Kingdom of Sophene

The Kingdom of Sophene was the Armenian border kingdom between Greater Armenia and Syria, independent from the third century BC until about 95 BC. Its land had been the southwestern corner of the old satrapy of Armenia, and when the Seleucid grip loosened, a branch of the Orontid house made Sophene a kingdom of its own, ruling from Arsamosata over highland valleys where Armenian, Iranian, Syrian and Greek gods shared the same hills. The little kingdom lived by balance: bowing to Seleucids when they were strong, sheltering behind Rome's shadow when Armenia grew ambitious. Its luck ran out against its own kin. Tigranes the Great, building the Artaxiad empire that would briefly rule the whole Near East, swallowed Sophene around 95 BC and folded it into his domains. Sophene's century of independence ended, but its princes' blood ran on in Armenian and Commagenian royal houses for generations. Roman records remember its kings as faithful, quarrelsome allies on the Euphrates frontier.