Research Notes:

Son of Artaxias I; reigning, traditionally, for 15 years; defeated by Pompey, made to accept Roman suzerainty and to surrender his sons as hostages in the Spring of 65. ¹

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From 78 to 63 BC the king of Iberia was Artag, apparently a son of Arshak. Of his early reign we know little, but he was the first Iberian king encountered by the Romans (he was Artoces to Appian, Cassius Dio, Eutropius and other chroniclers of Rome's Mithridatic Wars), and we have fairly precise information about his actions at the end of his reign. Mithridates VI caused the Romans to enter Iberia: around 110 BC Mithridates threatened Roman hegemony by conquering the Graeco-Sarmatian Bosphoran kingdom around the Sea of Azov, at the northeast extreme of the known world; Mithridates then conquered northwestern ('Lesser') Armenia and the Colchis, before turning on Anatolia. King Tigranes II of Greater Armenia, however, sided with Mithridates VI, invaded northwest Parthia and dominated Caucasian Albania, taking advantage of Rome's predicament, since Mithridates had landed in mainland Greece. Mithridates was eventually expelled from Greece and much of Anatolia, both by local rebellions and Roman legions. In 73 BC he began his third and last war with Rome: the Romans first sent Lucullus in 69 BC to attack Tigranes II, Mithridates' ally. Iberians and Caucasian Albanians fought for the Armenians, the Iberian javelin-throwers proving fearsome. Whether Artag fought at the Armenians' behest or to prevent Roman incursion into Iberia is unknown, but Georgian participation in the war made Roman invasion inevitable.

Winter and mutinous soldiery made Lucullus withdraw, but in 66 BC Gnaeus Pompey resumed the war and won resoundingly. Mithridates was forced (after clashing with Iberian forces as he fled via the Çoruh valley) to cross Colchis to the north. There he found his son, Machares, whom he had put on the throne of Bosphorus,hostile, and had to turn back to Dioscourias. Mithridates then faced a rebellion by another treacherous son, Pharnakes: in 63 BC he killed himself. Tigranes II of Armenia, desperate to regain his throne, usurped by his son (also Tigranes), now concluded a humiliating peace with Pompey, surrendering his western provinces and becoming a tribute-paying Roman ally. Pursuing Mithridates through Colchis was still on Pompey's agenda, but securing Iberia and Caucasian Albania as allies or subjects of Rome had priority, since both these kingdoms could block the Caucasian passes to the steppe nomads whom the Romans now perceived as their most serious threat. Pompey also wanted to secure the valuable 'silk road' from both India and China, across the Caspian (whose waters Pompey tasted), through Caucasian Albania, Iberia and Colchis. In December 66 BC, an army of 70,000 Iberians under King Artag and Caucasian Albanians under King Oroiz attacked the Romans on the Kura, but were forced to conclude a truce. Pompey overwintered in the upper Kura, descending in spring to attack Iberia, killing 9,000 and taking 10,000 prisoners, before going down river to deal with the Albanians. Like Tigranes II, Artag sent peace envoys; unlike Tigranes, he prepared an ambush at Mtskheta, but Pompey overtook him and took the garrison. Artag crossed the Kura and burned the bridges. Pompey took over all inner Iberia south of the Kura, waiting for summer to dry up the rivers and let his army ford the Kura and Aragvi, destroy the forest cover, and rout Artag. Artag had to offer his sons as hostages, give Pompey 'a bed, a table and a throne made of gold' and promise fealty to the Roman Republic, before he could surrender without fear of being taken to Rome in chains. (The captives paraded in Pompey's triumph in Rome included three Iberian nobles, a Colchian skeptouchos, two Caucasian Albanians, Tigranes junior, five sons of Mithridates VI and two daughters of the Jewish king Aristoboulos.)

Pompey crossed from Iberia to Colchis, widening the mule track over the Likhi Pass for wheeled vehicles, bluffed and fought his way to the coast and appointed Aristarchos, a Greek governor, over a subdued, rather than conquered central Colchis (Pompey avoided fighting the hostile Svans, Abkhaz and Circassians of northern Colchis: it was enough that Mithridates was now blockaded and isolated.) Pompey then backtracked through Iberia, and subdued king Oroiz of the Caucasian Albanians as he had Artag. By 64 BC Transcaucasia was effectively bound to Rome as three allied kingdoms — Iberia, Armenia and Caucasian Albania — and the protectorate of Colchis, since Aristarchos reported to Deiotar, ruler of Paphlagonia....

To imagine society and life in Artag's Iberia we have Strabo's descriptions, based on reports by Theophanes the Miletian, who accompanied Pompey's army to Iberia in 66 BC. Strabo notes the contrast between Iberia's highlanders and lowlanders, the former resembling Scythians, the latter Persians — reflecting the difference between nomadic north Ossetians and Chechens, settled in Kartli under previous kings, and native Georgians in the valleys. Strabo discusses the king's deputy, often his brother or the namesake of a present or former king (which has misled historians to presuppose a diarchy in Iberia), the theocratic power of Iberian priests, acting also as lawmakers and negotiators, and a third estate, consisting of freemen who were both farmers and warriors (the term 'eri' means both 'people' and 'army') and 'the king's slaves', or crown serfs. Other members of the lower orders, immigrant communities in particular, were organized in communes. Iberian towns are described as well built, with tiled roofs. Of foreign traders and enslaved prisoners of war, Strabo says nothing. Archeologists note frequent second-century BC burials without grave goods, often in enormous wine jars, suggesting a military society changing into one of burghers and urban craftsmen.

Not all of Artag's sons were Roman hostages: in 63 BC he was succeeded by his son Parnavaz II (also known in Georgian chronicles as Bartom or Bratman). For the next twenty years under Parnavaz II, Iberia-Kartli seems to have been peaceful. ²