The capital Tigranocerta had such amenities as a Greek theatre, hunting parks & pleasure gardens. Four of his vassal kings stood about his throne, and when he rode forth on horseback, they ran on foot before and beside him. He always wore everywhere (even when hunting) a tiara of precious stones. Theoretically an equal of the gods, he clothed himself in a tunic striped in white and purple, and a mantle entirely purple. He displayed all the pomp and magnificence becoming to a successor of Darius or Xerxes. Tigranes' public appearances were spectacular. Tigranes' title of King of Kings was then well justified and he made sure he looked the part as the historian V. Further, populations were relocated to reduce dissension and increase loyalty wherever required. Within the empire, conquered states might have kept their political apparatus but they were still obliged to pay tribute and contribute to Tigranes' army. This comment may well have been based on a misunderstanding and the four men in question could well have been close counsellors who were also kings of their own respective regions but served the Armenian king as viceroys. 125 CE) famously noted that Tigranes was always followed around by an entourage of four kings who acted as his servants. The Armenian king even sacked Ecbatana, the Parthian royal summer residence in 87 BCE while the Parthians were struggling to deal with invading northern nomads.įrom 85 BCE, having acquired a decent-sized empire, Tigranes rather grandly began calling himself the “King of Kings” (Persian: shahanshah), although the title is further evidence that he left conquered monarchs to rule as vassals. The latter city invited him to be their king and subsequently minted silver tetradrachm coins with images of Tigranes wearing his eastern tiara and, on the reverse, a woman with a turreted crown and holding the palm of victory. He conquered Cappadocia, Adiabene, Gordyene, Media Atropatene, Phoenicia and parts of Cilicia and Syria, including Antioch. With formidable siege engines and units of heavily-armoured cavalry, he then re-took the “Seventy Valleys” and went on an extended spree of conquest from 88 to 85 BCE. First, he annexed the other part of traditional Armenia, the kingdom of Sophene in 94 BCE. The Armenian monarch could thus set about expanding his own kingdom even further. Tigranes was able to take advantage of the crumbling of the Seleucid Empire as well as the Parthians being distracted by the still chaotic aftermath of Mithridates II's death in 91 BCE and invasions on their eastern borders.
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