ile he avoided a disaster like Crassus's, and indeed sacked the Parthian capital, he could not effect a permanent conquest nor even overlordship, and was forced to retreat in some disarray. (burney and lang 200) Later, dynastic quarrels might temporarily distract the Parthians, but they always re-emerged, and posed an ongoing threat, at least potentially, to the client-states and provinces of Syria, and ultimately to the entire East. Parthia thus posed a unique problem to Roman statecraft. The primary solution to that problem, the acceptance and utilization of the role of Armenia as a buffer state between the Roman and Parthian spheres of domination, was likewise unique. In one way or another, Armenia would play this buffer-state role for about half a millenium, from the first century BC into the fifth century AD. The scope of the following discussion will be narrower, considering the role of Armenia in Romano-Parthian relations under the Julio-Claudian emperors, from Augustus to Nero, though some reference will be made where appropriate to earlier and later events.
The Julio-Claudian era forms a natural period within the overall development of the Armenian buffer-state function. At the beginning of this period, Augustus, concerned primarily with the stabilization rather than expansion of the Roman orbit, implicitly elected not to attempt to repeat Mark Antony's attempted conquest of Parthia, and further to accept an independent Armenia, albeit under Roman influence, as buffer state between the Roman and Parthian spheres of influence. At the end of the period, Nero acquiesced in the establishment of a branch of the Parthian royal family as rulers of Armenia, insisting only on the nominal expression of overlordship conveyed by the Armenian king--brother of the king of Parthia--receiving his diadem in Rome, at Nero's hand.
On one level, then, the evolution of the Armenian buffer state from Augustus to Nero marks a s...