Accordingly, at the first encounter with Pompeius, the wretchedly

led and despondent ranks of the insurgents were utterly broken,

and Perpenna, among other officers, was taken prisoner. The wretch

sought to purchase his life by delivering up the correspondence

of Sertorius, which would have compromised numerous men of standing

in Italy; but Pompeius ordered the papers to be burnt unread,

and handed him, as well as the other chiefs of the insurgents,

overto the executioner. The emigrants who had escaped dispersed;

and most of them went into the Mauretanian deserts or joined the pirates.

Soon afterwards the Plotian law, which was zealously supported

by the young Caesar in particular, opened up to a portion of them

the opportunity of returning home; but all those who had taken part

in the murder of Sertorius, with but a single exception, died

a violent death. Osca, and most of the towns which had still adhered

to Sertorius in Hither Spain, now voluntarily opened their gates

to Pompeius; Uxama (Osma), Clunia, and Calagurris alone had to be

reduced by force. The two provinces were regulated anew;

in the Further province, Metellus raised the annual tribute

of the most guilty communities; in the Hither, Pompeius dispensed

reward and punishment: Calagurris, for example, lost its independence

and was placed under Osca. A band of Sertorian soldiers, which had

collected in the Pyrenees, was induced by Pompeius to surrender,

and was settled by him to the north of the Pyrenees near Lugudunum

(St. Bertrand, in the department Haute-Garonne), as the community

of the "congregated" (-convenae-). The Roman emblems of victory

were erected at the summit of the pass of the Pyrenees;

at the close of 683, Metellus and Pompeius marched with their armies

through the streets of the capital, to present the thanks

of the nation to Father Jovis at the Capitol for the conquest

of the Spaniards. The good fortune of Sulla seemed still to be

with his creation after he had been laid in the grave, and to protect it

better than the incapable and negligent watchmen appointed to guard

it. The opposition in Italy had broken down from the incapacity

and precipitation of its leader, and that of the emigrants

from dissension within their own ranks. These defeats,

although far more the result of their own perverseness and discordance

than of the exertions of their opponents, were yet so many victories

for the oligarchy. The curule chairs were rendered once more secure.

CHAPTER II

Rule of the Sullan Restoration

External Relations

When the suppression of the Cinnan revolution, which threatened

the very existence of the senate, rendered it possible for the restored

senatorial government to devote once more the requisite attention

to the internal and external security of the empire, there emerged

affairs enough, the settlement of which could not be postponed

without injuring the most important interests and allowing

present inconveniences to grow into future dangers. Apart from

the very serious complications in Spain, it was absolutely necessary

effectually to check the barbarians in Thrace and the regions

of the Danube, whom Sulla on his march through Macedonia had only

been able superficially to chastise,(1) and to regulate, by military

intervention, the disorderly state of things along the northern

frontier of the Greek peninsula; thoroughly to suppress

the bands of pirates infesting the seas everywhere, but especially

the eastern waters; and lastly to introduce better order

into the unsettled relations of Asia Minor. The peace which Sulla

had concluded in 670 with Mithradates, king of Pontus,(2)

and of which the treaty with Murena in 673(3) was essentially

a repetition, bore throughout the stamp of a provisional arrangement

to meet the exigencies of the moment; and the relations of the Romans

with Tigranes, king of Armenia, with whom they had de facto waged war,

remained wholly untouched in this peace. Tigranes had with right

regarded this as a tacit permission to bring the Roman possessions

in Asia under his power. If these were not to be abandoned, it

was necessary to come to terms amicably or by force with the new

great-king of Asia.

In the preceding chapter we have described the movements

in Italy and Spain connected with the proceedings of the democracy,

and their subjugation by the senatorial government. In the present

chapter we shall review the external government, as the authorities

installed by Sulla conducted or failed to conduct it.

Dalmato-Macedonian Expeditions

We still recognize the vigorous hand of Sulla in the energetic measures

which, in the last period of his regency, the senate adopted almost

simultaneously against the Sertorians, the Dalmatians and Thracians,

and the Cilician pirates.

The expedition to the Graeco-Illyrian peninsula was designed partly

to reduce to subjection or at least to tame the barbarous tribes

who ranged over the whole interior from the Black Sea to the Adriatic,

and of whom the Bessi (in the great Balkan) especially were,

as it was then said, notorious as robbers even among a race

of robbers; partly to destroy the corsairs in their haunts,

especially along the Dalmatian coast. As usual, the attack took

place simultaneously from Dalmatia and from Macedonia, in which

province an army of five legions was assembled for the purpose.

In Dalmatia the former praetor Gaius Cosconius held the command,

marched through the country in all directions, and took by storm

the fortress of Salona after a two years' siege. In Macedonia

the proconsul Appius Claudius (676-678) first attempted along

the Macedono-Thracian frontier to make himself master of the mountain

districts on the left bank of the Karasu. On both sides the war

was conducted with savage ferocity; the Thracians destroyed

the townships which they took and massacred their captives,

and the Romans returned like for like. But no results of importance

were attained; the toilsome marches and the constant conflicts

with the numerous and brave inhabitants of the mountains decimated

the army to no purpose; the general himself sickened and died.

His successor, Gaius Scribonius Curio (679-681), was induced

by various obstacles, and particularly by a not inconsiderable

military revolt, to desist from the difficult expedition

against the Thracians, and to turn himself instead to the northern

frontier of Macedonia, where he subdued the weaker Dardani (in Servia)

and reached as far as the Danube. The brave and able Marcus Lucullus

(682, 683) was the first who again advanced eastward, defeated the Bessi

in their mountains, took their capital Uscudama (Adrianople),

and compelled them to submit to the Roman supremacy. Sadalas king

of the Odrysians, and the Greek towns on the east coast to the north

and south of the Balkan chain--Istropolis, Tomi, Callatis,

Odessus (near Varna), Mesembria, and others--became dependent

on the Romans. Thrace, of which the Romans had hitherto held little

more than the Attalic possessions on the Chersonese, now became

a portion--though far from obedient--of the province of Macedonia.

Piracy

But the predatory raids of the Thracians and Dardani, confined

as they were to a small part of the empire, were far less injurious

to the state and to individuals than the evil of piracy,

which was continually spreading farther and acquiring

more solid organization. The commerce of the whole Mediterranean

was in its power. Italy could neither export its products nor import

grain from the provinces; in the former the people were starving,

in the latter the cultivation of the corn-fields ceased for want

of a vent for the produce. No consignment of money, no traveller

was longer safe: the public treasury suffered most serious losses;

a great many Romans of standing were captured by the corsairs,

and compelled to pay heavy sums for their ransom, if it was not even

the pleasure of the pirates to execute on individuals the sentence

of death, which in that case was seasoned with a savage humour.

The merchants, and even the divisions of Roman troops destined

for the east, began to postpone their voyages chiefly to the unfavourable

season of the year, and to be less afraid of the winter storms

than of the piratical vessels, which indeed even at this season

did not wholly disappear from the sea. But severely as the closing

of the sea was felt, it was more tolerable than the raids

made on the islands and coasts of Greece and Asia Minor.

Just as afterwards in the time of the Normans, piratical squadrons

ran up to the maritime towns, and either compelled them to buy

themselves off with large sums, or besieged and took them by storm.

When Samothrace, Clazomenae, Samos, Iassus were pillaged

by the pirates (670) under the eyes of Sulla after peace was concluded

with Mithradates, we may conceive how matters went where neither

a Roman army nor a Roman fleet was at hand. All the old rich temples

along the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor were plundered

one after another; from Samothrace alone a treasure of 1000 talents

(240,000 pounds) is said to have been carried off. Apollo, according

to a Roman poet of this period, was so impoverished by the pirates that,

when the swallow paid him a visit, he could no longer produce

to it out of all his treasures even a drachm of gold. More than four

hundred townships were enumerated as having been taken or laid

under contribution by the pirates, including cities like Cnidus,

Samos, Colophon; from not a few places on islands or the coast,

which were previously flourishing, the whole population migrated,

that they might not be carried off by the pirates. Even inland

districts were no longer safe from their attacks; there were instances

of their assailing townships distant one or two days' march

from the coast. The fearful debt, under which subsequently

all the communities of the Greek east succumbed, proceeded

in great part from these fatal times.

Organization of Piracy

Piracy had totally changed its character. The pirates

were no longer bold freebooters, who levied their tribute

from the large Italo-Oriental traffic in slaves and luxuries,

as it passed through the Cretan waters between Cyrene

and the Peloponnesus--in the language of the pirates the "golden sea";

no longer even armed slave-catchers, who prosecuted "war, trade,

and piracy" equally side by side; they formed now a piratical state,

with a peculiar esprit de corps, with a solid and very respectable

organization, with a home of their own and the germs of a symmachy,

and doubtless also with definite political designs. The pirates

called themselves Cilicians; in fact their vessels were the rendezvous

of desperadoes and adventurers from all countries--discharged

mercenaries from the recruiting-grounds of Crete, burgesses

from the destroyed townships of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers

and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, in a word

the ruined men of all nations, the hunted refugees of all vanquished

parties, every one that was wretched and daring--and where was there not

misery and outrage in this unhappy age? It was no longer

a gang of robbers who had flocked together, but a compact soldier-

state, in which the freemasonry of exile and crime took the place

of nationality, and within which crime redeemed itself, as it so often

does in its own eyes, by displaying the most generous public spirit.

In an abandoned age, when cowardice and insubordination

had relaxed all the bonds of social order, the legitimate commonwealths

might have taken a pattern from this state--the mongrel offspring

of distress and violence--within which alone the inviolable

determination to stand side by side, the sense of comradeship,

respect for the pledged word and the self-chosen chiefs, valour

and adroitness seemed to have taken refuge. If the banner of this state

was inscribed with vengeance against the civil society which,

rightly or wrongly, had ejected its members, it might be a question

whether this device was much worse than those of the Italian oligarchy

and the Oriental sultanship which seemed in the fair way of dividing

the world between them. The corsairs at least felt themselves

on a level with any legitimate state; their robber-pride,

their robber-pomp, and their robber-humour are attested by many

a genuine pirate's tale of mad merriment and chivalrous bandittism:

they professed, and made it their boast, to live at righteous war

with all the world: what they gained in that warfare was designated

not as plunder, but as military spoil; and, while the captured corsair

was sure of the cross in every Roman seaport, they too claimed

the right of executing any of their captives.

Its Military-Political Power

Their military-political organization, especially since

the Mithradatic war, was compact. Their ships, for the most part

-myopiarones-, that is, small open swift-sailing barks,

with a smaller proportion of biremes and triremes, now regularly sailed

associated in squadrons and under admirals, whose barges were wont

to glitter in gold and purple. To a comrade in peril,

though he might be totally unknown, no pirate captain refused

the requested aid; an agreement concluded with any one of them

was absolutely recognized by the whole society, and any injury inflicted

on one was avenged by all. Their true home was the sea from the pillars

of Hercules to the Syrian and Egyptian waters; the refuges

which they needed for themselves and their floating houses

on the mainland were readily furnished to them by the Mauretanian

and Dalmatian coasts, by the island of Crete, and, above all,

by the southern coast of Asia Minor, which abounded in headlands

and lurking-places, commanded the chief thoroughfare of the maritime

commerce of that age, and was virtually without a master.

The league of Lycian cities there, and the Pamphylian communities,

were of little importance; the Roman station, which had existed

in Cilicia since 652, was far from adequate to command the extensive

coast; the Syrian dominion over Cilicia had always been

but nominal, and had recently been superseded by the Armenian,

the holder of which, as a true great-king, gave himself no concern

at all about the sea and readily abandoned it to the pillage

of the Cilicians. It was nothing wonderful, therefore,

that the corsairs flourished there as they had never done anywhere else.

Not only did they possess everywhere along the coast signal-places

and stations, but further inland--in the most remote recesses

of the impassable and mountainous interior of Lycia, Pamphylia,

and Cilicia--they had built their rock-castles, in which they concealed

their wives, children, and treasures during their own absence

at sea, and, doubtless, in times of danger found an asylum themselves.

Great numbers of such corsair-castles existed especially

in the Rough Cilicia, the forests of which at the same time furnished

the pirates with the most excellent timber for shipbuilding; and there,

accordingly, their principal dockyards and arsenals were situated.

It was not to be wondered at that this organized military state

gained a firm body of clients among the Greek maritime cities,

which were more or less left to themselves and managed their own

affairs: these cities entered into traffic with the pirates

as with a friendly power on the basis of definite treaties,

and did not comply with the summons of the Roman governors to furnish

vessels against them. The not inconsiderable town of Side

in Pamphylia, for instance, allowed the pirates to build ships

on its quays, and to sell the free men whom they had captured

in its market.

Such a society of pirates was a political power; and as a political

power it gave itself out and was accepted from the time

when the Syrian king Tryphon first employed it as such and rested

his throne on its support.(4) We find the pirates as allies of king

Mithradates of Pontus as well as of the Roman democratic emigrants;

we find them giving battle to the fleets of Sulla in the eastern

and in the western waters; we find individual pirate princes ruling

over a series of considerable coast towns. We cannot tell how far

the internal political development of this floating state had

already advanced; but its arrangements undeniably contained

the germ of a sea-kingdom, which was already beginning to establish

itself, and out of which, under favourable circumstances,

a permanent state might have been developed.

Nullity of the Roman Marine Police

This state of matters clearly shows, as we have partly indicated

already,(5) how the Romans kept--or rather did not keep--order

on "their sea." The protectorate of Rome over the provinces

consisted essentially in military guardianship; the provincials

paid tax or tribute to the Romans for their defence by sea and land,

which was concentrated in Roman hands. But never, perhaps,

did a guardian more shamelessly defraud his ward than the Roman

oligarchy defrauded the subject communities. Instead of Rome equipping

a general fleet for the empire and centralizing her marine police,

the senate permitted the unity of her maritime superintendence--

without which in this matter nothing could at all be done--to fall

into abeyance, and left it to each governor and each client state

to defend themselves against the pirates as each chose and was able.

Instead of Rome providing for the fleet, as she had bound herself

to do, exclusively with her own blood and treasure and with those

of the client states which had remained formally sovereign,

the senate allowed the Italian war-marine to fall into decay,

and learned to make shift with the vessels which the several

mercantile towns were required to furnish, or still more frequently

with the coast-guards everywhere organized--all the cost

and burden falling, in either case, on the subjects. The provincials

might deem themselves fortunate, if their Roman governor applied

the requisitions which he raised for the defence of the coast

in reality solely to that object, and did not intercept them

for himself; or if they were not, as very frequently happened, called

on to pay ransom for some Roman of rank captured by the buccaneers.

Measures undertaken perhaps with judgment, such as the occupation

of Cilicia in 652, were sure to be spoilt in the execution.

Any Roman of this period, who was not wholly carried away

by the current intoxicating idea of the national greatness, must have

wished that the ships' beaks might be torn down from the orator's

platform in the Forum, that at least he might not be constantly

reminded by them of the naval victories achieved in better times.

Expedition to the South Coast of Asia Minor

Publius Servilius Isauricus

Zenicetes Vanquished

The Isaurians Subdued

Nevertheless Sulla, who in the war against Mithradates had

the opportunity of acquiring an adequate conviction of the dangers

which the neglect of the fleet involved, took various steps

seriously to check the evil. It is true that the instructions

which he had left to the governors whom he appointed in Asia,

to equip in the maritime towns a fleet against the pirates, had borne

little fruit, for Murena preferred to begin war with Mithradates,

and Gnaeus Dolabella, the governor of Cilicia, proved wholly

incapable. Accordingly the senate resolved in 675 to send one

of the consuls to Cilicia; the lot fell on the capable Publius

Servilius. He defeated the piratical fleet in a bloody engagement,

and then applied himself to destroy those towns on the south coast

of Asia Minor which served them as anchorages and trading stations.

The fortresses of the powerful maritime prince Zenicetes--Olympus,

Corycus, Phaselis in eastern Lycia, Attalia in Pamphylia--

were reduced, and the prince himself met his death in the flames

of his stronghold Olympus. A movement was next made against

the Isaurians, who in the north-west corner of the Rough Cilicia,

on the northern slope of Mount Taurus, inhabited a labyrinth

of steep mountain ridges, jagged rocks, and deeply-cut valleys,

covered with magnificent oak forests--a region which is even

at the present day filled with reminiscences of the old robber times.

To reduce these Isaurian fastnesses, the last and most secure retreats

ofthe freebooters, Servilius led the first Roman army over the Taurus,

and broke up the strongholds of the enemy, Oroanda, and above all

Isaura itself--the ideal of a robber-town, situated on the summit

of a scarcely accessible mountain-ridge, and completely overlooking

and commanding the wide plain of Iconium. The war, not ended

till 679, from which Publius Servilius acquired for himself

and his descendants the surname of Isauricus, was not without fruit;

a great number of pirates and piratical vessels fell in consequence

of it into the power of the Romans; Lycia, Pamphylia, West Cilicia

were severely devastated, the territories of the destroyed towns

were confiscated, and the province of Cilicia was enlarged by their

addition to it. But, in the nature of the case, piracy was far

from being suppressed by these measures; on the contrary, it simply

betook itself for the time to other regions, and particularly

to Crete, the oldest harbour for the corsairs of the Mediterranean.(6)

Nothing but repressive measures carried out on a large scale

and with unity of purpose--nothing, in fact, but the establishment

of a standing maritime police--could in such a case

afford thorough relief.

Asiatic Relations

Tigranes and the New Great-Kingdom of Armenia

The affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor were connected by various

relations with this maritime war. The variance which existed

between Rome and the kings of Pontus and Armenia did not abate,

but increased more and more. On the one hand Tigranes,

kingof Armenia, pursued his aggressive conquests in the most reckless

manner. The Parthians, whose state was at this period torn

by internal dissensions and enfeebled, were by constant hostilities

driven farther and farther back into the interior of Asia.

Of the countries between Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Iran, the kingdoms

of Corduene (northern Kurdistan), and Media Atropatene (Azerbijan),

were converted from Parthian into Armenian fiefs, and the kingdom

of Nineveh (Mosul), or Adiabene, was likewise compelled, at least

temporarily, to become a dependency of Armenia. In Mesopotamia,

too, particularly in and around Nisibis, the Armenian rule

was established; but the southern half, which was in great part desert,

seems not to have passed into the firm possession of the new great-

king, and Seleucia, on the Tigris, in particular, appears not to have

become subject to him. The kingdom of Edessa or Osrhoene

he handed over to a tribe of wandering Arabs, which he transplanted

from southern Mesopotamia and settled in this region, with the view

of commanding by its means the passage of the Euphrates

and the great route of traffic.(7)

Cappadocia Armenian

But Tigranes by no means confined his conquests to the eastern

bank of the Euphrates. Cappadocia especially was the object

of his attacks, and, defenceless as it was, suffered destructive

blows from its too potent neighbour. Tigranes wrested the eastern

province Melitene from Cappadocia, and united it with the opposite

Armenian province Sophene, by which means he obtained command

of the passage of the Euphrates with the great thoroughfare

of traffic between Asia Minor and Armenia. After the death of Sulla

the Armenians even advanced into Cappadocia proper, and carried off

to Armenia the inhabitants of the capital Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea)

and eleven other towns of Greek organization.

Syria under Tigranes

Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in full course

of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the new great-king.

Here the south from the Egyptian frontier to Straton's Tower

(Caesarea) was under the rule of the Jewish prince Alexander Jannaeus,

who extended and strengthened his dominion step by step

in conflict with his Syrian, Egyptian, and Arabic neighbours

and with the imperial cities. The larger towns of Syria--Gaza,

Straton's Tower, Ptolemais, Beroea--attempted to maintain themselves

on their own footing, sometimes as free communities, sometimes

under so-called tyrants; the capital, Antioch, in particular,

was virtually independent. Damascus and the valleys of Lebanon

had submitted to the Nabataean prince, Aretas of Petra. Lastly,

in Cilicia the pirates or the Romans bore sway. And for this crown

breaking into a thousand fragments the Seleucid princes continued

perseveringly to quarrel with each other, as though it were their object

to make royalty a jest and an offence to all; nay more,

while this family, doomed like the house of Laius to perpetual discord,

had its own subjects all in revolt, it even raised claims to the throne

of Egypt vacant by the decease of king Alexander II without heirs.

Accordingly king Tigranes set to work there without ceremony.

Eastern Cilicia was easily subdued by him, and the citizens of Soli

and other towns were carried off, just like the Cappadocians,

to Armenia. In like manner the province of Upper Syria,

withthe exception of the bravely-defended town of Seleucia at the mouth

of the Orontes, and the greater part of Phoenicia were reduced

by force; Ptolemais was occupied by the Armenians about 680,

and the Jewish state was already seriously threatened by them. Antioch,

the old capital of the Seleucids, became one of the residences

of the great-king. Already from 671, the year following the peace

between Sulla and Mithradates, Tigranes is designated

in the Syrian annals as the sovereign of the country, and Cilicia

and Syria appear as an Armenian satrapy under Magadates,

the lieutenant of the great-king. The age of the kings of Nineveh,

ofthe Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to be renewed; again oriental

despotism pressed heavily on the trading population of the Syrian

coast, as it did formerly on Tyre and Sidon; again great states

of the interior threw themselves on the provinces along

the Mediterranean; again Asiatic hosts, said to number

half a million combatants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts.

As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews

to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new

kingdom--from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia--

the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens

of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods

and chattels (under penalty of the confiscation of everything

that they left behind) in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities

proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness

of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates

on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new

grand sultan. The new "city of Tigranes," Tigrano-certa, founded

on the borders of Armenia and Mesopotamia, and destined

as the capital of the territories newly acquired for Armenia, became

a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high,

and the appendages of palace, garden, and park that were appropriate

to sultanism. In other respects, too, the new great-king proved

faithful to his part. As amidst the perpetual childhood

of the east the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns

on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed

himselfin public, appeared in the state and the costume of a successor

of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple caftan, the half-white

half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban,

and the royal diadem--attended moreover and served in slavish fashion,

wherever he went or stood, by four "kings."

Mithradates

King Mithradates acted with greater moderation. He refrained

from aggressions in Asia Minor, and contented himself with--

what no treaty forbade--placing his dominion along the Black Sea

ona firmer basis, and gradually bringing into more definite dependence

the regions which separated the Bosporan kingdom, now ruled

under his supremacy by his son Machares, from that of Pontus.

But he too applied every effort to render his fleet and army efficient,

and especially to arm and organize the latter after the Roman model;

in which the Roman emigrants, who sojourned in great numbers

at his court, rendered essential service.

Demeanor of the Romans in the East

Egypt not Annexed

The Romans had no desire to become further involved in Oriental

affairs than they were already. This appears with striking

clearness in the fact, that the opportunity, which at this time

presented itself, of peacefully bringing the kingdom of Egypt

under the immediate dominion of Rome was spurned by the senate.

The legitimate descendants of Ptolemaeus son of Lagus had come

to an end, when the king installed by Sulla after the death of Ptolemaeus

Soter II Lathyrus--Alexander II, a son of Alexander I--was killed,

a few days after he had ascended the throne, on occasion of a tumult

in the capital (673). This Alexander had in his testament(8) appointed

the Roman community his heir. The genuineness of this document

was no doubt disputed; but the senate acknowledged it by assuming

in virtue of it the sums deposited in Tyre on account of the deceased king.

Nevertheless it allowed two notoriously illegitimate sons of king Lathyrus,

Ptolemaeus XI, who was styled the new Dionysos or the Flute-blower

(Auletes), and Ptolemaeus the Cyprian, to take practical possession

of Egypt and Cyprus respectively. They were not indeed expressly

recognized by the senate, but no distinct summons to surrender

their kingdoms was addressed to them. The reason why the senate allowed

this state of uncertainty to continue, and did not commit itself

to a definite renunciation of Egypt and Cyprus, was undoubtedly

the considerable rent which these kings, ruling as it were on sufferance,

regularly paid for the continuance of the uncertainty to the heads

of the Roman coteries. But the motive for waiving that attractive

acquisition altogether was different. Egypt, by its peculiar

position and its financial organization, placed in the hands

of any governor commanding it a pecuniary and naval power and generally

an independent authority, which were absolutely incompatible

with the suspicious and feeble government of the oligarchy:

in this point of view it was judicious to forgo the direct possession

of the country of the Nile.

Non-Intervention in Asia Minor and Syria

Less justifiable was the failure of the senate to interfere directly

in the affairs of Asia Minor and Syria. The Roman government did not

indeed recognize the Armenian conqueror as king of Cappadocia

and Syria; but it did nothing to drive him back, although the war,

which under pressure of necessity it began in 676 against the pirates

in Cilicia, naturally suggested its interference more especially

in Syria. In fact, by tolerating the loss of Cappadocia and Syria

without declaring war, the government abandoned not merely

those committed to its protection, but the most important

foundations of its own powerful position. It adopted

a hazardous course, when it sacrificed the outworks of its dominion

in the Greek settlements and kingdoms on the Euphrates

and Tigris; but, when it allowed the Asiatics to establish

themselves on the Mediterranean which was the political

basis of its empire, this was not a proof of love of peace,

but a confession that the oligarchy had been rendered by the Sullan

restoration more oligarchical doubtless, but neither wiser

nor more energetic, and it was for Rome's place as a power

in the world the beginning of the end.

On the other side, too, there was no desire for war. Tigranes

had no reason to wish it, when Rome even without war abandoned

to him all its allies. Mithradates, who was no mere sultan and had

enjoyed opportunity enough, amidst good and bad fortune, of gaining

experience regarding friends and foes, knew very well that in a second

Roman war he would very probably stand quite as much alone

as in the first, and that he could follow no more prudent course

than to keep quiet and to strengthen his kingdom in the interior.

That he was in earnest with his peaceful declarations, he had

sufficiently proved in the conference with Murena.(9) He continued

to avoid everything which would compel the Roman government

to abandon its passive attitude.

Apprehensions of Rome

But as the first Mithradatic war had arisen without any of the partie

properly desiring it, so now there grew out of the opposition

of interests mutual suspicion, and out of this suspicion

mutual preparations for defence; and these, by their very gravity,

ultimately led to an open breach. That distrust of her own readiness

to fight and preparation for fighting, which had for long governed

the policy of Rome--a distrust, which the want of standing armies

and the far from exemplary character of the collegiate rule

render sufficiently intelligible--made it, as it were, an axiom

of her policy to pursue every war not merely to the vanquishing,

but to the annihilation of her opponent; in this point of view

the Romans were from the outset as little content with the peace

of Sulla, as they had formerly been with the terms which Scipio

Africanus had granted to the Carthaginians. The apprehension often

expressed that a second attack by the Pontic king was imminent,

was in some measure justified by the singular resemblance between

the present circumstances and those which existed twelve years before.

Once more a dangerous civil war coincided with serious armaments

of Mithradates; once more the Thracians overran Macedonia,

and piratical fleets covered the Mediterranean; emissaries were coming

and going--as formerly between Mithradates and the Italians--

so now between the Roman emigrants in Spain and those at the court

of Sinope. As early as the beginning of 677 it was declared

in the senate that the king was only waiting for the opportunity

of falling upon Roman Asia during the Italian civil war;

the Roman armies in Asia and Cilicia were reinforced

to meet possible emergencies.

Apprehensions of Mithradates

Bithynia Roman

Cyrene a Roman Province

Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

Mithradates on his part followed with growing apprehension

the development of the Roman policy. He could not but feel

that a war between the Romans and Tigranes, however much

the feeble senate might dread it, was in the long run almost inevitable,

and that he would not be able to avoid taking part in it. His attempt

to obtain from the Roman senate the documentary record of the terms

of peace, which was still wanting, had fallen amidst the disturbances

attending the revolution of Lepidus and remained without result;

Mithradates found in this an indication of the impending renewal

of the conflict. The expedition against the pirates, which indirectly

concerned also the kings of the east whose allies they were,

seemed the preliminary to such a war. Still more suspicious

were the claims which Rome held in suspense over Egypt and Cyprus:

it is significant that the king of Pontus betrothed his two daughters

Mithradatis and Nyssa to the two Ptolemies, to whom the senate

continued to refuse recognition. The emigrants urged him

to strike: the position of Sertorius in Spain, as to which Mithradates

despatched envoys under convenient pretexts to the headquarters

of Pompeius to obtain information, and which was about this very time

really imposing, opened up to the king the prospect of fighting

not, as in the first Roman war, against both the Roman parties,

but in concert with the one against the other. A more favourable

moment could hardly be hoped for, and after all it was always

better to declare war than to let it be declared against him.

In 679 Nicomedes III Philopator king of Bithynia, died, and as

the last of his race--for a son borne by Nysa was, or was said

to be, illegitimate--left his kingdom by testament to the Romans,

who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering

on the Roman province and long ago filled with Roman officials

and merchants. At the same time Cyrene, which had been already

bequeathed to the Romans in 658,(10) was at length constituted

a province, and a Roman governor was sent thither (679). These

measures, in connection with the attacks carried out about

the same time against the pirates on the south coast of Asia Minor,

must have excited apprehensions in the king; the annexation of Bithynia

in particular made the Romans immediate neighbours of the Pontic

kingdom; and this, it may be presumed, turned the scale. The king

took the decisive step and declared war against the Romans

in the winter of 679-680.

Preparations of Mithradates

Gladly would Mithradates have avoided undertaking so arduous a work

singlehanded. His nearest and natural ally was the great-king

Tigranes; but that shortsighted man declined the proposal of his

father-in-law. So there remained only the insurgents and the pirates.

Mithradates was careful to place himself in communication

with both, by despatching strong squadrons to Spain and to Crete.

A formal treaty was concluded with Sertorius,(11) by which Rome

ceded to the king Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, and Cappadocia--

all of them, it is true, acquisitions which needed to be ratified

on the field of battle. More important was the support

which the Spanish general gave to the king, by sending Roman officers

to lead his armies and fleets. The most active of the emigrants

inthe east, Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, were appointed by Sertorius

as his representatives at the court of Sinope. From the pirates

also came help; they flocked largely to the kingdom of Pontus,

and by their means especially the king seems to have succeeded

in forming a naval force imposing by the number as well as

by the quality of the ships. His main support still lay in his

own forces, with which the king hoped, before the Romans should arrive

in Asia, to make himself master of their possessions there;

especially as the financial distress produced in the province

of Asia by the Sullan war-tribute, the aversion of Bithynia towards

the new Roman government, and the elements of combustion left

behind by the desolating war recently brought to a close in Cilicia

and Pamphylia, opened up favourable prospects to a Pontic invasion.

There was no lack of stores; 2,000,000 -medimni- of grain lay

in the royal granaries. The fleet and the men were numerous and well

exercised, particularly the Bastarnian mercenaries, a select corps

which was a match even for Italian legionaries. On this occasion

also it was the king who took the offensive. A corps under Diophantus

advanced into Cappadocia, to occupy the fortresses there

and to close the way to the kingdom of Pontus against the Romans;

the leader sent by Sertorius, the propraetor Marcus Marius,

went in company with the Pontic officer Eumachus to Phrygia, with a view

to rouse the Roman province and the Taurus mountains to revolt;

the main army, above 100,000 men with 16,000 cavalry and 100

scythe-chariots, led by Taxiles and Hermocrates under the personal

superintendence of the king, and the war-fleet of 400 sail

commanded by Aristonicus, moved along the north coast of Asia Minor

to occupy Paphlagonia and Bithynia.

Roman Preparations

On the Roman side there was selected for the conduct of the war

in the first rank the consul of 680, Lucius Lucullus, who as governor

of Asia and Cilicia was placed at the head of the four legions

stationed in Asia Minor and of a fifth brought by him from Italy,

and was directed to penetrate with this army, amounting to 30,000

infantry and 1600 cavalry, through Phrygia into the kingdom

of Pontus. His colleague Marcus Cotta proceeded with the fleet

and another Roman corps to the Propontis, to cover Asia and Bithynia.

Lastly, a general arming of the coasts and particularly

of the Thracian coast more immediately threatened by the Pontic fleet,

was enjoined; and the task of clearing all the seas and coasts

from the pirates and their Pontic allies was, by extraordinary decree,

entrusted to a single magistrate, the choice falling on the praetor

Marcus Antonius, the son of the man who thirty years before had

first chastised the Cilician corsairs.(12) Moreover, the senate

placed at the disposal of Lucullus a sum of 72,000,000 sesterces

(700,000 pounds), in order to build a fleet; which, however,

Lucullus declined. From all this we see that the Roman government

recognized the root of the evil in the neglect of their marine,

and showed earnestness in the matter at least so far as

their decrees reached.

Beginning of the War

Thus the war began in 680 at all points. It was a misfortune

for Mithradates, that at the very moment of his declaring war

the Sertorian struggle reached its crisis, by which one of his

principal hopes was from the outset destroyed, and the Roman

government was enabled to apply its whole power to the maritime

and Asiatic contest. In Asia Minor on the other hand Mithradates

reaped the advantages of the offensive, and of the great distance

of the Romans from the immediate seat of war. A considerable

number of cities in Asia Minor opened their gates to the Sertorian

propraetor who was placed at the head of the Roman province,

and they massacred, as in 666, the Roman families settled among them:

the Pisidians, Isaurians, and Cilicians took up arms against Rome.

The Romans for the moment had no troops at the points threatened.

Individual energetic men attempted no doubt at their own hand

to check this mutiny of the provincials; thus on receiving accounts

of these events the young Gaius Caesar left Rhodes where he was staying

on account of his studies, and with a hastily-collected

band opposed himself to the insurgents; but not much could be

effected by such volunteer corps. Had not Deiotarus, the brave

tetrarch of the Tolistobogii--a Celtic tribe settled around

Pessinus--embraced the side of the Romans and fought with success

against the Pontic generals, Lucullus would have had to begin with

recapturing the interior of the Roman province from the enemy.

But even as it was, he lost in pacifying the province and driving

back the enemy precious time, for which the slight successes

achieved by his cavalry were far from affording compensation.

Still more unfavourable than in Phrygia was the aspect of things

for the Romans on the north coast of Asia Minor. Here the great

Pontic army and the fleet had completely mastered Bithynia,

and compelled the Roman consul Cotta to take shelter with his

far from numerous force and his ships within the walls

and port of Chalcedon, where Mithradates kept them blockaded.

The Romans Defeated at Chalcedon

This blockade, however, was so far a favourable event

for the Romans, as, if Cotta detained the Pontic army before Chalcedon

and Lucullus proceeded also thither, the whole Roman forces might unite

at Chalcedon and compel the decision of arms there rather than

in the distant and impassable region of Pontus. Lucullus did take

the route for Chalcedon; but Cotta, with the view of executing a great

feat at his own hand before the arrival of his colleague, ordered

his admiral Publius Rutilius Nudus to make a sally, which not only

ended in a bloody defeat of the Romans, but also enabled the Pontic

force to attack the harbour, to break the chain which closed it,

and to burn all the Roman vessels of war which were there, nearly

seventy in number. On the news of these misfortunes reaching

Lucullus at the river Sangarius, he accelerated his march

to the great discontent of his soldiers, in whose opinion Cotta

was of no moment, and who would far rather have plundered an undefended

country than have taught their comrades to conquer. His arrival

made up in part for the misfortunes sustained: the king raised

the siege of Chalcedon, but did not retreat to Pontus; he went

southward into the old Roman province, where he spread his army

along the Propontis and the Hellespont, occupied Lampsacus,

and began to besiege the large and wealthy town of Cyzicus.

He thus entangled himself more and more deeply in the blind alley

which he had chosen to enter, instead of--which alone promised success

for him--bringing the wide distances into play against the Romans.

Mithradates Besieges Cyzicus

In few places had the old Hellenic adroitness and aptitude

preserved themselves so pure as in Cyzicus; its citizens, although

they had suffered great loss of ships and men in the unfortunate

double battle of Chalcedon, made the most resolute resistance.

Cyzicus lay on an island directly opposite the mainland

and connected with it by a bridge. The besiegers possessed themselves

not only of the line of heights on the mainland terminating at the bridge

and of the suburb situated there, but also of the celebrated

Dindymene heights on the island itself; and alike on the mainland

and on the island the Greek engineers put forth all their art

to pave the way for an assault. But the breach which they at length

made was closed again during the night by the besieged,

and the exertions of the royal army remained as fruitless as did

the barbarous threat of the king to put to death the captured Cyzicenes

before the walls, if the citizens still refused to surrender.

The Cyzicenes continued the defence with courage and success;

they fell little short of capturing the king himself

in the course of the siege.

Destruction of the Pontic Army

Meanwhile Lucullus had possessed himself of a very strong position

in rear of the Pontic army, which, although not permitting him

directly to relieve the hard-pressed city, gave him the means

of cutting off all supplies by land from the enemy. Thus the enormous

army of Mithradates, estimated with the camp-followers at 300,000

persons, was not in a position either to fight or to march, firmly

wedged in between the impregnable city and the immoveable Roman

army, and dependent for all its supplies solely on the sea,

which fortunately for the Pontic troops was exclusively commanded

by their fleet. But the bad season set in; a storm destroyed a great

part of the siege-works; the scarcity of provisions and above all

of fodder for the horses began to become intolerable. The beasts

of burden and the baggage were sent off under convoy of the greater

portion of the Pontic cavalry, with orders to steal away or break

through at any cost; but at the river Rhyndacus, to the east

of Cyzicus, Lucullus overtook them and cut to pieces the whole body.

Another division of cavalry under Metrophanes and Lucius Fannius

was obliged, after wandering long in the west of Asia Minor,

to return to the camp before Cyzicus. Famine and disease made

fearful ravages in the Pontic ranks. When spring came on (681),

the besieged redoubled their exertions and took the trenches

constructed on Dindymon: nothing remained for the king but to raise

the siege and with the aid of his fleet to save what he could.

He went in person with the fleet to the Hellespont, but suffered

considerable loss partly at its departure, partly through storms

on the voyage. The land army under Hermaeus and Marius likewise

set out thither, with the view of embarking at Lampsacus

under the protection of its walls. They left behind their baggage

as well as the sick and wounded, who were all put to death

by the exasperated Cyzicenes. Lucullus inflicted on them

very considerable loss by the way at the passage of the rivers

Aesepus and Granicus; but they attained their object. The Pontic ships

carried off the remains of the great army and the citizens of Lampsacus

themselves beyond the reach of the Romans.

Maritime War

Mithradates Driven Back to Pontus

The consistent and discreet conduct of the war by Lucullus

had not only repaired the errors of his colleague, but had also

destroyed without a pitched battle the flower of the enemy's army--

it was said 200,000 soldiers. Had he still possessed the fleet

which was burnt in the harbour of Chalcedon, he would have annihilated

the whole army of his opponent. As it was, the work of destruction

continued incomplete; and while he was obliged to remain passive,

the Pontic fleet notwithstanding the disaster of Cyzicus took

its station in the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium were blockaded

by it on the European coast and Priapus pillaged on the Asiatic,

and the headquarters of the king were established in the Bithynian port

of Nicomedia. In fact a select squadron of fifty sail,

which carried 10,000 select troops including Marcus Marius

and the flower of the Roman emigrants, sailed forth even into the Aegean;

the report went that it was destined to effect a landing in Italy

and there rekindle the civil war. But the ships, which Lucullus

after the disaster off Chalcedon had demanded from the Asiatic

communities, began to appear, and a squadron ran forth in pursuit

of the enemy's fleet which had gone into the Aegean. Lucullus himself,

experienced as an admiral,(13) took the command. Thirteen quinqueremes

of the enemy on their voyage to Lemnos, under Isidorus, were assailed

and sunk off the Achaean harbour in the waters between the Trojan coast

and the island of Tenedos. At the small island of Neae, between Lemnos

and Scyros, at which little-frequented point the Pontic flotilla

of thirty-two sail lay drawn up on the shore, Lucullus found it,

immediately attacked the ships and the crews scattered over the island,

and possessed himself of the whole squadron. Here Marcus Marius

and the ablest of the Roman emigrants met their death, either in conflict

or subsequently by the axe of the executioner. The whole Aegean fleet

of the enemy was annihilated by Lucullus. The war in Bithynia

was meanwhile continued by Cotta and by the legates of Lucullus,

Voconius, Gaius Valerius Triarius, and Barba, with the land army

reinforced by fresh arrivals from Italy, and a squadron collected

in Asia. Barba captured in the interior Prusias on Olympus and Nicaea

while Triarius along the coast captured Apamea (formerly Myrlea)

and Prusias on the sea (formerly Cius). They then united for a joint

attack on Mithradates himself in Nicomedia; but the king without

even attempting battle escaped to his ships and sailed homeward,

and in this he was successful only because the Roman admiral Voconius,

who was entrusted with the blockade of the port of Nicomedia,

arrived too late. On the voyage the important Heraclea was indeed

betrayed to the king and occupied by him; but a storm in these waters

sank more than sixty of, his ships and dispersed the rest; the king

arrived almost alone at Sinope. The offensive on the part of Mithradates

ended in a complete defeat--not at all honourable, least of all

for the supreme leader--of the Pontic forces by land and sea.

Invasion of Pontus by Lucullus

Lucullus now in turn proceeded to the aggressive. Triarius

received the command of the fleet, with orders first of all

to blockade the Hellespont and lie in wait for the Pontic ships

returning from Crete and Spain; Cotta was charged with the siege

of Heraclea; the difficult task of providing supplies

was entrusted to the faithful and active princes of the Galatians

and to Ariobarzanes king of Cappadocia; Lucullus himself advanced

in the autumn of 681 into the favoured land of Pontus, which had long

been untrodden by an enemy. Mithradates, now resolved to maintain

the strictest defensive, retired without giving battle from Sinope

to Amisus, and from Amisus to Cabira (afterwards Neocaesarea,

now Niksar) on the Lycus, a tributary of the Iris; he contented

himself with drawing the enemy after him farther and farther

into the interior, and obstructing their supplies and communications.

Lucullus rapidly followed; Sinope was passed by; the Halys, the old

boundary of the Roman dominion, was crossed and the considerable

towns of Amisus, Eupatoria (on the Iris), and Themiscyra (on

the Thermodon) were invested, till at length winter put an end

to the onward march, though not to the investments of the towns.

The soldiers of Lucullus murmured at the constant advance

which did not allow them to reap the fruits of their exertions,

and at the tedious and--amidst the severity of that season--

burdensome blockades. But it was not the habit of Lucullus

to listen to such complaints: in the spring of 682 he immediately

advanced against Cabira, leaving behind two legions before Amisus

under Lucius Murena. The king had made fresh attempts during the winter

to induce the great-king of Armenia to take part in the struggle;

they remained like the former ones fruitless, or led only

to empty promises. Still less did the Parthians show any desire

to interfere in the forlorn cause. Nevertheless a considerable army,

chiefly raised by enlistments in Scythia, had again assembled

under Diophantus and Taxiles at Cabira. The Roman army,

which still numbered only three legions and was decidedly inferior

to the Pontic in cavalry, found itself compelled to avoid as far as

possible the plains, and arrived, not without toil and loss,

by difficult bypaths in the vicinity of Cabira, At this town

the two armies lay for a considerable period confronting each other.

The chief struggle was for supplies, which were on both sides scarce:

for this purpose Mithradates formed the flower of his cavalry

and a division of select infantry under Diophantus and Taxiles

into a flying corps, which was intended to scour the country between

the Lycus and the Halys and to seize the Roman convoys of provisions

coming from Cappadocia. But the lieutenant of Lucullus, Marcus

Fabius Hadrianus, who escorted such a train, not only completely

defeated the band which lay in wait for him in the defile where it

expected to surprise him, but after being reinforced from the camp

defeated also the army of Diophantus and Taxiles itself, so that it

totally broke up. It was an irreparable loss for the king,

when his cavalry, on which alone he relied, was thus overthrown.

Victory of Cabira

As soon as he received through the first fugitives that arrived

at Cabira from the field of battle--significantly enough, the beaten

generals themselves--the fatal news, earlier even than Lucullus

got tidings of the victory, he resolved on an immediate

farther retreat. But the resolution taken by the king spread

with the rapidity of lightning among those immediately around him; and,

when the soldiers saw the confidants of the king packing in all haste,

they too were seized with a panic. No one was willing to be

the hindmost in decamping; all, high and low, ran pell-mell

like startled deer; no authority, not even that of the king,

was longer heeded; and the king himself was carried away amidst

the wild tumult. Lucullus, perceiving the confusion, made his attack,

and the Pontic troops allowed themselves to be massacred almost

without offering resistance. Had the legions been able to maintain

discipline and to restrain their eagerness for spoil, hardly a man

would have escaped them, and the king himself would doubtless have

been taken. With difficulty Mithradates escaped along with a few

attendants through the mountains to Comana (not far from Tocat

and the source of the Iris); from which, however, a Roman corps

under Marcus Pompeius soon scared him off and pursued him, till,

attended by not more than 2000 cavalry, he crossed the frontier

of his kingdom at Talaura in Lesser Armenia. In the empire

of the great-king he found a refuge, but nothing more (end of 682).

Tigranes, it is true, ordered royal honours to be shown to his fugitive

father-in-law; but he did not even invite him to his court,

and detained him in the remote border-province to which he had come

in a sort of decorous captivity.

Pontus Becomes Roman

Sieges of the Pontic Cities

The Roman troops overran all Pontus and Lesser Armenia, and as

far as Trapezus the flat country submitted without resistance

to the conqueror. The commanders of the royal treasure-houses also

surrendered after more or less delay, and delivered up their stores

of money. The king ordered that the women of the royal harem--his

sisters, his numerous wives and concubines--as it was not possible

to secure their flight, should all be put to death by one of his

eunuchs at Pharnacea (Kerasunt). The towns alone offered

obstinate resistance. It is true that the few in the interior--

Cabira, Amasia, Eupatoria--were soon in the power of the Romans;

but the larger maritime towns, Amisus and Sinope in Pontus,

Amastris in Paphlagonia, Tius and the Pontic Heraclea in Bithynia,

defended themselves with desperation, partly animated by attachment

to the king and to their free Hellenic constitution which he had

protected, partly overawed by the bands of corsairs whom the king

had called to his aid. Sinope and Heraclea even sent forth vessels

against the Romans; and the squadron of Sinope seized a Roman

flotilla which was bringing corn from the Tauric peninsula

for the army of Lucullus. Heraclea did not succumb till after

a two years' siege, when the Roman fleet had cut off the city

from intercourse with the Greek towns on the Tauric peninsula and treason

had broken out in the ranks of the garrison. When Amisus was reduced

to extremities, the garrison set fire to the town, and under cover

of the flames took to their ships. In Sinope, where the daring

pirate-captain Seleucus and the royal eunuch Bacchides conducted

the defence, the garrison plundered the houses before it withdrew,

and set on fire the ships which it could not take along with it;

it is said that, although the greater portion of the defenders

were enabled to embark, 8000 corsairs were there put to death

by Lucullus. These sieges of towns lasted for two whole years

and more after the battle of Cabira (682-684); Lucullus prosecuted

them in great part by means of his lieutenants, while he himself

regulated the affairs of the province of Asia, which demanded

and obtained a thorough reform.

Remarkable, in an historical point of view, as was that obstinate

resistance of the Pontic mercantile towns to the victorious Romans,

it was of little immediate use; the cause of Mithradates was none

the less lost. The great-king had evidently, for the present

at least, no intention at all of restoring him to his kingdom.

The Roman emigrants in Asia had lost their best men by the destruction

of the Aegean fleet; of the survivors not a few, such as the active

leaders Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, had made their peace

with Lucullus; and with the death of Sertorius, who perished in the year

of the battle of Cabira, the last hope of the emigrants vanished.

Mithradates' own power was totally shattered, and one after another

his remaining supports gave way; his squadrons returning from Crete

and Spain, to the number of seventy sail, were attacked and destroyed

by Triarius at the island of Tenedos; even the governor

of the Bosporan kingdom, the king's own son Machares, deserted him,

and as independent prince of the Tauric Chersonese concluded

on his own behalf peace and friendship with the Romans (684).

The king himself, after a not too glorious resistance, was confined

in a remote Armenian mountain-stronghold, a fugitive from his kingdom

and almost a prisoner of his son-in-law. Although the bands

of corsairs might still hold out in Crete, and such as had escaped

from Amisus and Sinope might make their way along the hardly-

accessible east coast of the Black Sea to the Sanigae and Lazi,

the skilful conduct of the war by Lucullus and his judicious

moderation, which did not disdain to remedy the just grievances

of the provincials and to employ the repentant emigrants as officers

in his army, had at a moderate sacrifice delivered Asia Minor

from the enemy and annihilated the Pontic kingdom, so that it might

be converted from a Roman client-state into a Roman province.

A commission of the senate was expected, to settle in concert

with the commander-in-chief the new provincial organization.

Beginning of the Armenian War

But the relations with Armenia were not yet settled.

Thata declaration of war by the Romans against Tigranes

was in itself justified and even demanded, we have already shown.

Lucullus, who looked at the state of affairs from a nearer point of view

and with a higher spirit than the senatorial college in Rome, perceived

clearly the necessity of confining Armenia to the other side

of the Tigris and of re-establishing the lost dominion of Rome over

the Mediterranean. He showed himself in the conduct of Asiatic

affairs no unworthy successor of his instructor and friend Sulla.

A Philhellene above most Romans of his time, he was not insensible

to the obligation which Rome had come under when taking up

the heritage of Alexander--the obligation to be the shield and sword

of the Greeks in the east. Personal motives--the wish to earn laurels

also beyond the Euphrates, irritation at the fact that the great-

king in a letter to him had omitted the title of Imperator--may

doubtless have partly influenced Lucullus; but it is unjust

to assume paltry and selfish motives for actions, which motives

of duty quite suffice to explain. The Roman governing college

at any rate--timid, indolent, ill informed, and above all beset

by perpetual financial embarrassments--could never be expected,

without direct compulsion, to take the initiative in an expedition

so vast and costly. About the year 682 the legitimate representatives

of the Seleucid dynasty, Antiochus called the Asiatic and his brother,

moved by the favourable turn of the Pontic war, had gone to Rome

to procure a Roman intervention in Syria, and at the same

time a recognition of their hereditary claims on Egypt.

If the latter demand might not be granted, there could not, at any rate,

be found a more favourable moment or occasion for beginning the war

which had long been necessary against Tigranes. But the senate,

while it recognized the princes doubtless as the legitimate

kings of Syria, could not make up its mind to decree the armed

intervention. If the favourable opportunity was to be employed,

and Armenia was to be dealt with in earnest, Lucullus had to begin

the war, without any proper orders from the senate, at his own hand

and his own risk; he found himself, just like Sulla, placed under

the necessity of executing what he did in the most manifest

interest of the existing government, not with its sanction,

but in spite of it. His resolution was facilitated by the relations

of Rome towards Armenia, for long wavering in uncertainty between

peace and war, which screened in some measure the arbitrariness

of his proceedings, and failed not to suggest formal grounds for war.

The state of matters in Cappadocia and Syria afforded pretexts

enough; and already in the pursuit of the king of Pontus Roman

troops had violated the territory of the great-king. As, however,

the commission of Lucullus related to the conduct of the war

against Mithradates and he wished to connect what he did

with that commission, he preferred to send one of his officers,

Appius Claudius, to the great-king at Antioch to demand the surrender

of Mithradates, which in fact could not but lead to war.

Difficulties to Be Encountered

The resolution was a grave one, especially considering

the condition of the Roman army. It was indispensable during

the campaign in Armenia to keep the extensive territory of Pontus

strongly occupied, for otherwise the army stationed in Armenia

might lose its communications with home; and besides it might be

easily foreseen that Mithradates would attempt an inroad into his

former kingdom. The army, at the head of which Lucullus had ended

the Mithradatic war, amounting to about 30,000 men, was obviously

inadequate for this double task. Under ordinary circumstances

the general would have asked and obtained from his government

the despatch of a second army; but as Lucullus wished,

and was in some measure compelled, to take up the war over the head

of the government, he found himself necessitated to renounce

that plan and--although he himself incorporated the captured Thracian

mercenaries of the Pontic king with his troops--to carry the war

over the Euphrates with not more than two legions, or at most

15,000 men. This was in itself hazardous; but the smallness

of the number might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour

of the army consisting throughout of veterans. A far worse feature

was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high

aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed. Lucullus

was an able general, and--according to the aristocratic standard--

an upright and kindly-disposed man, but very far from being

a favourite with his soldiers. He was unpopular, as a decided

adherent of the oligarchy; unpopular, because he had vigorously

checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor;

unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted

on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded strict discipline

in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage

of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon

and many a camel to be laden with the treasures of the east for himself;

unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished,

haughty, Hellenizing, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever

it was possible, to ease and pleasure. There was no trace in him

of the charm which weaves a personal bond between the general

and the soldier. Moreover, a large portion of his ablest soldiers

had every reason to complain of the unmeasured prolongation of their

term of service. His two best legions were the same which Flaccus

and Fimbria had led in 668 to the east;(14) notwithstanding

that shortly after the battle of Cabira they had been promised their

discharge well earned by thirteen campaigns, Lucullus now led them

beyond the Euphrates to face a new incalculable war--it seemed

as though the victors of Cabira were to be treated worse than

the vanquished of Cannae.(15) It was in fact more than rash that,

with troops so weak and so much out of humour, a general should at his

own hand and, strictly speaking, at variance with the constitution,

undertake an expedition to a distant and unknown land, full of rapid

streams and snow-clad mountains--a land which from the very vastness

of its extent rendered any lightly-undertaken attack fraught

with danger. The conduct of Lucullus was therefore much

and not unreasonably censured in Rome; only, amidst the censure

the fact should not have been concealed, that the perversity

of the government was the prime occasion of this venturesome

project of the general, and, if it did not justify it, rendered

it at least excusable.

Lucullus Crosses the Euphrates

The mission of Appius Claudius was designed not only to furnish

a diplomatic pretext for the war, but also to induce the princes

and cities of Syria especially to take arms against the great-king:

in the spring of 685 the formal attack began. During the winter

the king of Cappadocia had silently provided vessels for transport;

with these the Euphrates was crossed at Melitene, and the further

march was directed by way of the Taurus-passes to the Tigris.

This too Lucullus crossed in the region of Amida (Diarbekr),

and advanced towards the road which connected the second capital

Tigranocerta,(16) recently founded on the south frontier of Armenia,

with the old metropolis Artaxata. At the former was stationed

the great-king, who had shortly before returned from Syria,

after having temporarily deferred the prosecution of his plans

of conquest on the Mediterranean on account of the embroilment

with the Romans. He was just projecting an inroad into Roman Asia

from Cilicia and Lycaonia, and was considering whether the Romans

would at once evacuate Asia or would previously give him battle,

possibly at Ephesus, when the news was brought to him of the advance

of Lucullus, which threatened to cut off his communications

with Artaxata. He ordered the messenger to be hanged,

but the disagreeable reality remained unaltered; so he left

the new capital and resorted to the interior of Armenia, in order

there to raise a force--which had not yet been done--against the Romans.

Meanwhile Mithrobarzanes with the troops actually at his disposal

and in concert with the neighbouring Bedouin tribes, who were called out

in all haste, was to give employment to the Romans. But the corps

of Mithrobarzanes was dispersed by the Roman vanguard, and the Arabs

by a detachment under Sextilius; Lucullus gained the road leading

from Tigranocerta to Artaxata, and, while on the right bank

of the Tigrisa Roman detachment pursued the great-king

retreating northwards, Lucullus himself crossed to the left

and marched forward to Tigranocerta.

Siege and Battle of Tigranocerta

The exhaustless showers of arrows which the garrison poured upon

the Roman army, and the setting fire to the besieging machines

by means of naphtha, initiated the Romans into the new dangers

of Iranian warfare; and the brave commandant Mancaeus maintained

the city, till at length the great royal army of relief had assembled

from all parts of the vast empire and the adjoining countries

that were open to Armenian recruiting officers, and had advanced

through the north-eastern passes to the relief of the capital.

The leader Taxiles, experienced in the wars of Mithradates,

advised Tigranes to avoid a battle, and to surround and starve out

the small Roman army by means of his cavalry. But when the king saw

the Roman general, who had determined to give battle without raising

the siege, move out with not much more than 10,000 men against a force

twenty times superior, and boldly cross the river which separated

the two armies; when he surveyed on the one side this little band,

"too many for an embassy, too few for an army," and on the other

side his own immense host, in which the peoples from the Black Sea

and the Caspian met with those of the Mediterranean and of

the Persian Gulf, in which the dreaded iron-clad lancers alone

were more numerous than the whole army of Lucullus, and in which

even infantry armed after the Roman fashion were not wanting;

he resolved promptly to accept the battle desired by the enemy.

But while the Armenians were still forming their array, the quick

eye of Lucullus perceived that they had neglected to occupy a height

which commanded the whole position of their cavalry. He hastened

to occupy it with two cohorts, while at the same time his weak

cavalry by a flank attack diverted the attention of the enemy

from this movement; and as soon as he had reached the height, he led

his little band against the rear of the enemy's cavalry. They were

totally broken and threw themselves on the not yet fully formed

infantry, which fled without even striking a blow. The bulletin

of the victor--that 100,000 Armenians and five Romans had fallen

and that the king, throwing away his turban and diadem, had galloped

off unrecognized with a few horsemen--is composed in the style

of his master Sulla. Nevertheless the victory achieved on the 6th

October 685 before Tigranocerta remains one of the most brilliant

stars in the glorious history of Roman warfare; and it was not less

momentous than brilliant.

All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans

All the provinces wrested from the Parthians or Syrians

to the south of the Tigris were by this means strategically lost

to the Armenians, and passed, for the most part, without delay

into the possession of the victor. The newly-built second capital

itselfset the example. The Greeks, who had been forced in large numbers

to settle there, rose against the garrison and opened to the Roman

army the gates of the city, which was abandoned to the pillage

of the soldiers. It had been created for the new great-kingdom,

and, like this, was effaced by the victor. From Cilicia and Syria

all the troops had already been withdrawn by the Armenian satrap

Magadates to reinforce the relieving army before Tigranocerta.

Lucullus advanced into Commagene, the most northern province

of Syria, and stormed Samosata, the capital; he did not reach Syria

proper, but envoys arrived from the dynasts and communities as far

as the Red Sea--from Hellenes, Syrians, Jews, Arabs--to do homage

to the Romans as their sovereigns. Even the prince of Corduene,

the province situated to the east of Tigranocerta, submitted;

while, on the other hand, Guras the brother of the great-king

maintained himself in Nisibis, and thereby in Mesopotamia.

Lucullus came forward throughout as the protector of the Hellenic

princes and municipalities: in Commagene he placed Antiochus,

a prince of the Seleucid house, on the throne; he recognized

Antiochus Asiaticus, who after the withdrawal of the Armenians had

returned to Antioch, as king of Syria; he sent the forced settlers

of Tigranocerta once more away to their homes. The immense stores

and treasures of the great-king--the grain amounted to 30,000,000

-medimni-, the money in Tigranocerta alone to 8000 talents (nearly

2,000,000 pounds)--enabled Lucullus to defray the expenses of the war

without making any demand on the state-treasury, and to bestow

on each of his soldiers, besides the amplest maintenance, a present

of 800 -denarii- (33 pounds).

Tigranes and Mithradates

The great-king was deeply humbled. He was of a feeble character,

arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted in adversity. Probably

an agreement would have been come to between him and Lucullus--

an agreement which there was every reason that the great-king should

purchase by considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should

grant under tolerable conditions--had not the old Mithradates been

in existence. The latter had taken no part in the conflicts around

Tigranocerta. Liberated after twenty months' captivity about

the middle of 684 in consequence of the variance that had occurred

between the great-king and the Romans, he had been despatched

with 10,000 Armenian cavalry to his former kingdom, to threaten

the communications of the enemy. Recalled even before he could

accomplish anything there, when the great-king summoned his whole

force to relieve the capital which he had built, Mithradates was met

on his arrival before Tigranocerta by the multitudes just fleeing

from the field of battle. To every one, from the great-king

down to the common soldier, all seemed lost. But if Tigranes

should now make peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last

chance of being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would

be beyond doubt the first condition of peace; and certainly

Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards him than Bocchus

had formerly acted towards Jugurtha. The king accordingly staked

his whole personal weight to prevent things from taking this turn,

and to induce the Armenian court to continue the war, in which

he had nothing to lose and everything to gain; and, fugitive

and dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court

was not slight. He was still a stately and powerful man, who,

although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted on horseback

in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict stood his ground

like the best. Years and vicissitudes seemed to have steeled his spirit:

while in earlier times he sent forth generals to lead his armies

and took no direct part in war himself, we find him henceforth

as an old man commanding in person and fighting in person on the field

of battle. To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had witnessed

so many unexampled changes of fortune, the cause of the great-king

appeared by no means lost through the defeat of Tigranocerta;

whereas the position of Lucullus was very difficult, and, if peace

should not now take place and the war should be judiciously continued,

even in a high degree precarious.

Renewal of the War

The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the great-king

almost as a father, and was now able to exercise a personal

influence over him, overpowered by his energy that weak man,

and induced him not only to resolve on the continuance of the war,

but also to entrust Mithradates with its political and military

management. The war was now to be changed from a cabinet contest

into a national Asiatic struggle; the kings and peoples of Asia

were to unite for this purpose against the domineering and haughty

Occidentals. The greatest exertions were made to reconcile

the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to induce them

to make common cause against Rome. At the suggestion of Mithradates,

Tigranes offered to give back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who

had reigned since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians--

Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the "great valleys"--and to enter into friendship

and alliance with him. But, after all that had previously taken place,

this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception;

Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates

by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans,

and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient

foreigner fought out their strife. Greater success attended

the application of Mithradates to the peoples of the east

than to the kings. It was not difficult to represent the war

as a national one of the east against the west, for such it was;

it might very well be made a religious war also, and the report

might be spread that the object aimed at by the army of Lucullus

was the temple of the Persian Nanaea or Anaitis in Elymais or the modern

Luristan, the most celebrated and the richest shrine in the whole

region of the Euphrates.(17) From far and near the Asiatics flocked

in crowds to the banner of the kings, who summoned them to protect

the east and its gods from the impious foreigners. But facts had

shown not only that the mere assemblage of enormous hosts

was of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching

and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a mass rendered

useless and involved in the general ruin. Mithradates sought

above all to develop the arm which was at once weakest among

the Occidentals and strongest among the Asiatics, the cavalry;

in the army newly formed by him half of the force was mounted.

For the ranks of the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass

of recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service,

and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic officers. The considerable

army, however, which soon assembled under the banner of the great-

king was destined not to measure its strength with the Roman

veterans on the first chance field of battle, but to confine itself

to defence and petty warfare. Mithradates had conducted

the last war in his empire on the system of constantly retreating

and avoiding battle; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion,

and Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war--the hereditary

land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the enemy, and excellently

adapted for this sort of warfare both by its physical character

and by the patriotism of its inhabitants.

Dissatisfaction with Lucullus in the Capital and in the Army

The year 686 found Lucullus in a position of difficulty,

which daily assumed a more dangerous aspect. In spite of his brilliant

victories, people in Rome were not at all satisfied with him.

The senate felt the arbitrary nature of his conduct: the capitalist

party, sorely offended by him, set all means of intrigue

and corruption at work to effect his recall. Daily the Forum

echoed with just and unjust complaints regarding the foolhardy,

the covetous, the un-Roman, the traitorous general. The senate

so far yielded to the complaints regarding the union of such unlimited

power--two ordinary governorships and an important extraordinary

command--in the hands of such a man, as to assign the province

of Asia to one of the praetors, and the province of Cilicia

along with three newly-raised legions to the consul Quintus

Marcius Rex, and to restrict the general to the command

against Mithradates and Tigranes.

These accusations springing up against the general in Rome

found a dangerous echo in the soldiers' quarters on the Iris

andon the Tigris; and the more so that several officers including

the general's own brother-in-law, Publius Clodius, worked upon

the soldiers with this view. The report beyond doubt designedly

circulated by these, that Lucullus now thought of combining

with the Pontic-Armenian war an expedition against the Parthians,

fed the exasperation of the troops.

Lucullus Advances into Armenia

But while the troublesome temper of the government and of the soldier

thus threatened the victorious general with recall and mutiny,

he himself continued like a desperate gambler to increase

his stake and his risk. He did not indeed march against the Parthians

but when Tigranes showed himself neither ready to make peace

nor disposed, as Lucullus wished, to risk a second pitched

battle, Lucullus resolved to advance from Tigranocerta, through

the difficult mountain-country along the eastern shore of the lake

of Van, into the valley of the eastern Euphrates (or the Arsanias,

now Myrad-Chai), and thence into that of the Araxes, where,

on the northern slope of Ararat, lay Artaxata the capital of Armenia

proper, with the hereditary castle and the harem of the king.

He hoped, by threatening the king's hereditary residence,

to compel him to fight either on the way or at any rate before

Artaxata. It was inevitably necessary to leave behind a division

at Tigranocerta; and, as the marching army could not possibly be

further reduced, no course was left but to weaken the position

in Pontus and to summon troops thence to Tigranocerta. The main

difficulty, however, was the shortness of the Armenian summer,

so inconvenient for military enterprises. On the tableland

of Armenia, which lies 5000 feet and more above the level of the sea,

the corn at Erzeroum only germinates in the beginning of June,

and the winter sets in with the harvest in September; Artaxata

had to be reached and the campaign had to be ended in four

months at the utmost.

At midsummer, 686, Lucullus set out from Tigranocerta,

and, marching doubtless through the pass of Bitlis and farther

to the westward along the lake of Van--arrived on the plateau of Musch

and at the Euphrates. The march went on--amidst constant

and very troublesome skirmishing with the enemy's cavalry,

and especially with the mounted archers--slowly, but without material

hindrance; and the passage of the Euphrates, which was seriously

defended by the Armenian cavalry, was secured by a successful engagement;

the Armenian infantry showed itself, but the attempt to involve it

in the conflict did not succeed. Thus the army reached the tableland,

properly so called, of Armenia, and continued its march

into the unknown country. They had suffered no actual misfortune;

but the mere inevitable delaying of the march by the difficulties

of the ground and the horsemen of the enemy was itself a very serious

disadvantage. Long before they had reached Artaxata, winter set

in; and when the Italian soldiers saw snow and ice around them,

the bow of military discipline that had been far too tightly

stretched gave way.

Lucullus Retreats to Mesopotamia

Capture of Nisibus

A formal mutiny compelled the general to order a retreat,

which he effected with his usual skill. When he had safely reached

Mesopotamia where the season still permitted farther operations,

Lucullus crossed the Tigris, and threw himself with the mass of his

army on Nisibis, the last city that here remained to the Armenians.

The great-king, rendered wiser by the experience acquired before

Tigranocerta, left the city to itself: notwithstanding its brave

defence it was stormed in a dark, rainy night by the besiegers,

and the army of Lucullus found there booty not less rich and winter-

quarters not less comfortable than the year before in Tigranocerta.

Conflicts in Pontus and at Tigranocerta

But, meanwhile, the whole weight of the enemy's offensive fell

on the weak Roman divisions left behind in Pontus and in Armenia.

Tigranes compelled the Roman commander of the latter corps, Lucius

Fannius--the same who had formerly been the medium of communication

between Sertorius and Mithradates (18)--to throw himself

into a fortress, and kept him beleaguered there. Mithradates

advanced into Pontus with 4000 Armenian horsemen and 4000 of his own,

and as liberator and avenger summoned the nation to rise against

the common foe. All joined him; the scattered Roman soldiers

were everywhere seized and put to death: when Hadrianus, the Roman

commandant in Pontus,(19) led his troops against him, the former

mercenaries of the king and the numerous natives of Pontus

following the army as slaves made common cause with the enemy.

For two successive days the unequal conflict lasted; it was only

the circumstance that the king after receiving two wounds had

to be carried off from the field of battle, which gave the Roman

commander the opportunity of breaking off the virtually lost

battle, and throwing himself with the small remnant of his troops

into Cabira. Another of Lucullus' lieutenants who accidentally

came into this region, the resolute Triarius, again gathered round

him a body of troops and fought a successful engagement

with the king; but he was much too weak to expel him afresh

from Pontic soil, and had to acquiesce while the king took up

winter-quarters in Comana.

Farther Retreat to Pontus

So the spring of 687 came on. The reunion of the army in Nisibis,

the idleness of winter-quarters, the frequent absence of the general,

had meanwhile increased the insubordination of the troops;

not only did they vehemently demand to be led back, but it was already

tolerably evident that, if the general refused to lead them home,

they would break up of themselves. The supplies were scanty;

Fannius and Triarius, in their distress, sent the most urgent

entreaties to the general to furnish aid. With a heavy heart

Lucullus resolved to yield to necessity, to give up Nisibis

and Tigranocerta, and, renouncing all the brilliant hopes of his

Armenian expedition, to return to the right bank of the Euphrates.

Fannius was relieved; but in Pontus the help was too late.

Triarius, not strong enough to fight with Mithradates, had taken

up a strong position at Gaziura (Turksal on the Iris, to the west

of Tokat), while the baggage was left behind at Dadasa.

But when Mithradates laid siege to the latter place, the Roman soldiers,

apprehensive for their property, compelled their leader to leave

his secure position, and to give battle to the king between Gaziura

and Ziela (Zilleh) on the Scotian heights.

Defeat of the Romans in Pontus at Ziela

What Triarius had foreseen, occurred. In spite of the stoutest

resistance the wing which the king commanded in person broke

the Roman line and huddled the infantry together into a clayey ravine,

where it could make neither a forward nor a lateral movement

and was cut to pieces without pity. The king indeed was dangerously

wounded by a Roman centurion, who sacrificed his life for it;

but the defeat was not the less complete. The Roman camp was taken;

the flower of the infantry, and almost all the staff and subaltern

officers, strewed the ground; the dead were left lying unburied

on the field of battle, and, when Lucullus arrived on the right bank

of the Euphrates, he learned the defeat not from his own soldiers,

but through the reports of the natives.

Mutiny of the Soldiers

Along with this defeat came the outbreak of the military conspiracy.

At this very time news arrived from Rome that the people had resolved

to grant a discharge to the soldiers whose legal term of service had

expired, to wit, to the Fimbrians, and to entrust the chief command

in Pontus and Bithynia to one of the consuls of the current year:

the successor of Lucullus, the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio,

had already landed in Asia Minor. The disbanding of the bravest

and most turbulent legions and the recall of the commander-in-chief,

in connection with the impression produced by the defeat of Ziela,

dissolved all the bonds of authority in the army just when the general

had most urgent need of their aid. Near Talaura in Lesser Armenia

he confronted the Pontic troops, at whose head Tigranes' son-in-law,

Mithradates of Media, had already engaged the Romans successfully

in a cavalry conflict; the main force of the great-king was advancing

to the same point from Armenia. Lucullus sent to Quintus Marcius

the new governor of Cilicia, who had just arrived on the way

to his province with three legions in Lycaonia, to obtain help from him;

Marcius declared that his soldiers refused to march to Armenia.

He sent to Glabrio with the request that he would take up the supreme

command committed to him by the people; Glabrio showed still less

inclination to undertake this task, which had now become so difficult

and hazardous. Lucullus, compelled to retain the command,

with the view of not being obliged to fight at Talaura against

the Armenian and the Pontic armies conjoined, ordered a movement

against the advancing Armenians.

Farther Retreat to Asia Minor

The soldiers obeyed the order to march; but, when they reached

the point where the routes to Armenia and Cappadocia diverged,

the bulk of the army took the latter, and proceeded to the province

of Asia. There the Fimbrians demanded their immediate discharge;

and although they desisted from this at the urgent entreaty

of the commander-in-chief and the other corps, they yet persevered

in their purpose of disbanding if the winter should come on without

an enemy confronting them; which accordingly was the case.

Mithradates not only occupied once more almost his whole kingdom,

but his cavalry ranged over all Cappadocia and as far as Bithynia;

king Ariobarzanes sought help equally in vain from Quintus Marcius,

from Lucullus, and from Glabrio. It was a strange, almost

incredible issue for a war conducted in a manner so glorious.

If we look merely to military achievements, hardly any other Roman

general accomplished so much with so trifling means as Lucullus;

the talent and the fortune of Sulla seemed to have devolved on this

his disciple. That under the circumstances the Roman army should

have returned from Armenia to Asia Minor uninjured, is a military

miracle which, so far as we can judge, far excels the retreat

of Xenophon; and, although mainly doubtless to be explained

by the solidity of the Roman, and the inefficiency of the Oriental,

system of war, it at all events secures to the leader of this expedition

an honourable name in the foremost rank of men of military

capacity. If the name of Lucullus is not usually included among these,

it is to all appearance simply owing to the fact that no narrative

of his campaigns which is in a military point of view even tolerable

has come down to us, and to the circumstance that in everything

and particularly in war, nothing is taken into account

but the final result; and this, in reality, was equivalent

to a complete defeat. Through the last unfortunate turn of things,

and principally through the mutiny of the soldiers, all the results

of an eight years' war had been lost; in the winter of 687-688

the Romans again stood exactly at the same spot

as in the winter of 679-680.

War with the Pirates

The maritime war against the pirates, which began at the same time

with the continental war and was all along most closely connected

with it, yielded no better results. It has been already mentioned

(20) that the senate in 680 adopted the judicious resolution

to entrust the task of clearing the seas from the corsairs

to a single admiral in supreme command, the praetor Marcus Antonius.

But at the very outset they had made an utter mistake in the choice

of the leader; or rather those, who had carried this measure

so appropriate in itself, had not taken into account that in the senate

all personal questions were decided by the influence of Cethegus(21)

and similar coterie-considerations. They had moreover

neglected to furnish the admiral of their choice with money

and ships in a manner befitting his comprehensive task,

so that with his enormous requisitions he was almost as burdensome

to the provincials whom he befriended as were the corsairs.

Defeat of Antonius off Cydonia

The results were corresponding. In the Campanian waters the fleet

of Antonius captured a number of piratical vessels. But an engagement

took place with the Cretans, who had entered into friendship

and alliance with the pirates and abruptly rejected his demand

that they should desist from such fellowship; and the chains,

with which the foresight of Antonius had provided his vessels

for the purpose of placing the captive buccaneers in irons,

served to fasten the quaestor and the other Roman prisoners

to the masts of the captured Roman ships, when the Cretan generals

Lasthenes and Panares steered back in triumph to Cydonia

from the naval combat in which they had engaged the Romans

off their island. Antonius, after having squandered immense sums

and accomplished not the slightest result by his inconsiderate mode

of warfare, died in 683 at Crete. The ill success of his expedition,

the costliness of building a fleet, and the repugnance of the oligarchy

to confer any powers of a more comprehensive kind on the magistrates,

led them, after the practical termination of this enterprise

by Antonius' death, to make no farther nomination of an admiral-in-chief,

and to revert to the old system of leaving each governor to look

after the suppression of piracy in his own province: the fleet equipped

by Lucullus for instance(22) was actively employed for this purpose

in the Aegean sea.

Cretan War

So far however as the Cretans were concerned, a disgrace

like that endured off Cydonia seemed even to the degenerate Romans

of this age as if it could be answered only by a declaration of war.

Yet the Cretan envoys, who in the year 684 appeared in Rome

with the request that the prisoners might be taken back and the old

alliance reestablished, had almost obtained a favourable decree

of the senate; what the whole corporation termed a disgrace,

the individual senator was ready to sell for a substantial price.

It was not till a formal resolution of the senate rendered the loans

of the Cretan envoys among the Roman bankers non-actionable--

that is, not until the senate had incapacitated itself for undergoing

bribery--that a decree passed to the effect that the Cretan

communities, if they wished to avoid war, should hand over not only

the Roman deserters but the authors of the outrage perpetrated off

Cydonia--the leaders Lasthenes and Panares--to the Romans

for befitting punishment, should deliver up all ships and boats of four

or more oars, should furnish 400 hostages, and should pay a fine

of 4000 talents (975,000 pounds). When the envoys declared that they

were not empowered to enter into such terms, one of the consuls

of the next year was appointed to depart on the expiry of his official

term for Crete, in order either to receive there what was demanded

or to begin the war.

Metellus Subdues Crete

Accordingly in 685 the proconsul Quintus Metellus appeared

in the Cretan waters. The communities of the island, with the larger

towns Gortyna, Cnossus, Cydonia at their head, were resolved rather

to defend themselves in arms than to submit to those excessive

demands. The Cretans were a nefarious and degenerate people,(23)

with whose public and private existence piracy was as intimately

associated as robbery with the commonwealth of the Aetolians;

but they resembled the Aetolians in valour as in many other respects,

and accordingly these two were the only Greek communities

that waged a courageous and honourable struggle for independence.

At Cydonia, where Metellus landed his three legions, a Cretan army

of 24,000 men under Lasthenes and Panares was ready to receive him;

a battle took place in the open field, in which the victory

after a hard struggle remained with the Romans. Nevertheless

the towns bade defiance from behind their walls to the Roman general;

Metellus had to make up his mind to besiege them in succession.

First Cydonia, in which the remains of the beaten army had taken

refuge, was after a long siege surrendered by Panares in return

for the promise of a free departure for himself. Lasthenes, who had

escaped from the town, had to be besieged a second time in Cnossus;

and, when this fortress also was on the point of falling,

he destroyed its treasures and escaped once more to places which still

continued their defence, such as Lyctus, Eleuthera, and others.

Two years (686, 687) elapsed, before Metellus became master

of the whole island and the last spot of free Greek soil thereby

passed under the control of the dominant Romans; the Cretan communities,

as they were the first of all Greek commonwealths to develop

the free urban constitution and the dominion of the sea, were also

to be the last of all those Greek maritime states that formerly filled

the Mediterranean to succumb to the Roman continental power.

The Pirates in the Mediterranean

All the legal conditions were fulfilled for celebrating another

of the usual pompous triumphs; the gens of the Metelli could add

to its Macedonian, Numidian, Dalmatian, Balearic titles with equal

right the new title of Creticus, and Rome possessed another name

of pride. Nevertheless the power of the Romans in the Mediterranean

was never lower, that of the corsairs never higher, than in those

years. Well might the Cilicians and Cretans of the seas, who are

said to have numbered at this time 1000 ships, mock the Isauricus

and the Creticus, and their empty victories. With what effect

the pirates interfered in the Mithradatic war, and how the obstinate

resistance of the Pontic maritime towns derived its best resources

from the corsair-state, has been already related. But that state

transacted business on a hardly less grand scale on its own behoof.

Almost under the eyes of the fleet of Lucullus, the pirate Athenodorus

surprised in 685 the island of Delos, destroyed its far-famed

shrines and temples, and carried off the whole population

into slavery. The island Lipara near Sicily paid to the pirates

a fixed tribute annually, to remain exempt from like attacks.

Another pirate chief Heracleon destroyed in 682 the squadron

equipped in Sicily against him, and ventured with no more than four

open boats to sail into the harbour of Syracuse. Two years later

his colleague Pyrganion even landed at the same port, established

himself there and sent forth flying parties into the island,

till the Roman governor at last compelled him to re-embark.

People grew at length quite accustomed to the fact that all

the provinces equipped squadrons and raised coastguards,

or were at any rate taxed for both; and yet the pirates appeared

to plunder the provinces with as much regularity as the Roman governors.

But even the sacred soil of Italy was now no longer respected

by the shameless transgressors: from Croton they carried off with them

the temple-treasures of the Lacinian Hera; they landed in Brundisium,

Misenum, Caieta, in the Etruscan ports, even in Ostia itself; they

seized the most eminent Roman officers as captives, among others

the admiral of the Cilician army and two praetors with their whole

retinue, with the dreaded -fasces- themselves and all the insignia

of their dignity; they carried away from a villa at Misenum

the very sister of the Roman admiral-in-chief Antonius, who was sent

forth to annihilate the pirates; they destroyed in the port

of Ostia the Roman war fleet equipped against them and commanded

by a consul. The Latin husbandman, the traveller on the Appian highway,

the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae

were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single

moment; all traffic and all intercourse were suspended;

the most dreadful scarcity prevailed in Italy, and especially

in the capital, which subsisted on transmarine corn. The contemporary

world and history indulge freely in complaints of insupportable

distress; in this case the epithet may have been appropriate.

Servile Disturbances

We have already described how the senate restored by Sulla carried

out its guardianship of the frontier in Macedonia, its discipline

over the client kings of Asia Minor, and lastly its marine police;

the results were nowhere satisfactory. Nor did better success

attend the government in another and perhaps even more urgent

matter, the supervision of the provincial, and above all

of the Italian, proletariate. The gangrene of a slave-proletariate

Gnawed at the vitals of all the states of antiquity, and the more so,

the more vigorously they had risen and prospered; for the power

and riches of the state regularly led, under the existing

circumstances, to a disproportionate increase of the body

of slaves. Rome naturally suffered more severely from this cause

than any other state of antiquity. Even the government of the sixth

century had been under the necessity of sending troops against

the gangs of runaway herdsmen and rural slaves. The plantation-system,

spreading more and more among the Italian speculators

had infinitely increased the dangerous evil: in the time of

the Gracchan and Marian crises and in close connection with them

servile revolts had taken place at numerous points of the Roman

empire, and in Sicily had even grown into two bloody wars (619-622

and 652-654;(24)). But the ten years of the rule of the restoration

after Sulla's death formed the golden age both for the buccaneers

at sea and for bands of a similar character on land, above all

in the Italian peninsula, which had hitherto been comparatively

well regulated. The land could hardly be said any longer to enjoy

peace. In the capital and the less populous districts of Italy

robberies were of everyday occurrence, murders were frequent.

A special decree of the people was issued--perhaps at this epoch--

against kidnapping of foreign slaves and of free men; a special

summary action was about this time introduced against violent

deprivation of landed property. These crimes could not

but appear specially dangerous, because, while they were usually

perpetrated by the proletariate, the upper class were to a great

extent also concerned in them as moral originators and partakers

in the gain. The abduction of men and of estates was very frequently

suggested by the overseers of the large estates and carried out

by the gangs of slaves, frequently armed, that were collected there:

and many a man even of high respectability did not disdain what

one of his officious slave-overseers thus acquired for him

as Mephistopheles acquired for Faust the lime trees of Philemon.

The state of things is shown by the aggravated punishment for outrages

on property committed by armed bands, which was introduced

by one of the better Optimates, Marcus Lucullus, as presiding over

the administration of justice in the capital about the year 676,(25)

with the express object of inducing the proprietors of large bands

of slaves to exercise a more strict superintendence over them

and thereby avoid the penalty of seeing them judicially condemned.

Where pillage and murder were thus carried on by order

of the world of quality, it was natural for these masses of slaves

and proletarians to prosecute the same business on their own account;

a spark was sufficient to set fire to so inflammable materials,

and to convert the proletariate into an insurrectionary army.

An occasion was soon found.

Outbreak of the Gladiatorial War in Italy

Spartacus

The gladiatorial games, which now held the first rank

among the popular amusements in Italy, had led to the institution

of numerous establishments, more especially in and around Capua,

designed partly for the custody, partly for the training

of those slaves who were destined to kill or be killed for the amusement

of the sovereign multitude. These were naturally in great part

brave men captured in war, who had not forgotten that they had once

faced the Romans in the field. A number of these desperadoes broke out

of one of the Capuan gladiatorial schools (681), and sought refuge

on Mount Vesuvius. At their head were two Celts, who were designated

by their slave-names Crixus and Oenomaus, and the Thracian Spartacus.

The latter, perhaps a scion of the noble family of the Spartocids

which attained even to royal honours in its Thracian home

and in Panticapaeum, had served among the Thracian auxiliaries

in the Roman army, had deserted and gone as a brigand to the mountains,

and had been there recaptured and destined for the gladiatorial games.

The Insurrection Takes Shape

The inroads of this little band, numbering at first only seventy-four

persons, but rapidly swelling by concourse from the surrounding

country, soon became so troublesome to the inhabitants

of the rich region of Campania, that these, after having vainly

attempted themselves to repel them, sought help against them

from Rome. A division of 3000 men hurriedly collected appeared

under the leadership of Clodius Glaber, and occupied the approaches

to Vesuvius with the view of starving out the slaves.

But the brigands in spite of their small number and their

defective armament had the boldness to scramble down steep declivities

and to fall upon the Roman posts; and when the wretched militia saw

the little band of desperadoes unexpectedly assail them, they took

to their heels and fled on all sides. This first success procured

for the robbers arms and increased accessions to their ranks.

Although even now a great portion of them carried nothing

but pointed clubs, the new and stronger division of the militia--

two legions under the praetor Publius Varinius--which advanced

from Rome into Campania, found them encamped almost like a regular army

in the plain. Varinius had a difficult position. His militia,

compelled to bivouac opposite the enemy, were severely weakened

by the damp autumn weather and the diseases which it engendered;

and, worse than the epidemics, cowardice and insubordination thinned

the ranks. At the very outset one of his divisions broke up entirely,

so that the fugitives did not fall back on the main corps, but went

straight home. Thereupon, when the order was given to advance

against the enemy's entrenchments and attack them, the greater

portion of the troops refused to comply with it. Nevertheless

Varinius set out with those who kept their ground against

the robber-band; but it was no longer to be found where he sought it.

It had broken up in the deepest silence and had turned to the south

towards Picentia (Vicenza near Amain), where Varinius overtook it

indeed, but could not prevent it from retiring over the Silarus

into the interior of Lucania, the chosen land of shepherds and robbers.

Varinius followed thither, and there at length the despised enemy

arrayed themselves for battle. All the circumstances

under which the combat took place were to the disadvantage

of the Romans: the soldiers, vehemently as they had demanded

battle a little before, fought ill; Varinius was completely

vanquished; his horse and the insignia of his official

dignity fell with the Roman camp itself into the enemy's hand.

The south-Italian slaves, especially the brave half-savage herdsmen,

flocked in crowds to the banner of the deliverers who had

so unexpectedly appeared; according to the most moderate estimates

the number of armed insurgents rose to 40,000 men. Campania,

just evacuated, was speedily reoccupied, and the Roman corps which was

left behind there under Gaius Thoranius, the quaestor of Varinius,

was broken and destroyed. In the whole south and south-west

of Italy the open country was in the hands of the victorious bandit-

chiefs; even considerable towns, such as Consentia in the Bruttian

country, Thurii and Metapontum in Lucania, Nola and Nuceria

in Campania, were stormed by them, and suffered all the atrocities

which victorious barbarians could inflict on defenceless civilized

men, and unshackled slaves on their former masters. That a conflict

like this should be altogether abnormal and more a massacre

than a war, was unhappily a matter of course: the masters

duly crucified every captured slave; the slaves naturally killed

their prisoners also, or with still more sarcastic retaliation

even compelled their Roman captives to slaughter each other

in gladiatorial sport; as was subsequently done with three hundred

of them at the obsequies of a robber-captain who had fallen in combat.

Great Victories of Spartacus

In Rome people were with reason apprehensive as to the destructive

conflagration which was daily spreading. It was resolved next year

(682) to send both consuls against the formidable leaders

of the gang. The praetor Quintus Arrius, a lieutenant of the consul

Lucius Gellius, actually succeeded in seizing and destroying

at Mount Garganus in Apulia the Celtic band, which under Crixus

had separated from the mass of the robber-army and was levying

contributions at its own hand. But Spartacus achieved

all the more brilliant victories in the Apennines and in northern Italy,

where first the consul Gnaeus Lentulus who had thought to surround

and capture the robbers, then his colleague Gellius and the so recently

victorious praetor Arrius, and lastly at Mutina the governor

of Cisalpine Gaul Gaius Cassius (consul 681) and the praetor Gnaeus

Manlius, one after another succumbed to his blows. The scarcely-

armed gangs of slaves were the terror of the legions; the series

of defeats recalled the first years of the Hannibalic war.

Internal Dissension among the Insurgents

What might have come of it, had the national kings

from the mountains of Auvergne or of the Balkan, and not runaway

gladiatorial slaves, been at the head of the victorious bands,

it is impossible to say; as it was, the movement remained

notwithstanding its brilliant victories a rising of robbers,

and succumbed less to the superior force of its opponents than

to internal discord and the want of definite plan. The unity

in confronting the common foe, which was so remarkably conspicuous

in the earlier servile wars of Sicily, was wanting in this Italian

war--a difference probably due to the fact that, while the Sicilian

slaves found a quasi-national point of union in the common

Syrohellenism, the Italian slaves were separated into the two

bodies of Helleno-Barbarians and Celto-Germans. The rupture

between the Celtic Crixus and the Thracian Spartacus--Oenomaus had

fallen in one of the earliest conflicts--and other similar quarrels

crippled them in turning to account the successes achieved,

and procured for the Romans several important victories. But the want

of a definite plan and aim produced far more injurious effects

on the enterprise than the insubordination of the Celto-Germans.

Spartacus doubtless--to judge by the little which we learn

regarding that remarkable man--stood in this respect above his party.

Along with his strategic ability he displayed no ordinary

talent for organization, as indeed from the very outset

the uprightness, with which he presided over his band and distributed

the spoil, had directed the eyes of the multitude to him quite

as much at least as his valour. To remedy the severely felt want

of cavalry and of arms, he tried with the help of the herds of horses

seized in Lower Italy to train and discipline a cavalry, and, so soon as

he got the port of Thurii into his hands, to procure from that quarter

iron and copper, doubtless through the medium of the pirates.

But in the main matters he was unable to induce the wild hordes

whom he led to pursue any fixed ulterior aims. Gladly would

he have checked the frantic orgies of cruelty, in which the robbers

indulged on the capture of towns, and which formed the chief reason

why no Italian city voluntarily made common cause with the insurgents;

but the obedience which the bandit-chief found in the conflic

ceased with the victory, and his representations and entreaties

were in vain. After the victories obtained in the Apennine

in 682 the slave army was free to move in any direction.

Spartacus himself is said to have intended to cross the Alps,

with a view to open to himself and his followers the means of return

to their Celtic or Thracian home: if the statement is well founded,

it shows how little the conqueror overrated his successes

and his power. When his men refused so speedily to turn their backs

on the riches of Italy, Spartacus took the route for Rome, and is said

to have meditated blockading the capital. The troops, however,

showed themselves also averse to this desperate but yet methodical

enterprise; they compelled their leader, when he was desirous

to be a general, to remain a mere captain of banditti and aimlessly

to wander about Italy in search of plunder. Rome might think herself

fortunate that the matter took this turn; but even as it was,

the perplexity was great. There was a want of trained soldiers

as of experienced generals; Quintus Metellus and Gnaeus Pompeius

were employed in Spain, Marcus Lucullus in Thrace, Lucius Lucullus

in Asia Minor; and none but raw militia and, at best, mediocre

officers were available. The extraordinary supreme command

in Italy was given to the praetor Marcus Crassus, who was not

a general of much reputation, but had fought with honour under Sulla

and had at least character; and an army of eight legions, imposing

if not by its quality, at any rate by its numbers, was placed

at his disposal. The new commander-in-chief began by treating

the first division, which again threw away its arms and fled before

the banditti, with all the severity of martial law, and causing every

tenth man in it to be executed; whereupon the legions in reality

grew somewhat more manly. Spartacus, vanquished in the next

engagement, retreated and sought to reach Rhegium through Lucania.

Conflicts in the Bruttian Country

Just at that time the pirates commanded not merely the Sicilian

waters, but even the port of Syracuse;(26) with the help of their

boats Spartacus proposed to throw a corps into Sicily, where the slaves

only waited an impulse to break out a third time. The march to Rhegium

was accomplished; but the corsairs, perhaps terrified by the coastguards

established in Sicily by the praetor Gaius Verres, perhaps also bribed

by the Romans, took from Spartacus the stipulated hire without performing

the service for which it was given. Crassus meanwhile had followed

the robber-army nearly as far as the mouth, of the Crathis,

and, like Scipio before Numantia, ordered his soldiers,

seeing that they did not fight as they ought, to construct

an entrenched wall of the length of thirty-five miles,

which shut off the Bruttian peninsula from the rest of Italy,(27)

intercepted the insurgent army on the return from Rhegium,

and cut off its supplies. But in a dark winter night Spartacus

broke through the lines of the enemy, and in the spring of 683(28)

was once more in Lucania. The laborious work had thus been in vain.

Crassus began to despair of accomplishing his task and demanded

that the senate should for his support recall to Italy the armies

stationed in Macedonia under Marcus Lucullus and in Hither Spain

under Gnaeus Pompeius.

Disruption of the Rebels and Their Subjugation

This extreme step however was not needed; the disunion and the arrogance

of the robber-bands sufficed again to frustrate their successes.

Once more the Celts and Germans broke off from the league of which

the Thracian was the head and soul, in order that, under leaders

of their own nation Gannicus and Castus, they might separately

fall victims to the sword of the Romans. Once, at the Lucanian

lake the opportune appearance of Spartacus saved them,

and thereupon they pitched their camp near to his; nevertheless

Crassus succeeded in giving employment to Spartacus by means

of the cavalry, and meanwhile surrounded the Celtic bands and compelled

them to a separate engagement, in which the whole body--numbering

it is said 12,300 combatants--fell fighting bravely all on the spot

and with their wounds in front. Spartacus then attempted to throw

himself with his division into the mountains round Petelia (near

Strongoli in Calabria), and signally defeated the Roman vanguard,

which followed his retreat But this victory proved more injurious

to the victor than to the vanquished. Intoxicated by success,

the robbers refused to retreat farther, and compelled their general

to lead them through Lucania towards Apulia to face the last decisive

struggle. Before the battle Spartacus stabbed his horse:

as in prosperity and adversity he had faithfully kept by his men,

he now by that act showed them that the issue for him and for all

was victory or death. In the battle also he fought with the courage

of a lion; two centurions fell by his hand; wounded and on his knees

he still wielded his spear against the advancing foes.

Thus the great robber-captain and with him the best of his comrades

died the death of free men and of honourable soldiers (683).

After the dearly-bought victory the troops who had achieved it,

and those of Pompeius that had meanwhile after conquering the Sertorians

arrived from Spain, instituted throughout Apulia and Lucania a manhunt,

such as there had never been before, to crush out the last sparks

of the mighty conflagration. Although in the southern districts,

where for instance the little town of Tempsa was seized in 683

by a gang of robbers, and in Etruria, which was severely affected

by Sulla's evictions, there was by no means as yet a real public

tranquillity, peace was officially considered as re-established

in Italy. At least the disgracefully lost eagles were recovered--

after the victory over the Celts alone five of them were brought

in; and along the road from Capua to Rome the six thousand crosses

bearing captured slaves testified to the re-establishment of order,

and to the renewed victory of acknowledged law over its living

property that had rebelled.

The Government of the Restoration as a Whole