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
Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten years
of the Sullan restoration. No one of the movements, external
or internal, which occurred during this period--neither the insurrection
of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars
in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings
of the pirates and the slaves--constituted of itself a mighty danger
necessarily affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet
the state had in all these struggles well-nigh fought for its
very existence. The reason was that the tasks were everywhere
left unperformed, so long as they might still have been performed
with ease; the neglect of the simplest precautionary measures produced
the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed
dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing
of equality. The democracy and the servile insurrection
were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor
was neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them.
It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals
of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked
by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief
Sertorius and his Spanish guerillas, and that it was only
the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian war in favour
of the legitimate government. As to the slaves, it was far less
an honour to have conquered them than a disgrace to have confronted
them in equal strife for years. Little more than a century had
elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush
to the cheek of the honourable Roman, when he reflected
on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age.
Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans
of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before
the bludgeons of their runaway serfs. Then every plain captain
acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success,
but always with honour; now it was difficult to find among
all the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency.
Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough
rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were
on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired,
merely that they might be able to defend themselves against
the insurgent slaves at home. Spartacus too as well as Hannibal
had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian straits,
beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with blockade;
the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity
to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken
against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti.
Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories
over insurgents and robber-chiefs?
The external wars, however, had produced a result still less
gratifying. It is true that the Thraco-Macedonian war had yielded
a result not directly unfavourable, although far from corresponding
to the considerable expenditure of men and money. In the wars
in Asia Minor and with the pirates on the other hand, the government
had exhibited utter failure. The former ended with the loss
of the whole conquests made in eight bloody campaigns, the latter
with the total driving of the Romans from "their own sea." Once Rome,
fully conscious of the irresistibleness of her power by land,
had transferred her superiority also to the other element;
now the mighty state was powerless at sea and, as it seemed,
on the point of also losing its dominion at least over the Asiatic
continent. The material benefits which a state exists to confer--
security of frontier, undisturbed peaceful intercourse, legal protection,
and regulated administration--began all of them to vanish for the whole
of the nations united in the Roman state; the gods of blessing
seemed all to have mounted up to Olympus and to have left
the miserable earth at the mercy of the officially called or volunteer
plunderers and tormentors. Nor was this decay of the state felt
as a public misfortune merely perhaps by such as had political rights
and public spirit; the insurrection of the proletariate,
and the brigandage and piracy which remind us of the times
of the Neapolitan Ferdinands, carried the sense of this decay
into the remotest valley and the humblest hut of Italy, and made
every one who pursued trade and commerce, or who bought
even a bushel of wheat, feel it as a personal calamity.
If inquiry was made as to the authors of this dreadful and unexampled
misery, it was not difficult to lay the blame of it with good
reason on many. The slaveholders whose heart was in their
money-bags, the insubordinate soldiers, the generals cowardly,
incapable, or foolhardy, the demagogues of the market-place mostly
pursuing a mistaken aim, bore their share of the blame; or,
to speak more truly, who was there that did not share in it?
It was instinctively felt that this misery, this disgrace, this disorder
were too colossal to be the work of any one man. As the greatness
of the Roman commonwealth was the work not of prominent individuals,
but rather of a soundly-organized burgess-body, so the decay
of this mighty structure was the result not of the destructive genius
of individuals, but of a general disorganization. The great majority
of the burgesses were good for nothing, and every rotten stone
in the building helped to bring about the ruin of the whole; the whole
nation suffered for what was the whole nation's fault. It was unjust
to hold the government, as the ultimate tangible organ of the state,
responsible for all its curable and incurable diseases; but it certainly
was true that the government contributed after a very grave fashion
to the general culpability. In the Asiatic war, for example,
where no individual of the ruling lords conspicuously failed,
and Lucullus, in a military point of view at least, behaved with ability
and even glory, it was all the more clear that the blame of failure lay
in the system and in the government as such--primarily, so far
as that war was concerned, in the remissness with which Cappadocia
and Syria were at first abandoned, and in the awkward position
of the able general with reference to a governing college incapable
of any energetic resolution. In maritime police likewise
the true idea which the senate had taken up as to a general hunting
out of the pirates was first spoilt by it in the execution
and then totally dropped, in order to revert to the old foolish system
of sending legions against the coursers of the sea. The expeditions
of Servilius and Marcius to Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete,
were undertaken on this system; and in accordance with it Triarius
had the island of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against
the pirates. Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas remind
us of that Persian great-king, who ordered the sea to be scourged
with rods to make it subject to him. Doubtless therefore
the nation had good reason for laying the blame of its failure
primarily on the government of the restoration. A similar misrule
had indeed always come along with the re-establishment
of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that
of Marius and Saturninus; yet never before had it shown such violence
and at the same time such laxity, never had it previously emerged
so corrupt and pernicious. But, when a government cannot govern,
it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also
the right to overthrow it. It is, no doubt, unhappily true
that an incapable and flagitious government may for a long period trample
under foot the welfare and honour of the land, before the men are
found who are able and willing to wield against that government
the formidable weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of
the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolution
which is in such a case legitimate. But if the game attempted
with the fortunes of nations may be a merry one and may be played
perhaps for a long time without molestation, it is a treacherous
game, which in its own time entraps the players; and no one then
blames the axe, if it is laid to the root of the tree that bears
such fruits. For the Roman oligarchy this time had now come.
The Pontic-Armenian war and the affair of the pirates became
the proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan constitution
and of the establishment of a revolutionary military dictatorship.