POLITICAL STATE OF THE WORLD THEN KNOWN. LEGISLATION. THE WAR WITH THE
PIRATES.
The states of Europe at this time were as follows. The Roman empire
comprised, besides Italy, Provence and part of Dauphiné, the whole of
Languedoc with Thoulouse, and Spain with the exception of Biscay and
Asturias, although the more distant peoples there were less under its
sway. The war against Sertorius had thus far completed the subjection of
Spain: beyond were the free Cantabrians, a numerous nation composed of
tribes which were quite independent of each other. In Gaul, the Æduans
had the ascendancy; yet most of the peoples were without any bond of
union, utterly weak, and already overwhelmed by the German tribes.
Dalmatia and Illyria were subject to Rome; but her rule did not reach
far into the interior, and in the Bosnian mountains the natives still
kept their freedom. Macedon, of which the extent was the same as it had
been under its last kings, and Greece were Roman provinces. The
inhabitants of Thrace, and the tribes north of mounts Scodrus and
Scardus, were free.
In Asia, the Bithynian monarchy had been broken up, the last king,
Nicomedes, having left his realms by will to the Romans. Mithridates had
in Western Asia, Pontus and part of Cappadocia; and on the shores of the
Black Sea, his dominions were still wider: the north of Armenia, the
country north of Erzerum, Georgia (Iberia), Imeritia (Colchis),
Daghestan, and also the peoples south of the Cuban were tributary to
him; the Bosporus and the Greek towns in the Crimea were to all intents
and purposes provinces of his empire; his influence was even felt as far
as the Dniester, on the banks of which his supremacy was acknowledged,
and his connexions moreover reached beyond the Danube into Thrace, even
to the Roman frontier. The kingdom of the Seleucidæ had quite fallen to
pieces, the disputes about the succession, after the death of Demetrius,
having split the country into a number of small principalities which
carried on feuds against each other with great fury: at last, Antiochus,
a petty prince on the coast who could hardly keep his ground, applies in
vain for help to the Romans. The other districts, longing for peace, are
glad to acknowledge Tigranes as their king, who rules from the frontier
of Erzerum as far as Cœle-Syria, over Great Armenia, Mesopotamia,
Northern Syria, Hyrcania, Kurdistan, and part of Cilicia: his empire
yielded him very rich revenues. In the East, it bordered on the
Parthians, who possessed nearly the whole of modern Persia and
Babylonia; in Eastern Persia and part of Khorassan, the kings of Bactria
may at that time have been still in existence, unless the Scythians had
already conquered these countries. Media also did not perhaps belong to
the Parthians even quite down to the breaking out of Pompey’s war.
Indeed their empire was very loosely connected; the Parthian sovereigns
were in the full meaning of the word kings of kings, the provinces being
ruled by their once tributary kings. The towns on the coasts of
Phœnicia, and in Cœle-Syria and Judæa, were free: the princes
(tetrarchs) of Jerusalem, of the race of the Maccabees, were
independent, and even bore the title of kings. In Cœle-Syria, numbers of
such tetrarchies had been formed.
Egypt under the Ptolemies was confined to its narrowest bounds, from the
river of Egypt to Elephantine; yet it was very rich. Its kings had still
a yearly revenue of 12,500 talents, as they were the sole owners of the
land. But the state was exceedingly weak and disorganised, being under
the most wretched and contemptible government. In Asia Minor, the Romans
had of latter years acquired through P. Servilius Isauricus Pisidia,
Lycia, and Pamphylia: these countries had until then been free; the
first, since the war with Antiochus; the two last, since the settlement
of the Rhodian affairs. Part of Cilicia was yet independent, each place
by itself: here were the real nests of pirates. Cyprus was a dependency
of the Ptolemies, but under kings of its own.
In Africa, after the death of Jugurtha, there was another king of the
house of Masinissa on the throne of Numidia. His name, however, is
unknown: for the inscription in Reinesius, which is said to have been in
existence in the sixteenth century, and in which Gauda is mentioned, has
not as yet been found again, and is therefore very doubtful. In Sylla’s
time, a Hiempsal was lord of Numidia. The country was certainly confined
within much narrower limits than it had been under Micipsa, and before
the war with Jugurtha; but, it was still a kingdom. The province of
Africa was governed by Roman proconsuls.
The Scordiscans and Tauriscans, those Gallic races which had formerly
been so harassed by those who had sprung from the same stock with
themselves, were dwelling on the banks of the Danube; higher up were the
Boians, who were independent, and also the people of Noricum which was
already subject to the supremacy of Rome. The German tribes can at that
time have scarcely dwelt farther south than the Mayne; there was
probably a line from that river and the Neckar through the Odenwald and
the Spessart towards Thuringia. The boundary of the German nation in the
east cut deep into Poland.
Although the institutions of Sylla could not be overthrown by Lepidus,
yet there were many of them, particularly the transfer of the
administration of justice to the senate, so hateful from the shameful
manner in which they were worked, that even many of the well-meaning
among the ruling party abhorred them, and openly declared themselves
against them. The venality of the courts of justice was quite glaring:
we may learn what their condition was from Cicero’s orations; it was
such that honest men were ashamed of the vile abuse. To make the judges
independent, was therefore the great question of the day. But while it
was wished to wrest the jurisdiction from the grasp of the senate, there
was also, on the other hand, some reason to beware of the knights; and
therefore an expedient was sought for, to keep that immense privilege
from falling entirely into their hands. In such times, the line of
demarcation between the different ranks is formed only by landed or by
moneyed property; as soon as people want to generalize, there is no
other standard but this, although it is a thoroughly false one. Such a
classification then becomes unavoidable: Rome was on this wrong road, as
France is now. There was in that age, and very likely there had been
even as early as the war of Hannibal, a census fixed for the senators;
either of 800,000 or 1,000,000 sesterces, being at any rate more
considerable than the minimum of the _census equestris_. Now the _Lex
Judiciaria_ of Lucius Aurelius Cotta (682) enacted that a number of
senators, knights, and _tribuni ærarii_, chosen it would seem by the
tribes from people of a lower census than that of the equestrian order,
should in about equal proportions constitute the courts as a very
numerous jury (Asconius on Cicero).[1] This was a great improvement; the
judges indeed were still bad enough; yet they were after all infinitely
better than those taken from the senate.
Moreover Pompey during his consulship, with the acquiescence of Crassus,
made another great change. He restored the tribuneship to what it had
been, so that the tribunes might even again propose laws, it being
reserved to the augurs alone to interpose; besides which, the tribunes
were to be again allowed to get curule offices when they had served
their time, as had been the custom before the days of Sylla. Pompey saw
that Sylla had made a blunder, and he wished to root out the evil at
once, without being aware that it was only by going too far that the
mischief had been done: for it is ever the fault of men of moderate
abilities when in power, that they are always for running into extremes,
and keeping no bounds. But any essential reform was in fact impossible,
the tribuneship being a monstrous nuisance which it was necessary to
abate.
This happened during the consulship of Pompey in the year 682; the
further changes down to Cicero’s consulship (689), I leave until then.
The war with Mithridates broke out almost instantly after the death of
Nicomedes, many provocations having been given on the side of the
Romans: its immediate cause was the alliance of Mithridates with
Sertorius. He was completely armed for war, as far as could be done by
dint of money and great exertions. The rock on which his enterprise was
to split, was his having Asiatics under him, he himself also being one;
for Mithridates has been overrated in history. Whatever gold in masses
could accomplish, he achieved; but it was to little purpose that he was
ever sending new armies into the field, a thing which he was enabled to
do by spending vast sums: he knew neither how to conduct a campaign nor
to fight a battle. He overran Paphlagonia, and burst into Bithynia and
Cappadocia, advancing as far as Chalcedon in Bithynia, into which he
drove the Roman consul Cotta. His fleet had decided success; for he
chased the Roman ships into the harbour, and took them, The Romans had
still (it was then the year 678) the old soldiers of Valerius Flaccus,
who had now been there for about thirteen years: these men were quite
demoralized, their ranks were thinned by death, and their tempers soured
by their having been kept as it were in banishment. Mithridates
therefore, after taking Chalcedon and Heraclea, had the way before him
open to the most wealthy and powerful town of Cyzicus, a place which
maintained its fidelity to the Romans with the same determination which
it had already displayed in former campaigns. He had posted his troops
on the island upon which part of the city is built, being connected with
the mainland only by a dyke: from this island and from the sea, he
battered the town with all his engines. The people of Cyzicus, alone,
and without any help from the Romans, beat off all the attacks of the
enemy. In the meanwhile, Lucullus came to Asia. He was a staunch
partisan of Sylla, and of melancholy importance in Roman history: more
than any other Roman, he transplanted the luxury of Asia to Rome. He was
distinguished as a general, and as Cicero thinks so highly of him, he
must certainly have had some estimable qualities; but he cannot have
gotten his great wealth by fair means. Whilst Mithridates was besieging
Cyzicus, Lucullus took a very advantageous position in Phrygia, on the
Æsepus; and there, by cutting off his supplies, he put Mithridates to
such straits that he was forced to raise the siege, after which he was
no longer able to keep his ground any where. Mithridates indeed carried
on the siege of Cyzicus too long; yet he ought not to be blamed too
harshly for it, since the same thing has happened with generals of
higher name. All great generals have made blunders in their turn, with
perhaps the solitary exception of the Duke of Wellington. But the king
now at once retreats, vanishes entirely from our sight, and is in the
heart of Pontus whither Lucullus follows him. Here also Mithridates does
not know how to defend himself at all, or to make any sort of stand; nor
even how to impede the enemy when it was besieging the towns which, like
Amisus, Sinope, and others, bravely held out; nor yet how to relieve a
place; but he lets himself be driven out of his country, and throws him
self into the arms of Tigranes with whom he was allied by marriage. All
his great armaments, his hundreds of thousands of hoplites were
dispersed; all the most important towns of Western Pontus, the truly
favoured part of the land, were conquered. Lucullus now followed him
across the mountains into Armenia, and besieged Tigranocerta in the
Arzanene, in the district of Erzerum. The Armenian army was in the first
battle scattered like chaff before the wind, and Tigranocerta also was
taken after a somewhat better conducted siege, which, however, did not
last long. Tigranes fell back before Lucullus. Gibbon very justly
remarks, that under circumstances which seem unfavourable, the character
of a people will sometimes strikingly change; but that sometimes it will
only change in some of its features, and not in others. The Armenians
behaved on this occasion, just as cowardly as the troops of Xerxes had
done against the Greeks, and they had shown themselves the same at the
retreat of the ten thousand; but they afterwards improved so much, that
in the times of the Eastern Roman Empire, until late in the middle ages,
the Armenian soldiers were among the very bravest, and formed the flower
of the Byzantine army. Armenia is a very cold country, so that we can
still less account for the former cowardice of the nation, as Gibbon
likewise remarks: the Highlands of Armenia are much colder than Germany;
in the neighbourhood of Erzerum snow often falls as early as towards the
end of September, and quite commonly in October. Yet it seems that other
causes exercised their influence. In after days, the Armenians, since
the spread of the Christian religion among them, became very important
allies to the Christian Emperors against the Magians of Persia; and
still later they distinguished themselves by their enthusiasm for the
Paulician tenets. Lucullus went on as far as Mesopotamia, and took up
his head-quarters at Nisibis, the Zobah of the 2d book of Samuel[2] (in
the Vulgate, the 2d book of Kings), the seat of the Syrian kings in that
country; which from the times of Diocletian became the border fortress
of the Romans against Persia. Here Lucullus seems chiefly to have
employed his power as proconsul for the purpose of enriching himself. At
Nisibis, a mutiny broke out among his soldiers, headed by his
brother-in-law, P. Clodius: (Lucullus had married one of his sisters.)
This outbreak originated with the Valerian soldiers, who had obtained a
promise at Rome, that those who had served twenty years should have
their discharge. The actual period of service was in those days more and
more prolonged, whilst in the times of the younger Scipio not more than
six years of uninterrupted military service were exacted: the Valerians
therefore had a very good right to demand their discharge. Yet Lucullus
would not part with them; perhaps because he had not received the
necessary reinforcements, and was not able to let them go. Clodius on
this occasion played the mutineer, as he did during the whole of his
life. Lucullus, thus checked in his progress, was obliged to retreat to
Cappadocia: thither Mithridates again broke in, and he routed C.
Valerius Triarius, and reconquered the greater part of Pontus. An outcry
had already been raised against Lucullus, that he wanted to protract the
war for the sake of enriching himself; and now that the campaign was
unfavourable, he was compelled to yield the command to Pompey.
Pompey, in the meanwhile, after the conclusion of the war against
Sertorius, had conducted that against the pirates. These must have been
a nuisance of long standing; for the rough inhabitants of the coasts of
Cilicia had been sea-rovers for ages: even as early as the Macedonian
time, they are mentioned as such; so that they must already have had
their strongholds there. The coast of Cilicia was also very well suited
for this; for although there were some important and thriving towns,
like Tarsus, there, the people mostly dwelt in small fortified places as
at Maina. Formerly this coast land had been subject to the Syrian rule;
but when the power of the Seleucidæ was broken up in the year 630,
Cilicia became independent, and many robbers by land and by sea settled
there, especially in Κιλικία τραχεῖα. In the war of Mithridates, they
were encouraged by the latter to make prizes, and their daring was
beyond belief: Cicero in his oration _de imperio Cn. Pompeii_ (thus, and
not _de lege Manilia_ it is called in all the MSS,) gives an idea of the
extent of this pest. From the coast of Syria to the pillars of Hercules,
no man was safe anywhere; all the seas were swarming with the ships of
the pirates. Those whom they took prisoners they dragged into their
fastnesses, obliging them to ransom themselves; or else they sold them,
or tortured them to death and threw them into the sea. In Italy itself,
they sacked and conquered towns: they once even landed at Ostia whence
they carried off Romans of rank who were walking about the shore, even
prætors with all the state attached to their office. Rome depended on
supplies from Sicily and other agricultural countries, and as these were
very often intercepted, the city was in constant dread of a famine.
Allied with the pirates were the Cretans, who had, at all times, been
robbers like them by sea and land. The naval force of the Romans had
much decayed; whereas the pirates had a countless number of boats,
which, though small, were too strong for a merchantman. Pompey now
received the command against this enemy, and this is the most brilliant
period of his life. The fame which he acquired on this occasion is well
earned: his plan of operations is quite excellent. He surrounded them as
with a net in a battue, and hunted them out of the most distant spots;
then, more and more closely contracting his own fleet until he drove
them to Cilicia, he overpowered them in a battle, took their ships, and
reduced their towns, transferring the inhabitants to other places;
partly into larger Cilician towns and fruitful districts, where they
might gain their livelihood, and at the same time be well watched;
partly also into Greece, especially into the neighbourhood of Dyme, into
Achaia and the wasted countries of the Peloponnesus.
This was a benefit to the world itself: for this Pompey deserved the
everlasting thanks of all who dwelt on the coasts of the Mediterranean.
Standing higher than ever in public opinion, he was in consequence of
this popularity intrusted with the war against Mithridates. Nor had the
Romans ever reason to rue this decision, though indeed they made victory
much more easy for him than it had been for Lucullus, as he received
considerable reinforcements. Mithridates lost in one battle all that he
had regained, without the Roman arms having any great honour from it: he
fled to Colchis, and from thence along the roots of mount Caucasus to
the Bosporus. Pompey followed close at his heels, by what is now
Erzerum, as far as Georgia and the neighbourhood of Tiflis, and the
princes of that country did homage to Rome: one of the sons of
Mithridates, named Machares, who held the kingdom of Bosporus as a fief,
made a separate peace with the Romans; but when he heard that his father
was approaching, he laid hands on his own life. Mithridates, who in his
misfortunes, with eastern fury, freely vented his passions upon those
around him, now became an object of hatred; his servants and children
(of whom he had very many) trembled before him. Moreover, he had formed
boundless plans: having still a great deal of money, he now conceived
the vast design of going to Italy; and he wanted to stir up the Bastarnæ
and other peoples on the banks of the Danube, to league themselves with
him. When his soldiers heard of this, they could not but remark, that as
yet none of his undertakings had been successful; and so they broke out
into a mutiny at Panticapæum, being joined by Pharnaces the king’s son.
The outbreak displayed all the dreadful features of an eastern
insurrection; and therefore Mithridates put an end to his own life,
thinking perhaps that his son would not rest until he knew his father to
be dead. Pharnaces now made peace with Pompey, and he was not ashamed to
send him his father’s body: Pompey, however, had it buried with kingly
pomp. Pharnaces got the kingdom of the Bosporus and the neighbouring
lands, as well as the country of the Cubanians; and this he kept until
the later times of Cæsar: when, however, he ventured to mix himself up
with the civil wars (_se inserere armis Romanis_ as Tacitus expresses
it), he met with his ruin. Pompey now turned his arms against Tigranes,
who was glad to obtain a shameful peace by paying a large sum of money,
and by giving up all his possessions with the exception of Armenia: even
of this he had to yield a part to a rebellious son, but it soon came
back to him. Syria he had to renounce altogether: it was reduced _in
formam provinciæ Romanæ_. Pompey went as far as Egypt, and made himself
master of Syria and Phœnicia: one of his generals even reached the
country of the Nabathæan Arabs, where he received the homage of the Arab
king Haret. In Judæa, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus were contending for the
throne: Pompey declared for the former. Aristobulus was made prisoner,
and led a captive in his triumph; the town of Jerusalem fell into the
power of the Romans; the temple was held against them for nearly three
months, and then it was taken and pillaged, but not destroyed.
The death of Mithridates happened in the year of Cicero’s consulship,
the conquest of Syria in the following one: it is not certain whether
Pompey’s triumph was at the end of the year 690, or in the beginning of
691. Pompey’s behaviour after the conclusion of the war was
praiseworthy. He showed an _animus civilis_, and dismissed the whole of
his army: he might have tried to do just what Sylla did, and made
himself the tyrant of the republic. Of the extravagantly flattering
honours bestowed upon him, he only once took advantage, and that was at
the Circensian games. Thus far he behaved sensibly enough; but in other
respects, his conduct in peace was soon such as to belie the name of
Magnus, which had been conferred upon him by Sylla in war. His triumph
was magnificent: among the trophies, there was a list of the tributes
which the commonwealth had gained from the conquered countries. The
numbers of these, however, as given in Plutarch, seem to me rather too
small than too great: if we bear in mind the immense land-taxes which in
the time of the Maccabees came in from Judæa and other districts in
Syria, we cannot believe that these numbers can have been correct. It is
true that the amount of the new revenue was larger than the sum total of
all that had been levied until then; but it is also to be taken into
account, that Syria was one of the finest and richest countries in the
world.