The affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor were connected by various relations with this maritime war.  The variance which existed between Rome and the kings of Pontus and Armenia did not abate, but increased more and more.  On the one hand Tigranes, kingof Armenia, pursued his aggressive conquests in the most reckless manner.  The Parthians, whose state was at this period torn by internal dissensions and enfeebled, were by constant hostilities driven farther and farther back into the interior of Asia.  Of the countries between Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Iran, the kingdoms of Corduene (northern Kurdistan), and Media Atropatene (Azerbijan), were converted from Parthian into Armenian fiefs, and the kingdom of Nineveh (Mosul), or Adiabene, was likewise compelled, at least temporarily, to become a dependency of Armenia.  In Mesopotamia, too, particularly in and around Nisibis, the Armenian rule was established; but the southern half, which was in great part desert, seems not to have passed into the firm possession of the new great-king, and Seleucia, on the Tigris, in particular, appears not to have become subject to him.  The kingdom of Edessa or Osrhoene he handed over to a tribe of wandering Arabs, which he transplanted from southern Mesopotamia and settled in this region, with the view of commanding by its means the passage of the Euphrates and the great route of traffic.(7)

Cappadocia Armenian

But Tigranes by no means confined his conquests to the eastern bank of the Euphrates.  Cappadocia especially was the object of his attacks, and, defenceless as it was, suffered destructive blows from its too potent neighbour.  Tigranes wrested the eastern province Melitene from Cappadocia, and united it with the opposite Armenian province Sophene, by which means he obtained command of the passage of the Euphrates with the great thoroughfare of traffic between Asia Minor and Armenia.  After the death of Sulla the Armenians even advanced into Cappadocia proper, and carried off to Armenia the inhabitants of the capital Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea) and eleven other towns of Greek organization.

Syria under Tigranes

Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in full course of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the new great-king.  Here the south from the Egyptian frontier to Straton’s Tower (Caesarea) was under the rule of the Jewish prince Alexander Jannaeus, who extended and strengthened his dominion step by step in conflict with his Syrian, Egyptian, and Arabic neighbours and with the imperial cities.  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.  Damascus and the valleys of Lebanon had submitted to the Nabataean prince, Aretas of Petra.  Lastly, in Cilicia the pirates or the Romans bore sway.