For the rest, the matters which Germanicus and Piso had been sent to the East to settle were complicated and difficult, and therefore afforded countless opportunities and pretexts for quarrels. Rome found herself involved in a grave difficulty in the East. Some years before, the Parthians, left without a king, had sent to Italy for Vonones, a son of their old King Phraates, who had been educated in Rome at the house of Augustus. To have at the head of the Parthian Empire a king who had been educated on the banks of the Tiber was a stroke of luck for Rome. The Parthians, however, very soon discovered that Vonones had become too much Latinised at Rome, and had forgotten too completely the ideas and customs of his nation. Consequently, they had turned him out and elected in his stead Artabanus. Vonones had fled to Armenia, and had succeeded in getting elected King of the Armenians. But Artabanus, not wishing his predecessor to become king of a vast empire marching with his own, from which he might retrieve in due course the crown of the Parthians, had succeeded also by means of various intrigues and threats in getting Vonones expelled from Armenia. The difficulty which Tiberius had charged Germanicus and Piso to study and resolve on the spot was actually this: whether Rome should or should not give ear to Vonones’s clamour and replace him on the throne of Armenia. The difficulty was a serious one, as each of the two opposing courses promised grave dangers. By replacing Vonones on the throne of Armenia, Rome might implicate herself in serious quarrels, and perhaps in a war, with the King of the Parthians, who was opposed to Vonones’s restoration. By not replacing him, Rome appeared to sacrifice to the hatred of the Parthian King this faithful client of hers, whose only fault was that he had been educated in Rome; to be inclined to recognise that a prince who had been too thoroughly Romanised could not govern an Oriental state,—a confession which certainly would not encourage the protected sovereigns of Asia, great and small, to bring themselves too closely into touch with the affairs, ideas, and customs of the protecting state. In point of fact, Germanicus and Piso, who were already embittered against each other by the incidents at Athens, came into open conflict on this point. Germanicus and his supporters were in favour of sacrificing Vonones to the resentment of the King of the Parthians and to the national susceptibilities of the East; while Piso, more loyal to the authoritative traditions of the old Roman policy, which were faithfully reflected in his own more cautious judgment, decided to defend Vonones. Rome must not abandon the cause of this her faithful servant in the East!