Many spoke highly of these results, as due to the king's alarm and the threats of Corbulo, and as splendid successes. Others explained them as a secret understanding that with the cessation of war on both sides and the departure of Vologeses, Tigranes also was to quit Armenia. "Why," it was asked, "had the Roman army been withdrawn from Tigranocerta? Why had they abandoned in peace what they had defended in war? Was it better for them to have wintered on the confines of Cappadocia in hastily constructed huts, than in the capital of a kingdom lately recovered?" There had been, in short, a suspension of arms, in order that Vologeses might fight some other foe than Corbulo, and that Corbulo might not further risk the glory he had earned in so many years. For, as I have related, he had asked for a general exclusively for the defence of Armenia, and it was heard that Cæsennius Pætus was on his way. And indeed he had now arrived, and the army was thus divided; the fourth and twelfth legions, with the fifth which had lately been raised in Mœsia and the auxiliaries from Pontus, Galatia and Cappadocia, were under the command of Pætus, while the third, sixth, and tenth legions and the old soldiery of Syria remained with Corbulo. All else they were to share or divide between them according to circumstances. But as Corbulo could not endure a rival, so Pætus, who would have been sufficiently honoured by ranking second to him, disparaged the results of the war, and said repeatedly that there had been no bloodshed or spoil, that the sieges of cities were sieges only in name, and that he would soon impose on the conquered tribute and laws and Roman administration, instead of the empty shadow of a king.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Alfred John Church. William Jackson Brodribb. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. reprinted 1942.
