Armenische Arsakiden zur Zeit der Antonine. Ein Beitrag zur Korrektur der armenischen Königsliste

Abstract

After Hadrian’s death in mid–138 A.D., the Parthians tried once again to assert their influence in Armenia. King Vologaeses, appointed by Hadrian himself in 117, was driven out and perhaps killed. Hadrian’s successor, emperor Antoninus Pius, was able to repulse the Parthian attack in a diplomatic way and to appoint a new client-king for Armenia. This new ruler was Pacorus, possibly a grandson of his name-sake, the former Parthian great-king. Pacorus’ reign came to an end, when the Parthians seized Armenia in 161 A.D. Following the Roman reconquest, several candidates tried to seize the Armenien throne; their rights were discussed by Marcus Cornelius Fronto, teacher of the new co-emperor L. Verus. Finally, the Roman government neither restituted Pacorus (who later lived at Rome and was adopted into the imperial family), nor respected the hereditary right of Vologaeses, no doubt a son of the king in Hadrian’s time. As a result, there was found one Sohaemus, a scion of a no longer ruling dynasty from Emesa/Homs, whose relationship to the Arsacids (and even to the Achaemenids) was more or less faked. Sohaemus, who is at last mentioned in 172 A.D., may have died in the middle of the decade. Many scholars maintain that his successor may have been Vologaeses II, father of the Armenian king Khosroes in the time of Septimius Severus and Caracalla. This additional Vologaeses is however completly unhistorical. Even the Armenian historical tradition knows only one king Vałarsh during the second century A.D., who is moved from Hadrians’ time to the period of Pius and Marcus Aurelius. So we have to delete this fictitious second Vologaeses from the Armenian king-list and must look for a real Arsacid successor of the pseudo-Arsacid Sohaemus. This was apparently Khosroes himself, a descendant of Vologaeses I., who had disappeared in 138. At the date of his nomination (between approximately 175 and 180) he was still a child and got a bit of sovereignity only after Commodus’ assassination.