The conduct on both sides, cautious, and we might almost say peaceful, of the last nominally ten years’ war, and its corresponding conclusion by the actual transfer of Armenia to the Parthians, while the susceptibilities of the mightier western empire were spared, bore good fruit. Armenia, under the national dynasty recognised by the Romans, was more dependent on them than formerly under the rulers forced upon the country. A Roman garrison was left at least in the district of Sophene, which most closely bordered on the Euphrates.[38] For the re-establishment of Artaxata the permission of the emperor was sought and granted, and the building was helped on by the emperor Nero with money and workmen. Between the two mighty states separated from each other by the Euphrates at no time has an equally good relation subsisted as after the conclusion of the treaty of Rhandeia in the last years of Nero and onward under the three rulers of the Flavian house. Other circumstances contributed to this. The masses of Transcaucasian peoples, perhaps allured by their participation in the last wars, during which they had found their way to Armenia as mercenaries, partly of the Iberians, partly of the Parthians, began then to threaten especially the western Parthian provinces, but at the same time the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. Probably in order to check them, immediately after the Armenian war in the year 63, the annexation was ordained of the so-called kingdom of Pontus, _i.e._ the south-east corner of the coast of the Black Sea, with the town of Trapezus and the region of the Phasis. The great Oriental expedition, which this emperor was just on the point of beginning when the catastrophe overtook him (68), and for which he already had put the flower of the troops of the West on the march, partly to Egypt, partly along the Danube, was meant no doubt to push forward the imperial frontier in other directions;[39] but its proper aim was the passes of the Caucasus above Tiflis, and the Scythian tribes settled on the northern slope, in the first instance the Alani.[40] These were just assailing Armenia on the one side and Media on the other. So little was that expedition of Nero directed against the Parthians that it might rather be conceived of as undertaken to help them; overagainst the wild hordes of the north a common defensive action was at any rate indicated for the two civilised states of the West and East. Vologasus indeed declined with equal friendliness the amicable summons of his Roman colleague to visit him, just as his brother had done, at Rome, since he had no liking on his part to appear in the Roman forum as a vassal of the Roman ruler; but he declared himself ready to present himself before the emperor when he should arrive in the East, and the Orientals doubtless, though not the Romans, sincerely mourned for Nero. King Vologasus addressed to the senate officially an entreaty to hold Nero’s memory in honour, and, when a pseudo-Nero subsequently emerged, he met with sympathy above all in the Parthian state.