Tigran II’s Great Country – Armenian Empire or Historical Armenia?

Many historians and simply Armenians living in Armenia and the Diaspora believe that the country of Tigran II the Great was an empire.

Meanwhile, there is a considerable number of people who consider the country of Tigran II just an Armenian state with no power outside its borders.

According to Wikipedia, an empire is a powerful state, which bases its internal and foreign policies on the military classes and acts in the interests of those classes. As a rule, the empire unites different peoples and territories into a single state with a single political center, which plays a significant role in the region or even throughout the whole world.

In this sense, the country of Tigran was, of course, an empire. He seized the territories of neighboring countries only relying on military force, conquered many nations like the Parthians, Greeks, Arabs, Jews, and others.

However, there is another point. If you go deep into history, you can see that the captured territories used to be either single Armenian states or separate Armenian kingdoms.

Thus, Tigran II did not seize but liberated the territories that once had been a part of the Armenian state, which “nullifies” his achievements. An obvious conclusion would rise that Armenia was not an empire because it just liberated its historical territories.

However, if we discard the historical past and only examine the period of Tigran’s reign, then the country of Tigran can be fully considered a powerful empire. His country was indeed large and its power reached Egypt.

by Tigran Hskaordi

TIGRAN THE GREAT: THE PATRIOT-EMPEROR (in English)