Note 54 — Chapter IX · THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER AND THE PARTHIANS. (continued 2)

Hadrian cannot possibly have released Armenia from the position of a Roman dependency. The notice of his biographer, c. 21: Armeniis regem habere permisit, cum sub Traiano legatum habuissent points rather to the contrary, and we find at the end of Hadrian’s reign a contingent of Armenians in the army of the governor of Cappadocia (Arrian, c. Alan. 29). Pius did not merely induce the Parthians by his representations to desist from the intended invasion of Armenia (vita, 9), but also in fact invested them with Armenia (coins from the years 140–144, Eckhel, vii. p. 15). The fact also that Iberia certainly stood in the relation of dependence under Pius, because otherwise the Parthians could not have brought complaints as to its king in Rome (Dio, lxix. 15), presupposes a like dependent relation for Armenia. The names of the Armenian kings of this period are not known. If the proximae gentes, with the rule of which Hadrian compensated the Parthian prince nominated as Parthian king by Trajan (vita, c. 5), were in fact Armenians, which is not improbable, there lies in it a confirmation as well of the lasting dependence of Armenia on Rome as of the continuous rule of the Arsacids there. Even the Ἀυρήλιος Πάκορος βασιλεὺς μεγάλης Ἀρμενίας, who erected a monument in Rome to his brother Aurelius Merithates who died there (C. I. Gr. 6559), belongs from his name to the house of the Arsacids. But he was hardly the king of Armenia installed by Vologasus IV. and deposed by the Romans (p. 74); if the latter had come to Rome as a captive, we should know it, and even he would hardly have been allowed to call himself king of Great Armenia in a Roman inscription.