No More Learning

command the extensive coast; the Syrian dominion over Cilicia had always been but nominal, and had recently been superseded by the Armenian, the holder of which, as a true great-king, gave himself no concern at all about the sea and readily abandoned it to the pillage of the Cilicians. It was
nothing wonderful, therefore, that the corsairs flourished there as they had never done anywhere else. Not only did they possess everywhere along the coast signal-places and stations, but further inland—in the most remote recesses of the impassable and mountainous interior of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia—they had built their rock castles, in which they concealed their wives, children, and treasures during their own absence at sea, and, doubtless, in times of danger found an asylum themselves. Great numbers of such corsair-castles existed especially in the Rough Cilicia, the forests of which at the same time furnished the pirates with the most excellent timber for shipbuilding; and there, accordingly, their principal dock yards and arsenals were situated. It was not to be wondered at that this organized military state gained a firm body of clients among the Greek maritime cities, which were more or less left to themselves and managed their own affairs: these cities entered into traflic with the pirates as with a friendly power on the basis of definite treaties, and did not
comply with the summons of the Roman governors to furnish vessels against them. The not inconsiderable town of Side in Pamphylia, for instance, allowed the pirates to build ships on its quays, and to sell the free men whom they had captured in its market.
Such a society of pirates was a political power; and al
312
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK 1
a. political power it gave itself out and was accepted from the time when the Syrian king Tryphon first employed it as such and rested his throne on its support (iii. 292). We find the pirates as allies of king Mithradates of Pontus as well as of the Roman democratic emigrants; we find them giving battle to the fleets of Sulla in the eastern and in the western waters; we find individual pirate princes ruling over a series of considerable coast towns. We cannot tell how far the internal political development of this floating state had already advanced; but its arrangements undeniably con tained the germ of a sea-kingdom, which was already beginning to establish itself, and out of which, under favourable circumstances, a permanent state might have been developed.
This state of matters clearly shows, as we have partly
Nnlllty of
the Roman indicated already 290), how the Romans kept—or rather
marine police.
(iii.
did not keep—order on “their sea. ” The protectorate of
Rome over the provinces consisted essentially in military guardianship; the provincials paid tax or tribute to the Romans for their defence by sea and land, which was con centrated in Roman hands. But never, perhaps, did a guardian‘ more shamelessly defraud his ward than the Roman oligarchy defrauded the subject communities. In stead of Rome equipping a general fleet for the empire and centralizing her marine police, the senate permitted the unity of her maritime superintendence—without which in this matter nothing could at all be done—to fall into abeyance, and left it to each governor and each client state to defend themselves against the pirates as each chose and was able. Instead of Rome providing for the fleet, as she had bound herself to do, exclusively with her own blood and treasure and with those of the client states which had remained formally sovereign, the senate allowed the Italian war-marine
to fall into decay, and learned to make shift with the vessels which the several mercantile towns were required to furnish,
CHAP. ll RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
313
or still more frequently with the coast-guards everywhere organized—all the cost and burden falling, in either case,
on the subjects. The provincials might deem themselves fortunate, if their Roman governor applied the requisitions which he raised for the defence of the coast in reality solely
to that object, and did not intercept them for himself; or if they were not, as very frequently happened, called on to pay ransom for some Roman of rank captured by the buccaneers. Measures undertaken perhaps with judgment, such as the occupation of Cilicia in 652, were sure to be spoilt in the 102. execution. Any Roman of this period, who was not wholly carried away by the current intoxicating idea of the national greatness, must have wished that the ships’ beaks might be
torn down from the orator’s platform in the Forum, that at least he might not be constantly reminded by them of the naval victories achieved in better times.
Nevertheless Sulla, who in the war against Mithradates Expedition had the opportunity of acquiring an adequate conviction of £2,131” com the dangers which the neglect of the fleet involved, took ofvAsia various steps seriously to check the evil. It is true that Mm"
the instructions which he had left to the governors whom
he appointed in Asia, to equip in the maritime towns a fleet
against the pirates, had borne little fruit, for Murena pre
ferred to begin war with Mithradates, and Gnaeus Dola
bella, the governor of Cilicia, proved wholly incapable. Accordingly the senate resolved in 675 to send one of the 79. consuls to Cilicia ; the lot fell on the capable Publius Publius Servilius. He defeated the piratical fleet in a bloody engagement, and then applied himself to destroy those towns
on the south coast of Asia Minor which served them as
and trading stations. The fortresses of the maritime prince Zenicetes—Olympus, Corycus, Zenlcetq
anchorages
powerful
Phaselis in eastern Lycia, Attalia in Pamphylia—were 2gb“. reduced, and the prince himself met his death in the flames
of his stronghold Olympus. A movement was next made
The Isaurians subdued.
against the Isaurians, who in the north-west corner of the Rough Cilicia, on the northern slope of Mount Taurus, inhabited a labyrinth of steep mountain ridges, jagged rocks, and deeply-cut valleys, covered with magnificent oak forests—a region which is even at the present day filled with reminiscences of the old robber times. To reduce these Isaurian fastnesses, the last and most secure retreats of the freebooters, Servilius led the first Roman army over
the Taurus, and broke up the strongholds of the enemy, Oroanda, and above all Isaura itself—the ideal of a robber town, situated on the summit of a scarcely accessible moun tain-ridge, and completely overlooking and commanding the wide plain of Iconium. The war, not ended till 679, from which Publius Servilius acquired for himself and his descendants the surname of Isauricus, was not without fruit 3 a great number of pirates and piratical vessels fell in consequence of it into the power of the Romans; Lycia, Pamphylia, West Cilicia were severely devastated, the territories of the destroyed towns were confiscated, and the province of Cilicia was enlarged by their addition to it. But, in the nature of the case, piracy was far from being suppressed by these measures; on the contrary, it simply betook itself for the time to other regions, and particularly
to Crete, the oldest harbour for the corsairs of the Medi terranean (iii. 291). Nothing but repressive measures carried
out on a large scale and with unity of purpose-—nothing, in fact, but the establishment of a standing maritime police —could in such a case afford thorough relief.
The affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor were con nected by various relations with this maritime war. The variance which existed between Rome and the kings of Pontus and Armenia did not abate, but increased more and more. On the one hand Tigranes, king of Armenia, pursued his aggressive conquests in the most reckless
75.
314
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
Asiatic relations.
Tigranes and the new great
kinsdom of manner. The Parthians, whose state was at this period Armenia.
CHAP- n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
315
torn by internal dissensions and enfeebled, were by constant hostilities driven farther and farther back into the interior of Asia Of the countries between Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Iran, the kingdoms of Corduene (northern Kurdistan), and Media Atropatene (Azerbijan), were converted from Parthian into Armenian fiefs, and the kingdom of Nineveh
or Adiabene, was likewise compelled, at least
(Mosul),
temporarily,
Mesopotamia, too, particularly in and around Nisibis, the Armenian rule was established; but the southern half, which was in great part desert, seems not to have passed into the firm possession of the new great-king, and Seleucia, on the Tigris, in particular, appears not to have become subject to him. The kingdom of Edessa or Osrhoene he handed over to a tribe of wandering Arabs, which he transplanted from southern Mesopotamia and settled in this region, with the view of commanding by its means the passage of the Euphrates and the great route of traflic. 1
But Tigranes by no means confined his conquests to Cappe the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Cappadocia especially men,“ was the object of his attacks, and, defenceless as it was,
suffered destructive blows from its too potent neighbour.
Tigranes wrested the eastern province Melitene from
1 The foundation of the kingdom of Edessa. is placed by native chronicles
in 620 (iii. 287), but it was not till some time after its rise that it passed 18L into the hands of the Arabic dynasty bearing the names of Abgarus and Mannus, which we afterwards find there. This dynasty is obviously con nected with the settlement of many Arabs by Tigranes the Great in the region of Edessa, Callirrhoe, Can-hale (Plin. H. N. v. 20. 85; 21. 86:
vi. 28, 14a) ; respecting which Plutarch also (Lu. 21) states that Tigranes, changing the habits of the tent-Arabs, settled them nearer to
his kingdom in order by their means to possess himself of the trade. We
may presumably take this to mean that the Bedouins, who were accustomed
to open routes for traflic through their territory and to levy on these routes
fixed transit-dues (Strabo, xvi. 748), were to serve the great-king as a
sort of toll-supervisors, and to levy tolls for him and themselves at the passage of the Euphrates. These "Osrhoenian Arabs" (Orei Amber),
as Pliny calls them, must also be the Arabs on Mount Amanus, whom Afranius subdued (Plut. Pomp. 39).
to become a dependency of Armenia. In
lyrla undel
Cappadocia, and united it with the opposite Armenian province Sophene, by which means he obtained command of the passage of the Euphrates with the great thoroughfare of traflic between Asia Minor and Armenia After the death of Sulla the Armenians even advanced into Cappa docia proper, and carried 06' to Armenia the inhabitants of the capital Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea) and eleven other towns of Greek organization.
Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in full course of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the new great-king. Here the south from the Egyptian frontier to Straton’s Tower (Caesarea) was under the rule of the
prince Alexander Jannaeus, who extended and strengthened his dominion step by step in conflict with his Syrian, Egyptian, and Arabic neighbours and with the imperial cities. The larger towns of Syria—Gaza, Straton’s Tower, Ptolemais, Beroea-—attempted to maintain them selves on their own footing, sometimes as free communities, sometimes under so-called tyrants; the capital, Antioch, in particular, was virtually independent. Damascus and the valleys of Lebanon had submitted to the Nabataean prince, Aretas of Petra. Lastly, in Cilicia the pirates or the Romans bore sway. And for this crown breaking into a thousand fragments the Seleucid princes continued per severingly to quarrel with each other, as though it were their object to make royalty a jest and an offence to all; nay more, while this family, doomed like the house of Laius to perpetual discord, had its own subjects all in revolt, it even raised claims to the throne of Egypt vacant by the decease of king Alexander II. without heirs. Accordingly king Tigranes set to work there without
316
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION noox v
Jewish
Eastern Cilicia was easily subdued by him, and the citizens of Soli and other towns were carried off, just like the Cappadocians, to Armenia In like manner the province of Upper Syria, with the exception of the
ceremony.
can. It RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
311
bravely-defended town of Seleucia at the mouth of the Orontes, and the greater part of Phoenicia were reduced
by force; Ptolemais was occupied by the Armenians about 68o, and the Jewish state was already seriously threatened 74. by them. Antioch, the old capital of the Seleucids, became one of the residences of the great-king. Already from 67 r, the year following the peace between Sulla and 88.
Mithradates, Tigranes is designated in the Syrian annals as the sovereign of the country, and Cilicia and Syria appear as an Armenian satrapy under Magadates, the lieutenant of the great-king. The age of the kings of Nineveh, of the Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to be renewed; again oriental despotism pressed heavily on the trading population of the Syrian coast, as it did formerly on Tyre and Sidon ; again great states of the interior threw themselves on the provinces along the Mediterranean; again Asiatic hosts, said to number half a million com
batants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts. As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new kingdom—from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia—the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods and chattels (under penalty of the confiscation of everything that they left behind) in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the
new grand sultan. The new “city of Tigranes,” Tigrano certa, founded on the borders of Armenia and Mesopo tamia, and destined as the capital of the territories newly acquired for Armenia, became a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high, and the appendages of
palace, garden, and park that were appropriate to sultanism.
Mithra dates.
In other respects, too, the new great-king proved faithful to his part. As amidst the perpetual childhood of the east the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed himself in public, appeared in the state and the costume of a successor of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple caftan, the half-white half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban, and the royal diadem attended moreover and served in slavish fashion, wherever he went or stood, by four “ kings. "
King Mithradates acted with greater moderation. He refrained from aggressions in Asia Minor, and contented himself with—what no treaty forbade-—placing his dominion along the Black Sea on a firmer basis, and gradually bring ing into more definite dependence the regions which sepa rated the Bosporan kingdom, now ruled under his supremacy by his son Machares, from that of Pontus. But he too applied every effort to render his fleet and army efficient, and especially to arm and organize the latter after the Roman model; in which the Roman emigrants, who sojourned in great numbers at his court, rendered essential service.
The Romans had no desire to become further involved in Oriental affairs than they were already. This appears with striking clearness in the fact, that the opportunity, which at this time presented itself, of peacefully bringing the kingdom of Egypt under the immediate dominion of
318
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK \'
our of the Romans in
Egypt not Rome was spurned by the senate. The legitimate de
annexed.
scendants of Ptolemaeus son of Lagus had come to an end, when the king installed by Sulla after the death of Ptolemaeus Soter II. Lathyrus—Alexander IL, a son of Alexander I. —was killed, a few days after he had ascended the throne,
ll. on occasion of a tumult in the capital (67 This Alex ander had in his testament1 appointed the Roman com
The disputed question, whether this alleged or real testament pro 81. ceeded from Alexander 666) or Alexander Ii. 673). usually
I. (1'
1
3). is
(1'
CHAP- lI RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
3X9
munity his heir. The genuineness of this document was no doubt disputed; but the senate acknowledged it by
in virtue of it the sums deposited in Tyre on account of the deceased king. Nevertheless it allowed two notoriously illegitimate sons of king Lathyrus, Ptolemaeus XL, who was styled the new Dionysos or the Flute-blower
and Ptolemaeus the Cyprian, to take practical possession of Egypt and Cyprus respectively. They were not indeed expressly recognized by the senate, but no distinct summons to surrender their kingdoms was ad dressed to them. The reason why the senate allowed this state of uncertainty to continue, and did not commit itself to a definite renunciation of Egypt and Cyprus, was undoubtedly the considerable rent which these kings, ruling as it were on sufferance, regularly paid for the continuance of the uncertainty to the heads of the Roman coteries. But the motive for waiving that attractive acquisition alto gether was different. Egypt, by its peculiar position and its financial organization, placed in the hands of any
governor commanding it a pecuniary and naval power and generally an independent authority, which were absolutely
decided in favour of the former alternative. But the reasons are in adequate; for Cicero (de L. Agr. i. 4, 12; 15, 38; r6, 41) does not
say that Egypt fell to Rome in 666, but that it did so in or after this year ; 8L and while the circumstance that Alexander I. died abroad. and Alexander
11. in Alexandria, has led some to infer that the treasures mentioned in the testament in question as lying in Tyre must have belonged to the former,
they have overlooked that Alexander II. was killed nineteen days after his arrival in Egypt (Letronne, lnrcr. dc I'Egypk, ii. 20), when his treasure might still very well be in Tyre. On the other hand the circumstance that
the second Alexander was the last genuine Lagid is decisive, for in the similar acquisitions of Pergarnus, Cyrene, and Bithynia it was always by
the last scion of the legitimate ruling family that Rome was appointed heir.
The ancient constitutional law, as it applied at least to the Roman client statel, seems to have given to the reigning prince the right of ultimate disposal of his kingdom not absolutely, but only in the absence of agnah' entitled to succeed. Comp. Gutsehmitl's remark in the German translation
of S. Sharpe's Hinwjy qfEgypl, 17.
Whether the testament was genuine or spurious, cannot be ascertained, and of no great moment; there are no special reasons for assuming a forgery.
assuming
(Auletes),
is
ii.
320
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK V
incompatible with the suspicious and feeble government of the oligarchy: in this point of view it was judicious to forgo the direct possession of the country of the Nile.
Less justifiable was the failure of the senate to interfere directly in the afi’airs of Asia Minor and Syria. The Roman and Syria. government did not indeed recognize the Armenian con
queror as king of Cappadocia and Syria ; but it did nothing
to drive him back, although the war, which under pressure 78. of necessity it began in 676 against the pirates in Cilicia, naturally suggested its interference more especially in Syria. In fact, by tolerating the loss of Cappadocia and Syria with out declaring war, the government abandoned not merely
those committed to its protection, but the most important foundations of its own powerful position. It adopted already a hazardous course, when it sacrificed the outworks of its dominion in the Greek settlements and kingdoms on the Euphrates and Tigris ; but, when it allowed the Asiatics to establish themselves on the Mediterranean which was the political basis of its empire, this was not a proof of love of peace, but a confession that the oligarchy had been rendered by the Sullan restoration more oligarchical doubtless, but neither wiser nor more energetic, and it was for Rome’s place as a power in the world the beginning of the end.
On the other side, too, there was no desire for war. Tigranes had no reason to wish when Rome even without war abandoned to him all its allies. Mithradates, who was no mere sultan and had enjoyed opportunity enough, amidst good and bad fortune, of gaining experience re
friends and foes, knew very well that in second Roman war he would very probably stand quite as much alone as in the first, and that he could follow no more prudent course than to keep quiet and to strengthen his kingdom in the interior. That he was in earnest with his peaceful declarations, he had sufficiently proved in the conference with Murena 95). He continued to avoid
Non-inter vention in Asia Minor
garding
(p.
a
it,
CRAP. I1 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 32!
everything which would compel the Roman government to abandon its passive attitude.
But as the first Mithradatic war had arisen without any Apprehen of the parties properly desiring so now there grew out 3312;” of the opposition of interests mutual suspicion, and out of
this suspicion mutual preparations for defence; and these,
by their very gravity, ultimately led to an open breach.
That distrust of her own readiness to fight and preparation
for fighting, which had for long governed the policy of Rome
—a distrust, which the want of standing armies and the far
from exemplary character of the collegiate rule render sufl'iciently intelligible—made as were, an axiom of her
policy to pursue every war not merely to the vanquishing,
but to the annihilation of her opponent; in this point of
view the Romans were from the outset as little content with
the peace of Sulla, as they had formerly been with the
terms which Scipio Africanus had granted to the Cartha
ginians. The apprehension often expressed that second
attack by the Pontic king was imminent, was in some measure justified by the singular resemblance between the
present circumstances and those which existed twelve years
before. Once more dangerous civil war coincided with
serious armaments of Mithradates once more the Thracians
overran Macedonia, and piratical fleets covered the Mediter
ranean emissaries were coming and going—as formerly
between Mithradates and the Italians—50 now between the
Roman emigrants in Spain and those at the court of
As early as the beginning of 677 was declared 77. in the senate that the king was only waiting for the opportunity of falling upon Roman Asia during the Italian civil war the Roman armies in Asia and Cilicia were reinforced to meet possible emergencies.
Mithradates on his part followed with growing apprehen- Apprehen sion the development of the Roman policy. He could not
but feel that war between the Romans and Tigranes, how- dates.
VOL. iv 12:
Sinope.
a
;
it
;
;
it, it
it,
a
a
Bithynia Roman.
Bithynia, died, and as the last of his race-—-for son borne by Nysa was, or was said to be, illegitimate-left his kingdom by testament to the Romans, who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering on the Roman
332
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
ever much the feeble senate might dread was in the long run almost inevitable, and that he would not be able to avoid taking part in it. His attempt to obtain from the Roman senate the documentary record of the terms of peace, which was still wanting, had fallen amidst the disturbances attending the revolution of Lepidus and remained without result; Mithradates found in this an indication of the im pending renewal of the conflict. The expedition against the pirates, which indirectly concerned also the kings of the east whose allies they were, seemed the preliminary to such
war. Still more suspicious were the claims which Rome held in suspense over Egypt and Cyprus: significant that the king of Pontus betrothed his two daughters Mithradatis and Nyssa to the two Ptolemies, to whom the senate continued to refuse recognition. The emigrants urged him to strike: the position of Sertorius in Spain, as to which Mithradates despatched envoys under convenient pretexts to the headquarters of Pompeius to obtain in formation, and which was about this very time really im posing, opened up to the king the prospect of fighting not, as the first Roman war, against both the Roman parties, but in concert with the one against the other. A more favourable moment could hardly be hoped for, and after all
was always better to declare war than to let be declared 75. against him. In 679 Nicomedes III. Philopator king of
and long ago filled with Roman oflicials and merchants. At the same time Cyrene, which had been already bequeathed to the Romans in 658 (p. 4), was at
- length constituted province, and Roman governor was sent thither (679). These measures, in connection with the attacks carried out about the same time against the pirates
province
a
a
it a
it is
it
in
a
it,
CHAP. n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
323
on the south coast of Asia Minor, must have excited appre
hensions in the king; the annexation of Bithynia in particular made the Romans immediate neighbours of the Outbreak Pontic kingdom; and this, it may be presumed, turned of the
Mithra the scale. The king took the decisive step and declared datic war.
war against the Romans in the winter of 679-680.
75-74.
Gladly would Mithradates have avoided undertaking so Prepara
arduous a work singlehanded. His nearest and natural ally was the great-king Tigranes ; but that shortsighted man declined the proposal of his father-in-law. So there re mained only the insurgents and the pirates. Mithradates was careful to place himself in communication with both, by despatching strong squadrons to Spain and to Crete. A formal treaty was concluded with Sertorius 299), by which Rome ceded to the king Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, and Cappadocia—all of them, true, acquisitions which needed to be ratified on the field of battle. More important was the support which the Spanish general gave to the king, by sending Roman oflicers to lead his armies and fleets. The most active of the emigrants in the east, Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, were appointed by Sertorius as his representatives at the court of Sinope. From the pirates also came help they flocked largely to the kingdom of Pontus, and their means especially the king seems to have succeeded in forming naval force imposing the number as well as the quality of the ships. His main support still lay in his own forces, with which the king
hoped, before the Romans should arrive in Asia, to make himself master of their possessions there especially as the financial distress produced in the province of Asia the Sullan war-tribute, the aversion of Bithynia towards the new Roman government, and the elements of combustion left behind by the desolating war recently brought to close in Cilicia and Pamphylia, opened up favourable prospects to Pontic invasion. There was no lack of stores; 2,000,000
tions of Mithra dates.
a
a
by
by
;
by by
; a
it is
(p.
Roman prepara tions.
medimm' of grain lay in the royal granaries. The fleet and the men were numerous and well exercised, particularly the Bastarnian mercenaries, a select corps which was a match even for Italian legionaries. On this occasion also it was the king who took the offensive. A corps under Diophantus advanced into Cappadocia, to occupy the fortresses there and to close the way to the kingdom of Pontus against the Romans; the leader sent by Sertorius, the propraetor Marcus Marius, went in company with the Pontic oflicer Eumachus to Phrygia, with a view to rouse the Roman province and the Taurus mountains to revolt; the main army, above
100,000 men with 16,000 cavalry and 100 scythe-chariots, led by Taxiles and Hermocrates under the personal super intendence of the king, and the war-fleet of 400 sail com manded by Aristonicus, moved along the north coast of Asia Minor to occupy Paphlagonia and Bithynia.
On the Roman side there was selected for the conduct of the war in the first rank the consul of 680, Lucius
74. Lucullus, who as governor of Asia and Cilicia was placed at the head of the four legions stationed in Asia Minor and of a fifth brought by him from Italy, and was directed to penetrate with this army, amounting to 30,000 infantry and 1600 cavalry, through Phrygia into the kingdom of Pontus. His colleague Marcus Cotta proceeded with the fleet and another Roman corps to the Propontis, to cover Asia and Bithynia. Lastly, a general arming of the coasts and particularly of the Thracian coast more immediately threatened by the Pontic fleet, was enjoined; and the task of clearing all the seas and coasts from the pirates and their Pontic allies was, by extraordinary decree, entrusted to a single magistrate, the choice falling on the praetor Marcus Antonius, the son of the man who thirty years before had first chastised the Cilician corsairs (iii. 381). Moreover, the senate placed at the disposal of Lucullus a sum of 72,000,000 sesterces (£700,000), in order to build
324
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK I
CHAP. ll RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
325
a fleet ; which, however, Lucullus declined. From all this we see that the Roman government recognized the
root of the evil in the neglect of their marine, and showed earnestness in the matter at least so far as their decrees reached.
Thus the war began in 680 at all points. It was a
Beginning
misfortune for Mithradates, that at the very moment of his of the war. 74.
declaring war the Sertorian struggle reached its crisis, by which one of his principal hopes was from the outset destroyed, and the Roman government was enabled to apply its whole power to the maritime and Asiatic contest.
In Asia Minor on the other hand Mithradates reaped the advantages of the offensive, and of the great distance of the Romans from the immediate seat of war. A consider able number of cities in Asia Minor opened their gates to the Sertorian propraetor who was placed at the head of the Roman province, and they massacred, as in 666, the 88. Roman families settled among them: the Pisidians, Isaur- ians, and Cilicians took up arms against Rome. The Romans for the moment had no troops at the points threatened. Individual energetic men attempted no doubt
at their own hand to check this mutiny of the provincials ; thus on receiving accounts of these events the young Gaius Caesar left Rhodes where he was staying on account of his studies, and with a hastily-collected band opposed him self to the insurgents; but not much could be effected by such volunteer corps. Had not Deiotarus, the brave tetrarch of the Tolistobogii—a Celtic tribe settled around Pessinus—embraced the side of the Romans and fought with success against the Pontic generals, Lucullus would have had to begin with recapturing the interior of the Roman province from the enemy. But even as it was, he lost in pacifying the province and driving back the enemy precious time, for which the slight successes achieved by his cavalry were far from affording compensation Still
The Romans
more unfavourable than in Phrygia was the aspect of things for the Romans on the north coast of Asia Minor.
Here the great Pontic army and the fleet had completely mastered Bithynia, and compelled the Roman consul Cotta to take shelter with his far from numerous force and his ships within the walls and port of Chalcedon, where Mithradates kept them blockaded.
This blockade, however, was so far a favourable event for the Romans, as, if Cotta detained the Pontic army before Chalcedon and Lucullus proceeded also thither, the whole Roman forces might unite at Chalcedon and compel the decision of arms there rather than in the distant and impassable region of Pontus. Lucullus did take the route for Chalcedon ; but Cotta, with the view of executing a great feat at his own hand before the arrival of his colleague, ordered his admiral Publius Rutilius Nudus to make a sally, which not only ended in a bloody defeat of the Romans, but also enabled the Pontic force to attack the harbour, to break the chain which closed and to burn all the Roman vessels of war which were there, nearly seventy in number. On the news of these mis fortunes reaching Lucullus at the river Sangarius, he ac celerated his march to the great discontent of his soldiers, in whose opinion Cotta was of no moment, and who would far rather have plundered an undefended country than have taught their comrades to conquer. His arrival made up in part for the misfortunes sustained: the king raised the siege of Chalcedon, but did not retreat to Pontus he went southward into the old Roman province, where he spread his army along the Propontis and the Hellespont,
defeated at Chalcedon.
326
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
and began to besiege the large and wealthy town of Cyzicus. He thus entangled himself more and more deeply in the blind alley which he had chosen to
enter, instead of—which alone promised success for him bringing the wide distances into play against the Romans.
occupied Lampsacus,
;
it,
CHAP- n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
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In few places had the old Hellenic adroitness and aptitude preserved themselves so pure as in Cyzicus ; its citizens, although they had suffered great loss of ships and men in the unfortunate double battle of Chalcedon, made the most resolute resistance. Cyzicus lay on an island directly opposite the mainland and connected with it by a bridge. The besiegers possessed themselves not only of the line of heights on the mainland terminating at the bridge and of the suburb situated there, but also of the celebrated Dindymene heights on the island itself; and alike on the mainland and on the island the Greek en gineers put forth all their art to pave the way for an assault.
But the breach which they at length made was closed again during the night by the besieged, and the exertions of the royal army remained as fruitless as did the barbarous threat of the king to put to death the captured Cyzicenes before the walls, if the citizens still refused to surrender. The Cyzicenes continued the defence with courage and success; they fell little short of capturing the king himself in the course of the siege.
Meanwhile Lucullus had I)ossessed himself of a very
Mithra
besieges Cyzicus.
strong position in rear of the Pontic army, which, although tion of the Pontic
not permitting him directly to relieve the hard-pressed city, gave him the means of cutting off all supplies by land from the enemy. Thus the enormous army of Mithradates, estimated with the camp-followers at 300,000 persons, was not in a position either to fight or to march, firmly wedged in between the impregnable city and the immoveable Roman army, and dependent for all its supplies solely on the sea, which fortunately for the Pontic troops was exclusively commanded by their fleet. But the bad season set in; a storm destroyed a great part of the siege-works; the scarcity of provisions and above all of fodder for the horses began to become intolerable. The beasts of burden and the baggage were sent off under convoy of the greater
army.
Destruc
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RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
portion of the Pontic cavalry, with orders to steal away or break through at any cost ; but at the river Rhyndacus, to the east of Cyzicus, Lucullus overtook them and cut to pieces the whole body. Another division of cavalry under Metrophanes and Lucius Fannius was obliged, after wander ing long in the west of Asia Minor, to return to the camp before Cyzicus. Famine and disease made fearful ravages
18. in the Pontic ranks. When spring came on (681), the besieged redoubled their exertions and took the trenches constructed on Dindymon: nothing remained for the king but to raise the siege and with the aid of his fleet save what he could. He went in person with the fleet to the Hellespont, but suffered considerable loss partly at its departure, partly through storms on the voyage. The land army under Hermaeus and Marius likewise set out thither, with the view of embarking at Lampsacus under the protection of its walls. They left behind their baggage as well as the sick and wounded, who were all put to death by the exasperated Cyzicenes. Lucullus in flicted on them very considerable loss by the way at the passage of the rivers Aesepus and Granicus; but attained their object. The Pontic ships carried 0d" the remains of the great army and the citizens of Lampsacus themselves beyond the reach of the Romans.
Maritime war.
The consistent and discreet conduct of the war by Lucullus had not only repaired the errors of his colleague, but had also destroyed without a pitched battle the flower of the enemy’s army—it was said 200,000 soldiers.
Had he still possessed the fleet which was burnt in the harbour
' of Chalcedon, he would have annihilated the whole army of his opponent. As it was, the work of destruction continued incomplete; and while he was obliged to remain passive, the Pontic fleet notwithstanding the disaster of Cyzicus took its station in the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium were blockaded by it on the European coast and Priapus
they
to
CHAP- ll RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
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pillaged on the Asiatic, and the headquarters of the king were established in the Bithynian port of Nicomedia. In fact a select squadron of fifty sail, which carried 10,000 select troops including Marcus Marius and the flower of the Roman emigrants, sailed forth even into the Aegean; the report went that it was destined to effect a landing in Italy and there rekindle the civil war. But the ships, which Lucullus after the disaster off Chalcedon had demanded from the Asiatic communities, began to appear, and a squadron ran forth in pursuit of the enemy’s fleet which had gone into the Aegean. Lucullus himself, experienced as an admiral 46), took the command. Thirteen quinque remes of the enemy on their voyage to Lemnos, under Isidorus, were assailed and sunk 0B’ the Achaean harbour in the waters between the Trojan coast and the island of Tenedos. At the small island of Neae, between Lemnos and Scyros, at which little-frequented point the Pontic flotilla of thirty-two sail lay drawn up on the shore, Lucullus found immediately attacked the ships and the crews scattered over the island, and possessed himself of the
whole squadron. Here Marcus Marius and the ablest of the Roman emigrants met their death, either in conflict or subsequently the axe of the executioner. The whole Aegean fleet of the enemy was annihilated by Lucullus. The war in Bithynia was meanwhile continued by Cotta and by the legates of Lucullus, Voconius, Gaius Valerius Triarius, and Barba, with the land army reinforced by fresh arrivals from Italy, and squadron collected in Asia.
Barba captured in the interior Prusias on Olympus and Nicaea, while Triarius along the coast captured Apamea
(formerly Myrlea) and Prusias on the sea (formerly Cius). They then united for joint attack on Mithradates himself in Nicomedia; but the king without even attempting battle escaped to his ships and sailed homeward, and in this he was successful only because the Roman admiral Voconius,
a
a
it, by
(p.
Mithn data driven back to Pontus.
Invasion of Pontus by Lucullus.
who was entrusted with the blockade of the port of Nico media, arrived too late. On the voyage the important Heraclea was indeed betrayed to the king and occupied by him ; but a storm in these waters sank more than sixty of his ships and dispersed the rest; the king arrived almost alone at Sinope. The offensive on the part of Mithradates ended in a complete defeat—not at all honourable, least of all for the supreme leader—of the Pontic forces by land and sea.
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RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 1300K v
Lucullus now in turn
Triarius received the command of the fleet, with orders first of all to blockade the Hellespont and lie in wait for the Pontic ships returning from Crete and Spain; Cotta was charged with the siege of Heraclea; the diflicult task of providing supplies was entrusted to the faithful and active princes of the Galatians and to Ariobarzanes king of Cappa
78. docia; Lucullus himself advanced in the autumn of 681 into the favoured land of Pontus, which had long been untrodden by an enemy. Mithradates, now resolved to maintain the strictest defensive, retired without giving battle from Sinope to Amisus, and from Amisus to Cabira (after wards Neocaesarea, now Niksar) on the Lycus, a tributary of the Iris ; he contented himself with drawing the enemy after him farther and farther into the interior, and obstruct ing their supplies and communications. Lucullus rapidly followed ; Sinope was passed by; the Halys, the old boundary of the Roman dominion, was crossed and the considerable towns of Amisus, Eupatoria (on the Iris), and
Themiscyra (on the Thermodon) were invested, till at length winter put an end to the onward march, though not to the investments of the towns. The soldiers of Lucullus murmured at the constant advance which did not allow them to reap the fruits of their exertions, and at the tedious and—amidst the severity of that season—burdensome blockades. But it was not the habit of Lucullus to listen
7! . to such complaints: in the spring of 682 he immediately
proceeded to the aggressive.
can. it RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
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advanced against Cabira, leaving behind two legions before Amisus under Lucius Murena. The king had made fresh attempts during the winter to induce the great-king of Armenia to take part in the struggle; they remained like the former ones fruitless, or led only to empty promises. Still less did the Parthians show any desire to interfere in the forlorn cause. Nevertheless a considerable army, chiefly raised by enlistments in Scythia, had again assembled under Diophantus and Taxiles at Cabira. The Roman army, which still numbered only three legions and was decidedly inferior to the Pontic in cavalry, found itself compelled to avoid as far as possible the plains, and arrived, not without toil and loss, by diflicult bypaths in the vicinity of Cabira. At this town the two armies lay for a considerable period confronting each other. The chief struggle was for supplies, which were on both sides scarce: for this purpose Mithra dates formed the flower of his cavalry and a division of select infantry under Diophantus and Taxiles into a flying corps, which was intended to scour the country between the Lycus and the Halys and to seize the Roman convoys of provisions coming from Cappadocia. But the lieutenant of Lucullus, Marcus Fabius Hadrianus, who escorted such a train, not only completely defeated the band which lay in wait for him in the defile where it expected to surprise him, but after being reinforced from the camp defeated also the army of Diophantus and Taxiles itself, so that it totally broke up. It was an irreparable loss for the king, when his cavalry, on which alone he relied, was thus overthrown.
As soon as he received through the first fugitives that arrived at Cabira from the field of battle—significantly cab‘m' enough, the beaten generals themselves—the fatal news,
earlier even than Lucullus got tidings of the victory, he resolved on an immediate farther retreat. But the resolu
tion taken by the king spread with the rapidity of lightning among those immediately around him ; and, when the
Victoryol
becomes Roman.
The Roman troops overran all Pontus and Lesser Armenia, and as far as Trapezus the flat country submitted without resistance to the conqueror. The commanders of the royal treasure-houses also surrendered after more or less delay, and delivered up their stores of money. The king ordered that the women of the royal harem—his sisters, his numerous wives and concubines—as it was not possible to secure their flight, should all be put to death by
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RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK V
soldiers saw the confidants of the king packing in all haste, they too were seized with a panic. No one was willing to be the hindmost in decamping; all, high and low, ran pell-mell like startled deer; no authority, not even that of the king, was longer heeded; and the king himself was carried away amidst the wild tumult. Lucullus, perceiving the confusion, made his attack, and the Pontic troops allowed themselves to be massacred almost without offering resistance. Had the legions been able to maintain discipline and to restrain their eagerness for spoil, hardly a man would have escaped them, and the king himself would doubtless have been taken. With difficulty Mithradates escaped along with a few attendants through the mountains to Comana (not far from Tocat and the source of the Iris); from which, however, a Roman
under Marcus Pompeius soon scared him off and pursued him, till, attended by not more than 2000 cavalry, he crossed the frontier of his kingdom at Talaura in Lesser Armenia. In the empire of the great-king he found a
12. refuge, but nothing more (end of 682). Tigranes, it is true, ordered royal honours to be shown to his fugitive father-in law; but he did not even invite him to his court, and detained him in the remote border-province to which he had come in a sort of decorous captivity.
corps
Sieges of one of his eunuchs at Pharnacea (Kerasunt). The towns
the Pontic alone offered obstinate resistance. It iS true that the few
in the interior—Cabira, Amasia, Eupatoriaflwere soon in
cities.
can. u RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
333
the power of the Romans ; but the larger maritime towns, Amisus and Sinope in Pontus, Amastris in Paphlagonia, Tius and the Pontic Heraclea in Bithynia, defended them selves with desperation, partly animated by attachment to the king and to their free Hellenic constitution which he had protected, partly overawed by the bands of corsairs whom the king had called to his aid. Sinope and Heraclea even sent forth vessels against the Romans; and the squadron of Sinope seized a Roman flotilla which was bringing corn from the Tauric peninsula for the army of Lucullus. Heraclea did not succumb till after a two years’ siege, when the Roman fleet had cut off the city from intercourse with the Greek towns on the Tauric peninsula and treason had broken out in the ranks of the garrisonv When Amisus was reduced to extremities, the garrison set fire to the town, and under cover of the flames took to their ships. In Sinope, where the daring pirate-captain
Seleucus and the royal eunuch Bacchides conducted the defence, the garrison plundered the houses before it with
drew, and set on fire the ships which it could not take
along with it; it is said that, although the greater portion
of the defenders were enabled to embark, 8000 corsairs
were there put to death by Lucullus. These sieges of towns lasted for two whole years and more after the battle
of Cabira (682-684); Lucullus prosecuted them in great 72-70. part by means of his lieutenants, while he himself regulated
the affairs of the province of Asia, which demanded and obtained a thorough reform.
Remarkable, in an historical point of view, as was that obstinate resistance of the Pontic mercantile towns to the victorious Romans, it was of little immediate use; the cause of Mithradates was none the less lost. The great king had evidently, for the present at least, no intention at all of restoring him to his kingdom. The Roman emigrants in Asia had lost their best men by the destruction of the
Beginning of the Armenian
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RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
Aegean fleet; of the survivors not a few, such as the active leaders Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, had made their peace with Lucullus ; and with the death of Sertorius, who perished in the year of the battle of Cabira, the last hope of the emigrants vanished. Mithradates’ own power was totally shattered, and one after another his remaining supports gave way; his squadrons returning from Crete and Spain, to the number of seventy sail, were attacked and destroyed by Triarius at the island of Tenedos; even the governor of the Bosporan kingdom, the king’s own son Machares, deserted him, and as in dependent prince of the Tauric Chersonese concluded on his own behalf peace and friendship with the Romans
70. (684). The king himself, after a not too glorious resist ance, was confined in a remote Armenian mountain-strong hold, a fugitive from his kingdom and almost a prisoner of his son-in-law. Although the bands of corsairs might still hold out in Crete, and such as had escaped from Amisus and Sinope might make their way along the hardly-accessible east coast of the Black Sea to the Sanigae and Lazi, the skilful conduct of the war by Lucullus and his judicious moderation, which did not disdain to remedy the just grievances of the provincials and to employ the repentant emigrants as oflicers in his army, had at a moderate sacrifice delivered Asia Minor from the enemy and annihilated the Pontic kingdom, so that it might be converted from a Roman client-state into a Roman
A commission of the senate was expected, to settle in concert with the commander-in-chief the new
provincial organization.
But the relations with Armenia were not yet settled.
That a declaration of war by the Romans against Tigranes was in itself justified and even demanded, we have already shown. Lucullus, who looked at the state of affairs from a nearer point of view and with a higher spirit than the
province.
CHAP. n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
335
senatorial college in Rome, perceived clearly the necessity
of confining Armenia to the other side of the Tigris and
of re-establishing the lost dominion of Rome over the Mediterranean. He showed himself in the conduct of Asiatic affairs no unworthy successor of his instructor and friend Sulla. A Philhellene above most Romans of his time, he was not insensible to the obligation which Rome had come under when taking up the heritage of Alexander —the obligation to be the shield and sword of the Greeks
in the east. Personal motives—the wish to earn laurels also beyond the Euphrates, irritation at the fact that the great-king in a letter to him had omitted the title of Imperator—may doubtless have partly influenced Lucullus ; but it is unjust to assume paltry and selfish motives for actions, which motives of duty quite suffice to explain. The Roman governing college at any rate—timid, indolent,
ill informed, and above all beset by perpetual financial embarrassments—could never be expected, without direct compulsion, to take the initiative in an expedition so vast and costly. About the year 682 the legitimate representa- 72. tives of the Seleucid dynasty, Antiochus called the Asiatic and his brother, moved by the favourable turn of the
Pontic war, had gone to Rome to procure a Roman inter vention in Syria, and at the same time a recognition of their hereditary claims on Egypt. If the latter demand might not be granted, there could not, at any rate, be found a more favourable moment or occasion for beginning the war which had long been necessary against Tigranes. But the senate, while it recognized the princes doubtless as the legitimate kings of Syria, could not make up its mind to decree the armed intervention. If the favourable opportunity was to be employed, and Armenia was to be dealt with in earnest, Lucullus had to begin the war, without any proper orders from the senate, at his own hand and his own risk; he found himself, just like Sulla,
Diflieulties to be en countered.
placed under the necessity of executing what he did in the most manifest interest of the existing government, not with its sanction, but in spite of His resolution was facili tated by the relations of Rome towards Armenia, for long wavering in uncertainty between peace and war, which screened in some measure the arbitrariness of his proceed ings, and failed not to suggest formal grounds for war. The state of matters in Cappadocia and Syria afforded
pretexts enough and already in the pursuit of the king of Pontus Roman troops had violated the territory of the great-king. As, however, the commission of Lucullus related to the conduct of the war against Mithradates and he wished to connect what he did with that commission, he preferred to send one of his oflicers, Appius Claudius, to the great-king at Antioch to demand the surrender of Mithradates, which fact could not but lead to war.
The resolution was grave one, especially considering the condition of the Roman army. It was indispensable during the campaign in Armenia to keep the extensive territory of Pontus strongly occupied, for otherwise the army stationed in Armenia might lose its communications with home; and besides might be easily foreseen that Mithradates would attempt an inroad into his former kingdom. The army, at the head of which Lucullus had ended the Mithradatic war, amounting to abbut 30,000 men, was obviously inadequate for this double task. Under ordinary circumstances the general would have asked and obtained from his government the despatch of
second army; but as Lucullus wished, and was in some measure compelled, to take up the war over the head of the government, he found himself necessitated to renounce that plan and-—although he himself incorporated the captured Thracian mercenaries of the Pontic king with his troops—to carry the war over the Euphrates with not more than two legions, or at most 15,000 men. This was
336
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
a
it
in a
;
it.
CUAP. n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
337
in itself hazardous ; but the smallness of the number might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour of the army consisting throughout of veterans. A far worse feature was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed. Lucullus was an able general, and—according to the aristocratic standard—an upright and kindly-disposed man, but very far from being a favourite with his soldiers. He was unpopular, as a decided adherent of the oligarchy; unpopular, because he had vigorously checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor; unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded . strict discipline in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon and many a camel to be laden with the treasures of the east for himself; unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished, haughty, Hellenizing, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever it was possible, to ease and pleasure. There was no trace in him of the charm which weaves a personal bond between the general and the soldier. Moreover, a large portion of his ablest soldiers had every reason to complain
of the unmeasured prolongation of their term of service. His two best legions were the same which Flaccus and Fimbria had led in 668 to the east 47); notwithstand- ing that shortly after the battle of Cabira they had been promised their discharge well earned by thirteen campaigns, Lucullus now led them beyond the Euphrates to face
new incalculable war—it seemed as though the victors of Cabira were to be treated worse than the vanquished of Cannae (ii. 298, 53). was in fact more than rash that, with troops so weak and so much out of humour, general should at his own hand and, strictly speaking, at variance
with the constitution, undertake an expedition to distant VOL. iv 122
86.
aa
3
It
a
(p.
Lucullus crosses the Euphrates.
and unknown land, full of rapid streams and snow-clad mountains—a land which from the very vastness of its extent rendered any lightly-undertaken attack fraught with danger. The conduct of Lucullus was therefore much and not unreasonably censured in Rome ; only, amidst the censure the fact should not have been concealed, that the perversity of the government was the prime occasion of this venturesome project of the general, and, if it did not justify rendered at least excusable.
The mission of Appius Claudius was designed not only to furnish diplomatic pretext for the war, but also to induce the princes and cities of Syria especially to take arms against the great-king: in the spring of 685 the formal attack began. During the winter the king of Cappadocia had silently provided vessels for transport; with these the Euphrates was crossed at Melitene, and the further march was directed by way of the Taurus-passes to the Tigris. This too Lucullus crossed in the region of Amida (Diarbekr), and advanced towards the road which connected the second capital Tigranocerta,1 recently founded on the south frontier of Armenia, with the old metropolis Artaxata. At the former was stationed the great-king, who had shortly before returned from Syria, after having
338
ROLE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION soox v
deferred the prosecution of his plans of con quest on the Mediterranean on account of the embroilment with the Romans. He was just projecting an inroad into Roman Asia from Cilicia and Lycaonia, and was consider ing whether the Romans would at once evacuate Asia or would previously give him battle, possibly at Ephesus,
That Tigranocerta was situated in the region of Mardin some two days‘ march to the west of Nisibis, has been proved by the investigation instituted on the spot by Sachau (" Ueber die Lage von Tigranokerta," AM. der Berliner Akademie, 1880), although the more exact fixing of the locality proposed by Sachau not beyond doubt. On the other hand, his attempt to clear up the campaign of Lucullus encounters the difliculty that, on the route assumed in crossing of the Tigris in reality out of the question.
temporarily
is a
it,
is
1
it, a
it
CHAP- l1 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
339
when the news was brought to him of the advance of Lucullus, which threatened to cut off his communications with Artaxata. He ordered the messenger to be hanged, but the disagreeable reality remained unaltered; so he left the new capital and resorted to the interior of Armenia, in order there to raise a force-——which had not yet been
done—against the Romans. Meanwhile Mithrobarzanes with the troops actually at his disposal and in concert with the neighbouring Bedouin tribes, who were called out in all haste, was to give employment to the Romans. But the corps of Mithrobarzanes was dispersed by the Roman van guard, and the Arabs by a detachment under Sextilius ; Lucullus gained the road leading from Tigranocerta to Artaxata, and, while on the right bank of the Tigris a Roman detachment pursued the great-king retreating northwards, Lucullus himself crossed to the left and marched forward to Tigranocerta.
The exhaustless showers of arrows which the garrison Siege and
poured upon the Roman army, and the setting fire to the battle of Tigrano
besieging machines by means of naphtha, initiated the cm Romans into the new dangers of Iranian warfare ; and the brave commandant Mancaeus maintained the city, till at length the great royal army of relief had assembled from
all parts of the vast empire and the adjoining countries that were open to Armenian recruiting oflicers, and had advanced through the north-eastern passes to the relief of the capital. The leader Taxiles, experienced in the wars of Mithradates, advised Tigranes to avoid a battle, and to surround and starve out the small Roman army by means of his cavalry. But when the king saw the Roman general, who had determined to give battle without raising the siege, move out with not much more than 10,000 men
against a force twenty times superior, and boldly cross the river which separated the two armies; when he surveyed on the one side this little band, “ too many for an embassy,
$1115’; Pminw
34o
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
09.
All the.
too few for an army,” and on the other side his own immense host, in which the peoples from the Black Sea and the Caspian met with those of the Mediterranean and of the Persian Gulf, in which the dreaded iron-clad lancers alone were more numerous than the whole army of Lucullus, and in which even infantry armed after the Roman fashion were not wanting; he resolved promptly to accept the battle desired by the enemy. But while the Armenians were still forming their array, the quick eye of Lucullus perceived that they had neglected to occupy a height which commanded the whole position of their cavalry. He hastened to occupy it with two cohorts, while at the same
time his weak cavalry by a flank attack diverted the at tention of the enemy from this movement ; and as soon as he had reached the height, he led his little hand against the rear of the enemy’s cavalry. They were totally broken and threw themselves on the not yet fully formed infantry, which fled without even striking a blow. The bulletin of the victor—that 100,000 Armenians and five Romans had fallen and that the king, throwing away his turban and
diadem, had galloped off unrecognized with a few horse men—is composed in the style of his master Sulla. Nevertheless the victory achieved on the 6th October 685 before Tigranocerta remains one of the most brilliant stars in the glorious history of Roman warfare; and it was not less momentous than brilliant.
All the provinces wrested from the Parthians or Syrians to the south of the Tigris were by this means strategically lost to the Armenians, and passed, for the most part, with
$1,? “ out delay into the possession of the victor. The newly
ROIMIB-
built second capital itself set the example. The Greeks, who had been forced in large numbers to settle there, rose against the garrison and opened to the Roman army the gates of the city, which was abandoned to the pillage of the soldiers. It had been created for the new great-kingdom,
CRAP. It RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
341
and, like this, was effaced by the victor. From Cilicia and Syria all the troops had already been withdrawn by the Armenian satrap Magadates to reinforce the relieving army before Tigranocerta. Lucullus advanced into Commagene, the most northern'province of Syria, and stormed Samosata,
the capital ; he did not reach Syria proper, but envoys arrived from the dynasts and communities as far as the Red Sea—from Hellenes, Syrians, Jews, Arabs—to do homage to the Romans as their sovereigns. Even the prince of Corduene, the province situated to the east of Tigranocerta, submitted; while, on the other hand, Guras the brother of the great-king maintained himself in Nisibis, and thereby in Mesopotamia. Lucullus came forward throughout as the protector of the Hellenic princes and municipalities: in Commagene he placed Antiochus, a prince of the Seleucid house, on the throne; he recognized
Antiochus Asiaticus, who after the withdrawal of the Armenians had returned to Antioch, as king of Syria; he sent the forced settlers of Tigranocerta once more away to their homes. The immense stores and treasures of the great-king—the grain amounted to 30,000,000 mm’z'mm', the money in Tigranocerta alone to 8000 talents (nearly £2,0oo,o00)—enabled Lucullus to defray the expenses of the war without making any demand on the state-treasury, and to bestow on each of his soldiers, besides the amplest maintenance, a present of 800 demm'i (£3
The great-king was deeply humbled. He was of Tignnu
and Mith
radates.
feeble character, arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted adversity. Probably an agreement would have been come to between him and Lucullus—an agreement which there was every reason that the great-king should purchase by considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should grant under tolerable conditions—had not the old Mithra dates been in existence. The latter had taken no part in the conflicts around Tigranocerta. Liberated after twenty
in a
3).
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RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
70. months’ captivity about the middle of 684 in consequence of the variance that had occurred between the great-king and the Romans, he had been despatched with 10,000 Armenian cavalry to his former kingdom, to threaten the communications of the enemy. Recalled even before he could accomplish anything there, when the great-king sum moned his whole force to relieve the capital which he had built, Mithradates was met on his arrival before Tigrano certa by the multitudes just fleeing from the field of battle. To every one, from the great-king down to the common soldier, all seemed lost. But if Tigranes should now make peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last chance of being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would be beyond doubt the first condition of peace; and cer tainly Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards him than Bocchus had formerly acted towards Jugurtha. The king accordingly staked his whole personal weight to prevent things from taking this turn, and to induce the Armenian court to continue the war, in which he had nothing to lose and everything to gain; and, fugitive and dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court was not slight. He was still a stately and powerful man, who, although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted on horseback in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict stood his ground like the best. Years and vicissitudes seemed to have steeled his spirit : while in earlier times he sent forth generals to lead his armies and took no direct part in war himself, we find him henceforth as an old man commanding in person and fighting in person on the field of battle. To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had witnessed so many unexampled changes of fortune, the cause of the great-king appeared by no means lost through the defeat of Tigranocerta ; whereas the position of Lucullus was very diflicult, and, if peace should not now take place and the war should be judiciously continued, even in
a high degree precarious.
CHAP. H RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
343
The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the Renewal great-king almost as a father, and was now able to exercise of the war a personal influence over him, overpowered by his energy
that weak man, and induced him not only to resolve on the continuance of the war, but also to entrust Mithradates
with its political and military management. The war was
now to be changed from a cabinet contest into a national
Asiatic struggle; the kings and peoples of Asia were to
unite for this purpose against the domineering and haughty Occidentals. The greatest exertions were made to recon
cile the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to
induce them to make common cause against Rome. At
the suggestion of Mithradates, Tigranes offered to give
back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who had reigned
since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians 70
Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the “great valleys ”—and to enter into friendship and alliance with him. But, after all that had previously taken place, this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception; Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans, and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient foreigner fought out their strife. Greater success attended the application of Mithradates to the peoples of the east than to the kings. It was not diflicult to represent the war as a national one of the east against the west, for such it was ; it might very well be made a religious war also, and the report might be spread that the object aimed at by the army of Lucullus was the temple of the Persian Nanaea or Anaitis in Elymais or the modern Luristan, the most celebrated and the richest shrine in the whole region of the Euphrates. 1 From far
1 Cicero (De Imp. Pump. 9, 23) hardly means any other than one of the rich temples of the province Elymais, whither the predatory expeditions of the Syrian and Parthian kings were regularly directed (Strabo, xvi. 744;
Polyb. xxxi. u " r Maccab. 6, etc. ). and probably this as the best known‘,
Dissatis faction
Lucullus in the capital and in the army.
and near the Asiatics flocked in crowds to the banner of the kings, who summoned them to protect the east and its gods from the impious foreigners. But facts had shown not only that the mere assemblage of enormous hosts was of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a mass rendered useless and involved in the general ruin. Mithradates sought above all to develop the arm which was at once weakest among the Occidentals and strongest among the Asiatics, the cavalry; in the army newly formed by him half of the force was mounted. For the ranks of the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass of recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service, and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic oflicers. The considerable army, however, which soon assembled under the banner of the great-king was destined not to measure its strength with the Roman veterans on the first chance field of battle, but to confine itself to defence and petty warfare. Mithradates had conducted the last war in his empire on the system of constantly retreating and avoiding battle ; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion, and Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war—the hereditary land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the enemy, and excellently adapted for this sort of warfare both by its physical character and by the patriotism of its inhabitants.
The year 686 found Lucullus in a position of difliculty, which daily assumed a more dangerous aspect.