Note 121 — Chapter IX · THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER AND THE PARTHIANS. (continued 3)

The differences in the exceptionally good accounts, particularly of Petrus Patricius, fr. 14, and Ammianus, xxv. 7, 9, are probably only of a formal kind. The fact that the Tigris was to be the proper boundary of the empire, as Priscus says, does not exclude, especially considering the peculiar character of its upper course, the possibility of the boundary there partially going beyond it; on the contrary, the five districts previously named in Petrus appear to be adduced just as beyond the Tigris, and to be excepted from the following general definition. The districts adduced by Priscus here and, expressly as beyond the Tigris, by Ammianus—these are in both Arzanene, Carduene, and Zabdicene, in Priscus Sophene and Intilene ("rather Ingilene, in Armenia Angel, now Egil"; Kiepert), in Ammianus Moxoene and Rehimene (?)—cannot possibly all have been looked on by the Romans as Persian before the peace, when at any rate Armenia was already Romano iuri obnoxia (Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 11); beyond doubt the more westerly of them already then formed a part of Roman Armenia, and stand here only in so far as they were, in consequence of the peace, incorporated with the empire as the satrapy of Sophene. That the question here concerned not the boundary of the cession, but that of the territory directly imperial, is shown by the conclusion, which settles the boundary between Armenia and Media.