the humbled foe at the expense
of the powerful ally. The singular preference, which the father
Tigranes experienced from Pompeius as contrasted with his son
the ally and son-in-law of the Parthian king, was already
part of this policy; it was a direct offence, when soon afterwards
by the orders of Pompeius the younger Tigranes and his family
were arrested and were not released even on Phraates interceding
with the friendly general for his daughter and his son-in-law.
But Pompeius paused not here. The province of Corduene,
to which both Phraates and Tigranes laid claim, was at the command
of Pompeius occupied by Roman troops for the latter, and the Parthians
who were found in possession were driven beyond the frontier
and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene, without the government
of Ctesiphon having even been previously heard (689).
Far the most suspicious circumstance however was, that the Romans
seemed not at all inclined to respect the boundary of the Euphrates
fixed by treaty. On several occasions Roman divisions
destined from Armenia for Syria marched across Mesopotamia;
the Arab emir Abgarus of Osrhoene was received under singularly
favourable conditions into Roman protection; nay, Oruros, situated
in Upper Mesopotamia somewhere between Nisibis and the Tigris 220
miles eastward from the Commagenian passage of the Euphrates,
was designated as the eastern limit of the Roman dominion--
presumably their indirect dominion, inasmuch as the larger
and more fertile northern half of Mesopotamia had been assigned
by the Romans in like manner with Corduene to the Armenian empire.
The boundary between Romans and Parthians thus became the great
Syro-Mesopotamian desert instead of the Euphrates; and this too
seemed only provisional. To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist
on the maintenance of the agreements--which certainly, as it would
seem, were only concluded orally--respecting the Euphrates
boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous reply that the territory
of Rome extended as far as her rights. The remarkable intercourse
between the Roman commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps
of the region of Media and even of the distant province Elymais
(between Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern Luristan) seemed
a commentary on this speech.(20) The viceroys of this latter
mountainous, warlike, and remote land had always exerted themselves
to acquire a position independent of the great-king; it was
the more offe