Armenian Emperor Tigran the Great

[Eddie]

I have just finished reading Manantian's fine book on 'Tigran II and Rome'. Here a few notes with a plea of forgiveness for length. The subject is interesting.

 

Eddie

 

 

I.

Hagop Manantian’s 1940 ‘Tigran II and Rome’ (Collected Works, Volume 1, pp407-602, 1977) still stands supreme among the more serious studies of the first and only Armenian imperial monarch. Reigning from 95 to 55BC, Tigran II having seized the crown of ‘King of Kings’ from an enfeebled Persian throne, waged a 25 year military campaign to build a dominion stretching from northern Armenia to the shores of the Mediterranean. As master of central and eastern Asia Minor and a good portion of the Middle East Tigran could not avoid combat with Rome also eager for mastery of the region. ‘Tigran II and Rome’ is Manantian’s account of Rome’s ruthless offensive against the Armenian empire, the last barrier to its supremacy in Asia Minor. It is at the same time a sobering evaluation of Tigran’s national and historical significance.

 

As a central preoccupation Manantian successfully takes up the cudgels against classical Roman and modern European imperialist historians who deploying fabrication and falsification dismiss Tigran II as a backward, uncivilised figure of a dismal and dark East against whom Rome’s invasion of Asia Minor is presented with the imprint of civilisation. Manantian’s particular target is Plutarch whose invented history of the Armenian-Roman wars is cited by 19th century European historians eager to reinforce their own ‘notable hostility’ towards ‘the East and the people of the East’.

 

Manantian demolishes fabrication is demolished with skilful rigour. In their opposion to Rome, Tigran II and Mithradates King of Pontus appear credibly as defenders the legacy of Hellenism’s that with its global productive and trading infrastructure underpinned significant cultural development and still survived in Asia Minor. Here at least, the Roman Empire was, Manantian suggests, of the same parasitic order as the Ottoman relentlessly draining conquered nations whilst contributing virtually naught to economic or cultural development. Remarking on Rome’s eventual triumph Manantian concludes that ‘responsibility for the subsequent backwardness in Asia Minor’ must ‘fall squarely upon Roman shoulders.’

 

The argument however goes dangerously overboard when presented as defenders of Hellenistic progress against a plundering Rome, Tigran and Mithradates, King of Pontus are transformed into national liberators, the latter almost a class warrior ‘defending and protecting the exploited’, inspiring them to ‘social and class war’ against ‘brutal Roman rule.’ When Mithradates eventually falls to the Roman sword, it is only as a result of the treachery of the Pontus ruling classes. It is one thing to challenge Roman fabrication, quite another however to paint Rome’s opponents as some sort of modern revolutionary democrats, overlooking their tyrannical slaveholding character and their merciless oppression of their own common people.

 

Nevertheless the volume’s core remains firm, to the point and relevant, an addition to a necessary polemical arsenal against imperialist falsification. For Armenians such polemics stretch back 3000 years. Fifth century historian Movses Khorenatzi had noted great powers’ attempts to assimilate smaller nations and write them out of history. To exact revenge against Haig, the founder of the Armenian nation, Assyrian King Ninos planned to ‘annihilate his every last offspring’ and ‘ordered the destruction of vast numbers of volumes that told of achievements of other nations.’ Thereafter Armenians have had to contend with 19th and 20th century imperialist and Turkish falsification as well as that of contemporary European and US historians, exposed by Armen Aivazyan.

 

II.

Effectively dismissing Plutarch as he does Manantian’s nevertheless reconstructs Tigran II without his ‘Great’ pedestal. Removing the lies and distortions Rome wrapped around one of its most formidable opponents Manantian retains his objective critical spirit. So he does not refer to ‘Tigran the Great’, the title of H K Armen’s volume also published in 1940. Emperor Tigran is simply Tigran II with no make up from our ample stocks of excess nationalist enthusiasm. With persuasive argument Manantian shows that Tigran’s defence of Hellenistic civilisation in Asia Minor was a failure and his contribution to the consolidation of the Armenian state insignificant.

 

Contrary to hired Roman pens Tigran was no mediocrity, no disloyal and incompetent eastern barbarian who merely tagged along with the more forceful but equally barbarian Mithradates. A remarkable man of immense vigour, stubborn will and military and political skill he demonstrated a remarkable capacity for recovery from crippling and almost fatal defeat at Roman hands as well as from challenges of internal enemies. Yet still Tigran’s Empire was dismantled by the Romans and he himself humbled.

 

In his first engagement at the Battle of Tigranakert in DATE, the Armenian ‘King of Kings’ proved no match for Roman arms. Exaggerated as are distorted accounts of categorical and easy Roman victory, the Armenian defeat was devastating and humiliating, all the more so for being a result not so much of Roman military prowess but of Tigran’s disastrous miscalculation. He had refused to join Mithradates during the earlier Roman offensive against Pontus and compounded this error with a disastrous complacency about Roman appetites for Armenia. So he offered an emboldened Luculllus his opportunity to mount his surprise attack on the centre of Tigran’s Empire.

 

H B Hakobyan’s in his erudite ‘Great Tigran’ (244pp, Yerevan, 2005) indirectly challenges Manantian’s and others’ assessments of Armenian-Roman battles. It remains the case nevertheless that the Roman capture and sacking Tigran’s newly built capital housing his family and the vast quantities of treasure Tigran had plundered from his imperial domains, terminated, in abrupt and categorical fashion both his imperial ambitions and his ‘progressive plan the aim of which was to develop Hellenistic urban cultural and civilisation in backward Armenia.’(p526)

 

With the end of the Armenian age of empire Rome freely rampaged and trampled what remained of Hellenism’s legacy in Asia Minor. As for Armenia, Rome’s triumph drained the land of wealth and resources. To the heavy reparations imposed by Lucullus, yet more were added by the more voracious Pompei, that grubby ‘agent of Roman finance and usury’, that ‘most notorious of usurers’ who obtained by diplomatic means what Lucullus failed to do by force of arms. He ‘subjugated and plundered Armenia without bloodshed or sacrifice’ (p583) transforming Armenia into ‘a friend and ally’ of Rome, effectively a vassal state, ‘a Roman military outpost.’ (p598).

 

Having thus vanquished and humbled the one time ‘King of Kings’, Armenia ‘ceased to be a great power and lost its former independence.’ Effectively reduced to ‘a buffer state’ it thereafter lacked the ability ‘to take its fortunes into its own hands’. Henceforth its future was to be ‘determined largely by (neighbouring) and interested great powers’ (p602), by Persian, Roman and subsequently Arabic, Ottoman, Russian empires fighting for supremacy in the region.

 

 

 

III.

Manantian is altogether too eager to pain Tigran in reforming and progressive colours. He notes but without critical comment that Tigran, like other imperial powers of his time, resorted to the mass deportations of subjugated peoples. In Tigran’s case he ruthlessly uprooted from their homelands up to 300,000 men and women forcibly relocating them in Armenia there to serve his programme of Armenia’s Hellenisation. Despite the Armenian experience of national oppression Manantian recounts this not just without adverse comment but with a suggestion that Tigran’s deportations were marks of progress being in aid of developing towns and crafts (p458) that proved, at least for Armenians, of immense benefit! Tigran was in addition no friend to his own people to whose harsh life as slaves and servants, soldiers and labours he was, like all imperial monarchs utterly indifferent.

 

As an individual Tigran was indeed a heroic tragic figure who from heights of imperial glory reached with such audacity and determination lived his last years as a minor adjunct of the foe who felled him. It is surprising that there is so little creative literature about the man. However as a national historic figure Tigran is certainly no role model for the Armenian people today despite his idolisation by certain trends of Armenian historiography. If ever intending to celebrate Tigran II era, Armenians should recall their protests when Shah Abbas and the Persian Renaissance was commemorated. Tigran after all did the same as Shah Abbas, deported whole, in his case Armenian communities, to Iran to serve his programme of Iranian economic development.

 

Eddie Arnavoudian

8 November 2010

[Ashot]

A recent ABC News article on May 19, 2004 noted that according to the Armenian and Italian researchers the "symbol on his crown that features a star with a curved tail may represent the passage of Halley's Comet in 87 BCE." Tigranes could have seen Halley's comet when it passed closest to the Sun on August 6 in 87, according to the researchers, who said the comet would have been a 'most recordable event'– heralding the New Era of the King of Kings.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1110824.htm