Chapter IV

Pompeius and the East

Pompeius Suppresses Piracy

We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs

of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687

Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude of power, undertook

the conduct of the war against the pirates. He began by dividing

the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts

and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants,

for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching

the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them

into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the best part

of the ships of war that were available--among which on this occasion

also those of Rhodes were distinguished--early in the year to sea,

and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian

waters, with a view especially to re-establish the supply of grain

from these provinces to Italy. His lieutenants meanwhile addressed

themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts.

It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted

from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate

of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province

of Narbo--an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same

time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against

the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared

in Rome.(1) When at the end of forty days the navigation had been

everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean,

Pompeius proceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern

seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy,

the Lycian and Cilician waters. On the news of the approach

of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere disappeared

from the open sea; and not only so, but even the strong Lycian fortresses

of Anticragus and Cragus surrendered without offering serious

resistance. The well-calculated moderation of Pompeius helped

even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible

marine strongholds. His predecessors had ordered every captured

freebooter to be nailed to the cross; without hesitation he gave

quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found

in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence.

The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain

at least their own waters by arms against the Romans; after having

placed their children and wives and their rich treasures for

security in the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited

the Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the offing

of Coracesium. But here the ships of Pompeius, well manned and well

provided with all implements of war, achieved a complete victory.

Without farther hindrance he landed and began to storm and break up

the mountain-castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer

to themselves freedom and life as the price of submission. Soon

the great multitude desisted from the continuance of a hopeless war

in their strongholds and mountains, and consented to surrender.

Forty-nine days after Pompeius had appeared in the eastern seas,

Cilicia was subdued and the war at an end.

The rapid suppression of piracy was a great relief, but not a grand

achievement; with the resources of the Roman state, which had been

called forth in lavish measure, the corsairs could as little cope

as the combined gangs of thieves in a great city can cope

with a well-organized police. It was a naive proceeding to celebrate

such a razzia as a victory. But when compared with the prolonged

continuance and the vast and daily increasing extent of the evil,

it was natural that the surprisingly rapid subjugation

of the dreaded pirates should make a most powerful impression

on the public; and the more so, that this was the first trial of rule

centralized in a single hand, and the parties were eagerly waiting

to see whether that hand would understand the art of ruling better

than the collegiate body had done. Nearly 400 ships and boats,

including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either taken

by Pompeius or surrendered to him; in all about 1300 piratical vessels

are said to have been destroyed; besides which the richly-filled

arsenals and magazines of the buccaneers were burnt.

Of the pirates about 10,000 perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive

into the hands of the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral

of the Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other

individuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long believed

at home to be dead, obtained once more their freedom through

Pompeius. In the summer of 687, three months after the beginning

of the campaign, commerce resumed its wonted course and instead

of the former famine abundance prevailed in Italy.

Dissensions between Pompeius and Metellus as to Crete

A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however,

disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the Roman arms.

There Quintus Metellus was stationed in the second year of his command,

and was employed in finishing the subjugation-already substantially

effected--of the island,(2) when Pompeius appeared in the eastern

waters. A collision was natural, for according to the Gabinian law

the command of Pompeius extended concurrently with that of Metellus

over the whole island, which stretched to a great length but was

nowhere more than ninety miles broad;(3) but Pompeius was considerate

enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants. The still resisting

Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen

taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned

on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit

of imposing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south

of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius.

He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment,

from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius

to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions

and to take over the towns. This proceeding was, no doubt,

not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side

of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when,

utterly ignoring the convention of the cities with Pompeius,

he continued to treat them as hostile. In vain Octavius protested;

in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned

from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there;

Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna,

besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person

was taken prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans

who were taken with him were consigned to the executioner.

Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna,

at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader's

death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been

commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war

in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna,

where both made a stand, was only subdued by Metellus

after the most obstinate resistance.

In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal

civil war at his own hand against the generalissimo of the democracy.

It shows the indescribable disorganization in the Roman state,

that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter

correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years

afterwards were sitting once more peacefully and even "amicably"

side by side in the senate.

Pompeius Takes the Supreme Command against Mithradates

Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing

for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans

or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal

which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs

of the mainland of Asia Minor. The portion of the Lucullan army

that was still left after the losses which it had suffered

and the departure of the Fimbrian legions remained inactive

on the upper Halys in the country of the Trocmi bordering

on the Pontic territory. Lucullus still held provisionally

the chief command, as his nominated successor Glabrio continued

to linger in the west of Asia Minor. The three legions

commanded by Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive

in Cilicia. The Pontic territory was again wholly in the power

of king Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities

that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria,

pay for their revolt with cruel severity. The kings of the east

did not proceed to any serious offensive movement against the Romans,

either because it formed no part of their plan, or--as was asserted--

because the landing of Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates

and Tigranes to desist from advancing farther. The Manilian law

realized the secretly-cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly

than he probably himself anticipated; Glabrio and Rex

were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia and Cilicia

with the troops stationed there, as well as the management

of the Pontic-Armenian war along with authority to make war, peace,

and alliance with the dynasts of the east at his own discretion,

were transferred to Pompeius. Amidst the prospect of honours

and spoils so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising

of an ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty laurels;

he abandoned the expedition against Crete and the farther pursuit

of the corsairs, and destined his fleet also to support the attack

which he projected on the kings of Pontus and Armenia. Yet amidst

this land-war he by no means wholly lost sight of piracy,

which was perpetually raising its head afresh. Before he left Asia

(691) he caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against

the corsairs; on his proposal in the following year a similar measure

was resolved on for Italy, and the sum needed for the purpose

was granted by the senate. They continued to protect the coasts

with guards of cavalry and small squadrons, and though

as the expeditions to be mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696

and Egypt in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet

after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes

and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its head

and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as it had done

under the government of the mouldering oligarchy.

War Preparations of Pompeius

Alliance with the Parthians

Variance between Mithradates and Tigranes

The few months which still remained before the commencement

of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed by the new commander-

in-chief with strenuous activity in diplomatic and military

preparations. Envoys were sent to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre

than to attempt a serious mediation. There was a hope at the Pontic

court that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by the recent

considerable successes which the allies had achieved over Rome

to enter into the Pontic-Armenian alliance. To counteract this, Roman

envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles,

which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid.

A son of the great-king Tigranes, bearing the same name

had rebelled against his father, either because he was unwilling

to wait for the death of the old man, or because his father's

suspicion, which had already cost several of his brothers their

lives, led him to discern his only chance of safety in open

insurrection. Vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge

with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid,

and intrigued against his father there. It was partly due

to his exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward

which was offered to him by both sides for his accession--the secured

possession of Mesopotamia--from the hand of the Romans, renewed

with Pompeius the agreement concluded with Lucullus respecting

the boundary of the Euphrates,(4) and even consented to operate

in concert with the Romans against Armenia. But the younger Tigranes

occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out of his

promoting the alliance between the Romans and the Parthians,

for his insurrection produced a variance between the kings

Tigranes and Mithradates themselves. The great-king cherished

in secret the suspicion that Mithradates might have had a hand

in the insurrection of his grandson--Cleopatra the mother

of the younger Tigranes was the daughter of Mithradates--

and, though no open rupture took place, the good understanding

between the two monarchs was disturbed at the very moment

when it was most urgently needed.

At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike preparations

with energy. The Asiatic allied and client communities were warned

to furnish the stipulated contingents. Public notices summoned

the discharged veterans of the legions of Fimbria to return

to the standards as volunteers, and by great promises and the name

of Pompeius a considerable portion of them were induced in reality

to obey the call. The whole force united under the orders

of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries,

to between 40,000 and 50,000 men.(5)

Pompeius and Lucullus

In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, to take

the chief command of the troops of Lucullus and to advance

with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Cilician legions

were directed to follow. At Danala, a place belonging to the Trocmi,

the two generals met; but the reconciliation, which mutual friends

had hoped to effect, was not accomplished. The preliminary

courtesies soon passed into bitter discussions, and these

into violent altercation: they parted in worse mood than they had met.

As Lucullus continued to make honorary gifts and to distribute

lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared

all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to

his own arrival null and void. Formally he was in the right;

customary tactin the treatment of a meritorious and more than

sufficientlymortified opponent was not to be looked for from him.

Invasion of Pontus

Retreat of Mithradates

So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops crossed

the frontier of Pontus. There they were opposed by king Mithradates

with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry. Left in the lurch by his

allies and attacked by Rome with reinforced power and energy,

he made an attempt to procure peace; but he would hear nothing

of the unconditional submission which Pompeius demanded--what worse

could the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him? That he might

not expose his army, mostly archers and horsemen, to the formidable

shock of the Roman infantry of the line, he slowly retired before

the enemy, and compelled the Romans to follow him in his various

cross-marches; making a stand at the same time, wherever there was

opportunity, with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy,

and occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding

their supplies. At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted

from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone,

proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates,

crossed it, and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire.

But Mithradates followed along the left bank of the Euphrates,

and when he had arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province,

he intercepted the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira,

which was strong and well provided with water, and from which

with his light troops he commanded the plain. Pompeius,

still wanting the Cilician legions and not strong enough to maintain

himself in this position without them, had to retire over the Euphrates

and to seek protection from the cavalry and archers of the king

in the wooded ground of Pontic Armenia extensively intersected

by rocky ravines and deep valleys. It was not till the troops

from Cilicia arrived and rendered it possible to resume the offensive

with a superiority of force, that Pompeius again advanced, invested

the camp of the king with a chain of posts of almost eighteen miles

in length, and kept him formally blockaded there, while the Roman

detachments scoured the country far and wide. The distress in the Pontic

camp was great; the draught animals even had to be killed; at length

after remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick

and wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to leave

in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death by his own troops,

and departed during the night with the utmost secrecy towards

the east. Cautiously Pompeius followed through the unknown land:

the march was now approaching the boundary which separated

the dominions of Mithradates and Tigranes. When the Roman general

perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest

to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the enemy away

after him into the far distant regions of the east, he determined

not to permit this.

Battle at Nicopolis

The two armies lay close to each other. During the rest at noon

the Roman army set out without the enemy observing the movement,

made a circuit, and occupied the heights, which lay in front

and commanded a defile to be passed by the enemy, on the southern bank

of the river Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Enderes,

at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built. The following

morning the Pontic troops broke up in their usual manner,

and, supposing that the enemy was as hitherto behind them, after,

accomplishing the day's march they pitched their camp

in the very valley whose encircling heights the Romans had occupied.

Suddenly in the silence of the night there sounded all around them

the dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides

poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp-followers,

chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other; and amidst

the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness, not a missile

failed to take effect. When the Romans had expended their darts,

they charged down from the heights on the masses which had now become

visible by the light of the newly-risen moon, and which were

abandoned to them almost defenceless; those that did not fall

by the steel of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful pressure

under the hoofs and wheels. It was the last battle-field

on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans. With three

attendants--two of his horsemen, and a concubine who was accustomed

to follow him in male attire and to fight bravely by his side--

he made his escape thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither

a portion of his trusty followers found their way to him. He divided

among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents of gold

(1,400,000 pounds); furnished them and himself with poison;

and hastened with the band that was left to him up the Euphrates

to unite with his ally, the great-king of Armenia.

Tigranes Breaks with Mithradates

Mithradates Crosses the Phasis

This hope likewise was vain; the alliance, on the faith of which

Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already by that time

existed no longer. During the conflicts between Mithradates

and Pompeius just narrated, the king of the Parthians, yielding

to the urgency of the Romans and above all of the exiled Armenian prince,

had invaded the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had

compelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains.

The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata;

but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure

with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered

the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led

by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom

Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little

inclined to fight with the freshly-victorious Romans, and least

of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates; whom he trusted less

than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son

intended to betake himself to his grandfather. So he entered into

negotiations with the Romans for a separate peace; but he did not wait

for the conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance

which linked him to Mithradates. The latter, when he had arrived

at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn that the great-king

Tigranes had set a price of 100 talents (24,000 pounds)

on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had delivered them

to the Romans. King Mithradates saw his kingdom in the hands

of the enemy, and his allies on the point of coming to an agreement

with them; it was not possible to continue the war; he might deem

himself fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along

the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in perhaps

dislodging his son Machares--who had revolted and entered into

connection with the Romans(6)--once more from the Bosporan kingdom,

and in finding on the Maeotis a fresh soil for fresh projects.

So he turned northward. When the king in his flight had crossed

the Phasis, the ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time

discontinued his pursuit; but instead of returning to the region

of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into the region

of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.

Pompeius at Artaxata

Peace with Tigranes

Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the region

of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his camp thirteen miles

from the city. There he was met by the son of the great-king,

who hoped after the fall of his father to receive the Armenian diadem

from the hand of the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every

way to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father

and the Romans. The great-king was only the more resolved to purchase

peace at any price. On horseback and without his purple robe,

but adorned with the royal diadem and the royal turban, he appeared

at the gate of the Roman camp and desired to be conducted

to the presence of the Roman general. After having given up

at the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman camp

required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself in barbarian

fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in token of unconditional

surrender placed the diadem and tiara in his hands. Pompeius,

highly delighted at a victory which cost nothing, raised up

the humbled king of kings, invested him again with the insignia

of his dignity, and dictated the peace. Besides a payment of;

1,400,000 pounds (6000 talents) to the war-chest and a present

to the soldiers, out of which each of them received 50 -denarii-

(2 pounds 2 shillings), the king ceded all the conquests which

he had made, not merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian

possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right bank

of the Euphrates; he was again restricted to Armenia proper,

and his position of great-king was, of course, at an end.

In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued the two mighty kings

of Pontus and Armenia. At the beginning of 688 there was not a Roman

soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its

close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without

an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat

on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal

of Rome. The whole domain of Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates

unconditionally obeyed the Romans; the victorious army took up

its winter-quarters to the east of that stream on Armenian soil,

in the country from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur,

from which the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.

The Tribes of the Caucasus

Iberians

Albanians

But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot, raised up

for them new conflicts. The brave peoples of the middle and eastern

Caucasus saw with indignation the remote Occidentals encamping

on their territory. There--in the fertile and well-watered tableland

of the modern Georgia--dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well-organized,

agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs

cultivated the soil according to the system of common possession,

without any separate ownership of the individual cultivators. Army

and people were one; the people were headed partly by the ruler-

clans--out of which the eldest always presided over the whole

Iberian nation as king, and the next eldest as judge and leader

of the army--partly by special families of priests, on whom chiefly

devolved the duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties

concluded with other peoples and of watching over their observance.

The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the king.

Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans, who were settled

on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, were in a far lower

stage of culture. Chiefly a pastoral people they tended, on foot

or on horseback, their numerous herds in the luxuriant meadows

of the modern Shirvan; their few tilled fields were still cultivated

with the old wooden plough without iron share. Coined money

was unknown, and they did not count beyond a hundred. Each of their

tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief and spoke its distinct

dialect. Far superior in number to the Iberians, the Albanians

could not at all cope with them in bravery. The mode of fighting

was on the whole the same with both nations; they fought chiefly

with arrows and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian

fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods

behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops of trees

on the foe; the Albanians had also numerous horsemen partly mailed

after the Medo-Armenian manner with heavy cuirasses and greaves.

Both nations lived on their lands and pastures in a complete

independence preserved from time immemorial. Nature itself

as it were, seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and Asia

as a rampart against the tide of national movements; there the arms

of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly found their limit;

now the brave garrison of this partition-wall set themselves

to defend it also against the Romans.

Albanians Conquered by Pompeius

Iberians Conquered

Alarmed by the information that the Roman commander-in-chief

intended next spring to cross the mountains and to pursue

the Pontic king beyond the Caucasus--for Mithradates, they heard,

was passing the winter in Dioscurias (Iskuria between Suchum Kale

and Anaklia) on the Black Sea--the Albanians under their prince

Oroizes first crossed the Kur in the middle of the winter of 688-689

and threw themselves on the army, which was divided for the sake

of its supplies into three larger corps under Quintus Metellus Celer,

Lucius Flaccus, and Pompeius in person. But Celer, on whom

the chief attack fell, made a brave stand, and Pompeius, after having

delivered himself from the division sent to attack him, pursued

the barbarians beaten at all points as far as the Kur. Artoces

the king of the Iberians kept quiet and promised peace and friendship;

but Pompeius, informed that he was secretly arming so as to fall

upon the Romans on their march in the passes of the Caucasus,

advanced in the spring of 689, before resuming the pursuit

of Mithradates, to the two fortresses just two miles distant

from each other, Harmozica (Horum Ziche or Armazi) and Seusamora

(Tsumar) which a little above the modern Tiflis command the two valleys

of the river Kur and its tributary the Aragua, and with these

the only passes leading from Armenia to Iberia. Artoces, surprised

by the enemy before he was aware of it, hastily burnt the bridge over

the Kur and retreated negotiating into the interior. Pompeius occupied

the fortresses and followed the Iberians to the other bank

of the Kur; by which he hoped to induce them to immediate submission.

But Artoces retired farther and farther into the interior,

and, when at length he halted on the river Pelorus, he did so

not to surrender but to fight. The Iberian archers however withstood

not for a moment the onset of the Roman legions, and, when Artoces

saw the Pelorus also crossed by the Romans, he submitted

at length to the conditions which the victor proposed, and sent

his children as hostages.

Pompeius Proceeds to Colchis

Pompeius now, agreeably to the plan which he had formerly projected,

marched through the Sarapana pass from the region of the Kur

to that of the Phasis and thence down that river to the Black Sea,

where on the Colchian coast the fleet under Servilius already

awaited him. But it was for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost

unsubstantial, that the army and fleet were thus brought

to the richly fabled shores of Colchis. The laborious march just

completed through unknown and mostly hostile nations was nothing

when compared with what still awaited them, and if they should

really succeed in conducting the force from the mouth of the Phasis

to the Crimea, through warlike and poor barbarian tribes,

on inhospitable and unknown waters, along a coast where

at certain places the mountains sink perpendicularly into the sea

and it would have been absolutely necessary to embark in the ships--

if such a march should be successfully accomplished, which was perhaps

more difficult than the campaigns of Alexander and Hannibal--

what was gained by it even at the best, corresponding at all to its toils

and dangers? The war doubtless was not ended, so long as the old

king was still among the living; but who could guarantee that they

would really succeed in catching the royal game for the sake of which

this unparalleled chase was to be instituted? Was it not better

even at the risk of Mithradates once more throwing the torch

of war into Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised

so little gain and so many dangers? Doubtless numerous voices

in the army, and still more numerous voices in the capital,

urged the general to continue the pursuit incessantly and at any price;

but they were the voices partly of foolhardy Hotspurs,

partly of those perfidious friends, who would gladly at any price

have kept the too-powerful Imperator aloof from the capital

and entangled him amidst interminable undertakings in the east.

Pompeius was too experienced and too discreet an officer to stake

his fame and his army in obstinate adherence to so injudicious

an expedition; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the army

furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit

of the king and arranging its return. The fleet received instructions

to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the northern coast of Asia

Minor against any hostile invasion, and strictly to blockade

the Cimmerian Bosporus under the threat of death to any trader

who should break the blockade. Pompeius conducted the land troops

not without great hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory

to the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the stream,

into the Albanian plain.

Fresh Conflicts with the Albanians

For several days the Roman army had to march in the glowing heat

through this almost waterless flat country, without encountering

the enemy; it was only on the left bank of the Abas (probably

the river elsewhere named Alazonius, now Alasan) that the force

of the Albanians under the leadership of Coses, brother of the king

Oroizes, was drawn up against the Romans; they are said to have

amounted, including the contingent which had arrived

from the inhabitants of the Transcaucasian steppes, to 60,000 infantry

and 12,000 cavalry. Yet they would hardly have risked the battle,

unless they had supposed that they had merely to fight with

the Roman cavalry; but the cavalry had only been placed in front,

and, on its retiring, the masses of Roman infantry showed themselves

from their concealment behind. After a short conflict the army

of the barbarians was driven into the woods, which Pompeius

gave orders to invest and set on fire. The Albanians thereupon

consented to make peace; and, following the example of the more

powerful peoples, all the tribes settled between the Kur and the Caspian

concluded a treaty with the Roman general. The Albanians,

Iberians, and generally the peoples settled to the south along,

and at the foot of, the Caucasus, thus entered at least for the moment

into a relation of dependence on Rome. When, on the other hand,

the peoples between the Phasis and the Maeotis--Colchians, Soani,

Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae--were inscribed

in the long list of the nations subdued by Pompeius, the notion

of subjugation was evidently employed in a manner very far from exact.

The Caucasus once more verified its significance in the history

of the world; the Roman conquest, like the Persian and the Hellenic,

found its limit there.

Mithradates Goes to Panticapaeum

Accordingly king Mithradates was left to himself and to destiny.

As formerly his ancestor, the founder of the Pontic state

had first entered his future kingdom as a fugitive from the executioners

of Antigonus and attended only by six horsemen, so had the grandson

now been compelled once more to cross the bounds of his kingdom

and to turn his back on his own and his fathers' conquests.

But for no one had the dice of fate turned up the highest gains

and the greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously

than for the old sultan of Sinope; and the fortunes of men

change rapidly and incalculably in the east. Well might

Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new

vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn

paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only thing

constant was the perpetual change of fortune. Inasmuch as

the Roman rule was intolerable for the Orientals at the very core

of their nature, and Mithradates himself was in good and in evil

a true prince of the east, amidst the laxity of the rule exercised

by the Roman senate over the provinces, and amidst the dissensions

of the political parties in Rome fermenting and ripening into civil

war, Mithradates might, if he was fortunate enough to bide

his time, doubtless re-establish his dominion yet a third time.

For this very reason--because he hoped and planned while still

there was life in him--he remained dangerous to the Romans so long as

he lived, as an aged refugee no less than when he had marched forth

with his hundred thousands to wrest Hellas and Macedonia

from the Romans. The restless old man made his way in the year 689

from Dioscurias amidst unspeakable hardships partly by land partly

by sea to the kingdom of Panticapaeum, where by his reputation

and his numerous retainers he drove his renegade son Machares

from the throne and compelled him to put himself to death.

From this point he attempted once more to negotiate with the Romans;

he besought that his paternal kingdom might be restored to him,

and declared himself ready to recognize the supremacy of Rome

and to pay tribute as a vassal. But Pompeius refused to grant

the king a position in which he would have begun the old game afresh,

and insisted on his personal submission.

His Last Preparations against Rome

Mithradates, however, had no thought of delivering himself into the hands

of the enemy, but was projecting new and still more extravagant plans.

Straining all the resources with which the treasures that he had saved

and the remnant of his states supplied him, he equipped a new army

of 36,000 men consisting partly of slaves which he armed and exercised

after the Roman fashion, and a war-fleet; according to rumour he designed

to march westward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Pannonia, to carry along

with him the Scythians in the Sarmatian steppes and the Celts on the Danube

as allies, and with this avalanche of peoples to throw himself

on Italy. This has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war

of the Pontic king has been compared with the military march

of Hannibal; but the same project, which in a gifted man is a stroke

of genius, becomes folly in one who is wrong-headed. This intended

invasion of Italy by the Orientals was simply ridiculous,

and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair.

Through the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans

were prevented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist

and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it

were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been

soon enough met at the foot of the Alps.

Revolt against Mithradates

In fact, while Pompeius, without troubling himself further

as to the threats of the impotent giant, was employed in organizing

the territory which he had gained, the destinies of the aged king

drew on to their fulfilment without Roman aid in the remote north.

His extravagant preparations had produced the most violent excitement

among the Bosporans, whose houses were torn down, and whose oxen

were taken from the plough and put to death, in order to procure

beams and sinews for constructing engines of war. The soldiers

too were disinclined to enter on the hopeless Italian expedition.

Mithradates had constantly been surrounded by suspicion

and treason; he had not the gift of calling forth affection

and fidelity among those around him. As in earlier years he had

compelled his distinguished general Archelaus to seek protection

in the Roman camp; as during the campaigns of Lucullus his most

trusted officers Diodes, Phoenix, and even the most notable of the Roman

emigrants had passed over to the enemy; so now, when his star

grew pale and the old, infirm, embittered sultan was accessible

to no one else save his eunuchs, desertion followed still more rapidly

on desertion. Castor, the commandant of the fortress Phanagoria

(on the Asiatic coast opposite Kertch), first raised the standard

of revolt; he proclaimed the freedom of the town and delivered

the sons of Mithradates that were in the fortress into the hands

of the Romans. While the insurrection spread among the Bosporan towns,

and Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), Theudosia (Kaffa),

and others joined the Phanagorites, the king allowed his suspicion

and his cruelty to have free course. On the information of despicable

eunuchs his most confidential adherents were nailed to the cross;

the king's own sons were the least sure of their lives. The son

who was his father's favourite and was probably destined by him

as his successor, Pharnaces, took his resolution and headed

the insurgents. The servants whom Mithradates sent to arrest him,

and the troops despatched against him, passed over to his side;

the corps of Italian deserters, perhaps the most efficient among

the divisions of Mithradates' army, and for that very reason the least

inclined to share in the romantic--and for the deserters peculiarly

hazardous--expedition against Italy, declared itself en masse

for the prince; the other divisions of the army and the fleet followed

the example thus set.

Death of Mithadates

After the country and the army had abandoned the king, the capital

Panticapaeum at length opened its gates to the insurgents

and delivered over to them the old king enclosed in his palace.

From the high wall of his castle the latter besought his son at least

to grant him life and not imbrue his hands in his father's blood;

but the request came ill from the lips of a man whose own hands

were stained with the blood of his mother and with the recently-shed

blood of his innocent son Xiphares; and in heartless severity

and inhumanity Pharnaces even outstripped his father. Seeing therefore

he had now to die, the sultan resolved at least to die as he had

lived; his wives, his concubines and his daughters, including

the youthful brides of the kings of Egypt and Cyprus, had all to suffer

the bitterness of death and drain the poisoned cup, before he too

took it, and then, when the draught did not take effect quickly

enough, presented his neck for the fatal stroke to a Celtic

mercenary Betuitus. So died in 691 Mithradates Eupator,

in the sixty-eighth year of his life and the fifty-seventh of his reign,

twenty-six years after he had for the first time taken the field

against the Romans. The dead body, which king Pharnaces sent

as a voucher of his merits and of his loyalty to Pompeius, was by order

of the latter laid in the royal sepulchre of Sinope.

The death of Mithradates was looked on by the Romans as equivalent

to a victory: the messengers who reported to the general

the catastrophe appeared crowned with laurel, as if they had a victory

to announce, in the Roman camp before Jericho. In him a great

enemy was borne to the tomb, a greater than had ever yet withstood

the Romans in the indolent east. Instinctively the multitude felt

this: as formerly Scipio had triumphed even more over Hannibal than

over Carthage, so the conquest of the numerous tribes of the east

and of the great-king himself was almost forgotten in the death

of Mithradates; and at the solemn entry of Pompeius nothing attracted

more the eyes of the multitude than the pictures, in which they saw

king Mithradates as a fugitive leading his horse by the rein

and thereafter sinking down in death between the dead bodies of his

daughters. Whatever judgment may be formed as to the idiosyncrasy

of the king, he is a figure of great significance--in the full

sense of the expression--for the history of the world. He was not

a personage of genius, probably not even of rich endowments;

but he possessed the very respectable gift of hating,

and out of this hatred he sustained an unequal conflict

against superior foes throughout half a century, without success

doubtless, but with honour. He became still more significant

through the position in which history had placed him

thanthrough his individual character. As the forerunner

of the national reaction of the Orientals against the Occidentals,

he opened the new conflict of the east against the west;

and the feeling remained with the vanquished as with the victors,

that his death was not so much the end as the beginning.

Pompeius Proceeds to Syria

Meanwhile Pompeius, after his warfare in 689 with the peoples

of the Caucasus, had returned to the kingdom of Pontus,

and there reduced the last castles still offering resistance;

these were razed in order to check the evils of brigandage,

and the castle wells were rendered unserviceable by rolling blocks

of rock into them. Thence he set out in the summer of 690 for Syria,

to regulate its affairs.

State of Syria

It is difficult to present a clear view of the state of disorganization

which then prevailed in the Syrian provinces. It is true

that in consequence of the attacks of Lucullus the Armenian governor

Magadates had evacuated these provinces in 685,(7) and that the Ptolemies,

gladly as they would have renewed the attempts of their predecessors

to attach the Syrian coast to their kingdom, were yet afraid to provoke

the Roman government by the occupation of Syria; the more so,

as that government had not yet regulated their more than doubtful

legal title even in the case of Egypt, and had been several times

solicited by the Syrian princes to recognize them as the legitimate heirs

of the extinct house of the Lagids. But, though the greater powers

all at the moment refrained from interference in the affairs

of Syria, the land suffered far more than it would have suffered amidst

a great war, through the endless and aimless feuds of the princes,

knights, and cities.

Arabian Princes

The actual masters in the Seleucid kingdom were at this time

the Bedouins, the Jews, and the Nabataeans. The inhospitable

sandy steppe destitute of springs and trees, which, stretching

from the Arabianpeninsula up to and beyond the Euphrates, reaches

towards the west as far as the Syrian mountain-chain and its narrow belt

of coast, toward the east as far as the rich lowlands of the Tigris

and lower Euphrates--this Asiatic Sahara--was the primitive home

of the sons of Ishmael; from the commencement of tradition we find

the "Bedawi," the "son of the desert," pitching his tents there

and pasturing his camels, or mounting his swift horse in pursuit

now of the foe of his tribe, now of the travelling merchant. Favoured

formerly by king Tigranes, who made use of them for his plans half

commercial half political,(8) and subsequently by the total absence

of any master in the Syrian land, these children of the desert

spread themselves over northern Syria. Wellnigh the leading part

in a political point of view was enacted by those tribes,

which had appropriated the first rudiments of a settled existence

from the vicinity of the civilized Syrians. The most noted

of these emirs were Abgarus, chief of the Arab tribe of the Mardani,

whom Tigranes had settled about Edessa and Carrhae in upper Mesopotamia;(9)

then to the west of the Euphrates Sampsiceramus, emir of the Arabs

of Hemesa (Homs) between Damascus and Antioch, and master

of the strong fortress Arethusa; Azizus the head of another horde

roaming in the same region; Alchaudonius, the prince of the Rhambaeans,

who had already put himself into communication with Lucullus;

and several others.

Robber-Chiefs

Alongside of these Bedouin princes there had everywhere appeared

bold cavaliers, who equalled or excelled the children of the desert

in the noble trade of waylaying. Such was Ptolemaeus son

of Mennaeus, perhaps the most powerful among these Syrian robber-

chiefs and one of the richest men of this period, who ruled over

the territory of the Ityraeans--the modern Druses--in the valleys

of the Libanus as well as on the coast and over the plain

of Massyas to the northward with the cities of Heliopolis (Baalbec)

and Chalcis, and maintained 8000 horsemen at his own expense;

such were Dionysius and Cinyras, the masters of the maritime cities

Tripolis (Tarablus) and Byblus (between Tarablus and Beyrout);

such was the Jew Silas in Lysias, a fortress not far from Apamea

on the Orontes.

Jews

In the south of Syria, on the other hand, the race of the Jews

seemed as though it would about this time consolidate itself

into a political power. Through the devout and bold defence

of the primitive Jewish national worship, which was imperilled

by the levelling Hellenism of the Syrian kings, the family

of the Hasmonaeans or the Makkabi had not only attained to their

hereditary principality and gradually to kingly honours;(10)

but these princely high-priests had also spread their conquests

to the north, east, and south. When the brave Jannaeus Alexander

died (675), the Jewish kingdom stretched towards the south over

the whole Philistian territory as far as the frontier of Egypt, towards

the south-east as far as that of the Nabataean kingdom of Petra,

from which Jannaeus had wrested considerable tracts on the right

bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, towards the north over Samaria

and Decapolis up to the lake of Gennesareth; here he was already

making arrangements to occupy Ptolemais (Acco) and victoriously

to repel the aggressions of the Ityraeans. The coast obeyed the Jews

from Mount Carmel as far as Rhinocorura, including the important

Gaza--Ascalon alone was still free; so that the territory

of the Jews, once almost cut off from the sea, could now be enumerated

among the asylums of piracy. Now that the Armenian invasion, just

as it approached the borders of Judaea, was averted from that land

by the intervention of Lucullus,(11) the gifted rulers

of the Hasmonaean house would probably have carried their arms still

farther, had not the development of the power of that remarkable

conquering priestly state been nipped in the bud by internal divisions.

Pharisees

Sadducees

The spirit of religious independence, and the spirit of national

independence--the energetic union of which had called the Maccabee

state into life--speedily became once more dissociated and even

antagonistic. The Jewish orthodoxy or Pharisaism, as it was called,

was content with the free exercise of religion, as it had

been asserted in defiance of the Syrian rulers; its practical aim

was a community of Jews, composed of the orthodox in the lands

of all rulers, essentially irrespective of the secular government--

a community which found its visible points of union in the tribute

for the temple at Jerusalem, which was obligatory on every

conscientious Jew, and in the schools of religion and spiritual

courts. Overagainst this orthodoxy, which turned away

from political life and became more and more stiffened into theological

formalism and painful ceremonial service, were arrayed

the defenders of the national independence, invigorated amidst

successful struggles against foreign rule, and advancing towards

the ideal of a restoration of the Jewish state, the representatives

of the old great families--the so-called Sadducees--partly

on dogmatic grounds, in so far as they acknowledged only the sacred

books themselves and conceded authority merely, not canonicity,

to the "bequests of the scribes," that is, to canonical tradition;(12)

partly and especially on political grounds, in so far as, instead

of a fatalistic waiting for the strong arm of the Lord of Zebaoth,

they taught that the salvation of the nation was to be expected

from the weapons of this world, and from the inward and outward

strengthening of the kingdom of David as re-established

in the glorious times of the Maccabees. Those partisans of orthodoxy

found their support in the priesthood and the multitude; they

contested with the Hasmonaeans the legitimacy of their high-

priesthood, and fought against the noxious heretics with all

the reckless implacability, with which the pious are often found

to contend for the possession of earthly goods. The state-party

on the other hand relied for support on intelligence brought into

contact with the influences of Hellenism, on the army, in which

numerous Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries served, and on the abler

kings, who here strove with the ecclesiastical power much as

a thousand years later the Hohenstaufen strove with the Papacy.

Jannaeus had kept down the priesthood with a strong hand;

under his two sons there arose (685 et seq.) a civil and fraternal war,

since the Pharisees opposed the vigorous Aristobulus and attempted

to obtain their objects under the nominal rule of his brother,

the good-natured and indolent Hyrcanus. This dissension not merely

put a stop to the Jewish conquests, but gave also foreign nations

opportunity to interfere and thereby obtain a commanding position

in southern Syria.

Nabataeans

This was the case first of all with the Nabataeans. This remarkable

nation has often been confounded with its eastern neighbours,

the wandering Arabs, but it is more closely related to the Aramaean

branch than to the proper children of Ishmael. This Aramaean or,

according to the designation of the Occidentals, Syrian stock

must have in very early times sent forth from its most ancient

settlements about Babylon a colony, probably for the sake of trade,

to the northern end of the Arabian gulf; these were the Nabataeans

on the Sinaitic peninsula, between the gulf of Suez and Aila,

and in the region of Petra (Wadi Mousa). In their ports

the wares of the Mediterranean were exchanged for those of India;

the great southern caravan-route, which ran from Gaza to the mouth

of the Euphrates and the Persian gulf, passed through the capital

of the Nabataeans--Petra--whose still magnificent rock-palaces

and rock-tombs furnish clearer evidence of the Nabataean civilization

than does an almost extinct tradition. The leaders of the Pharisees,

to whom after the manner of priests the victory of their faction

seemed not too dearly bought at the price of the independence

and integrity of their country, solicited Aretas the king

of the Nabataeans for aid against Aristobulus, in return for which

they promised to give back to him all the conquests wrested

from him by Jannaeus. Thereupon Aretas had advanced with, it was

said, 50,000 men into Judaea and, reinforced by the adherents

of the Pharisees, he kept king Aristobulus besieged in his capital.

Syrian Cities

Amidst the system of violence and feud which thus prevailed

from one end of Syria to another, the larger cities were of course

the principal sufferers, such as Antioch, Seleucia, Damascus,

whose citizens found themselves paralysed in their husbandry

as well as in their maritime and caravan trade. The citizens of Byblus

and Berytus (Beyrout) were unable to protect their fields

and their ships from the Ityraeans, who issuing from their mountain

and maritime strongholds rendered land and sea equally insecure.

Those of Damascus sought to ward off the attacks of the Ityraeans

and Ptolemaeus by handing themselves over to the more remote kings

of the Nabataeans or of the Jews. In Antioch Sampsiceramus and Azizus

mingled in the internal feuds of the citizens, and the Hellenic

great city had wellnigh become even now the seat of an Arab emir.

The state of things reminds us of the kingless times of the German

middle ages, when Nuremberg and Augsburg found their protection

not in the king's law and the king's courts, but in their own walls

alone; impatiently the merchant-citizens of Syria awaited the strong

arm, which should restore to them peace and security of intercourse.

The Last Seleucids

There was no want, however, of a legitimate king in Syria;

there were even two or three of them. A prince Antiochus

from the house of the Seleucids had been appointed by Lucullus

as ruler of the most northerly province in Syria, Commagene.(13)

Antiochus Asiaticus, whose claims on the Syrian throne had met

with recognition both from the senate and from Lucullus,(14)

had been received in Antioch after the retreat of the Armenians

and there acknowledged as king. A third Seleucid prince Philippus

had immediately confronted him there as a rival; and the great

population of Antioch, excitable and delighting in opposition

almost like that of Alexandria, as well as one or two

of the neighbouring Arab emirs had interfered in the family strife

which now seemed inseparable from the rule of the Seleucids.

Was there any wonder that legitimacy became ridiculous and loathsome

to its subjects, and that the so-called rightful kings

were of even somewhat less importance in the land than the petty

princes and robber-chiefs?

Annexation of Syria

To create order amidst this chaos did not require either brilliance

of conception or a mighty display of force, but it required a clear

insight into the interests of Rome and of her subjects, and vigour

and consistency in establishing and maintaining the institutions

recognized as necessary. The policy of the senate in support

of legitimacy had sufficiently degraded itself; the general,

whom the opposition had brought into power, was not to be guided

by dynastic considerations, but had only to see that the Syrian kingdom

should not be withdrawn from the clientship of Rome in future either

by the quarrels of pretenders or by the Covetousness of neighbours.

But to secure this end there was only one course; that the Roman

community should send a satrap to grasp with a vigorous hand

the reins of government, which had long since practically slipped

from the hands of the kings of the ruling house more even through

their own fault than through outward misfortunes. This course Pompeius

took. Antiochus the Asiatic, on requesting to be acknowledged

as the hereditary ruler of Syria, received the answer that Pompeius

would not give back the sovereignty to a king who knew neither how

to maintain nor how to govern his kingdom, even at the request

of his subjects, much less against their distinctly expressed wishes.

With this letter of the Roman proconsul the house of Seleucus

was ejected from the throne which it had occupied for two hundred

and fifty years. Antiochus soon after lost his life through

the artifice of the emir Sampsiceramus, as whose client he played

the ruler in Antioch; thenceforth there is no further mention of these

mock-kings and their pretensions.

Military Pacification of Syria

But, to establish the new Roman government and introduce

any tolerable order into the confusion of affairs, it was further

necessary to advance into Syria with a military force and to terrify

or subdue all the disturbers of the peace, who had sprung

up during the many years of anarchy, by means of the Roman legions.

Already during the campaigns in the kingdom of Pontus and on the Caucasus

Pompeius had turned his attention to the affairs of Syria

and directed detached commissioners and corps to interfere,

where there was need. Aulus Gabinius--the same who as tribune

of the people had sent Pompeius to the east--had in 689 marched

along the Tigris and then across Mesopotamia to Syria, to adjust

the complicated affairs of Judaea. In like manner the severely pressed

Damascus had already been occupied by Lollius and Metellus. Soon

afterwards another adjutant of Pompeius, Marcus Scaurus, arrived

in Judaea, to allay the feuds ever breaking out afresh there.

Lucius Afranius also, who during the expedition of Pompeius

to the Caucasus held the command of the Roman troops in Armenia,

had proceeded from Corduene (the northern Kurdistan) to upper

Mesopotamia, and, after he had successfully accomplished

the perilous march through the desert with the sympathizing help

of the Hellenes settled in Carrhae, brought the Arabs in Osrhoene

to submission. Towards the end of 690 Pompeius in person arrived

in Syria,(15) and remained there till the summer of the following

year, resolutely interfering and regulating matters for the present

and the future. He sought to restore the kingdom to its state

in the better times of the Seleucid rule; all usurped powers were set

aside, the robber-chiefs were summoned to give up their castles,

the Arab sheiks were again restricted to their desert domains,

the affairs of the several communities were definitely regulated.

The Robber-Chiefs Chastised

The legions stood ready to procure obedience to these stern orders,

and their interference proved especially necessary against

the audacious robber-chiefs. Silas the ruler of Lysias, Dionysius

the ruler of Tripolis, Cinyras the ruler of Byblus were taken prisoners

in their fortresses and executed, the mountain and maritime strongholds

of the Ityraeans were broken up, Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus in Chalcis

was forced to purchase his freedom and his lordship with a ransom

of 1000 talents (240,000 pounds). Elsewhere the commands

of the new master met for the most part with unresisting obedience.

Negotiations and Conflicts with the Jews

The Jews alone hesitated. The mediators formerly sent by Pompeius,

Gabinius and Scaurus, had--both, as it was said, bribed

with considerable sums--in the dispute between the brothers

Hyrcanus and Aristobulus decided in favour of the latter, and had also

induced king Aretas to raise the siege of Jerusalem and to proceed

homeward, in doing which he sustained a defeat at the hands

of Aristobulus. But, when Pompeius arrived in Syria, he cancelled

the orders of his subordinates and directed the Jews to resume their

old constitution under high-priests, as the senate had recognized

it about 593,(16) and to renounce along with the hereditary

principality itself all the conquests made by the Hasmonaean

princes. It was the Pharisees, who had sent an embassy of two

hundred of their most respected men to the Roman general and procured

from him the overthrow of the kingdom; not to the advantage

of their own nation, but doubtless to that of the Romans,

who from the nature of the case could not but here revert

to the old rights of the Seleucids, and could not tolerate a conquering

power like that of Jannaeus within the limits of their empire.

Aristobulus was uncertain whether it was better patiently

to acquiesce in his inevitable doom or to meet his fate with arms

in hand; at one time he seemed on the point of submitting to Pompeius,

at another he seemed as though he would summon the national party

among the Jews to a struggle with the Romans. When at length,

with the legions already at the gates, he yielded to the enemy,

the more resolute or more fanatical portion of his army refused

to comply with the orders of a king who was not free. The capital

submitted; the steep temple-rock was defended by that fanatical band

for three months with an obstinacy ready to brave death, till at last

the besiegers effected an entrance while the besieged were resting

on the Sabbath, possessed themselves of the sanctuary, and handed over

the authors of that desperate resistance, so far as they had

not fallen under the sword of the Romans, to the axes of the lictors.

Thus ended the last resistance of the territories newly annexed

to the Roman state.

The New Relations of the Romans in the East

The work begun by Lucullus had been completed by Pompeius;

the hitherto formally independent states of Bithynia, Pontus,

and Syria were united with the Roman state; the exchange--which

had been recognized for more than a hundred years as necessary--

of the feeble system of a protectorate for that of direct sovereignty

over the more important dependent territories,(17) had at length

been realized, as soon as the senate had been overthrown and the Gracchan

party had come to the helm. Rome had obtained in the east

new frontiers, new neighbours, new friendly and hostile relations.

There were now added to the indirect territories of Rome

the kingdom of Armenia and the principalities of the Caucasus,

and also the kingdom on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the small remnant

of the extensive conquests of Mithradates Eupator, now a client-state

of Rome under the government of his son and murderer Pharnaces;

the town of Phanagoria alone, whose commandant Castor had given

the signal for the revolt, was on that account recognized by the Romans

as free and independent.

Conflicts with the Nabataeans

No like successes could be boasted of against the Nabataeans.

King Aretas had indeed, yielding to the desire of the Romans,

evacuated Judaea; but Damascus was still in his hands,

and the Nabataean land had not yet been trodden by any Roman soldier.

To subdue that region or at least to show to their new neighbours

in Arabia that the Roman eagles were now dominant on the Orontes

and on the Jordan, and that the time had gone by when any one was free

to levy contributions in the Syrian lands as a domain without a master,

Pompeius began in 691 an expedition against Petra; but detained

by the revolt of the Jews, which broke out during this expedition,

he was not reluctant to leave to his successor Marcus Scaurus

the carrying out of the difficult enterprise against the Nabataean city

situated far off amidst the desert.(18) In reality Scaurus also

soon found himself compelled to return without having accomplished

his object. He had to content himself with making war

on the Nabataeans in the deserts on the left bank of the Jordan,

where he could lean for support on the Jews, but yet bore off only

very trifling successes. Ultimately the adroit Jewish minister

Antipater from Idumaea persuaded Aretas to purchase a guarantee

for all his possessions, Damascus included, from the Roman governor

for a sum of money; and this is the peace celebrated on the coins

of Scaurus, where king Aretas appears--leading his camel--

as a suppliant offering the olive branch to the Roman.

Difficulty with the Parthians

Far more fraught with momentous effects than these new relations

of the Romans to the Armenians, Iberians, Bosporans, and Nabataeans

was the proximity into which through the occupation of Syria they

were brought with the Parthian state. Complaisant as had been

the demeanour of Roman diplomacy towards Phraates while the Pontic

and Armenian states still subsisted, willingly as both Lucullus

and Pompeius had then conceded to him the possession of the regions

beyond the Euphrates,(19) the new neighbour now sternly took up

his position by the side of the Arsacids; and Phraates, if the royal

art of forgetting his own faults allowed him, might well recall now

the warning words of Mithradates that the Parthian by his alliance

with the Occidentals against the kingdoms of kindred race paved

the way first for their destruction and then for his own.

Romans and Parthians in league had brought Armenia to ruin;

when it was overthrown, Rome true to her old policy now reversed

the parts and favoured the humbled foe at the expense

of the powerful ally. The singular preference, which the father

Tigranes experienced from Pompeius as contrasted with his son

the ally and son-in-law of the Parthian king, was already

part of this policy; it was a direct offence, when soon afterwards

by the orders of Pompeius the younger Tigranes and his family

were arrested and were not released even on Phraates interceding

with the friendly general for his daughter and his son-in-law.

But Pompeius paused not here. The province of Corduene,

to which both Phraates and Tigranes laid claim, was at the command

of Pompeius occupied by Roman troops for the latter, and the Parthians

who were found in possession were driven beyond the frontier

and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene, without the government

of Ctesiphon having even been previously heard (689).

Far the most suspicious circumstance however was, that the Romans

seemed not at all inclined to respect the boundary of the Euphrates

fixed by treaty. On several occasions Roman divisions

destined from Armenia for Syria marched across Mesopotamia;

the Arab emir Abgarus of Osrhoene was received under singularly

favourable conditions into Roman protection; nay, Oruros, situated

in Upper Mesopotamia somewhere between Nisibis and the Tigris 220

miles eastward from the Commagenian passage of the Euphrates,

was designated as the eastern limit of the Roman dominion--

presumably their indirect dominion, inasmuch as the larger

and more fertile northern half of Mesopotamia had been assigned

by the Romans in like manner with Corduene to the Armenian empire.

The boundary between Romans and Parthians thus became the great

Syro-Mesopotamian desert instead of the Euphrates; and this too

seemed only provisional. To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist

on the maintenance of the agreements--which certainly, as it would

seem, were only concluded orally--respecting the Euphrates

boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous reply that the territory

of Rome extended as far as her rights. The remarkable intercourse

between the Roman commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps

of the region of Media and even of the distant province Elymais

(between Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern Luristan) seemed

a commentary on this speech.(20) The viceroys of this latter

mountainous, warlike, and remote land had always exerted themselves

to acquire a position independent of the great-king; it was

the more offensive and menacing to the Parthian government,

when Pompeius accepted the proffered homage of this dynast.

Not less significant was the fact that the title of "king of kings,"

which had been hitherto conceded to the Parthian king by the Romans

in official intercourse, was now all at once exchanged by them

for the simple title of king. This was even more a threat than

a violation of etiquette. Since Rome had entered on the heritage

of the Seleucids, it seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert

at a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran and Turan

were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet no Parthian empire

but merely a Parthian satrapy. The court of Ctesiphon would thus

have had reason enough for going to war with Rome; it seemed

the prelude to its doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia

on account of the question of the frontier. But Phraates had not

the courage to come to an open rupture with the Romans at a time

when the dreaded general with his strong army was on the borders

of the Parthian empire. When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle

amicably the dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded

to the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in their

award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene and northern

Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards his daughter with her son and her

husband adorned the triumph of the Roman general. Even the Parthians

trembled before the superior power of Rome; and, if they had not,

like the inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the Roman

arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had not ventured

to stand the conflict.

Organization of the Provinces

There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating

the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and of removing

as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years' desolating war.

The work of organization begun in Asia Minor by Lucullus

and the commission associated with him, and in Crete by Metellus,

received its final conclusion from Pompeius. The former province

of Asia, which embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was converted

from a frontier province into a central one. The newly-erected

provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus, which was formed

out of the whole former kingdom of Nicomedes and the western half

of the former Pontic state as far as and beyond the Halys;

that of Cilicia, which indeed was older, but was now for the first

time enlarged and organized in a manner befitting its name,

and comprehended also Pamphylia and Isauria; that of Syria,

and that of Crete. Much was no doubt wanting to render that mass

of countries capable of being regarded as the territorial possession

of Rome in the modern sense of the term. The form and order

of the government remained substantially as they were; only the Roman

community came in place of the former monarchs. Those Asiatic provinces

consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of domanial possessions,

urban territories de facto or de jure autonomous, lordships pertaining

to princes and priests, and kingdoms, all of which were as regards

internal administration more or less left to themselves,

and in other respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes

in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its proconsuls

very much as formerly on the great-king and his satraps.

Feudatory Kings

Cappadocia

Commagene

Galatia

The first place, in rank at least, among the dependent dynasts

was held by the king of Cappadocia, whose territory Lucullus had

already enlarged by investing him with the province of Melitene

(about Malatia) as far as the Euphrates, and to whom Pompeius

farther granted on the western frontier some districts taken off

Cilicia from Castabala as far as Derbe near Iconium, and on the eastern

frontier the province of Sophene situated on the left bank

of the Euphrates opposite Melitene and at first destined

for the Armenian prince Tigranes; so that the most important passage

of the Euphrates thus came wholly into the power of the Cappadocian

prince. The small province of Commagene between Syria

and Cappadocia with its capital Samosata (Samsat) remained a dependent

kingdom in the hands of the already-named Seleucid Antiochus;(21)

to him too were assigned the important fortress of Seleucia (near

Biradjik) commanding the more southern passage of the Euphrates,

and the adjoining tracts on the left bank of that river; and thus

care was taken that the two chief passages of the Euphrates

with a corresponding territory on the eastern bank were left in the hands

of two dynasts wholly dependent on Rome. Alongside of the kings

of Cappadocia and Commagene, and in real power far superior to them,

the new king Deiotarus ruled in Asia Minor. One of the tetrarchs

of the Celtic stock of the Tolistobogii settled round Pessinus,

and summoned by Lucullus and Pompeius to render military service

with the other small Roman clients, Deiotarus had in these campaigns

so brilliantly proved his trustworthiness and his energy as contrasted

with all the indolent Orientals that the Roman generals conferred

upon him, in addition to his Galatian heritage and his possessions

in the rich country between Amisus and the mouth of the Halys,

the eastern half of the former Pontic empire with the maritime towns

of Pharnacia and Trapezus and the Pontic Armenia as far as

the frontier of Colchis and the Greater Armenia, to form the kingdom

of Lesser Armenia. Soon afterwards he increased his already

considerable territory by the country of the Celtic Trocmi,

whose tetrarch he dispossessed. Thus the petty feudatory became

one of the most powerful dynasts of Asia Minor, to whom might

be entrusted the guardianship of an important part of the frontier

of the empire.

Princes and Chiefs

Vassals of lesser importance were, the other numerous Galatian

tetrarchs, one of whom, Bogodiatarus prince of the Trocmi,

was on account of his tried valour in the Mithradatic war presented

by Pompeius with the formerly Pontic frontier-town of Mithradatium;

Attalus prince of Paphlagonia, who traced back his lineage

to the old ruling house of the Pylaemenids; Aristarchus and other petty

lords in the Colchian territory; Tarcondimotus who ruled in eastern

Cilicia in the mountain-valleys of the Amanus; Ptolemaeus son

of Mennaeus who continued to rule in Chalcis on the Libanus; Aretas

king of the Nabataeans as lord of Damascus; lastly, the Arabic

emirs in the countries on either side of the Euphrates, Abgarus

in Osrhoene, whom the Romans endeavoured in every way to draw over

to their interest with the view of using him as an advanced post

against the Parthians, Sampsiceramus in Hemesa, Alchaudonius

the Rhambaean, and another emir in Bostra.

Priestly Princes

To these fell to be added the spiritual lords who in the east

frequently ruled over land and people like secular dynasts,

and whose authority firmly established in that native home

of fanaticism the Romans prudently refrained from disturbing,

as they refrained from even robbing the temples of their treasures:

the high-priest of the Goddess Mother in Pessinus; the two high-priests

of the goddess Ma in the Cappadocian Comana (on the upper Sarus)

and in the Pontic city of the same name (Gumenek near Tocat),

both lords who were in their countries inferior only to the king

in power, and each of whom even at a much later period possessed

extensive estates with special jurisdiction and about six thousand

temple-slaves--Archelaus, son of the general of that name

who passed over from Mithradates to the Romans, was invested

by Pompeius with the Pontic high-priesthood--the high-priest

of the Venasian Zeus in the Cappadocian district of Morimene,

whose revenues amounted annually to 3600 pounds (15 talents);

the "archpriest and lord" of that territory in Cilicia Trachea,

where Teucer the son of Ajax had founded a temple to Zeus, over which

his descendants presided by virtue of hereditary right; the "arch-priest

and lord of the people" of the Jews, to whom Pompeius, after having

razed the walls of the capital and the royal treasuries and strongholds

in the land, gave back the presidency of the nation with a serious

admonition to keep the peace and no longer to aim at conquests.

Urban Communities

Alongside of these secular and spiritual potentates stood the urban

communities. These were partly associated into larger unions

which rejoiced in a comparative independence, such as in particular

the league of the twenty-three Lycian cities, which was well organized

and constantly, for instance, kept aloof from participation

in the disorders of piracy; whereas the numerous detached communities,

even if they had self-government secured by charter,

were in practice wholly dependent on the Roman governors.

Elevation of Urban Life in Asia

The Romans failed not to see that with the task of representing

Hellenism and protecting and extending the domain of Alexander

in the east there devolved on them the primary duty of elevating

the urban system; for, while cities are everywhere the pillars

of civilization, the antagonism between Orientals and Occidentals

was especially and most sharply embodied in the contrast between

the Oriental, military-despotic, feudal hierarchy and the Helleno-

Italic urban commonwealth prosecuting trade and commerce. Lucullus

and Pompeius, however little they in other respects aimed at

the reduction of things to one level in the east, and however much

the latter was disposed in questions of detail to censure and alter

the arrangements of his predecessor, were yet completely agreed

in the principle of promoting as far as they could an urban life in Asia

Minor and Syria. Cyzicus, on whose vigorous resistance the first

violence of the last war had spent itself, received from Lucullus

a considerable extension of its domain. The Pontic Heraclea,

energetically as it had resisted the Romans, yet recovered

its territory and its harbours; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against

the unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate.

Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had refused

him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus from devastation

by the Pontic soldiery and his own: he did at least what he could

to restore them, extended considerably their territories, peopled them

afresh--partly with the old inhabitants, who at his invitation

returned in troops to their beloved homes, partly with new settlers

of Hellenic descent--and provided for the reconstruction

of the buildings destroyed. Pompeius acted in the same spirit

and on a greater scale. Already after the subjugation of the pirates

he had, instead of following the example of his predecessors

and crucifying his prisoners, whose number exceeded 20,000, settled

them partly in the desolated cities of the Plain Cilicia,

such as Mallus, Adana, Epiphaneia, and especially in Soli,

which thenceforth bore the name of Pompeius' city (Pompeiupolis),

partly at Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum. This colonizing

by means of pirates met with manifold censure,(22) as it seemed

in some measure to set a premium on crime; in reality it was,

politically and morally, well justified, for, as things then stood,

piracy was something different from robbery and the prisoners

might fairly be treated according to martial law.

New Towns Established

But Pompeius made it his business above all to promote urban life

in the new Roman provinces. We have already observed how poorly

provided with towns the Pontic empire was:(23) most districts

of Cappadocia even a century after this had no towns, but merely

mountain fortresses as a refuge for the agricultural population

in war; the whole east of Asia Minor, apart from the sparse Greek

colonies on the coasts, must have been at this time in a similar

plight. The number of towns newly established by Pompeius in these

provinces is, including the Cilician settlements, stated at thirty-

nine, several of which attained great prosperity. The most notable

of these townships in the former kingdom of Pontus were Nicopolis,

the "city of victory," founded on the spot where Mithradates

sustained the last decisive defeat(24)--the fairest memorial

of a general rich in similar trophies; Megalopolis, named from Pompeius'

surname, on the frontier of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia,

the subsequent Sebasteia (now Siwas); Ziela, where the Romans fought

the unfortunate battle,(25) a township which had arisen round

the temple of Anaitis there and hitherto had belonged to its high-

priest, and to which Pompeius now gave the form and privileges

of a city; Diopolis, formerly Cabira, afterwards Neocaesarea (Niksar),

likewise one of the battle-fields of the late war; Magnopolis

or Pompeiupolis, the restored Eupatoria at the confluence of the Lycus

and the Iris, originally built by Mithradates, but again destroyed

by him on account of the defection of the city to the Romans;(26)

Neapolis, formerly Phazemon, between Amasia and the Halys. Most

of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing

colonists from a distance, but by the suppression of villages

and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring-wall;

only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and veterans of his army,

who preferred to establish a home for themselves there at once

rather than afterwards in Italy. But at other places also

there arose on the suggestion of the regent new centres of Hellenic

civilization. In Paphlagonia a third Pompeiupolis marked the spot

where the army of Mithradates in 666 achieved the great victory

over the Bithynians.(27) In Cappadocia, which perhaps had suffered

more than any other province by the war, the royal residence Mazaca

(afterwards Caesarea, now Kaisarieh) and seven other townships

were re-established by Pompeius and received urban institutions.

In Cilicia and Coelesyria there were enumerated twenty towns laid

out by Pompeius. In the districts ceded by the Jews, Gadara

in the Decapolis rose from its ruins at the command of Pompeius,

and the city of Seleucis was founded. By far the greatest portion

of the domain-land at his disposal on the Asiatic continent must have

been applied by Pompeius for his new settlements; whereas in Crete,

about which Pompeius troubled himself little or not at all,

the Roman domanial possessions seem to have continued tolerably extensive.

Pompeius was no less intent on regulating and elevating the existing

communities than on founding new townships. The abuses and usurpations

which prevailed were done away with as far as lay in his power;

detailed ordinances drawn up carefully for the different provinces

regulated the particulars of the municipal system. A number

of the most considerable cities had fresh privileges conferred on them.

Autonomy was bestowed on Antioch on the Orontes, the most important

city of Roman Asia and but little inferior to the Egyptian Alexandria

and to the Bagdad of antiquity, the city of Seleucia in the Parthian

empire; as also on the neighbour of Antioch, the Pierian Seleucia,

which was thus rewarded for its courageous resistance to Tigranes;

on Gaza and generally on all the towns liberated from the Jewish rule;

on Mytilene in the west of Asia Minor; and on Phanagoria

on the Black Sea.

Aggregate Results

Thus was completed the structure of the Roman state in Asia,

which with its feudatory kings and vassals, its priests made

into princes, and its series of free and half-free cities puts

us vividly in mind of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation.

It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties

overcome or as respects the consummation attained; nor was it made

so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality

lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise

of Pompeius. Pompeius in particular consented to be praised,

and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might

almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was.

If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their deliverer

and founder, as the man who had as well by land as by sea terminated

the wars with which the world was filled, such a homage might

not seem too extravagant for the vanquisher of the pirates

and of the empires of the east. But the Romans this time surpassed

the Greeks. The triumphal inscriptions of Pompeius himself enumerated

12 millions of people as subjugated and 1538 cities and strongholds

as conquered--it seemed as if quantity was to make up for quality--

and made the circle of his victories extend from the Maeotic Sea

to the Caspian and from the latter to the Red Sea, when his eyes had

never seen any one of the three; nay farther, if he did not exactly

say so, he at any late induced the public to suppose that the annexation

of Syria, which in truth was no heroic deed, had added

the whole east as far as Bactria and India to the Roman empire--

so dim was the mist of distance, amidst which according to his

statements the boundary-line of his eastern conquests was lost.

The democratic servility, which has at all times rivalled

that of courts, readily entered into these insipid extravagances.

It was not satisfied by the pompous triumphal procession, which moved

through the streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept. 693--

the forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great--adorned, to say nothing

of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of Mithradates

and by the children of the three mightiest kings of Asia, Mithradates,

Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its general, who had conquered

twenty-two kings, with regal honours and bestowed on him the golden

chaplet and the insignia of the magistracy for life. The coins struck

in his honour exhibit the globe itself placed amidst the triple

laurels brought home from the three continents, and surmounted

by the golden chaplet conferred by the burgesses on the man

who had triumphed over Africa, Spain, and Asia. It need excite

no surprise, if in presence of such childish acts of homage voices

were heard of an opposite import. Among the Roman world of quality

it was currently affirmed that the true merit of having subdued

the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only gone thither

to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around his own brow the laurels

which another hand had plucked. Both statements were totally

erroneous: it was not Pompeius but Glabrio that was sent to Asia

to relieve Lucullus, and, bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was

a fact that, when Pompeius took the supreme command, the Romans

had forfeited all their earlier successes and had not a foot's breadth

of Pontic soil in their possession. More pointed and effective

was the ridicule of the inhabitants of the capital, who failed not

to nickname the mighty conqueror of the globe after the great powers

which he had conquered, and saluted him now as "conqueror of Salem,"

now as "emir" (-Arabarches-), now as the Roman Sampsiceramus.

Lucullus and Pompeius as Administrators

The unprejudiced judge will not agree either with those exaggerations

or with these disparagements. Lucullus and Pompeius, in subduing

and regulating Asia, showed themselves to be, not heroes

and state-creators, but sagacious and energetic army-leaders

and governors. As general Lucullus displayed no common talents

and a self-confidence bordering on rashness, while Pompeius displayed

military judgment and a rare self-restraint; for hardly

has any general with such forces and a position so wholly free

ever acted so cautiously as Pompeius in the east. The most brilliant

undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him on all sides;

he was free to start for the Cimmerian Bosporus and for the Red

Sea; he had opportunity of declaring war against the Parthians;

the revolted provinces of Egypt invited him to dethrone king

Ptolemaeus who was not recognized by the Romans, and to carry

out the testament of Alexander; but Pompeius marched neither

to Panticapaeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria;

throughout he gathered only those fruits which of themselves fell

to his hand. In like manner he fought all his battles by sea

and land with a crushing superiority of force. Had this moderation

proceeded from the strict observance of the instructions given

to him, as Pompeius was wont to profess, or even from a perception

that the conquests of Rome must somewhere find a limit and that

fresh accessions of territory were not advantageous to the state,

it would deserve a higher praise than history confers on the most

talented officer; but constituted as Pompeius was, his self-

restraint was beyond doubt solely the result of his peculiar want

of decision and of initiative--defects, indeed, which were in his

case far more useful to the state than the opposite excellences

of his predecessor. Certainly very grave errors were perpetrated

both by Lucullus and by Pompeius. Lucullus reaped their fruits himself,

when his imprudent conduct wrested from him all the results

of his victories; Pompeius left it to his successors to bear

the consequences of his false policy towards the Parthians. He might

either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage

to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized,

as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid

for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted

to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood,

which the court of Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised,

impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing

the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation.

As administrator of Asia Lucullus acquired a more than princely

wealth; and Pompeius also received as reward for its organization

large sums in cash and still more considerable promissory notes

from the king of Cappadocia, from the rich city of Antioch,

and from other lords and communities. But such exactions had become

almost a customary tax; and both generals showed themselves at any rate

to be not altogether venal in questions of greater importance,

and, if possible, got themselves paid by the party whose interests

coincided with those of Rome. Looking to the state of the times,

this does not prevent us from characterizing the administration

of both as comparatively commendable and conducted primarily

in the interest of Rome, secondarily in that of the provincials.

The conversion of the clients into subjects, the better regulation

of the eastern frontier, the establishment of a single and strong

government, were full of blessing for the rulers as well as

for the ruled. The financial gain acquired by Rome was immense;

the new property tax, which with the exception of some specially

exempted communities all those princes, priests, and cities had to pay

to Rome, raised the Roman state-revenues almost by a half above their

former amount. Asia indeed suffered severely. Pompeius brought

in money and jewels an amount of 2,000,000 pounds (200,000,000

sesterces) into the state-chest and distributed 3,900,000 pounds

(16,000 talents) among his officers and soldiers; if we add to this

the considerable sums brought home by Lucullus, the non-official

exactions of the Roman army, and the amount of the damage done

by the war, the financial exhaustion of the land may be readily

conceived. The Roman taxation of Asia was perhaps in itself

not worse than that of its earlier rulers, but it formed a heavier

burden on the land, in so far as the taxes thenceforth went

out of the country and only the lesser portion of the proceeds

was again expended in Asia; and at any rate it was, in the old

as well as the newly-acquired provinces, based on a systematic plundering

of the provinces for the benefit of Rome. But the responsibility

for this rests far less on the generals personally than on the parties

at home, whom these had to consider; Lucullus had even exerted himself

energetically to set limits to the usurious dealings of the Roman

capitalists in Asia, and this essentially contributed to bring

about his fall. How much both men earnestly sought to revive

the prosperity of the reduced provinces, is shown by their action

in cases where no considerations of party policy tied their hands,

and especially in their care for the cities of Asia Minor. Although

for centuries afterwards many an Asiatic village lying in ruins

recalled the times of the great war, Sinope might well begin a new

era with the date of its re-establishment by Lucullus, and almost

all the more considerable inland towns of the Pontic kingdom might

gratefully honour Pompeius as their founder. The organization

of Roman Asia by Lucullus and Pompeius may with all its undeniable

defects be described as on the whole judicious and praiseworthy;

serious as were the evils that might still adhere to it,

it could not but be welcome to the sorely tormented Asiatics

for the very reason that it came attended by the inward

and outward peace, the absence of which had been so long

and so painfully felt.

The East after the Departure of Pompeius

Peace continued substantially in the east, till the idea--merely

indicated by Pompeius with his characteristic timidity--of joining

the regions eastward of the Euphrates to the Roman empire was taken

up again energetically but unsuccessfully by the new triumvirate

of Roman regents, and soon thereafter the civil war drew the eastern

provinces as well as all the rest into its fatal vortex.

In the interval the governors of Cilicia had to fight constantly

with the mountain-tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes

of the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins especially

many Roman troops were destroyed; but these movements had no farther

significance. More remarkable was the obstinate resistance,

which the tough Jewish nation opposed to the conquerors. Alexander,

son of the deposed king Aristobulus, and Aristobulus himself

who after some time succeeded in escaping from captivity,

excited during the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700)

three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which

the government of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently

succumbed. It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance

of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them

to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous

of these revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army

of occupation in consequence of the Egyptian crisis furnished

the immediate impulse, began with the murder of the Romans

settled in Palestine. It was not without difficulty

that the able governor succeeded in rescuing the few Romans,

who had escaped this fate and found a temporary refuge

on Mount Gerizim, from the insurgents who kept them blockaded there,

and in overpowering the revolt after several severely contested

battles and tedious sieges. In consequence of this the monarchy

of the high-priests was abolished and the Jewish land was broken up

as Macedonia had formerly been, into five independent districts

administered by governing colleges with an Optimate organization;

Samaria and other townships razed by the Jews were re-established,

to form a counterpoise to Jerusalem; and lastly a heavier tribute

was imposed on the Jews than on the other Syrian subjects of Rome.

The Kingdom of Egypt

It still remains that we should glance at the kingdom of Egypt

along with the last dependency that remained to it of the extensive

acquisitions of the Lagids, the fair island of Cyprus.

Egypt was now the only state of the Hellenic east that was still

at least nominally independent; just as formerly, when the Persians

established themselves along the eastern half of the Mediterranean,

Egypt was their last conquest, so now the mighty conquerors

from the west long delayed the annexation of that opulent

and peculiar country. The reason lay, as was already indicated,

neitherin any fear of the resistance of Egypt nor in the want

of a fitting occasion. Egypt was just about as powerless as Syria,

and had already in 673 fallen in all due form of law to the Roman

community.(28) The control exercised over the court of Alexandria

by the royal guard--which appointed and deposed ministers

and occasionally kings, took for itself what it pleased, and,

if it was refused a rise of pay, besieged the king in his palace--

was by no means liked in the country or rather in the capital (for

the country with its population of agricultural slaves was hardly taken

into account); and at least a party there wished for the annexation

of Egypt by Rome, and even took steps to procure it But the less

the kings of Egypt could think of contending in arms against Rome,

the more energetically Egyptian gold set itself to resist the Roman

plans of union; and in consequence of the peculiar despotico-

communistic centralization of the Egyptian finances the revenues

of the court of Alexandria were still nearly equal to the public

income of Rome even after its augmentation by Pompeius.

The suspicious jealousy of the oligarchy, which was chary of allowing

any individual either to conquer or to administer Egypt, operated

in the same direction. So the de facto rulers of Egypt and Cyprus

were enabled by bribing the leading men in the senate not merely

to respite their tottering crowns, but even to fortify them afresh

and to purchase from the senate the confirmation of their royal title.

But with this they had not yet obtained their object.

Formal state-law required a decree of the Roman burgesses;

until this was issued, the Ptolemies were dependent on the caprice

of every democratic holder of power, and they had thus to commence

the warfare of bribery also against the other Roman party,

which as the more powerful stipulated for far higher prices.

Cyprus Annexed

The result in the two cases was different. The annexation

of Cyprus was decreed in 696 by the people, that is, by the leaders

of the democracy, the support given to piracy by the Cypriots

being alleged as the official reason why that course should

now be adopted. Marcus Cato, entrusted by his opponents

with the execution of this measure, came to the island without an army;

but he had no need of one. The king took poison; the inhabitants

submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate,

and were placed under the governor of Cilicia. The ample treasure

of nearly 7000 talents (1,700,000 pounds), which the equally

covetous and miserly king could not prevail on himself to apply

for the bribes requisite to save his crown, fell along with the latter

to the Romans, and filled after a desirable fashion the empty vaults

of their treasury.

Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized but Expelled by His Subjects

On the other hand the brother who reigned in Egypt succeeded

in purchasing his recognition by decree of the people from the new

masters of Rome in 695; the purchase-money is said to have amounted

to 6000 talents (1,460,000 pounds). The citizens indeed, long

exasperated against their good flute-player and bad ruler,

and now reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus

and the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable

degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans (696),

chased him on that account out of the country. When the king thereupon

applied, as if on account of his eviction from the estate which he

had purchased, to those who sold it, these were reasonable enough

to see that it was their duty as honest men of business to get back

his kingdom for Ptolemaeus; only the parties could not agree

as to the person to whom the important charge of occupying Egypt

by force along with the perquisites thence to be expected should

be assigned. It was only when the triumvirate was confirmed anew

at the conference of Luca, that this affair was also arranged,

after Ptolemaeus had agreed to a further payment of 10,000 talents

(2,400,000 pounds); the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius,

now obtained orders from those in power to take the necessary steps

immediately for bringing back the king. The citizens of Alexandria

had meanwhile placed the crown on the head of Berenice the eldest

daughter of the ejected king, and given to her a husband

in the person of one of the spiritual princes of Roman Asia,

Archelaus the high-priest of Comana,(29) who possessed ambition enough

to hazard his secure and respectable position in the hope of mounting

the throne of the Lagids. His attempts to gain the Roman regents

to his interests remained without success; but he did not recoil

before the idea of being obliged to maintain his new kingdom

with arms in hand even against the Romans.

And Brought Back by Gabinius

A Roman Garrison Remains in Alexandria

Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war against Egypt

but directed to do so by the regents, made a pretext out of

the alleged furtherance of piracy by the Egyptians and the building

of a fleet by Archelaus, and started without delay for the Egyptian

frontier (699). The march through the sandy desert between Gaza

and Pelusium, in which so many invasions previously directed

against Egypt had broken down, was on this occasion successfully

accomplished--a result especially due to the quick and skilful

leader of the cavalry Marcus Antonius. The frontier fortress

of Pelusium also was surrendered without resistance by the Jewish

garrison stationed there. In front of this city the Romans met

the Egyptians, defeated them--on which occasion Antonius again

distinguished himself--and arrived, as the first Roman army,

at the Nile. Here the fleet and army of the Egyptians were drawn up

for the last decisive struggle; but the Romans once more conquered,

and Archelaus himself with many of his followers perished

in the combat. Immediately after this battle the capital surrendered,

and therewith all resistance was at an end. The unhappy land

was handed over to its legitimate oppressor; the hanging and beheading,

with which, but for the intervention of the chivalrous Antonius,

Ptolemaeus would have already in Pelusium begun to celebrate

the restoration of the legitimate government, now took its course

unhindered, and first of all the innocent daughter was sent

by her father to the scaffold. The payment of the reward agreed

upon with the regents broke down through the absolute impossibility

of exacting from the exhausted land the enormous sums required,

although they took from the poor people the last penny; but care

was taken that the country should at least be kept quiet

by the garrison of Roman infantry and Celtic and German cavalry

left in the capital, which took the place of the native praetorians

and otherwise emulated them not unsuccessfully. The previous hegemony

of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a direct military

occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy

was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double

burden imposed on it.