scarcely accessible mountain-ridge, and completely overlooking
and commanding the wide plain of Iconium. The war, not ended
till 679, from which Publius Servilius acquired for himself
and his descendants the surname of Isauricus, was not without fruit;
a great number of pirates and piratical vessels fell in consequence
of it into the power of the Romans; Lycia, Pamphylia, West Cilicia
were severely devastated, the territories of the destroyed towns
were confiscated, and the province of Cilicia was enlarged by their
addition to it. But, in the nature of the case, piracy was far
from being suppressed by these measures; on the contrary, it simply
betook itself for the time to other regions, and particularly
to Crete, the oldest harbour for the corsairs of the Mediterranean.(6)
Nothing but repressive measures carried out on a large scale
and with unity of purpose--nothing, in fact, but the establishment
of a standing maritime police--could in such a case
afford thorough relief.

Asiatic Relations
Tigranes and the New Great-Kingdom of Armenia

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)

Ca