eriously threatened by them. Antioch,
the old capital of the Seleucids, became one of the residences
of the great-king. Already from 671, the year following the peace
between Sulla and Mithradates, Tigranes is designated
in the Syrian annals as the sovereign of the country, and Cilicia
and Syria appear as an Armenian satrapy under Magadates,
the lieutenant of the great-king. The age of the kings of Nineveh,
ofthe Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to be renewed; again oriental
despotism pressed heavily on the trading population of the Syrian
coast, as it did formerly on Tyre and Sidon; again great states
of the interior threw themselves on the provinces along
the Mediterranean; again Asiatic hosts, said to number
half a million combatants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts.
As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews
to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new
kingdom--from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia--
the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens
of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods
and chattels (under penalty of the confiscation of everything
that they left behind) in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities
proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness
of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates
on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new
grand sultan. 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. As amidst the perpetual childhood
of the east the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns
on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed
himselfin public, appeared in the state and the costume of a successor
of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple caftan, the half-white
half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban,
and the royal diadem--attended moreover and served in slavish fashion,
wherever he went or stood, by four "kings."

Mithradates

King Mithradates acted with greater moderation. He refrained
from aggressions in Asia Minor, and contented himself wi