Trdat I.

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Modern statue of Trdate in the park of Versailles

Trdat I. (Latinized: Tiridates ; Armenian Տրդատ Ա , eastern arm .: Trdat I. , western arm .: Drtad I. ), son of the Parthian great king Vonones II. , Was with interruptions from 52/53 to 60 and 61 (66) to 75 King of Armenia and founder of the Armenian line of the Arsacids .

Trdat was also a Zoroastrian priest and was accompanied by another Skinny on his journey to Rome in 66. At the beginning of the 20th century, Franz Cumont speculated that Trdat was important in the emergence of the Mithraic cult , which Cumont saw as the Roman version of Zoroastrianism. This theory is rejected today.

Surname

The name Trdat developed from the name Tiridat, which means given in Tir . Tir was the Armenian Parthian god of literature, science and the arts. The deity Tir is based on the Avestian god Tischtrya and was later merged with the Greek god Apollon .

Rise to power

Trdat was the son of Vonones II and a Greek concubine and brother of the later great kings Vologaeses I , Pakoros and Osroes I. Practically nothing is known about his young years. He spent this in media , where his father was governor.

In 51 the Roman promagistrate of Cappadocia Julius Paelignus invaded Armenia and devastated the country. Later on, Armenia was occupied by the Iberian usurper Rhadamistos . He had killed his uncle Mithridates of Armenia and seized power. Great King Vologaeses I took advantage of this situation in 52 and invaded Armenia with his army. He conquered the royal city of Artaxata (near today's city of Artaschat ) and proclaimed his younger brother Trdat to be king. This act, however, broke the treaty between Rome and Parthia, according to which the Romans had the right to appoint and crown the Armenian king. But Vologaeses I claimed that the Armenian throne had belonged to his ancestors and had now been usurped by foreign kings. Due to an epidemic and civil unrest, the Parthians had to withdraw, which gave Rhadamistos the opportunity to return. Rhadamistos was driven out by a revolt in 55 and replaced by Trdat. Rhadamistos fled with his pregnant wife Zenobia . She asked him to stab her because she would rather die than be captured. Rhadamistos stabbed his wife and threw her into the Araxes River . But Zenobia was not dead and was fished from the river by shepherds and brought to King Trdat. She received them with honor. Rhadamistos escaped to Iberia, but was executed a little later on the orders of his father Parasmanes I for a plot.

Domination

Armenia had been occupied by the Iberians allied with Rome since 41. Trdat expelled the Iberian Rhadamistos in 54 and restored Parthian sovereignty. This called Rome on the scene. In 58 Nero sent the general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo , who conquered Armenia and installed Tigranes of Cappadocia , who had been educated in Rome, as vassal king. When the latter undertook a campaign of conquest against the Parthian province of Adiabene in 61 , the Parthian great king Vologaeses I struck back. Corbulo had to consent in 63 that Trdat was reinstated in his rule, but could make it a condition that he lay down his crown and accept it from Nero in Rome. In 66 Trdat was crowned in Rome. Armenia became a vassal state of the Romans, who had to approve the respective Arsakid rulers.

War with the Alans

In the year 72 the Alans - belligerent nomads from the tribal union of the Sarmatians - led several raids to Media Atropatene and northern Armenia. Trdat I and his brother Pakoros , the king of Media, met them in several battles in which Trdat I was captured but quickly freed. The Alans withdrew from Armenia and Media Atropatene with a lot of booty. The King of Iberia Mirdat I asked Emperor Vespasian for help against the Alans. He helped to fortify the Armazi fortress near the Iberian capital Mtskheta .

An Aramaic inscription near Tbilisi showed that Trdat I also waged war against the Iberians in his last years. The exact date of the end of his reign is unknown. Various sources name Sanatruces as his successor.

It is known that Trdat's nephew, Axidares , son of Pakoros, became king of Armenia in 110.

reception

Trdat is a character in Georg Friedrich Handel's operas Nero (1705), Radamisto (1720) and Reinhard Keiser's opera Octavia (1705) as well as the libretto Zenobia by Pietro Metastasio , which was set to music by around twenty-five composers .

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cumont, Les réligions orientales dans le paganisme romaine (Conférences faites au Collége de France en 1905)
  2. ↑ Roger Beck: MITHRAISM . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica (English, including references)
  3. ^ Mary Boyce : A History of Zoroastrianism , Brill Academic Publishers 1991, p. 77, ISBN 90-04-10474-7
  4. ^ A b Robert K. Sherk: ANRW II.7, Political History (Provinces and Fringe Peoples: Greek Balkans; Asia Minor) , Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1980 Berlin & New York, pp. 954-1052, ISBN 3-11- 008015-X
  5. ↑ Tacitus , Annalen 12.50.1–2
  6. ^ Tacitus, Annalen , 7/13
  7. ↑ Ehsan Yarshater: The Cambridge History of Iran , Cambridge University Press, 1983 Massachusetts, pp. 80–83, ISBN 0-521-20092-X
  8. ↑ Flavius ​​Josephus : De bello Iudaico 7.8.4
  9. ↑ Classical Greek, Roman and Armenian sources name Sanatruces. In the Armenian sources he is equated with the martyr Judas Thaddäus . Professor Nina Garsoian says there is no explicit evidence that Sanatruces was Trdat's successor. Richard G. Hovannisian: The Armenian people from ancient to modern times: from antiquity to the fourteenth century. Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, ISBN 0-312-10168-6 , p. 69.
  10. ↑ Armenia and Iran ii: The pre-Islamic period. In: Encyclopædia Iranica
personal data
SURNAME Trdat I.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tiridates
BRIEF DESCRIPTION King of Armenia
DATE OF BIRTH before 51
DATE OF DEATH after 75