Rome's Great Eastern War

Rome’s Eastern Gamble: War and Conquest in the Ancient East

Despite Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean, by the turn of the first century BC, Rome’s influence barely stretched into the East. In the century since Rome’s defeat of the Seleucid Empire in the 180s BC, the East was dominated by the rise of new empires: Parthia, Armenia and Pontus, each vying to recreate the glories of the Persian Empire.

By the 80s BC, the Pontic Empire of Mithridates had grown so bold that it i…