which ended the division of the Armenian nucleus. Then, Tigranes forced, one by one, the outlying kingdoms--Iberia, Albania, Media Atropatene, Gordyene, Adiabene, Osrhoene, Commagene, and the district of Nisibis (Mygdonia)--to accept his overlordship and so, in the case of some of them, to abandon the earlier overlordship of the Seleucids or of the Arsacids (82). In the alliance which he formed with his father-in-law, Mithridates Eupator of Pontus, Tigranes appears decidedly to have played the role of the senior partner. Finally, in 84 B.C., he conquered the Seleucid throne. An Armenian cosmocracy had been created, a successor of all the cosmocratic traditions hitherto known. It stretched from the Caucasus to Palestine and from the Mediterranean to the Caspian; and its new capital, Tigranocerta, 'contrôlait la grande route de commerce qui, partie d'Antioche, filait par Zeugma, Edesse, Nisibe et Arbèles vers Ecbatane et Hécatompylos chez les Parthes, pour gagner la Bactriane et l'Inde' (83). Prosperity and peace, so long as it lasted crowned his victories. But, as heir of the Seleucids and ally of the King of Pontus, Tigranes became involved in the great struggle between the Hellenistic East and rome which was then convulsing the Eastern Mediterranean; he ended by suffering defeat at the hands of Lucullus and, later, of Pompey. By 66 B.C., the imperial venture of Tigranes the Great had vanished and his own Armenian kingdom had had 'Roman friendship' imposed upon it--the second juridical contact. But the unity of Great Armenia and its cosmocratic claims remained (84).