Tigranes the Great and Armenia's brief empire
King Tigranes II expands Armenia into an empire stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, before Rome forces him back to his Armenian heartland.
- Tigranes II the Great — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- The Armenians — A. E. Redgate, Blackwell (1998)
After Alexander the Great’s empire broke up, Armenia was ruled by local dynasties, first the Orontids and then the Artaxiads, founded by Artaxias I around 189 BCE. His descendant Tigranes II spent his youth as a hostage of the Parthians and came to the throne in about 95 BCE. Over the next twenty years he took advantage of the decline of the Seleucid and Parthian empires, conquering lands from the Caspian Sea to Syria and the Mediterranean coast, including Antioch. He took the Persian title “King of Kings” and built a new capital, Tigranakert.
- Tigranes II the Great — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
His alliance with his father-in-law, Mithridates VI of Pontus, brought him into conflict with Rome. The Roman general Lucullus defeated him at Tigranakert in 69 BCE, and in 66 BCE Tigranes submitted to Pompey, who let him keep Armenia itself as a Roman ally. He died around 55 BCE. His empire lasted barely a generation, but for Armenians he remains the great king of a time when Armenia was a power in its own right.
- Tigranes II the Great — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Armenians — A. E. Redgate, Blackwell (1998)
Why it matters today
Tigranes is the Armenians' memory of greatness, the moment when a people later known for surviving empires was itself an empire. His map of "sea to sea" Armenia hangs in schools and diaspora community halls, a source of pride for a small modern country.