Chronograph Русский Open the atlasAtlas

Nero crowns Tiridates I in Rome

Tiridates, brother of the Parthian king, travelled to Rome and received the crown of Armenia from Nero’s hands in the Forum, sealing the compromise that ended the war over Armenia: its king would be a Parthian prince, but one approved by Rome.

Date
66year known
Place
Rometoday: Rome, Italy · Western and Central Europe
Participants
Nero, Tiridates I of Armenia, Kingdom of Armenia, Roman Empire, Parthian Empire
Threads
Europe in the Roman age (1st–5th c.)
Also known as
Golden Day; Tiridates’ visit to Rome; Золотой день; Визит Трдата в Рим

Under the agreement reached with Corbulo at Rhandeia in 63, Tiridates had laid his diadem before a statue of Nero and undertaken to receive it back only from the emperor himself. He set out with his family, a retinue of nobles and magi and 3,000 Parthian horsemen; as a Zoroastrian priest he would not defile water by a sea voyage, and the overland journey through Thrace and Illyria took nine months. Nero met him at Neapolis and honoured him with games at Puteoli.

Tiridates reached Rome in 66. The day after his arrival, Nero in triumphal dress received the kneeling king in the Forum and placed the diadem on his head. The festivities included a “Golden Day” in the Theatre of Pompey, gilded for the occasion. Nero closed the doors of the Temple of Janus as a sign of universal peace and showered Tiridates with gifts — worth 200 million sesterces according to Cassius Dio, more than 100 million according to Suetonius; the king took Roman craftsmen home to rebuild Artaxata, which he renamed Neronia. Some Roman writers held that Nero had in effect ceded Armenia to Parthia, but the settlement kept the peace between the two empires for some fifty years, until Trajan invaded Armenia in 114.

Open in the interactive atlas

Connections

Causes and preconditions

Related events

Same participants

Same place

Adjacent events in the thread

Meanwhile in the world

Other regions, within a year of this event

Eastern Europe

Balkans and Anatolia

Middle East and Egypt

Africa

Central and Northern Asia

South Asia

East Asia

Southeast Asia and Oceania

North America

Latin America

The same period

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Tiridates I of Armenia
  2. Wikipedia (English): Nero
  3. Wikipedia (Russian): Трдат I
  4. Wikipedia (Russian): Нерон
  5. Cassius Dio. Roman History, LXIII.1–7.
  6. Suetonius. Nero, 13, 30.
  7. Hovannisian R. G. (ed.) The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times. Vol. 1. — New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
  8. Champlin E. Nero. — Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.