me and Pontus which
commenced in B.C. 88, was still continuing, and still far from decided,
when Sanatroeces came to the throne. An octogenarian monarch was unfit
to engage in strife, and if Sanatroeces, notwithstanding this drawback,
had been ambitious of military distinction, it would have been difficult
for him to determine into which scale the interests of his country
required that he should cast the weight of his sword. On the one hand,
Parthia had evidently much to fear from the military force and the
covetous disposition of Tigranes, king of Armenia, the son-in-law of
Mithridates, and at this time his chosen alley. Tigranes had hitherto
been continually increasing in strength. By the defeat of Artanes, king
of Sophene, or Armenia Minor, he had made himself master of Armenia
in its widest extent; by his wars with Parthia herself he had acquired
Gordyene, or Northern Mesopotamia, and Adiabene, or the entire rich
tract east of the middle Tigris (including Assyria Proper and Arbelitis),
as far, at any rate, as the course of the lower Zab; by means which are
not stated he had brought under subjection the king of the important
country of Media Artropatene, independent since the time of Alexander.
Invited into Syria, about B.C. 83, by the wretched inhabitants, wearied
with the perpetual civil wars between the princes of the house of the
Seleucidae, he had found no difficulty in establishing himself as
king over Cilicia, Syria, and most of Phoenicia. About B.C. 80 he
had determined on building himself a new capital in the province of
Gordyene, a capital of a vast size, provided with all the luxuries
required by an Oriental court, and fortified with walls which recalled
the glories of the ancient cities of the Assyrians. 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. Thus threatened by Armenia, it was impossible for
Sanatroeces cordially to embrace the side of Mithridates, with which
Armenia and its king were so closely allied; it was impossible for him
even to wish that the two allies should be free to work their will on
the Asiatic continent unchecked by the power which alone had for the
last twe