Beginning of the Armenian War

But the relations with Armenia were not yet settled.  Thata declaration of war by the Romans against Tigranes was in itself justified and even demanded, we have already shown.  Lucullus, who looked at the state of affairs from a nearer point of view and with a higher spirit than the senatorial college in Rome, perceived clearly the necessity of confining Armenia to the other side of the Tigris and of re-establishing the lost dominion of Rome over the Mediterranean.  He showed himself in the conduct of Asiatic affairs no unworthy successor of his instructor and friend Sulla.  A Philhellene above most Romans of his time, he was not insensible to the obligation which Rome had come under when taking up the heritage of Alexander—­the obligation to be the shield and sword of the Greeks in the east.  Personal motives—­the wish to earn laurels also beyond the Euphrates, irritation at the fact that the great-king in a letter to him had omitted the title of Imperator—­may doubtless have partly influenced Lucullus; but it is unjust to assume paltry and selfish motives for actions, which motives of duty quite suffice to explain.  The Roman governing college at any rate—­timid, indolent, ill informed, and above all beset by perpetual financial embarrassments—­could never be expected, without direct compulsion, to take the initiative in an expedition so vast and costly.  About the year 682 the legitimate representatives of the Seleucid dynasty, Antiochus called the Asiatic and his brother, moved by the favourable turn of the Pontic war, had gone to Rome to procure a Roman intervention in Syria, and at the same time a recognition of their hereditary claims on Egypt.  If the latter demand might not be granted, there could not, at any rate, be found a more favourable moment or occasion for beginning the war which had long been necessary against Tigranes.  But the senate, while it recognized the princes doubtless as the legitimate kings of Syria, could not make up its mind to decree the armed intervention.  If the favourable opportunity was to be employed, and Armenia was to be dealt with in earnest, Lucullus had to begin the war, without any proper orders from the senate, at his own hand and his own risk; he found himself, just like Sulla, placed under the necessity of executing what he did in the most manifest interest of the existing government, not with its sanction, but in spite of it.  His resolution was facilitated by the relations of Rome towards Armenia, for long wavering in uncertainty between peace and war, which screened in some measure the arbitrariness of his proceedings, and failed not to suggest formal grounds for war.  The state of matters in Cappadocia and Syria afforded pretexts enough; and already in the pursuit of the king of Pontus Roman troops had violated the territory of the great-king.  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.