Artaxias I
Artaxias I was the Seleucid governor of Armenia who declared himself king in 189 BC when Rome broke Antiochus III at Magnesia, was recognised by the Roman senate as the price of his defection, founded the dynasty that gave Armenia Tigranes the Great and the capital, Artaxata, that Hannibal in exile is said to have laid out for him, and fixed the frontiers of the Armenian kingdom by conquest and by boundary stones, some of which have been dug up with his name on them in Aramaic. Strabo is the source for the founding. Antiochus III had appointed two Armenian nobles, Artaxias and Zariadres, as his strategoi over Greater Armenia and Sophene, and after the treaty of Apamea in 188 both went over to Rome and took the title of king. Artaxias then enlarged his kingdom in every direction, taking land from the Medes, the Iberians, the Syrians and the Cappadocians. Strabo says the whole country came to speak one language. Hannibal came to his court about 185 after fleeing Antiochus, and Plutarch says the old Carthaginian saw a site on the Araxes that wanted a city, drew the plan, and persuaded the king to build. Artaxata was Armenia's capital for five centuries. The boundary stones, found around Lake Sevan and inscribed in Aramaic, the chancery language of the old Persian empire, record him dividing the land between villages and call him son of Zariadres and king of the Eruandids, which shows the dynasty he claimed to continue. He survived a war with Antiochus IV about 165, in which he was defeated and kept his throne as a vassal, and joined a coalition against the Parthians. The Armenian tradition written down centuries later by Moses of Khoren remembered him as Artashes, the king who married the Alan princess Satenik after catching her with a lasso across the river. He died about 160 and was followed by his sons; his great-grandson Tigranes made the kingdom an empire for twenty years.
- Lived: 230 BCE – 160 BCE
- Nationality: Armenian
- Roles: king, monarch, founder
