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