For a time the arrangements made did their work. So long as Tiberius bore sway with a firm hand, and so long as king Artaxias of Armenia lived, tranquillity continued in the East; but in the last years of the old emperor, when he from his solitary island allowed things to take their course and shrank back from all interference, and especially after the death of Artaxias (about 34), the old game once more began. King Artabanus, exalted by his long and prosperous government and by many successes achieved against the border peoples of Iran, and convinced that the old emperor would have no inclination to begin a heavy war in the East, induced the Armenians to proclaim his own eldest son, Arsaces, as ruler; that is, to exchange the Roman suzerainty for the Parthian. Indeed he seemed directly to aim at war with Rome; he demanded the estate left by his predecessor and rival Vonones, who had died in Cilicia, from the Roman government, and his letters to it as undisguisedly expressed the view that the East belonged to the Orientals, as they called by the right name the abominations at the imperial court, of which people in Rome ventured only to whisper in their most intimate circles. He is said even to have made an attempt to possess himself of Cappadocia. But he had miscalculated on the old lion. Tiberius was even at Capreae formidable not merely to his courtiers, and was not the man to let himself, and in himself Rome, be mocked with impunity. He sent Lucius Vitellius, the father of the subsequent emperor, a resolute officer and skilful diplomatist, to the East with plenary power similar to that which Gaius Caesar and Germanicus had formerly had, and with the commission in case of need to lead the Syrian legions over the Euphrates. At the same time he applied the often tried means for giving trouble to the rulers of the East by insurrections and pretenders in their own land. To the Parthian prince, whom the Armenian nationalists had proclaimed as ruler, he opposed a prince of the royal house of the Iberians, Mithradates, brother of the Armenian king Pharasmanes, and directed the latter, as well as the prince of the Albanians, to support the Roman pretender to Armenia with military force. Large bands of the Transcaucasian Sarmatae, warlike and easy of access to every wooer, were hired with Roman money for the inroads into Armenia. The Roman pretender succeeded in poisoning his rival through bribed courtiers, and in possessing himself of the country and of the capital Artaxata. Artabanus sent in place of the murdered prince another son Orodes to Armenia, and attempted also on his part to procure Transcaucasian auxiliaries; but only few made good their way to Armenia, and the bands of Parthian horsemen were not a match for the good infantry of the Caucasian peoples and the dreaded Sarmatian mounted archers. Orodes was vanquished in a hard pitched battle, and himself severely wounded in single combat with his rival. Then Artabanus in person