With the disappearance of the Seleucid and other Macedonian succession States, the inheritance of Alexander in the Eastern Mediterranean was disputed by two outsiders, Arsacid Iran (Parthia) and Rome. Armenia was one of the disputed territories, and doubly so, both as a part of that inheritance and as a vassal, on the one hand, of the Achaemenids, to whose succession the Arsacids laid claims, and, on the other, of the Roman State. In the course of the struggle, begun by the latter in 54 B.C., the Artaxiad Dynasty came to extinction at the beginning of the first century (85), and the throne of Armenia fell prey to a series of foreign contestants, Median, Judaean, Iranian, Pontic, and Iberian princes, whose conflicting interests were supported by the two opposing imperial neighbours and by different political factions inside the kingdom. At last, however, a modus vivendi was reached by the empires. In the Peace of Rhandeia of A.D. 63, it was agreed that an Arsacid cadet should reign in Armenia, but as a vassal of Caesar. In 66, the Arsacid Tiridates I, who had earlier claimed the throne of Armenia, made his celebrated journey to Rome, to receive amid much pomp his investiture from the hands of Nero. The Third Armenian Monarchy was thus founded. The settlement of Rhandeia signified an important principle of the Armenian problem. It was not, however, successfully put into practice for any length of time. The struggle