Added to this was scarcity of water, a burning summer and long marches, all of which were alleviated only by the general's patient endurance.He bore indeed the same or even more burdens than the common soldier.Subsequently, they reached lands under cultivation, and reaped the crops, and of two fortresses in which the Armenians had fled for refuge, one was taken by storm; the other, which repulsed the first attack, was reduced by blockade.Thence the general crossed into the country of the Tauraunites, where he escaped an unforeseen peril.Near his tent, a barbarian of no mean rank was discovered with a dagger, who divulged under torture the whole method of the plot, its contrivance by himself, and his associates.The men who under a show of friendship planned the treachery, were convicted and punished.
Soon afterwards, Corbulo's envoys whom he had sent to Tigranocerta, reported that the city walls were open, and the inhabitants awaiting orders.They also handed him a gift denoting friendship, a golden crown, which he acknowledged in complimentary language.Nothing was done to humiliate the city, that remaining uninjured it might continue to yield a more cheerful obedience.
The citadel, however, which had been closed by an intrepid band of youths, was not stormed without a struggle.They even ventured on an engagement under the walls, but were driven back within their fortifications and succumbed at last only to our siege-works and to the swords of furious assailants.The success was the easier, as the Parthians were distracted by a war with the Hyrcanians, who had sent to the Roman emperor, imploring alliance, and pointing to the fact that they were detaining Vologeses as a pledge of amity.When these envoys were on their way home, Corbulo, to save them from being intercepted by the enemy's picquets after their passage of the Euphrates, gave them an escort, and conducted them to the shores of the Red Sea, whence, avoiding Parthian territory, they returned to their native possessions.
Corbulo too, as Tiridates was entering the Armenian frontier through Media, sent on Verulanus, his lieutenant-general with the auxiliaries, while he himself followed with the legions by forced marches, and compelled him to retreat to a distance and abandon the idea of war.
Having harried with fire and sword all whom he had ascertained to be against us, he began to take possession of Armenia, when Tigranes arrived, whom Nero had selected to assume the sovereignty.Though a Cappadocian noble and grandson of king Archelaus, yet, from having long been a hostage at Rome, he had sunk into servile submissiveness.Nor was he unanimously welcomed, as some still cherished a liking for the Arsacids.Most, however, in their hatred of Parthian arrogance preferred a king given them by Rome.He was supported too with a force of a thousand legionaries, three allied cohorts and two squadrons of cavalry, that he might the more easily secure his new kingdom.Parts of Armenia, according to their respective proximities, were put under the subjection of Pharasmanes, Polemo, Aristobulus, and Antiochus.Corbulo retired into Syria, which province, as being vacant by the death of its governor Ummidius, was intrusted to him.
One of the famous cities of Asia, Laodicea, was that same year overthrown by an earthquake, and, without any relief from us, recovered itself by its own resources.In Italy meanwhile the old town of Puteoli obtained from Nero the privileges of a colony with an additional name.A further enrolment of veterans in Tarentum and Antium did but little for those thinly peopled places; for most scattered themselves in the provinces where they had completed their military service.Not being accustomed to tie themselves by marriage and rear children, they left behind them homes without families.For whole legions were no longer transplanted, as in former days, with tribunes and centurions and soldiers of every grade, so as to form a state by their unity and mutual attachment, but strangers to one another from different companies, without a head or any community of sentiment, were suddenly gathered together, as it might be out of any other class of human beings, and became a mere crowd rather than a colony.
As at the elections for praetors, now generally under the Senate's control there was the excitement of a particularly keen competition, the emperor quieted matters by promoting the three supernumerary candidates to legionary commands.He also raised the dignity of the Senate, by deciding that all who appealed from private judges to its house, were to incur the same pecuniary risk as those who referred their cause to the emperor.Hitherto such an appeal had been perfectly open, and free from penalty.
At the close of the year Vibius Secundus, a Roman knight, on the accusation of the Moors, was convicted of extortion, and banished from Italy, contriving through the influence of his brother Vibius Crispus to escape heavier punishment.