Armenia in 218 B.C.

Armenia — Spring 218 BC · A Highland Vassal of the East.

The Orontid kingdom of the Armenian highland — a mountainous, horse-rearing realm between the headwaters of the Euphrates and the Caspian gates, heir to the old kingdom of Urartu and ruled by an Iranian-descended royal house. In 218 BC it is a semi-autonomous vassal within the Seleucid sphere, governing itself from the royal cities of the Araxes valley while paying the deference (and the famed Armenian foals) owed to the Great King in the south.

For more than a century the Orontid (Eruandid) kings have ruled Greater Armenia as a satrapy in name and a kingdom in fact — descendants of the Iranian house that governed Armenia for the Achaemenids, now bending, when they must, to the Seleucids. In 218 the diadem rests with Orontes IV, last of the line. While Antiochus III drives south into Coele-Syria, the mountains keep Armenia at the edge of his cares — but not for long. Within a decade the Great King will turn north, break the Orontids, and set his own strategoi over the highland.