The East and King Mithradates
State of the East
The state of breathless excitement, in which the revolution kept
the Roman government by perpetually renewing the alarm of fire and
the cry to quench it, made them lose sight of provincial matters
generally; and that most of all in the case of the Asiatic lands,
whose remote and unwarlike nations did not thrust themselves so
directly on the attention of the government as Africa, Spain, and
its Transalpine neighbours. After the annexation of the kingdom of
Attalus, which took place contemporaneously with the outbreak of
the revolution, for a whole generation there is hardly any evidence
of Rome taking a serious part in Oriental affairs--with the exception
of the establishment of the province of Cilicia in 652,(1) to which
the Romans were driven by the boundless audacity of the Cilician
pirates, and which was in reality nothing more than the institution
of a permanent station for a small division of the Roman army and
fleet in the eastern waters. It was not till the downfall of Marius
in 654 had in some measure consolidated the government of the
restoration, that the Roman authorities began anew to bestow
some attention on the events in the east
Cyrene Romans
In many respects matters still stood as they had done thirty years
ago. The kingdom of Egypt with its two appendages of Cyrene and
Cyprus was broken up, partly de jure, partly de facto, on the death
of Euergetes II (637). Cyrene went to his natural son, Ptolemaeus
Apion, and was for ever separated from Egypt. The sovereignty of
the latter formed a subject of contention between the widow of
the last king Cleopatra (665), and his two sons Soter II Lathyrus
(673) and Alexander I (666); which gave occasion to Cyprus also to
separate itself for a considerable period from Egypt. The Romans
did not interfere in these complications; in fact, when the
Cyrenaean kingdom fell to them in 658 by the testament of the
childless king Apion, while not directly rejecting the acquisition,
they left the country in substance to itself by declaring the Greek
towns of the kingdom, Cyrene, Ptolemais, and Berenice, free cities
and even handing over to them the use of the royal domains.
The supervision of the governor of Africa over this territory was
from its remoteness merely nominal, far more so than that of the
governor of Macedonia over the Hellenic free cities. The consequences
of this measure--which beyond doubt originated not in Philhellenism,
but simply in the weakness and negligence of the Roman government--
were substantially similar to those which had occurred under the like
circumstances in Hellas; civil wars and usurpations so rent the land
that, when a Roman officer of rank accidentally made his appearance
there in 668, the inhabitants urgently besought him to regulate
their affairs and to establish a permanent government among them.
In Syria also during the interval there had not been much change,
and still less any improvement. During the twenty years' war of
succession between the two half-brothers Antiochus Grypus (658) and
Antiochus of Cyzicus(659), which after their death was inherited by
their sons, the kingdom which was the object of contention became
almost an empty name, inasmuch as the Cilician sea-kings, the Arab
sheiks of the Syrian desert, the princes of the Jews, and the
magistrates of the larger towns had ordinarily more to say than the
wearers of the diadem. Meanwhile the Romans established themselves
in western Cilicia, and the important Mesopotamia passed over
definitively to the Parthians.
The Parthian State
Armenia
The monarchy of the Arsacids had to pass through a dangerous crisis
about the time of the Gracchi, chiefly in consequence of the inroads
of Turanian tribes. The ninth Arsacid, Mithradates II or the Great
(630?-667?), had recovered for the state its position of ascendency
in the interior of Asia, repulsed the Scythians, and advanced the
frontier of the kingdom towards Syria and Armenia; but towards the
end of his life new troubles disturbed his reign; and, while the
grandees of the kingdom including his own brother Orodes rebelled
against the king and at length that brother overthrew him and had
put him to death, the hitherto unimportant Armenia rose into power.
This country, which since its declaration of independence(2) had
been divided into the north-eastern portion or Armenia proper, the
kingdom of the Artaxiads, and the south-western or Sophene, the
kingdom of the Zariadrids, was for the first time united into one
kingdom by the Artaxiad Tigranes (who had reigned since 660); and
this doubling of his power on the one hand, and the weakness of the
Parthian rule on the other, enabled the new king of all Armenia not
only to free himself from dependence on the Parthians and to recover
the provinces formerly ceded to them, but even to bring to Armenia
the titular supremacy of Asia, as it had passed from the Achaemenids
to the Seleucids and from the Seleucids to the Arsacids.
Asia Minor
Lastly in Asia Minor the territorial arrangements, which had been
made under Roman influence after the dissolution of the kingdom of
Attalus,(3) still subsisted in the main unchanged. In the condition
of the dependent states--the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia,
Pontus, the principalities of Paphlagonia and Galatia, the numerous
city-leagues and free towns--no outward change was at first
discernible. But, intrinsically, the character of the Roman rule
had certainly undergone everywhere a material alteration. Partly
through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every
tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the
Roman revolution--in the seizure, for instance, of the property of
the soil in the province of Asia by Gaius Gracchus, in the Roman
tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of
the revenue added to their other avocations there--the Roman rule,
barely tolerable even from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia
that neither the crown of the king nor the hut of the peasant there
was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn
seemed to grow for the Roman -decumanus-, and every child of free
parents seemed to be born for the Roman slave-drivers. It is true
that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his inexhaustible
passive endurance; but it was not patience and reflection that
made him bear it peacefully. It was rather the peculiarly Oriental
lack of initiative; and in these peaceful lands, amidst these
effeminate nations, strange and terrible things might happen,
if once there should appear among them a man who knew how to
give the signal for revolt.
Mithradates Eupator
There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithradates VI
surnamed Eupator (born about 624, 691) who traced back his lineage on
the father's side in the sixteenth generation to king Darius the son
of Hystaspes and in the eighth to Mithradates I the founder of the
Pontic kingdom, and was on the mother's side descended from the
Alexandrids and the Seleucids. After the early death of his father
Mithradates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Sinope,
he had received the title of king about 634, when a boy of eleven
years of age; but the diadem brought to him only trouble and danger.
His guardians, and even as it would seem his own mother called to
take a part in the government by his father's will, conspired against
the boy-king's life. It is said that, in order to escape from the
daggers of his legal protectors, he became of his own accord a
wanderer, and during seven years, changing his resting-place night
after night, a fugitive in his own kingdom, led the homeless life
of a hunter. Thus the boy grew into a powerful man. Although our
accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to written
records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradition, which is
generated in the east with the rapidity of lightning, early adorned
the mighty king with many of the traits of its Samsons and Rustems.
These traits, however, belong to the character, just as the crown of
clouds belongs to the character of the highest mountain-peaks; the
outlines of the figure appear in both cases only more coloured and
fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered. The armour, which
fitted the gigantic frame of king Mithradates, excited the wonder of
the Asiatics and still more that of the Italians. As a runner he
overtook the swiftest deer; as a rider he broke in the wild steed,
and was able by changing horses to accomplish 120 miles in a day;
as a charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand, and gained in
competition many a prize--it was dangerous, no doubt, in such sport
to carry off victory from the king. In hunting on horseback, he hit
the game at full gallop and never missed his aim. He challenged
competition at table also--he arranged banqueting matches and carried
off in person the prizes proposed for the most substantial eater and
the hardest drinker--and not less so in the pleasures of the harem,
as was shown among other things by the licentious letters of his Greek
mistresses, which were found among his papers. His intellectual
wants he satisfied by the wildest superstition--the interpretation of
dreams and the Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king's hours--
and by a rude adoption of Hellenic civilization. He was fond of
Greek art and music; that is to say, he collected precious articles,
rich furniture, old Persian and Greek objects of luxury--his cabinet
of rings was famous--he had constantly Greek historians, philosophers,
and poets in his train, and proposed prizes at his court-festivals not
only for the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest
jester and the best singer. Such was the man; the sultan
corresponded. In the east, where the relation between the ruler
and the ruled bears the character of natural rather than of moral
law, the subject resembles the dog alike in fidelity and in
falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful. In both respects
Mithradates has hardly been surpassed. By his orders there died
or pined in perpetual captivity for real or alleged treason his
mother, his brother, his sister espoused to him, three of his sons
and as many of his daughters. Still more revolting perhaps is the
fact, that among his secret papers were found sentences of death,
drawn up beforehand, against several of his most confidential
servants. In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan, that
he afterwards, for the mere purpose of withdrawing from his enemies
the trophies of victory, caused his two Greek wives, his sister and
his whole harem to be put to death, and merely left to the women
the choice of the mode of dying. He prosecuted the experimental
study of poisons and antidotes as an important branch of the
business of government, and tried to inure his body to particular
poisons. He had early learned to look for treason and assassination
at the hands of everybody and especially of his nearest relatives,
and he had early learned to practise them against everybody and
most of all against those nearest to him; of which the necessary
consequence--attested by all his history--was, that all his
undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom
he trusted. At the same time we doubtless meet with isolated
traits of high-minded justice: when he punished traitors, he
ordinarily spared those who had become involved in the crime simply
from their personal relations with the leading culprit; but such fits
of equity are not wholly wanting in every barbarous tyrant. What
really distinguishes Mithradates amidst the multitude of similar
sultans, is his boundless activity. He disappeared one fine morning
from his palace and remained unheard of for months, so that he was
given over as lost; when he returned, he had wandered incognito
through all western Asia and reconnoitred everywhere the country
and the people. In like manner he was not only in general a man of
fluent speech, but he administered justice to each of the twenty-two
nations over which he ruled in its own language without needing
an interpreter--a trait significant of the versatile ruler of
the many-tongued east. His whole activity as a ruler bears
the same character. So far as we know (for our authorities are
unfortunately altogether silent as to his internal administration)
his energies, like those of every other sultan, were spent in
collecting treasures, in assembling armies--which were usually,
in his earlier years at least, led against the enemy not by the king
in person, but by some Greek -condottiere---in efforts to add new
satrapies to the old. Of higher elements--desire to advance
civilization, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special
gifts of genius--there are found, in our traditional accounts at
least, no distinct traces in Mithradates, and we have no reason to
place him on a level even with the great rulers of the Osmans, such
as Mohammed II and Suleiman. Notwithstanding his Hellenic culture,
which sat on him not much better than the Roman armour sat on his
Cappadocians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary stamp,
coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, superstitious, cruel,
perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous in organization, so
powerful in physical endowments, that his defiant laying about him
and his unshaken courage in resistance look frequently like talent,
sometimes even like genius. Granting that during the death-struggle
of the republic it was easier to offer resistance to Rome than in the
times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only the complication of the
Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy which rendered
it possible for Mithradates to resist the Romans twice as long as
Jugurtha did, it remains nevertheless true that before the Parthian
wars he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in
the east, and that he defended himself against them as the lion of the
desert defends himself against the hunter. Still we are not entitled,
in accordance with what we know, to recognize in him more than the
resistance to be expected from so vigorous a nature. But, whatever
judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king,
his historical position remains in a high degree significant.
The Mithradatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political
opposition offered by Hellas to Rome, and the beginning of a revolt
against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper
grounds of antagonism--the national reaction of the Asiatics against
the Occidentals. The empire of Mithradates was, like himself,
Oriental; polygamy and the system of the harem prevailed at court
and generally among persons of rank; the religion of the inhabitants
of the country as well as the official religion of the court was
pre-eminently the old national worship; the Hellenism there was
little different from the Hellenism of the Armenian Tigranids and
the Arsacids of the Parthian empire. The Greeks of Asia Minor
might imagine for a brief moment that they had found in this king a
support for their political dreams; his battles were really fought
for matters very different from those which were decided on the fields
of Magnesia and Pydna. They formed--after a long truce--a new
passage in the huge duel between the west and the east, which has
been transmitted from the conflicts at Marathon to the present
generation and will perhaps reckon its future by thousands of
years as it has reckoned its past.
The Nationalities of Asia Minor
Manifest however as is the foreign and un-Hellenic character of
the whole life and action of the Cappadocian king, it is difficult
definitely to specify the national element preponderating in it,
nor will research perhaps ever succeed in getting beyondbgeneralities
or in attaining clear views on this point. In the whole circle
of ancient civilization there is no region where the stocks
subsisting side by side or crossing each other were so numerous,
so heterogeneous, so variously from the remotest times intermingled,
and where in consequence the relations of the nationalities were
less clear than in Asia Minor. The Semitic population continued in
an unbroken chain from Syria to Cyprus and Cilicia, and to it the
original stock of the population along the west coast in the regions
of Caria and Lydia seems also to have belonged, while the north-
western point was occupied by the Bithynians, who were akin to
the Thracians in Europe. The interior and the north coast, on
the other hand, were filled chiefly by Indo-Germanic peoples most
nearly cognate to the Iranian. In the case of the Armenian and
Phrygian languages(4) it is ascertained, in that of the Cappadocian
it is highly probable, that they had immediate affinity with the Zend;
and the statement made as to the Mysians, that among them the Lydian
and Phrygian languages met, just denotes a mixed Semitic-Iranian
population that may be compared perhaps with that of Assyria. As to
the regions stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially
Lydia, there is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the
native language and writing that are in this particular instance
extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable that
these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo-Germans rather
than the Semites. How all this confused mass of peoples was
overlaid first with a net of Greek mercantile cities, and then
with the Hellenism called into life by the military as well
as intellectual ascendency of the Greek nation, has been set
forth in outline already.
Pontus
In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in
Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district
in which, situated as it was at the northeastern extremity of Asia
Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the
Iranian nationality presumably preserved itself with less admixture
than anywhere else in Asia Minor. Not even Hellenism had penetrated
far into that region. With the exception of the coast where several
originally Greek settlements subsisted--especially the important
commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace
and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the
empire--the country was still in a very primitive condition. Not that
it had lain waste; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still
one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of
grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond
doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also
comparatively populous. But there were hardly any towns properly
so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which
served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries
for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser
Armenia alone, in fact, there were counted seventy-five of these
little royal forts. We do not find that Mithradates materially
contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire; and situated
as he was,--in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite
conscious, reaction against Hellenism,--this is easily conceivable.
Acquisitions of Territory by Mithradates
Colchis
Northern Shores of the Black Sea
He appears more actively employed--likewise quite in the Oriental
style--in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not
small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find
his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well
as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor. But nowhere did so free and
ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern
shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at that time we must not
omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to
give a really distinct idea of it. On the eastern coast of the Black
Sea--which, previously almost unknown, was first opened up to more
general knowledge by Mithradates--the region of Colchis on the
Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important commercial town
of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into
a satrapy of Pontus. Of still greater moment were his enterprises in
the northern regions.(5) The wide steppes destitute of hills and
trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus,
and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions--more
especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between
the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute
destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts
for a period of twenty-two months or longer--little adapted for
agriculture or for permanent settlement at all; and they always were
so, although two thousand years ago the state of the climate was
presumably somewhat less unfavourable than it is at the present
day.(6) The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them into
these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and led (and still
to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life with their herds of oxen
or still more frequently of horses, changing their places of abode and
pasture, and carrying their effects along with them in waggon-houses.
Their equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode of
life; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great measure on
horseback and always in loose array, equipped with helmet and coat
of mail of leather and leather-covered shield, armed with sword,
lance, and bow--the ancestors of the modern Cossacks. The Scythians
originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race
and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present
inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian tribes
advancing from east to west,--Sauromatae, Roxolani, Jazyges,--who are
commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which
we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more affinity with Median
and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the
great Zend stock. Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direction,
particularly the Getae, who reached as far as the Dniester. Between
the two there intruded themselves--probably as offsets of the great
Germanic migration, the main body of which seems not to have touched
the Black Sea--the Celts, as they were called, on the Dnieper, the
Bastarnae in the same quarter, and the Peucini at the mouth of the
Danube. A state, in the proper sense, was nowhere formed; every
tribe lived by itself under its princes and elders.
Hellenism in That Quarter
In sharp contrast to all these barbarians stood the Hellenic
settlements, which at the time of the mighty impetus given to Greek
commerce had been founded chiefly by the efforts of Miletus on these
coasts, partly as trading-marts, partly as stations for prosecuting
important fisheries and even for agriculture, for which, as we have
already said, the north-western shores of the Black Sea presented in
antiquity conditions less unfavourable than at the present day.
For the use of the soil the Hellenes paid here, like the Phoenicians
in Libya, tax and ground-rent to the native rulers. The most important
of these settlements were the free city of Chersonesus (not far from
Sebastopol), built on the territory of the Scythians in the Tauric
peninsula (Crimea), and maintaining itself in moderate prosperity,
under circumstances far from favourable, by virtue of its good
constitution and the public spirit of its citizens; and Panticapaeum
(Kertch) at the opposite side of the peninsula on the straits leading
from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, governed since the year 457
by hereditary burgomasters, afterwards called kings of the Bosporus,
the Archaeanactidae, Spartocidae, and Paerisadae. The culture of
corn and the fisheries of the Sea of Azov had rapidly raised the
city to prosperity. Its territory still in the time of Mithradates
embraced the lesser eastern division of the Crimea including the town
of Theodosia, and on the opposite Asiatic continent the town of
Phanagoria and the district of Sindica. In better times the lords
of Panticapaeum had by land ruled the peoples on the east coast
of the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Kuban, and had commanded
the Black Sea with their fleet; but Panticapaeum was no longer what
it had been. Nowhere was the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt
more deeply than at these distant outposts. Athens in its good times
had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the duties of a
leading power--duties which certainly were specially brought home to
the Athenians by their need of Pontic grain. After the downfall of
the Attic maritime power these regions were, on the whole, left to
themselves. The Greek land-powers never got so far as to intervene
seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and
Lysimachus sometimes attempted it; and the Romans, on whom with the
conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor devolved the political obligation
of becoming the strong protectors of Greek civilization at the point
where it needed such protection, utterly neglected the summons of
interest as well as of honour. The fall of Sinope, the decline of
Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the northern
shore of the Black Sea. A vivid picture of their position with
reference to the roving barbarians is given to us by an inscription
of Olbia (near Oczakow not far from the mouth of the Dnieper), which
apparently may be placed not long before the time of Mithradates.
The citizens had not only to send annual tribute to the court-camp
of the barbarian king, but also to make him a gift when he encamped
before the town or even simply passed by, and in a similar way to
buy off minor chieftains and in fact sometimes the whole horde with
presents; and it fared ill with them if the gift appeared too small.
The treasury of the town was bankrupt and they had to pledge the
temple-jewels. Meanwhile the savage tribes were thronging without in
front of the gates; the territory was laid waste, the field-labourers
were dragged away en masse, and, what was worst of all, the weaker
of their barbarian neighbours, the Scythians, sought, in order
to shelter themselves from the pressure of the more savage Celts,
to obtain possession of the walled town, so that numerous
citizens were leaving it and the inhabitants already contemplated
its entire surrender.
Mithradates Master of the Bosphoran Kingdom
Such was the state in which Mithradates found matters, when his
Macedonian phalanx crossing the ridge of the Caucasus descended into
the valleys of the Kuban and Terek and his fleet at the same time
appeared in the Crimean waters. No wonder that here too, as had
already been the case in Dioscurias, the Hellenes everywhere received
the king of Pontus with open arms and regarded the half-Hellene and
his Cappadocians armed in Greek fashion as their deliverers. What
Rome had here neglected, became apparent. The demands on the rulers
of Panticapaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exorbitant
height; the town of Chersonesus found itself hard pressed by Scilurus
king of the Scythians dwelling in the peninsula and his fifty sons;
the former were glad to surrender their hereditary lordship, and
the latter their long-preserved freedom, in order to save their
last possession, their Hellenism. It was not in vain. Mithradates'
brave generals, Diophantus and Neoptolemus, and his disciplined troops
easily got the better of the peoples of the steppes. Neoptolemus
defeated them at the straits of Panticapaeum partly by water, partly
in winter on the ice; Chersonesus was delivered, the strongholds of
the Taurians were broken, and the possession of the peninsula was
secured by judiciously constructed fortresses. Diophantus marched
against the Reuxinales or, as they were afterwards called, the Roxolani
(between the Dnieper and Don) who came forward to the aid of the Taurians;
50,000 of them fled before his 6000 phalangites, and the Pontic arms
penetrated as far as the Dnieper.(7) Thus Mithradates acquired here
a second kingdom combined with that of Pontus and, like the latter,
mainly based on a number of Greek commercial towns. It was called
the kingdom of the Bosporus; it embraced the modern Crimea with the
opposite Asiatic promontory, and annually furnished to the royal
chests and magazines 200 talents (48,000 pounds) and 270,000 bushels
of grain. The tribes of the steppe themselves from the north slope
of the Caucasus to the mouth of the Danube entered, at least in great
part, into relations of dependence on, or treaty with, the Pontic
king and, if they furnished him with no other aid, afforded at any
rate an inexhaustible field for recruiting his armies.
Lesser Armenia
Alliance with Tigranes
While thus the most important successes were gained towards the north,
the king at the same time extended his dominions towards the east and
the west. The Lesser Armenia was annexed by him and converted from a
dependent principality into an integral part of the Pontic kingdom;
but still more important was the close connection which he formed with
the king of the Greater Armenia. He not only gave his daughter
Cleopatra in marriage to Tigranes, but it was mainly through his
support that Tigranes shook off the yoke of the Arsacids and took
their place in Asia. An agreement seems to have been made between
the two to the effect that Tigranes should take in hand to occupy
Syria and the interior of Asia, and Mithradates Asia Minor and
the coasts of the Black Sea, under promise of mutual support;
and it was beyond doubt the more active and capable Mithradates
who brought about this agreement with a view to cover his rear
and to secure a powerful ally.
Paphlagonia and Cappadocia Acquired
Lastly, in Asia Minor the king turned his eyes towards the interior
of Paphlagonia--the coast had for long belonged to the Pontic empire--
and towards Cappadocia.(8) The former was claimed on the part of
Pontus as having been bequeathed by the testament of the last of
the Pylaemenids to king Mithradates Euergetes: against this, however,
legitimate or illegitimate pretenders and the land itself protested.
As to Cappadocia, the Pontic rulers had not forgotten that this
country and Cappadocia on the sea had been formerly united, and
continually cherished ideas of reunion. Paphlagonia was occupied by
Mithradates in concert with Nicomedes king of Bithynia, with whom he
shared the land. When the senate raised objections to this course,
Mithradates yielded to its remonstrance, while Nicomedes equipped one
of his sons with the name of Pylaemenes and under this title retained
the country to himself. The policy of the allies adopted still worse
expedients in Cappadocia. King Ariarathes VI was killed by Gordius,
it was said by the orders, at any rate in the interest, of Ariarathes'
brother-in-law Mithradates Eupator: his young son Ariarathes knew no
means of meeting the encroachments of the king of Bithynia except
the ambiguous help of his uncle, in return for which the latter then
suggested to him that he should allow the murderer of his father,
who had taken flight, to return to Cappadocia. This led to a rupture
and to war; but when the two armies confronted each other ready for
battle, the uncle requested a previous conference with the nephew and
thereupon cut down the unarmed youth with his own hand. Gordius, the
murderer of the father, then undertook the government by the directions
of Mithradates; and although the indignant population rose against
him and called the younger son of the last king to the throne, the
latter was unable to offer any permanent resistance to the superior
forces of Mithradates. The speedy death of the youth placed by the
people on the throne gave to the Pontic king the greater liberty of
action, because with that youth the Cappadocian royal house became
extinct. A pseudo-Ariarathes was proclaimed as nominal regent,
just as had been done in Paphlagonia; under whose name Gordius
administered the kingdom as lieutenant of Mithradates.
Empire of Mithradates
Mightier than any native monarch for many a day had been,
Mithradates bore rule alike over the northern and the southern
shores of the Black Sea and far into the interior of Asia Minor.
The resources of the king for war by land and by sea seemed
immeasurable. His recruiting field stretched from the mouth of
the Danube to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea; Thracians, Scythians,
Sauromatae, Bastarnae, Colchians, Iberians (in the modern Georgia)
crowded under his banners; above all he recruited his war-hosts from
the brave Bastarnae. For his fleet the satrapy of Colchis supplied
him with the most excellent timber, which was floated down from the
Caucasus, besides flax, hemp, pitch, and wax; pilots and officers
were hired in Phoenicia and Syria. The king, it was said, had
marched into Cappadocia with 600 scythe-chariots, 10,000 horse,
80,000 foot; and he had by no means mustered for this war all his
resources. In the absence of any Roman or other naval power worth
mentioning, the Pontic fleet, with Sinope and the ports of the Crimea
as its rallying points, had exclusive command of the Black Sea.
The Romans and Mithradates
Intervention of the Senate
That the Roman senate asserted its general policy--of keeping down
the states more or less dependent on it--also in dealing with that
of Pontus, is shown by its attitude on occasion of the succession to
the throne after the sudden death of Mithradates V. From the boy in
minority who followed him there was taken away Great Phrygia, which
had been conferred on his father for his taking part in the war
against Aristonicus or rather for his good money,(9) and this region
was added to the territory immediately subject to Rome.(10) But,
after this boy had at length attained majority, the same senate
showed utter passiveness towards his aggressions on all sides and
towards the formation of this imposing power, the development of
which occupies perhaps a period of twenty years. It was passive,
while one of its dependent states became developed into a great
military power, having at command more than a hundred thousand
armed men; while the ruler of that state entered into the closest
connection with the new great-king of the east, who was placed partly
by his aid at the head of the states in the interior of Asia; while
he annexed the neighbouring Asiatic kingdoms and principalities under
pretexts which sounded almost like a mockery of the ill-informed
and far-distant protecting power; while, in fine, he even
established himself in Europe and ruled as king over the Tauric
peninsula, and as lord-protector almost to the Macedono-Thracian
frontier. These circumstances indeed formed the subject of
discussion in the senate; but when the illustrious corporation
consoled itself in the affair of the Paphlagonian succession with
the fact that Nicomedes appealed to his pseudo-Pylaemenes, it was
evidently not so much deceived as grateful for any pretext which
spared it from serious interference. Meanwhile the complaints
became daily more numerous and more urgent. The princes of the
Tauric Scythians, whom Mithradates had driven from the Crimea,
turned for help to Rome; those of the senators who at all reflected
on the traditional maxims of Roman policy could not but recollect
that formerly, under circumstances so wholly different, the crossing
of king Antiochus to Europe and the occupation of the Thracian
Chersonese by his troops had become the signal for the Asiatic
war,(11) and could not but see that the occupation of the Tauric
Chersonese by the Pontic king ought still less to be tolerated now.
The scale was at last turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom
of Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of Bithynia--
who on his part had hoped to gain possession of Cappadocia by
another pseudo-Ariarathes, and now saw that the Pontic pretender
excluded his own--would hardly fail to urge the Roman government to
intervention. The senate resolved that Mithradates should reinstate
the Scythian princes--so far were they driven out of the track of
right policy by their negligent style of government, that instead of
supporting the Hellenes against the barbarians they had now on the
contrary to support the Scythians against those who were half their
countrymen. Paphlagonia was declared independent, and the pseudo-
Pylaemenes of Nicomedes was directed to evacuate the country.
In like manner the pseudo-Ariarathes of Mithradates was to retire
from Cappadocia, and, as the representatives of the country refused
the freedom proffered to it, a king was once more to be appointed
by free popular election.
Sulla Sent to Cappadocia
The decrees sounded energetic enough; only it was an error, that
instead of sending an army they directed the governor of Cilicia,
Lucius Sulla, with the handful of troops whom he commanded there
against the pirates and robbers, to intervene in Cappadocia.
Fortunately the remembrance of the former energy of the Romans
defended their interests in the east better than their present
government did, and the energy and dexterity of the governor supplied
what the senate lacked in both respects. Mithradates kept back and
contented himself with inducing Tigranes the great-king of Armenia,
who held a more free position with reference to the Romans than he
did, to send troops to Cappadocia. Sulla quickly collected his
forces and the contingents of the Asiatic allies, crossed the
Taurus, and drove the governor Gordius along with his Armenian
auxiliaries out of Cappadocia. This proved effectual. Mithradates
yielded on all points; Gordius had to assume the blame of the
Cappadocian troubles, and the pseudo-Ariarathes disappeared;
the election of king, which the Pontic faction had vainly
attempted to direct towards Gordius, fell on the respected
Cappadocian Ariobarzanes.
First Contact between the Romans and the Parthians
When Sulla in following out his expedition arrived in the region of
the Euphrates, in whose waters the Roman standards were then first
mirrored, the Romans came for the first time into contact with the
Parthians, who in consequence of the variance between them and Tigranes
had occasion to make approaches to the Romans. On both sides there
seemed a feeling that it was of some moment, in this first contact
between the two great powers of the east and the west, that neither
should renounce its claims to the sovereignty of the world; but Sulla,
bolder than the Parthian envoy, assumed and maintained in the
conference the place of honour between the king of Cappadocia and
the Parthian ambassador. Sulla's fame was more increased by this
greatly celebrated conference on the Euphrates than by his victories
in the east; on its account the Parthian envoy afterwards forfeited
his life to his masters resentment. But for the moment this contact
had no further result. Nicomedes in reliance on the favour of
the Romans omitted to evacuate Paphlagonia, but the decrees adopted
by the senate against Mithradates were carried further into effect,
the reinstatement of the Scythian chieftains was at least promised by
him; the earlier status quo in the east seemed to be restored (662).
New Aggressions of Mithradates
So it was alleged; but in fact there was little trace of any real
return of the former order of things. Scarce had Sulla left Asia,
when Tigranes king of Great Armenia fell upon Ariobarzanes the new
king of Cappadocia, expelled him, and reinstated in his stead the
Pontic pretender Ariarathes. In Bithynia, where after the death
of the old king Nicomedes II (about 663) his son Nicomedes III
Philopator had been recognized by the people and by the Roman senate
as legitimate king, his younger brother Socrates came forward as
pretender to the crown and possessed himself of the sovereignty.
It was clear that the real author of the Cappadocian as of the Bithynian
troubles was no other than Mithradates, although he refrained from
taking any open part. Every one knew that Tigranes only acted at
his beck; but Socrates also had marched into Bithynia with Pontic
troops, and the legitimate king's life was threatened by the
assassins of Mithradates. In the Crimea even and the neighbouring
countries the Pontic king had no thought of receding, but on the
contrary carried his arms farther and farther.
Aquillius Sent to Asia
The Roman government, appealed to for aid by the kings Ariobarzanes
and Nicomedes in person, despatched to Asia Minor in support of
Lucius Cassius who was governor there the consular Manius Aquillius--
an officer tried in the Cimbrian and Sicilian wars--not, however,
as general at the head of an army, but as an ambassador, and
directed the Asiatic client states and Mithradates in particular
to lend armed assistance in case of need. The result was as
it had been two years before. The Roman officer accomplished the
commission entrusted to him with the aid of the small Roman corps
which the governor of the province of Asia had at his disposal, and
of the levy of the Phrygians and Galatians; king Nicomedes and king
Ariobarzanes again ascended their tottering thrones; Mithradates
under various pretexts evaded the summons to furnish contingents,
but gave to the Romans no open resistance; on the contrary
the Bithynian pretender Socrates was even put to death by
his orders (664).
The State of Things Intermediate between War and Peace
It was a singular complication. Mithradates was fully convinced
that he could do nothing against the Romans in open conflict, and
was therefore firmly resolved not to allow matters to come to an
open rupture and war with them. Had he not been so resolved, there
was no more favourable opportunity for beginning the struggle than
the present: just at the time when Aquillius marched into Bithynia
and Cappadocia, the Italian insurrection was at the height of its
power and might encourage even the weak to declare against Rome;
yet Mithradates allowed the year 664 to pass without profiting by
the opportunity. Nevertheless he pursued with equal tenacity and
activity his plan of extending his territory in Asia Minor. This
strange combination of a policy of peace at any price with a policy
of conquest was certainly in itself untenable, and was simply a
fresh proof that Mithradates did not belong to the class of genuine
statesmen; he knew neither how to prepare for conflict like king
Philip nor how to submit like king Attalus, but in the true style
of a sultan was perpetually fluctuating between a greedy desire of
conquest and the sense of his own weakness. But even in this point
of view his proceedings can only be understood, when we recollect
that Mithradates had become acquainted by twenty years' experience
with the Roman policy of that day. He knew very well that the Roman
government were far from desirous of war; that they in fact, looking
to the serious danger which threatened their rule from any general
of reputation, and with the fresh remembrance of the Cimbrian war
and Marius, dreaded war still more if possible than he did himself.
He acted accordingly. He was not afraid to demean himself in a way
which would have given to any energetic government not fettered by
selfish considerations manifold ground and occasion for declaring war;
but he carefully avoided any open rupture which would have placed the
senate under the necessity of declaring it. As soon as men appeared
to be in earnest he drew back, before Sulla as well as before
Aquillius; he hoped, doubtless, that he would not always be
confronted by energetic generals, that he too would, as well as
Jugurtha, fall in with his Scaurus or Albinus. It must be owned
that this hope was not without reason; although the very example
of Jugurtha had on the other hand shown how foolish it was to
confound the bribery of a Roman commander and the corruption
of a Roman army with the conquest of the Roman people.
Aquillius Brings about War
Nicomedes
Thus matters stood between peace and war, and looked quite as if
they would drag on for long in the same indecisive position. But
it was not the intention of Aquillius to allow this; and, as he could
not compel his government to declare war against Mithradates, he
made use of Nicomedes for that purpose. The latter, who was under
the power of the Roman general and was, moreover, his debtor for
the accumulated war expenses and for sums promised to the general in
person, could not avoid complying with the suggestion that he should
begin war with Mithradates. The declaration of war by Bithynia
took place; but, even when the vessels of Nicomedes closed the
Bosporus against those of Pontus, and his troops marched into the
frontier districts of Pontus and laid waste the region of Amastris,
Mithradates remained still unshaken in his policy of peace; instead
of driving the Bithynians over the frontier, he lodged a complaint
with the Roman envoys and asked them either to mediate or to allow
him the privilege of self-defence. But he was informed by
Aquillius, that he must under all circumstances refrain from war
against Nicomedes. That indeed was plain. They had employed
exactly the same policy against Carthage; they allowed the victim
to be set upon by the Roman hounds and forbade its defending itself
against them. Mithradates reckoned himself lost, just as the
Carthaginians had done; but, while the Phoenicians yielded from
despair, the king of Sinope did the very opposite and assembled
his troops and ships. "Does not even he who must succumb," he is
reported to have said, "defend himself against the robber?" His son
Ariobarzanes received orders to advance into Cappadocia; a message
was sent once more to the Roman envoys to inform them of the step
to which necessity had driven the king, and to demand their
ultimatum. It was to the effect which was to be anticipated.
Although neither the Roman senate nor king Mithradates nor king
Nicomedes had desired the rupture, Aquillius desired it and war
ensued (end of 665).
Preparations of Mithradates
Mithradates prosecuted the political and military preparations for
the passage of arms thus forced upon him with all his characteristic
energy. First of all he drew closer his alliance with Tigranes king
of Armenia, and obtained from him the promise of an auxiliary army
which was to march into western Asia and to take possession of the
soil there for king Mithradates and of the moveable property for
king Tigranes. The Parthian king, offended by the haughty carriage
of Sulla, though not exactly coming forward as an antagonist to
the Romans, did not act as their ally. To the Greeks the king
endeavoured to present himself in the character of Philip and
Perseus, as the defender of the Greek nation against the alien rule
of the Romans. Pontic envoys were sent to the king of Egypt and to
the last remnant of free Greece, the league of the Cretan cities,
and adjured those for whom Rome had already forged her chains to rise
now at the last moment and save Hellenic nationality; the attempt was
in the case of Crete at least not wholly in vain, and numerous Cretans
took service in the Pontic army. Hopes were entertained that the
lesser and least of the protected states--Numidia, Syria, the Hellenic
republics--would successively rebel, and that the provinces would
revolt, particularly the west of Asia Minor, the victim of unbounded
oppression. Efforts were made to excite a Thracian rising, and even
to arouse Macedonia to revolt. Piracy, which even previously was
flourishing, was now everywhere let loose as a most welcome ally,
and with alarming rapidity squadrons of corsairs, calling themselves
Pontic privateers, filled the Mediterranean far and wide. With
eagerness and delight accounts were received of the commotions among
the Roman burgesses, and of the Italian insurrection subdued yet far
from extinguished. No direct relations, however, were formed with
the discontented and the insurgents in Italy; except that a foreign
corps armed and organized in the Roman fashion was created in Asia,
the flower of which consisted of Roman and Italian refugees.
Forces like those of Mithradates had not been seen in Asia since
the Persian wars. The statements that, leaving out of account the
Armenian auxiliary army, he took the field with 250,000 infantry and
40,000 cavalry, and that 300 Pontic decked and 100 open vessels put
to sea, seem not too exaggerated in the case of a warlike sovereign
who had at his disposal the numberless inhabitants of the steppes.
His generals, particularly the brothers Neoptolemus and Archelaus,
were experienced and cautious Greek captains; among the soldiers of
the king there was no want of brave men who despised death; and the
armour glittering with gold and silver and the rich dresses of the
Scythians and Medes mingled gaily with the bronze and steel of the
Greek troopers. No unity of military organization, it is true,
bound together these party-coloured masses; the army of Mithradates
was just one of those unwieldy Asiatic war-machines, which had so often
already--on the last occasion exactly a century before at Magnesia--
succumbed to a superior military organization; but still the east was
in arms against the Romans, while in the western half of the empire
also matters looked far from peaceful.
Weak Counterpreparatons of the Romans
However much it was in itself a political necessity for Rome to
declare war against Mithradates, yet the particular moment was as
unhappily chosen as possible; and for this reason it is very probable
that Manius Aquillius brought about the rupture between Rome and
Mithradates at this precise time primarily from regard to his own
interests. For the moment they had no other troops at their disposal
in Asia than the small Roman division under Lucius Cassius and the
militia of western Asia, and, owing to the military and financial
distress in which they were placed at home in consequence of the
insurrectionary war, a Roman army could not in the most favourable
case land in Asia before the summer of 666. Hitherto the Roman
magistrates there had a difficult position; but they hoped to
protect the Roman province and to be able to hold their ground as
they stood--the Bithynian army under king Nicomedes in its position
taken up in the previous year in the Paphlagonian territory between
Amastris and Sinope, and the divisions under Lucius Cassius, Manius
Aquillius, and Quintus Oppius, farther back in the Bithynian, Galatian,
and Cappadocian territories, while the Bithyno-Roman fleet continued
to blockade the Bosporus.
Mithradates Occupies Asia Minor
Anti-Roman Movements There
In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the
offensive. On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern
Tesch Kopri), the Pontic vanguard of cavalry and light-armed
troops encountered the Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very
superior numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army
dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the hands of the
victors. It was mainly to Neoptolemus and Archelaus that the king
was indebted for this brilliant success. The far more wretched
Asiatic militia, stationed farther back, thereupon gave themselves
up as vanquished, even before they encountered the enemy; when the
generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed. A Roman
division was defeated in Cappadocia; Cassius sought to keep the field
in Phrygia with the militia, but he discharged it again without
venturing on a battle, and threw himself with his few trustworthy
troops into the townships on the upper Maeander, particularly into
Apamea. Oppius in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself
up in the Phrygian Laodicea; Aquillius was overtaken while retreating
at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and so totally defeated
that he lost his camp and had to seek refuge at Pergamus in the Roman
province; the latter also was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell
into the hands of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships
that were there. After each victory Mithradates had dismissed all
the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor, and had
neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the national sympathies
that were from the first turned towards him. Now the whole country
as far as the Maeander was with the exception of a few fortresses in
his power; and news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution
had broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act
against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on
Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles
with each other in order to settle to whom the chief command in the
Asiatic war should belong. Rome seemed zealously employed in the
work of self-destruction: it is no wonder that, though even now
minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great body of the natives
of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king. Hellenes and Asiatics united
in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer; it became usual to
compliment the king, in whom as in the divine conqueror of the
Indians Asia and Hellas once more found a common meeting-point, under
the name of the new Dionysus. The cities and islands sent messengers
to meet him, wherever he went, and to invite "the delivering god"
to visit them; and in festal attire the citizens flocked forth in
front of their gates to receive him. Several places delivered the
Roman officers sojourning among them in chains to the king; Laodicea
thus surrendered Quintus Oppius, the commandant of the town, and
Mytilene in Lesbos the consular Manius Aquillius.(12) The whole
fury of the barbarian, who gets the man before whom he has trembled
into his power, discharged itself on the unhappy author of the war.
The aged man was led throughout Asia Minor, sometimes on foot chained
to a powerful mounted Bastarnian, sometimes bound on an ass and
proclaiming his own name; and, when at length the pitiful spectacle
again arrived at the royal quarters in Pergamus, by the king's
orders molten gold was poured down his throat--in order to
satiate his avarice, which had really occasioned the war--
till he expired in torture.
Orders Issued from Ephesus for a General Massacre
But the king was not content with this savage mockery, which alone
suffices to erase its author's name from the roll of true nobility.
From Ephesus king Mithradates issued orders to all the governors
and cities dependent on him to put to death on one and the same day
all Italians residing within their bounds, whether free or slaves,
without distinction of sex or age, and on no account, under severe
penalties, to aid any of the proscribed to escape; to cast forth
the corpses of the slain as a prey to the birds; to confiscate their
property and to hand over one half of it to the murderers, and the
other half to the king. The horrible orders were--excepting in a
few districts, such as the island of Cos--punctually executed,
and eighty, or according to other accounts one hundred and fifty,
thousand--if not innocent, at least defenceless--men, women, and
children were slaughtered in cold blood in one day in Asia Minor;
a fearful execution, in which the good opportunity of getting
rid of debts and the Asiatic servile willingness to perform any
executioner's office at the bidding of the sultan had at least
as much part as the comparatively noble feeling of revenge. In a
political point of view this measure was not only without any rational
object--for its financial purpose might have been attained without
this bloody edict, and the natives of Asia Minor were not to be driven
into warlike zeal even by the consciousness of the most blood-stained
guilt--but even opposed to the king's designs, for on the one hand
it compelled the Roman senate, so far as it was still capable of
energy at all, to an energetic prosecution of the war, and on the
other hand it struck at not the Romans merely, but the king's natural
allies as well, the non-Roman Italians. This Ephesian massacre
was altogether a mere meaningless act of brutally blind revenge,
which obtains a false semblance of grandeur simply through the
colossal proportions in which the character of sultanic rule
was here displayed.
Organization of the Conquered Provinces
The king's views altogether grew high; he had begun the war from
despair, but the unexpectedly easy victory and the non-arrival of
the dreaded Sulla occasioned a transition to the most highflown hopes.
He set up his home in the west of Asia Minor; Pergamus the seat
of the Roman governor became his new capital, the old kingdom
of Sinope was handed over to the king's son Mithradates to be
administered as a viceroyship; Cappadocia, Phrygia, Bithynia were
organized as Pontic satrapies. The grandees of the empire and the
king's favourites were loaded with rich gifts and fiefs, and not
only were the arrears of taxes remitted, but exemption from
taxation for five years was promised, to all the communities-
a measure which was as much a mistake as the massacre of the
Romans, if the king expected thereby to secure the fidelity of
the inhabitants of Asia Minor.
The king's treasury was, no doubt, copiously replenished otherwise
by the immense sums which accrued from the property of the Italians
and other confiscations; for instance in Cos alone 800 talents
(195,000 pounds) which the Jews had deposited there were carried
of by Mithradates. The northern portion of Asia Minor and most of
the islands belonging to it were in the king's power; except some petty
Paphlagonian dynasts, there was hardly a district which still adhered
to Rome; the whole Aegean Sea was commanded by his fleets. The south-
west alone, the city-leagues of Caria and Lycia and the city of Rhodes,
resisted him. In Caria, no doubt, Stratonicea was reduced by force
of arms; but Magnesia on the Sipylus successfully withstood a severe
siege, in which Mithradates' ablest officer Archelaus was defeated and
wounded. Rhodes, the asylum of the Romans who had escaped from Asia
with the governor Lucius Cassius among them, was assailed on the part
of Mithradates by sea and land with immense superiority of force.
But his sailors, courageously as they did their duty under the eyes
of the king, were awkward novices, and so Rhodian squadrons
vanquished those of Pontus four times as strong and returned home
with captured vessels. By land also the siege made no progress;
after a part of the works had been destroyed, Mithradates abandoned
the enterprise, and the important island as well as the mainland
opposite remained in the hands of the Romans.
Pontic Invasion of Europe
Predatory Inroads of the Thracians
Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies
Pontic Fleet in the Aegean
But not only was the Asiatic province occupied by Mithradates almost
without defending itself, chiefly in consequence of the Sulpician
revolution breaking out at a most unfavourable time; Mithradates
even directed an attack against Europe. Already since 662 the
neighbours of Macedonia on her northern and eastern frontier had been
renewing their incursions with remarkable vehemence and perseverance;
in the years 664, 665 the Thracians overran Macedonia and all Epirus
and plundered the temple of Dodona. Still more singular was the
circumstance, that with these movements was combined a renewed
attempt to place a pretender on the Macedonian throne in the person
of one Euphenes. Mithradates, who from the Crimea maintained
connections with the Thracians, was hardly a stranger to all these
events. The praetor Gaius Sentius defended himself, it is true,
against these intruders with the aid of the Thracian Dentheletae;
but it was not long before mightier opponents came against him.
Mithradates, carried away by his successes, had formed the bold
resolution that he would, like Antiochus, bring the war for the
sovereignty of Asia to a decision in Greece, and had by land and sea
directed thither the flower of his troops. His son Ariarathes
penetrated from Thrace into the weakly-defended Macedonia, subduing
the country as he advanced and parcelling it into Pontic satrapies.
Abdera and Philippi became the principal bases for the operations of
the Pontic arms in Europe. The Pontic fleet, commanded by
Mithradates' best general Archelaus, appeared in the Aegean Sea,
where scarce a Roman sail was to be found. Delos, the emporium of
the Roman commerce in those waters, was occupied and nearly 20,000
men, mostly Italians, were massacred there; Euboea suffered a similar
fate; all the islands to the east of the Malean promontory were soon
in the hands of the enemy; they might proceed to attack the mainland
itself. The assault, no doubt, which the Pontic fleet made from
Euboea on the important Demetrias, was repelled by Bruttius Sura, the
brave lieutenant of the governor of Macedonia, with his handful of
troops and a few vessels hurriedly collected, and he even occupied
the island of Sciathus; but he could not prevent the enemy from
establishing himself in Greece proper.
The Pontic Proceedings in Greece
There Mithradates carried on his operations not only by arms, but
at the same time by national propagandism. His chief instrument
for Athens was one Aristion, by birth an Attic slave, by profession
formerly a teacher of the Epicurean philosophy, now a minion of
Mithradates; an excellent master of persuasion, who by the brilliant
career which he pursued at court knew how to dazzle the mob, and
with due gravity to assure them that help was already on the way
to Mithradates from Carthage, which had been for about sixty years
lying in ruins. These addresses of the new Pericles were so far
effectual that, while the few persons possessed of judgment escaped
from Athens, the mob and one or two literati whose heads were turned
formally renounced the Roman rule. So the ex-philosopher became a
despot who, supported by his bands of Pontic mercenaries, commenced
an infamous and bloody rule; and the Piraeeus was converted into
a Pontic harbour. As soon as the troops of Mithradates gained a
footing on the Greek continent, most of the small free states--the
Achaeans, Laconians, Boeotians--as far as Thessaly joined them.
Sura, after having drawn some reinforcements from Macedonia, advanced
into Boeotia to bring help to the besieged Thespiae and engaged in
conflicts with Archelaus and Aristion during three days at Chaeronea;
but they led to no decision and Sura was obliged to retire when
the Pontic reinforcements from the Peloponnesus approached (end of
666, beg. of 667). So commanding was the position of Mithradates,
particularly by sea, that an embassy of Italian insurgents could invite
him to make an attempt to land in Italy; but their cause was already
by that time lost, and the king rejected the suggestion.
Position of the Romans
The position of the Roman government began to be critical. Asia
Minor and Hellas were wholly, Macedonia to a considerable extent,
in the enemy's hands; by sea the Pontic flag ruled without a rival.
Then there was the Italian insurrection, which, though baffled on
the whole, still held the undisputed command of wide districts of
Italy; the barely hushed revolution, which threatened every moment
to break out afresh and more formidably; and, lastly, the alarming
commercial and monetary crisis(13) occasioned by the internal
troubles of Italy and the enormous losses of the Asiatic
capitalists, and the want of trustworthy troops. The government
would have required three armies, to keep down the revolution in
Rome, to crush completely the insurrection in Italy, and to wage
war in Asia; it had but one, that of Sulla; for the northern army
was, under the untrustworthy Gnaeus Strabo, simply an additional
embarrassment. Sulla had to choose which of these three tasks he
would undertake; he decided, as we have seen, for the Asiatic war.
It was no trifling matter--we should perhaps say, it was a great
act of patriotism--that in this conflict between the general interest
of his country and the special interest of his party the former
retained the ascendency; and that Sulla, in spite of the dangers
which his removal from Italy involved for his constitution and his
party, landed in the spring of 667 on the coast of Epirus.
Sulla's Landing
Greece Occupied
But he came not, as Roman commanders-in-chief had been wont to
make their appearance in the East. That his army of five legions
or of at most 30,000 men,(14) was little stronger than an ordinary
consular army, was the least element of difference. Formerly in
the eastern wars a Roman fleet had never been wanting, and had in
fact without exception commanded the sea; Sulla, sent to reconquer
two continents and the islands of the Aegean sea, arrived without a
single vessel of war. Formerly the general had brought with him a
full chest and drawn the greatest portion of his supplies by sea
from home; Sulla came with empty hands--for the sums raised with
difficulty for the campaign of 666 were expended in Italy--and
found himself exclusively left dependent on requisitions. Formerly
the general had found his only opponent in the enemy's camp, and
since the close of the struggle between the orders political
factions had without exception been united in opposing the public
foe; but Romans of note fought under the standards of Mithradates,
large districts of Italy desired to enter into alliance with him,
and it was at least doubtful whether the democratic party would follow
the glorious example that Sulla had set before it, and keep truce with
him so long as he was fighting against the Asiatic king. But the
vigorous general, who had to contend with all these embarrassments,
was not accustomed to trouble himself about more remote dangers
before finishing the task immediately in hand. When his proposals
of peace addressed to the king, which substantially amounted to a
restoration of the state of matters before the war, met with no
acceptance, he advanced just as he had landed, from the harbours of
Epirus to Boeotia, defeated the generals of the enemy Archelaus and
Aristion there at Mount Tilphossium, and after that victory
possessed himself almost without resistance of the whole Grecian
mainland with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the
Piraeeus, into which Aristion and Archelaus had thrown themselves,
and which he failed to carry by a coup de main. A Roman division
under Lucius Hortensius occupied Thessaly and made incursions into
Macedonia; another under Munatius stationed itself before Chalcis,
to keep off the enemy's corps under Neoptolemus in Euboea; Sulla
himself formed a camp at Eleusis and Megara, from which he
commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and prosecuted the siege of
the city and harbour of Athens. The Hellenic cities, governed as
they always were by their immediate fears, submitted unconditionally
to the Romans, and were glad when they were allowed to ransom
themselves from more severe punishment by supplying provisions
and men and paying fines.
Protracted Siege of Athens and the Piraeus
Athens Falls
The sieges in Attica advanced less rapidly. Sulla found himself
compelled to prepare all sorts of heavy besieging implements for
which the trees of the Academy and the Lyceum had to supply the
timber. Archelaus conducted the defence with equal vigour and
judgment; he armed the crews of his vessels, and thus reinforced
repelled the attacks of the Romans with superior strength and made
frequent and not seldom successful sorties. The Pontic army of
Dromichaetes advancing to the relief of the city was defeated under
the walls of Athens by the Romans after a severe struggle, in which
Sulla's brave legate Lucius Licinius Murena particularly distinguished
himself; but the siege did not on that account advance more rapidly.
From Macedonia, where the Cappadocians had meanwhile definitively
established themselves, plentiful and regular supplies arrived by
sea, which Sulla was not in a condition to cut off from the harbour-
fortress; in Athens no doubt provisions were beginning to fail, but
from the proximity of the two fortresses Archelaus was enabled to
make various attempts to throw quantities of grain into Athens, which
were not wholly unsuccessful. So the winter of 667-8 passed away
tediously without result. As soon as the season allowed, Sulla threw
himself with vehemence on the Piraeus; he in fact succeeded by
missiles and mines in making a breach in part of the strong walls of
Pericles, and immediately the Romans advanced to the assault; but it
was repulsed, and on its being renewed crescent-shaped entrenchments
were found constructed behind the fallen walls, from which the
invaders found themselves assailed on three sides with missiles
and compelled to retire. Sulla then raised the siege, and contented
himself with a blockade. In the meanwhile the provisions in Athens
were wholly exhausted; the garrison attempted to procure a capitulation,
but Sulla sent back their fluent envoys with the hint that he stood
before them not as a student but as a general, and would accept only
unconditional surrender. When Aristion, well knowing what fate was
in store for him, delayed compliance, the ladders were applied and
the city, hardly any longer defended, was taken by storm (1 March
668). Aristion threw himself into the Acropolis, where he soon
afterwards surrendered. The Roman general left the soldiery to
murder and plunder in the captured city and the more considerable
ringleaders of the revolt to be executed; but the city itself
obtained back from him its liberty and its possessions--
even the important Delos,--and was thus once more saved
by its illustrious dead.
Critical Position of Sulla
Want of a Fleet
The Epicurean schoolmaster had thus been vanquished; but the position
of Sulla remained in the highest degree difficult, and even
desperate. He had now been more than a year in the field without
having advanced a step worth mentioning; a single port mocked all
his exertions, while Asia was utterly left to itself, and the conquest
of Macedonia by Mithradates' lieutenants had recently been completed
by the capture of Amphipolis. Without a fleet--it was becoming daily
more apparent--it was not only impossible to secure his communications
and supplies in presence of the ships of the enemy and the numerous
pirates, but impossible to recover even the Piraeeus, to say
nothing of Asia and the islands; and yet it was difficult to see
how ships of war were to be got. As early as the winter of 667-8
Sulla had despatched one of his ablest and most dexterous officers,
Lucius Licinius Lucullus, into the eastern waters, to raise ships
there if possible. Lucullus put to sea with six open boats, which he
had borrowed from the Rhodians and other small communities; he himself
merely by an accident escaped from a piratic squadron, which captured
most of his boats; deceiving the enemy by changing his vessels he
arrived by way of Crete and Cyrene at Alexandria; but the Egyptian
court rejected his request for the support of ships of war with equal
courtesy and decision. Hardly anything illustrates so clearly as
does this fact the sad decay of the Roman state, which had once
been able gratefully to decline the offer of the kings of Egypt to
assist the Romans with all their naval force, and now itself seemed
to the Alexandrian statesmen bankrupt. To all this fell to be added
the financial embarrassment; Sulla had already been obliged to empty
the treasuries of the Olympian Zeus, of the Delphic Apollo, and of
the Epidaurian Asklepios, for which the gods were compensated by
the moiety, confiscated by way of penalty, of the Theban territory.
But far worse than all this military and financial perplexity was
the reaction of the political revolution in Rome; the rapid, sweeping,
violent accomplishment of which had far surpassed the worst
apprehensions. The revolution conducted the government in the
capital; Sulla had been deposed, his Asiatic command had been
entrusted to the democratic consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who
might be daily looked for in Greece. The soldiers had no doubt
adhered to Sulla, who made every effort to keep them in good humour;
but what could be expected, when money and supplies were wanting,
when the general was deposed and proscribed, when his successor
was on the way, and, in addition to all this, the war against
the tough antagonist who commanded the sea was protracted without
prospect of a close?
Pontic Armies Enter Greece
Evacuation of the Piraeus
King Mithradates undertook to deliver his antagonist from his
perilous position. He it was, to all appearance, who disapproved
the defensive system of his generals and sent orders to them to
vanquish the enemy with the utmost speed. As early as 667 his son
Ariarathes had started from Macedonia to combat Sulla in Greece
proper; only the sudden death, which overtook the prince on the march
at the Tisaean promontory in Thessaly, had at that time led to the
abandonment of the expedition. His successor Taxiles now appeared
(668), driving before him the Roman corps stationed in Thessaly,
with an army of, it is said, 100,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry at
Thermopylae. Dromichaetes joined him. Archelaus also--compelled,
apparently, not so much by Sulla's arms as by his master's orders--
evacuated the Piraeeus first partially and then entirely, and joined
the Pontic main army in Boeotia. Sulla, after the Piraeeus with
all its greatly-admired fortifications had been by his orders
destroyed, followed the Pontic army, in the hope of being able
to fight a pitched battle before the arrival of Flaccus. In vain
Archelaus advised that they should avoid such a battle, but should
keep the sea and the coast occupied and the enemy in suspense.
Now just as formerly under Darius and Antiochus, the masses of
the Orientals, like animals terrified in the midst of a fire, flung
themselves hastily and blindly into battle; and did so on this
occasion more foolishly than ever, since the Asiatics might perhaps
have needed to wait but a few months in order to be the spectators
of a battle between Sulla and Flaccus.
Battle of Chaerones
In the plain of the Cephissus not far from Chaeronea, in March 668,
the armies met. Even including the division driven back from
Thessaly, which had succeeded in accomplishing its junction with
the Roman main army, and including the Greek contingents, the Roman
army found itself opposed to a foe three times as strong and
particularly to a cavalry fur superior and from the nature of
the field of battle very dangerous, against which Sulla found it
necessary to protect his flanks by digging trenches, while in front
he caused a chain of palisades to be introduced between his first and
second lines for protection against the enemy's war-chariots. When
the war chariots rolled on to open the battle, the first line of the
Romans withdrew behind this row of stakes: the chariots, rebounding
from it and scared by the Roman slingers and archers, threw themselves
on their own line and carried confusion both into the Macedonian
phalanx and into the corps of the Italian refugees. Archelaus
brought up in haste his cavalry from both flanks and sent it to
engage the enemy, with a view to gain time for rearranging his infantry;
it charged with great fury and broke through the Roman ranks; but
the Roman infantry rapidly formed in close masses and courageously
withstood the horsemen assailing them on every side. Meanwhile Sulla
himself on the right wing led his cavalry against the exposed flank
of the enemy; the Asiatic infantry gave way before it was even properly
engaged, and its giving way carried confusion also into the masses
of the cavalry. A general attack of the Roman infantry, which
through the wavering demeanour of the hostile cavalry gained time
to breathe, decided the victory. The closing of the gates of the
camp which Archelaus ordered to check the flight, only increased
the slaughter, and when the gates at length were opened, the Romans
entered at the same time with the Asiatics. It is said that
Archelaus brought not a twelfth part of his force in safety to
Chalcis; Sulla followed him to the Euripus; he was not in a position
to cross that narrow arm of the sea.
Slight Effect of the Victory
Sulla and Flaccus
It was a great victory, but the results were trifling, partly
because of the want of a fleet, partly because the Roman conqueror,
instead of pursuing the vanquished, was under the necessity in the
first instance of protecting himself against his own countrymen.
The sea was still exclusively covered by Pontic squadrons, which
now showed themselves even to the westward of the Malean promontory;
even after the battle of Chaeronea Archelaus landed troops on
Zacynthus and made an attempt to establish himself on that island.
Moreover Lucius Flaccus had in the meanwhile actually landed with two
legions in Epirus, not without having sustained severe loss on the
way from storms and from the war-vessels of the enemy cruising in
the Adriatic; his troops were already in Thessaly; thither Sulla had
in the first instance to turn. The two Roman armies encamped over
against each other at Melitaea on the northern slope of Mount
Othrys; a collision seemed inevitable. But Flaccus, after he had
opportunity of convincing himself that Sulla's soldiers were by no
means inclined to betray their victorious leader to the totally
unknown democratic commander-in chief, but that on the contrary his
own advanced guard began to desert to Sulla's camp, evaded a conflict
to which he was in no respect equal, and set out towards the north,
with the view of getting through Macedonia and Thrace to Asia and
there paving the way for further results by subduing Mithradates.
That Sulla should have allowed his weaker opponent to depart without
hindrance, and instead of following him should have returned to
Athens, where he seems to have passed the winter of 668-9, is in
a military point of view surprising. We may suppose perhaps that
in this also he was guided by political motives, and that he was
sufficiently moderate and patriotic in his views willingly to forgo
a victory over his countrymen, at least so long as they had
still the Asiatics to deal with, and to find the most tolerable
solution of the unhappy dilemma in allowing the armies of the
revolution in Asia and of the oligarchy in Europe to fight
against the common foe.
Second Pontic Army Sent to Greece
Battle of Orchomenus
In the spring of 669 there was again fresh work in Europe.
Mithradates, who continued his preparations indefatigably in Asia
Minor, had sent an army not much less than that which had been
extirpated at Chaeronea, under Dorylaus to Euboea; thence it had,
after a junction with the remains of the army of Archelaus, passed
over the Euripus to Boeotia. The Pontic king, who judged of what his
army could do by the standard of victories over the Bithynian and
Cappadocian militia, did not understand the unfavourable turn which
things had taken in Europe; the circles of the courtiers were
already whispering as to the treason of Archelaus; peremptory orders
were issued to fight a second battle at once with the new army, and
not to fail on this occasion to annihilate the Romans. The master's
will was carried out, if not in conquering, at least in fighting.
The Romans and Asiatics met once more in the plain of the Cephissus,
near Orchomenus. The numerous and excellent cavalry of the latter
flung itself impetuously on the Roman infantry, which began to waver
and give way: the danger was so urgent, that Sulla seized a standard
and advancing with his adjutants and orderlies against the enemy
called out with a loud voice to the soldiers that, if they should
be asked at home where they had abandoned their general, they
might reply--at Orchomenus. This had its effect; the legions
rallied and vanquished the enemy's horse, after which the infantry
were overthrown with little difficulty. On the following day the camp
of the Asiatics was surrounded and stormed; far the greatest portion
of them fell or perished in the Copaic marshes; a few only,
Archelaus among the rest, reached Euboea. The Boeotian communities
had severely to pay for their renewed revolt from Rome, some of
them even to annihilation. Nothing opposed the advance into
Macedonia and Thrace; Philippi was occupied, Abdera was voluntarily
evacuated by the Pontic garrison, the European continent in general
was cleared of the enemy. At the end of the third year of the war
(669) Sulla was able to take up winter-quarters in Thessaly, with a
view to begin the Asiatic campaign in the spring of 670,(15) for
which purpose he gave orders to build ships in the Thessalian ports.
Reaction in Asia Minor against Mithradates
Meanwhile the circumstances of Asia Minor also had undergone a
material change. If king Mithradates had once come forward as the
liberator of the Hellenes, if he had introduced his rule with the
recognition of civic independence and with remission of taxes, they
had after this brief ecstasy been but too rapidly and too bitterly
undeceived. He had very soon emerged in his true character, and
had begun to exercise a despotism far surpassing the tyranny of
the Roman governors--a despotism which drove even the patient
inhabitants of Asia Minor to open revolt. The sultan again resorted
to the most violent expedients. His decrees granted independence
to the townships which turned to him, citizenship to the -metoeci-,
full remission of debts to the debtors, lands to those that had none,
freedom to the slaves; nearly 15,000 such manumitted slaves fought
in the army of Archelaus. The most fearful scenes were the result
of this high-handed subversion of all existing order. The most
considerable mercantile cities, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, Tralles,
Sardes, closed their gates against the king's governors or put
them to death, and declared for Rome.(16) On the other hand the
king's lieutenant Diodorus, a philosopher of note like Aristion, of
another school, but equally available for the worst subservience,
under the instructions of his master caused the whole town-council
of Adramyttium to be put to death. The Chians, who were suspected
of an inclination to Rome, were fined in the first instance in 2000
talents (480,000 pounds) and, when the payment was found not correct,
they were en masse put on board ship and deported in chains under
the charge of their own slaves to the coast of Colchis, while their
island was occupied with Pontic colonists. The king gave orders that
the chiefs of the Celts in Asia Minor should all be put to death along
with their wives and children in one day, and that Galatia should be
converted into a Pontic satrapy. Most of these bloody edicts were
carried into effect either at Mithradates' own headquarters or in
Galatia, but the few who escaped placed themselves at the head of
their powerful tribes and expelled Eumachus, the governor of the king,
out of their bounds. It may readily be conceived that such a king
would be pursued by the daggers of assassins; sixteen hundred men
were condemned to death by the royal courts of inquisition as having
been implicated in such conspiracies.
Lucullus and the Fleet on the Asiatic Coast
While the king was thus by his suicidal fury provoking his
temporary subjects to rise in arms against him, he was at the same
time hard pressed by the Romans in Asia, both by sea and by land.
Lucullus, after the failure of his attempt to lead forth the Egyptian
fleet against Mithradates, had with better success repeated his
efforts to procure vessels of war in the Syrian maritime towns, and
reinforced his nascent fleet in the ports of Cyprus, Pamphylia, and
Rhodes till he found himself strong enough to proceed to the attack.
He dexterously avoided measuring himself against superior forces and
yet obtained no inconsiderable advantages. The Cnidian island and
peninsula were occupied by him, Samos was assailed, Colophon and
Chios were wrested from the enemy.
Flaccus Arrives in Asia
Fimbria
Fimbria's Victory at Miletopolis
Perilous Position of Mithradates
Meanwhile Flaccus had proceeded with his army through Macedonia and
Thrace to Byzantium, and thence, passing the straits, had reached
Chalcedon (end of 668). There a military insurrection broke out
against the general, ostensibly because he embezzled the spoil
from the soldiers. The soul of it was one of the chief officers
of the army, a man whose name had become a proverb in Rome for a
true mob-orator, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who, after having differed
with his commander-in-chief, transferred the demagogic practices
which he had begun in the Forum to the camp. Flaccus was deposed
by the army and soon afterwards put to death at Nicomedia, not far
from Chalcedon; Fimbria was installed by decree of the soldiers
in his stead. As a matter of course he allowed his troops every
indulgence; in the friendly Cyzicus, for instance, the citizens
were ordered to surrender all their property to the soldiers on pain
of death, and by way of warning example two of the most respectable
citizens were at once executed. Nevertheless in a military point
of view the change of commander-in-chief was a gain; Fimbria was not,
like Flaccus, an incapable general, but energetic and talented.
At Miletopolis (on the Rhyndacus to the west of Brussa) he defeated
the younger Mithradates, who as governor of the satrapy of Pontus had
marched against him, completely in a nocturnal assault, and by this
victory opened his way to Pergamus, the capital formerly of the
Roman province and now of the Pontic king, whence he dislodged the
king and compelled him to take flight to the port of Pitane not far
off, with the view of there embarking. Just at that moment Lucullus
appeared in those waters with his fleet; Fimbria adjured him to
render assistance so that he might be enabled to capture the king.
But the Optimate was stronger in Lucullus than the patriot; he
sailed onward and the king escaped to Mitylene. The situation
of Mithradates was even thus sufficiently embarrassed. At the end
of 669 Europe was lost, Asia Minor was partly in rebellion against
him, partly occupied by a Roman army; and he was himself threatened
by the latter in his immediate vicinity. The Roman fleet under
Lucullus had maintained its position on the Trojan coast by two
successful naval engagements at the promontory of Lectum and at
the island of Tenedos; it was joined there by the ships which had
in the meanwhile been built by Sulla's orders in Thessaly, and by
it position commanding the Hellespont it secured to the general of
the Roman senatorial army a safe and easy passage next spring to Asia.
Negotiations for Peace
Mithradates attempted to negotiate. Under other circumstances no
doubt the author of the edict for the Ephesian massacre could never
have cherished the hope of being admitted at all to terms of peace
with Rome; but amidst the internal convulsions of the Roman
republic, when the ruling government had declared the general sent
against Mithradates an outlaw and subjected his partisans at home to
the most fearful persecutions, when one Roman general opposed the
other and yet both stood opposed to the same foe, he hoped that he
should be able to obtain not merely a peace, but a favourable peace.
He had the choice of applying to Sulla or to Fimbria; he caused
negotiations to be instituted with both, yet it seems from the first
to have been his design to come to terms with Sulla, who, at least
from the king's point of view, seemed decidedly superior to his
rival. His general Archelaus, a instructed by his master, asked
Sulla to cede Asia to the king and to expect in return the king's
aid against the democratic party in Rome. But Sulla, cool and
clear as ever, while urgently desiring a speedy settlement of
Asiatic affairs on account of the position of things in Italy,
estimated the advantages of the Cappadocian alliance for
the war impending over him in Italy as very slight, and was
altogether too much of a Roman to consent to so disgraceful
and so injurious a concession.
Preliminaries of Delium
In the peace conferences, which took place in the winter of 669-70,
at Delium on the coast of Boeotia opposite to Euboea, Sulla distinctly
refused to cede even a foot's-breadth of land, but, with good
reason faithful to the old Roman custom of not increasing after
victory the demands made before battle, did not go beyond the
conditions previously laid down. He required the restoration of
all the conquests made by the king and not wrested from him again--
Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, Asia Minor and the
islands--the surrender of prisoners and deserters, the delivering
up of the eighty war-vessels of Archelaus to reinforce the still
insignificant Roman fleet; lastly, pay and provisions for the army
and the very moderate sum of 3000 talents (720,000 pounds) as
indemnity for the expenses of the war. The Chians carried off to
the Black Sea were to be sent home, the families of the Macedonians
who were friendly to Rome and had become refugees were to be
restored, and a number of war-vessels were to be delivered to the
cities in alliance with Rome. Respecting Tigranes, who in strictness
should likewise have been included in the peace, there was silence on
both sides, since neither of the contracting parties cared for the
endless further steps which would be occasioned by making him a party.
The king thus retained the state of possession which he had before
the war, nor was he subjected to any humiliation affecting his
honour.(17) Archelaus, clearly perceiving that much comparatively
beyond expectation was obtained and that more was not obtainable,
concluded the preliminaries and an armistice on these conditions,
and withdrew the troops from the places which the Asiatics
still possessed in Europe.
New Difficulties
Sulla Proceeds to Asia
But Mithradates rejected the peace and demanded at least that
the Romans should not insist on the surrender of the war-vessels
and should concede to him Paphlagonia; while he at the same time
asserted that Fimbria was ready to grant him far more favourable
conditions. Sulla, offended by this placing of his offers on an
equal footing with those of an unofficial adventurer, and having
already gone to the utmost measure of concession, broke off the
negotiations. He had employed the interval to reorganize Macedonia
and to chastise the Dardani, Sinti, and Maedi, in doing which he at
once procured booty for his army and drew nearer Asia; for he was
resolved at any rate to go thither, in order to come to a reckoning
with Fimbria. He now at once put his legions stationed in Thrace as
well as his fleet in motion towards the Hellespont. Then at length
Archelaus succeeded in wringing from his obstinate master a reluctant
consent to the treaty; for which he was subsequently regarded with
an evil eye at court as the author of the injurious peace, and even
accused of treason, so that some time afterwards he found himself
compelled to leave the country and to take refuge with the Romans,
who readily received him and loaded him with honours. The Roman
soldiers also murmured; their disappointment doubtless at not
receiving the expected spoil of Asia probably contributed to that
murmuring more than their indignation--in itself very justifiable--
that the barbarian prince, who had murdered eighty thousand of their
countrymen and had brought unspeakable misery on Italy and Asia,
should be allowed to return home unpunished with the greatest part
of the treasures which he had collected by the pillage of Asia.
Sulla himself may have been painfully sensible that the political
complications thwarted in a most vexatious way a task which was
in a military point of view so simple, and compelled him after
such victories to content himself with such a peace. But the self-
denial and the sagacity with which he had conducted this whole war
were only displayed afresh in the conclusion of this peace; for war
with a prince, to whom almost the whole coast of the Black Sea
belonged, and whose obstinacy was clearly displayed by the very last
negotiations, would still under the most favourable circumstances
require years, and the situation of Italy was such that it seemed
almost too late even for Sulla to oppose the party in power there
with the few legions which he possessed.(18) Before this could be
done, however, it was absolutely necessary to overthrow the bold
officer who was at the head of the democratic army in Asia, in order
that he might not at some future time come from Asia to the help of
the Italian revolution, just as Sulla now hoped to return from Asia
and crush it. At Cypsela on the Hebrus Sulla obtained accounts of
the ratification of the peace by Mithradates; but the march to Asia
went on. The king, it was said, desired personally to confer with
the Roman general and to cement the peace with him; it may be
presumed that this was simply a convenient pretext for transferring
the army to Asia and there putting an end to Fimbria.
Peace at Dardanus
Sulla against Fimbria
Fimbria's Death
So Sulla, attended by his legions and by Archelaus, crossed the
Hellespont; after he had met with Mithradates on its Asiatic shore
at Dardanus and had orally concluded the treaty, he made his army
continue its march till he came upon the camp of Fimbria at
Thyatira not far from Pergamus, and pitched his own close beside
it. The Sullan soldiers, far superior to the Fimbrians in number,
discipline, leadership, and ability, looked with contempt on the
dispirited and demoralized troops and their uncalled commander-in-
chief. Desertions from the ranks of the Fimbrians became daily more
numerous. When Fimbria ordered an attack, the soldiers refused to
fight against their fellow-citizens, or even to take the oath which he
required that they would stand faithfully by each other in battle.
An attempt to assassinate Sulla miscarried; at the conference which
Fimbria requested Sulla did not make his appearance, but contented
himself with suggesting to him through one of his officers a means of
personal escape. Fimbria was of an insolent temperament, but he was
no poltroon; instead of accepting the vessel which Sulla offered to
him and fleeing to the barbarians, he went to Pergamus and fell on
his own sword in the temple of Asklepios. Those who were most
compromised in his army resorted to Mithradates or to the pirates,
with whom they found ready reception; the main body placed itself
under the orders of Sulla.
Regulation of Asiatic Affairs
Sulla determined to leave these two legions, whom he did not trust
for the impending war, behind in Asia, where the fearful crisis
left for long its lingering traces in the several cities and
districts. The command of this corps and the governorship of Roman
Asia he committed to his best officer, Lucius Licinius Murena.
The revolutionary measures of Mithradates, such as the liberation
of the slaves and the annulling of debts, were of course cancelled;
a restoration, which in many places could not be carried into effect
without force of arms. The towns of the territory on the eastern
frontier underwent a comprehensive reorganization, and reckoned
from the year 670 as the date of their being constituted. Justice
moreover was exercised, as the victors understood the term.
The most noted adherents of Mithradates and the authors of the
massacre of the Italians were punished with death. The persons
liable to taxes were obliged immediately to pay down in cash according
to valuation the whole arrears of tenths and customs for the last five
years; besides which they had to pay a war-indemnity of 20,000
talents (4,800,000 pounds), for the collection of which Lucius
Lucullus was left behind. These were measures fearful in their rigour
and dreadful in their effects; but when we recall the Ephesian decree
and its execution, we feel inclined to regard them as a comparatively
mild retaliation. That the exactions in other respects were not
unusually oppressive, is shown by the value of the spoil afterwards
carried in triumph, which amounted in precious metal to only about
1,000,000 pounds. The few communities on the other hand that had
remained faithful--particularly the island of Rhodes, the region of
Lycia, Magnesia on the Maeander--were richly rewarded: Rhodes received
back at least a portion of the possessions withdrawn from it after
the war against Perseus.(19) In like manner compensation was made
as far as possible by free charters and special favours to the Chians
for the hardships which they had borne, and to the Ilienses for the
insanely cruel maltreatment inflicted on them by Fimbria on account
of the negotiations into which they had entered with Sulla. Sulla
had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia to meet
the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made them all promise to live
in peace and good neighbourhood; on which occasion, however, the
haughty Mithradates had refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not
descended of royal blood--the slave, as he called him--to his
presence. Gaius Scribonius Curio was commissioned to superintend
the restoration of the legal order of things in the two kingdoms
evacuated by Mithradates.
Sulla Embarks for Italy
The goal was thus attained. After four years of war the Pontic
king was again a client of the Romans, and a single and settled
government was re-established in Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor;
the requirements of interest and honour were satisfied, if not
adequately, yet so far as circumstances would allow; Sulla had not
only brilliantly distinguished himself as a soldier and general, but
had the skill, in his path crossed by a thousand obstacles, to preserve
the difficult mean between bold perseverance and prudent concession.
Almost like Hannibal he had fought and conquered, in order that
with the forces, which the first victory gave him, he might prepare
forthwith for a second and severer struggle. After he had in some
degree compensated his soldiers for the fatigues which they had
undergone by luxurious winter-quarters in the rich west of Asia Minor,
he in the spring of 671 transferred them in 1600 vessels from
Ephesus to the Piraeeus and thence by the land route to Patrae,
where the vessels again lay ready to convey the troops to Brundisium.
His arrival was preceded by a report addressed to the senate
respecting his campaigns in Greece and Asia, the writer of which
appeared to know nothing of his deposition; it was the mute herald
of the impending restoration.