia and Mesopotamia, and destined as the capital of the territories newly acquired for Armenia, became a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high, and the appendages of palace, garden, and park that were appropriate to sultanism. In other respects, too, the new great-king proved faithful to his part.
The imposts levied by the Persian great-king and the Carthaginian republic were substantially of the same character with that tenth; and in Greece also such a taxation had for long been, after Oriental precedent, associated with the -tyrannis- and often also with a hegemony.
Syria under Tigranes Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in full course of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the new great-king. The larger towns of Syria Gaza, Straton's Tower, Ptolemais, Beroea attempted to maintain themselves on their own footing, sometimes as free communities, sometimes under so-called tyrants; the capital, Antioch, in particular, was virtually independent.
There he was met by the son of the great-king, who hoped after the fall of his father to receive the Armenian diadem from the hand of the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every way to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father and the Romans. The great-king was only the more resolved to purchase peace at any price.
In like manner the province of Upper Syria, withthe exception of the bravely-defended town of Seleucia at the mouth of the Orontes, and the greater part of Phoenicia were reduced by force; Ptolemais was occupied by the Armenians about 680, and the Jewish state was already seriously threatened by them. Antioch, the old capital of the Seleucids, became one of the residences of the great-king.
This was indeed a hopeful beginning; and the title of commander-in-chief with absolute power, which the Aetolians decreed to the great-king, seemed insult added to injury. There had been, just as usual, deception on both sides.
As, however, the commission of Lucullus related to the conduct of the war against Mithradates and he wished to connect what he did with that commission, he preferred to send one of his officers, Appius Claudius, to the great-king at Antioch to demand the surrender of Mithradates, which in fact could not but lead to war. Difficulties to Be Encountered
The war vessels which he possessed beyond the prescribed number, the elephants, and the political refugees who had sought shelter with him, he delivered up. By way of compensation the great-king received the title of a friend of the Roman commonwealth.
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