“Rome often seemed infinitely more important than the rest of the empire together—and the amount of space devoted to its affairs by the aristocratically-minded ancient historians suggests that this was often what they thought too. But still the capital was not everything; and the government had to devote continuous, unobtrusive attention to the vast imperial territories, and above all to the immensely long frontiers.
The only frontier which presented serious problems was the eastern one, for Parthia, a feudal state in Iraq and Iran, was the one substantial foreign power with which Rome had to contend, anywhere in the world. The relations between the two governments were perpetually bedevilled by the mountainous kingdom of Armenia, which extended north of Mesopotamia as far as the Caucasus. Both Rome and Parthia always coveted that country, and neither was ever able to reduce it to subordination for long; though the Romans at least, and presumably the Parthians too, often boasted publicly that it had been conquered. Above all, neither of the two empires could allow it to be absorbed by the other. Each felt the territory was a dagger pointed at its own heart.”
Nero by Michael Grant, Dorset Press, NY 1970 p.58
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