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Tigranes the Great

Assessment
In The Art of War (1521), Niccolò Machiavelli attributes Tigranes' military failure to his excessive reliance on his cavalry.

In his 1904 book on Mashtots, the historian Leo called him the greatest of all Armenia's historical heroes and contrasted the continued legacy of Mashtots with the legacy of Tigranes the Great's brief empire.
 * originally published as:

European operas
According to one count, 24 operas have been composed about Tigranes the Great by European composers,

including by prominent Italian and German composers, such as Alessandro Scarlatti (Tigrane, 1715), Antonio Vivaldi (La virtu trionfante dell'amore e dell'odio ovvero il Tigrane, 1724), Niccolò Piccinni (Tigrane, 1761), Tomaso Albinoni, Giovanni Bononcini, Francesco Gasparini, Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi, Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Lampugnani, Vincenzo Righini, Antonio Tozzi, and others.

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674640344

https://www.jstor.org/stable/730703 Alessandro Scarlatti's 'Tigrane' Reinhard G. Pauly

Armenian nationalism


According to Razmik Panossian, Tigranes the Great's short-lived empire has been a source of pride for modern Armenian nationalists. Nevertheless, his empire was a multi-ethnic one.

The phrase "sea to sea Armenia" (ծովից ծով Հայաստան, tsovits tsov Hayastan) is a popular expression used by Armenians to refer to the kingdom of Tigranes which extended from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

It is noteworthy that the present conflict with Azerbaijan is sometimes put in this perspective with such comments as: ‘We have not had this much military success since Tigran the Great; it’s about time we go on the offensive…!’ In a long history of defeats and persecution, Tigran the Great’s brief empire of 2,000 years ago is still a source of pride for Armenian nationalists.12

After the collapse of Soviet rule in Armenia October Avenue in Yerevan was renamed after Tigran the Great.He is the only king to have his image imprinted on an Armenian banknote.

H. Shiraz, Knar Hayastani, p. 46. There are many other poems with national themes, including one entitled ‘To Ararat’ (p. 353), and another which mentions the glory of Tigran the Great (p. 352).

This is not at all to deny that a sense of Armenianness, a collective identity known as Armenians, and the Armenian language, have not existed for a long time – even for millennia. The point is how knowledge of this past, the history of the modern nation, is interpreted, used and abused by nationalists for political and cultural purposes. For example, in 1992 and 1993, when Armenian forces were victorious on the battleground, one often heard the phrase: ‘we have not had so much military success since the time of Tigran the Great!’ King Tigran lived in the first century BC.

In Armenian art
https://kochar.am/am/portfolio_page/tigran-the-great/

Modern politics
https://www.primeminister.am/en/press-release/item/2020/02/15/Nikol-Pashinyan-Ilham-Aliyev/ I would ask President Aliyev not to go that far into history because when Armenian King Tigran the Great was negotiating with Pompeus, there was no such country in the South Caucasus and in the world in general named Azerbaijan. Therefore, I do not think that it is right to go that far back in history, since I can go even further and start from 405 BC, for example, but I would not do so because I do not think that it is the right way to go.

https://eurasianet.org/armenian-azerbaijani-leaders-spar-in-unprecedented-public-debate When it was Pashinyan’s turn to respond, he went back far deeper in history, to the first-century B.C. era of King Tigran the Great, when “there wasn’t any country named Azerbaijan.”

2020 war https://www.primeminister.am/en/statements-and-messages/item/2020/10/14/Nikol-Pashinyan-message-to-the-nation/ The souls, spirit and strength of our other great martyrs and heroes, King Artashes, Tigran the Great, Ashot Yerkat, Aram Manukyan, Hovhannes Baghramyan, Monte Melkonyan, Vazgen Sargsyan, are with us today. Today, the Armenians are united more than ever. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians are providing financial, economic, media-borne and political support to Armenia and Artsakh.

2018-19 https://www.primeminister.am/en/press-release/item/2018/11/19/Nikol-Pashinyan-visit-to-Gegharkunik/ Let no one try to insinuate the idea that we are poor wretch; we are strong and victorious; let no one try to speak to us with compassion, threats and contempt. It is the people of Narekatsi, Mashtots, Monte Melkonian, Marshal Baghramyan and Tigran the Great.

https://www.primeminister.am/en/foreign-visits/item/2019/02/27/visit-to-Iran./ https://www.primeminister.am/en/press-release/item/2019/02/28/Nikol-Pashinyan-meets-Isfahan-Armenian-community/ We will not allow anybody to think that the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh can be taken away because we are proud citizens of the Republic of Armenia, proud citizens of the Republic of Artsakh, we are the descendants of Tigran the Great, we are the descendants of King Pap.

Coinage
ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΤΙΓΡΑΝΟΥ Արտաշէսեան հարստութեան դրամները = Coinage of the Artaxiad dynasty of Armenia / http://haygirk.nla.am/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=2283

unsorted
While Tigran was not able to consolidate his gains, the forty-year interval of relative peace may have had the important effect of developing Greater Armenia and the network of clan relationships that would prove crucial for the preservation of Armenian identity in subsequent periods.38 https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789047444367/Bej.9789004173750.i-366_012.xml

In the 1910s, Jacques de Morgan and Isaac Don Levine estimated the population of the short-lived empire of Tigranes the Great ((r. 95 – 55 BC)) at 25 and 30 million, respectively.

text
The Armenian king, Tigran II (95–55 BC), forged an alliance with Mithradates, the king of Pontus, on the southern shore of the Black Sea. After a series of victories against Rome, Parthia and the Seleucids, Tigran united all the territories inhabited by Armenians, and added northern Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as Cilicia and Phoenicia to his domains; by 70 BC he had an empire stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. He built himself a new capital, Tigranakert (Armenian: 'built by Tigran'), and adopted the Parthian title of 'King of kings'. The site of Tigranakert cannot be determined with accuracy, but it is probably the modern town of Silvan, to the north-east of Diyarbekir. But to Rome the massive, if haphazard, empire of Tigran posed a threat; and in the autumn of 69 BC a Roman army, under the command of Lucullus, laid siege to Tigranakert and captured it. (In the following year his forces pursued Tigran, who had fled with his ally Mithradates to the Eastern Armenian capital of Artashat, or Artaxata; but when the winter supervened the Roman legions were forced to withdraw amid frost and sickness.) In 66 BC Tigran surrendered to Pompey. The brief Armenian experiment in empirebuilding was over. Armenia reverted to her position as a semi-autonomous state between an eastern and a western empire – in this case, Rome and Parthia. Within Armenia the Artaxiad dynasty spluttered and died out in AD 1.

The independence of Artashesian Armenia was conditional on the balance of power between the two new major empires in the region: the Romans in the west, and the Parthians in the south-east. Thus, when the former temporarily withdrew from Asia Minor, Armenia was subjugated to the wishes of the latter and had to pay tribute to Parthian kings. The order would occasionally reverse in the future, but the basic dynamic would remain.However, for a short period (c. 85–69 BC), when both major powers were preoccupied with their internal problems, the Armenian king Tigran II (‘The Great’, 95–55 BC) seized the opportunity and expanded his kingdom into an empire stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, including Damascus. This short-lived empire retracted back to the Armenian plateau when both Romans and Parthians once again asserted their influence in the region. After Tigran the Artashesian dynasty continued its balancing act between the two empires, despite the occasional attacks. The dynasty died out by AD 10 after a period of internal turmoil over succession. Subsequently Armenia fell to Roman rule.

Thus, some leading figures—sometimes within the same family—would support rival empires undermining any chance of political unity (e.g. Tigran the Great’s two sons ‘betrayed’ their father: one joined the Parthians, the other joined the Romans).

Armenian






http://hpj.asj-oa.am/252/ Գ.Խ. Սարգսյան, Տիգրանակերտ. Հին հայկական քաղաքային համայնքների պատմությունից. Մոսկվա, ՍՍՌՄ Գիտությունների ակադեմիայի Արևելագիտության ինստիտուտ, 1960, 160 էջ

http://hpj.asj-oa.am/2534/ Տիգրան Մեծի առասպելաբանական կերպարը (Սարգիս Հարությունյանի ծննդյան 80-ամյակին)

http://hpj.asj-oa.am/1116/ Տիգրան II-ին վերաբերող մի կարևոր ուղղում

http://lraber.asj-oa.am/1189/ Տիգրան Բ-ի և Արտավազդ Բ-ի գահատարիների քանակն ըստ Խորենացու

http://lraber.asj-oa.am/6090/ Ժողովրդական բանահյուսության արտացոլումը Խաչիկ Դաշտենցի «Տիգրան Մեծ» դրամայում

images on books https://archive.org/details/armenianlegendsp00boyarich/page/n7

https://archive.org/details/landmarksinarmen00dalerich/page/n3

https://archive.org/stream/historyofarmenia00morg#page/84/mode/2up

Jacques de Morgan


 * Tigran Mets
 * vol 11 697 698