Battle of Tigranocerta

The Battle of Tigranocerta (Տիգրանակերտի ճակատամարտ, Tigranakerti tchakatamart) was fought on 6 October 69 BC between the forces of the Roman Republic and the army of the Kingdom of Armenia led by King Tigranes the Great. The Roman force, led by Consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus, defeated Tigranes, and as a result, captured Tigranes' capital city of Tigranocerta. The battle arose from the Third Mithridatic War being fought between the Roman Republic and Mithridates VI of Pontus, whose daughter Cleopatra was married to Tigranes. Mithridates fled to seek shelter with his son-in-law, and Rome invaded the Kingdom of Armenia. Having laid siege to Tigranocerta, the Roman forces fell back behind a nearby river when the large Armenian army approached. Feigning retreat, the Romans crossed at a ford and fell on the right flank of the Armenian army. After the Romans defeated the Armenian cataphracts, the balance of Tigranes' army, which was mostly made up of raw levies and peasant troops from his extensive empire, panicked and fled, and the Romans remained in charge of the field. Tigranes the Great Tigranes' expansion into the Near East led to the creation of an Armenian empire that stretched almost across the entire region. With his father-in-law and ally securing the empire's western flank, Tigranes was able to conquer territories in Parthia and Mesopotamia and annex the lands of the Levant. In Syria, he began the construction of the city of Tigranocerta (also written Tigranakert), which he named after himself, and imported a multitude of peoples, including Arabs, Greeks, and Jews, to populate it. The city soon became the king's headquarters in Syria and flourished as a great centre for Hellenistic culture, complete with theatres, parks and hunting grounds. This period of Armenian hegemony in the region, however, was coming close to an end with a series of Roman victories in the Roman–Mithridatic Wars. Friction between the two had existed for several decades, although it was during the Third Mithridatic War that the Roman armies under Lucullus made significant progress against Mithridates, forcing him to take refuge with Tigranes.