No More Learning

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
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CHAP. ll RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
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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.
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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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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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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).
342
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. In spite of his brilliant victories, people in Rome were not at all satis tied with him. The senate felt the arbitrary nature of his conduct ; the capitalist party, sorely offended by him, set all means of intrigue and corruption at work to effect his recall. Daily the Forum echoed with just and unjust com
on no account can the allusion be to the temple of Comana or any shrine at all in the kingdom of Pontus,
344
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
CHAP. It RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
the foolhardy, the covetous, the un Roman, the traitorous general. The senate so far yielded
to the complaints regarding the union of such unlimited power—two ordinary governorships and an important extra ordinary command—|in the hands of such a man, as to assign the province of Asia to one of the praetors, and the province of Cilicia along with three newly-raised legions to the consul Quintus Marcius Rex, and to restrict the general to the command against Mithradates and Tigranes.
These accusations springing up against the general in Rome found a dangerous echo in the soldiers’ quarters on the Iris and on the Tigris; and the more so that several officers including the general’s own brother-in-law, Publius Clodius, worked upon the soldiers with this view. The report beyond doubt designedly circulated by these, that Lucullus now thought of combining with the Pontic Armenian war an expedition against the Parthians, fed the exasperation of the troops.
But while the troublesome temper of the government Lucullil
and of the soldiers thus threatened the victorious general advances into
with recall and mutiny, he himself continued like a desper Armenia. ate gambler to increase his stake and his risk. He did
not indeed march against the Parthians ; but when Tigranes
showed himself neither ready to make peace nor disposed,
as Lucullus wished, to risk a second pitched battle, Lucullus resolved to advance from Tigranocerta, through the difficult mountain-country along the eastern shore of the lake of Van, into the valley of the eastern Euphrates (or the Arsanias, now Myrad-Chai), and thence into that of the Araxes, where, on the northern slope of Ararat, lay Artaxata the capital of Armenia proper, with the hereditary castle and the harem of the king. He hoped, by threaten ing the king’s hereditary residence, to compel him to fight either on the way or at any rate before Artaxata. It was inevitably necessary to leave behind a division at Tigrano
plaints regarding
345
Lucullus retreats to Mesopo tamia.
68.
346
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
certa ; and, as the marching army could not possibly be further reduced, no course was left but to weaken the position in Pontus and to summon troops thence to
The main difliculty, however, was the short- ness of the Armenian summer, so inconvenient for military enterprises. On the tableland of Armenia, which lies 5000 feet and more above the level of the sea, the corn at Erzeroum only germinates in the beginning of June, and the winter sets in with the harvest in September;
Artaxata had to be reached and the campaign had to be ended in four months at the utmost.
At midsummer, 686, Lucullus set out from Tigrano certa, and, marching doubtless through the pass of Bitlis and farther to the westward along the lake of Van— arrived on the plateau of Musch and at the Euphrates. The march went 0n—amidst constant and very trouble some skirmishing with the enemy’s cavalry, and especially with the mounted archers. —slowly, but without material hindrance; and the passage of the Euphrates, which was seriously defended by the Armenian cavalry, was secured by a successful engagement; the Armenian infantry showed itself, but the attempt to involve it in the conflict did not succeed. Thus the army reached the tableland, properly so called, of Armenia, and continued its march into the unknown country. They had suffered no actual misfor tune; but the mere inevitable delaying of the march by the difficulties of the ground and the horsemen of the enemy was itself a very serious disadvantage. Long before they had reached Artaxata, winter set in; and when the
Italian soldiers saw snow and ice around them, the bow
of military discipline that had been far too tightly stretched
gave way.
A formal mutiny compelled the general to order a re
treat, which he effected with his usual skill. When he had safely reached Mesopotamia where the season still
Tigranocerta.
CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
347
farther operations, Lucullus crossed the Tigris,
and threw himself with the mass of his army on Nisibis,
the last city that here remained to the Armenians. The Capture of great-king, rendered wiser by the experience acquired Nisibil. before Tigranocerta, left the city to itself : notwithstanding
its brave defence it was stormed in a dark, rainy night by
the besiegers, and the army of Lucullus found there booty
not less rich and winter-quarters not less comfortable than
the year before in Tigranocerta.
permitted
But, meanwhile, the whole weight of the enemy's offen sive fell on the weak Roman divisions left behind in Pontus and in Armenia. ‘ Tigranes compelled the Roman commander of the latter corps, Lucius Fannius—the same who had formerly been the medium of communication between Sertorius and Mithradates 32 328, 334)—t0 throw himself into fortress, and kept him beleaguered there. Mithradates advanced into Pontus with 4000 Armenian horsemen and 4000 of his own, and as liberator and
avenger summoned the nation to rise against the common foe. All joined him; the scattered Roman soldiers were everywhere seized and put to death: when Hadrianus, the Roman commandant in Pontus 331), led his troops against him, the former mercenaries of the king and the numerous natives of Pontus following the army as slaves made common cause with the enemy. For two successive days the unequal conflict lasted; was only the circum stance that the king after receiving two wounds had to be carried off from the field of battle, which gave the Roman commander the opportunity of breaking off the virtually lost battle, and throwing himself with the small remnant of his troops into Cabira. Another of Lucullus’ lieuten ants who accidentally came into this region, the resolute Triarius, again gathered round him body of troops and fought successful engagement with the king; but he was much too weak to expel him afresh from Pontic soil,
Conflicts in Pontus and at Tigrano
a
a
it
(p.
a
(p. 3,
67. Farther
retreat 10 Forum.
and had to acquiesce while the king took up winter‘ quarters in Comana.
So the spring of 687 came on. The reunion of the army in Nisibis, the idleness of winter-quarters, the frequent absence of the general, had meanwhile increased the in subordination of the troops; not only did they vehemently demand to be led back, but it was already tolerably evident that, if the general refused to lead them home, they would break up of themselves. The supplies were scanty; Fannius and Triarius, in their distress, sent the most urgent entreaties to the general to furnish aid. With a heavy heart Lucullus resolved to yield to necessity, to give up Nisibis and Tigranocerta, and, renouncing all the brilliant hopes of his Armenian expedition, to return to the right bank of the Euphrates. Fannius was relieved; but in Pontus the help was too late. Triarius, not strong enough to fight with Mithradates, had taken up a strong
at Gaziura (Turksal on the Iris, to the west of Tokat), while the baggage was left behind at Dadasa. But when Mithradates laid siege to the latter place, the Roman soldiers, apprehensive for their property, compelled their leader to leave his secure position, and to give battle
to the king between Gaziura and Ziela (Zilleh) on the Scotian heights.
What Triarius had foreseen, occurred. In spite of the stoutest resistance the wing which the king commanded in person broke the Roman line and huddled the infantry together into a clayey ravine, where it could make neither a forward nor a lateral movement and was cut to pieces without pity. The king indeed was dangerously wounded by a Roman centurion, who sacrificed his life for it; but the defeat was not the less complete. The Roman camp was taken; the flower of the infantry, and almost all the staff and subaltern oflicers, strewed the ground; the dead were left lying unburied on the field of battle, and, when
Defeat of the
Romans in Pontus
at Ziela
348
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
position
CHAP- Il RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
349
Lucullus arrived on the right bank of the Euphrates, he learned the defeat not from his own soldiers, but through the reports of the natives.
Along with this defeat came the outbreak of the military Mutiny conspiracy. At this very time news arrived from Rome of the
soldiers. that the people had resolved to grant a discharge to the
soldiers whose legal term of service had expired, to wit, to the Fimbrians, and to entrust the chief command in Pontus and Bithynia to one of the consuls of the current year: the successor of Lucullus, the consul Manius Acilius
Glabrio, had already landed in Asia Minor. The disband
ing of the bravest and most turbulent legions and the - recall of the commander-in-chief, in connection with the impression produced by the defeat of Ziela, dissolved all the bonds of authority in the army just when the general had most urgent need of their aid. Near Talaura in Lesser Armenia he confronted the Pontic troops, at whose head Tigranes’ son-in-law, Mithradates of Media, had
already engaged the Romans successfully in a cavalry conflict; the main force of the great-king was advancing to the same point from Armenia. Lucullus sent to
Marcius the new governor of Cilicia, who had just arrived on the way to his province with three legions in Lycaonia, to obtain help from him; Marcius declared
that his soldiers refused to march to Armenia. He sent to Glabrio with the request that he would take up the
supreme command committed to him by the
Glabrio showed still less inclination to undertake this task, which had now become so diflicult and hazardous. Lucullus, compelled to retain the command, with the view of not being obliged to fight at Talaura against the Armenian and me Pontic armies conjoined, ordered a
movement against the advancing Armenians.
The soldiers obeyed the order to march; but, when
they reached the point where the routes to Armenia and
Quintus
people;
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v Farther Cappadocia diverged, the bulk of the army took the latter,
retreat to
35°
and proceeded to the province of Asia. There the Minor. Fimbrians demanded their immediate discharge; and al— though they desisted from this at the urgent entreaty of
the commander-in-chief and the other corps,
persevered in their purpose of disbanding if the winter should come on without an enemy confronting them; which accordingly was the case. Mithradates not only occupied once more almost his whole kingdom, but his cavalry ranged over all Cappadocia and as far as Bithynia ; king Ariobarzanes sought help equally in vain from Quintus Marcius, from Lucullus, and from Glabrio. It was a strange, almost incredible issue for a war conducted in' a . manner so glorious. If we look merely to military achieve ments, hardly any other Roman general accomplished so
much with so trifling means as Lucullus; the talent and the fortune of Sulla seemed to have devolved on this his disciple. That under the circumstances the Roman army should have returned from Armenia to Asia Minor un injured, is a military miracle which, so far as we can judge, far excels the retreat of Xenophon; and, although mainly doubtless to be explained by the solidity of the Roman, and the inefliciency of the Oriental, system of war, it at all events secures to the leader of this expedition an honourable name in the foremost rank of men of military
If the name of Lucullus is not usually included among these, it is to all appearance simply owing to the fact that no narrative of his campaigns which is in a military point of view even tolerable has come down to us, and to the circumstance that in everything, and particularly in war, nothing is taken into account but the final result; and this, in reality, was equivalent to a complete defeat. Through the last unfortunate turn of things, and principally through the mutiny of the soldiers, all the results of an
they yet
capacity.
67-66. eight years’ war had been lost ; in the winter of 687-688
CRAP. ll RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
35!
the Romans again stood exactly at the same spot as in the
the same time with the continental war and was all along the Dime“ most closely connected with yielded no better results.
It has been already mentioned 324) that the senate in
680 adopted the judicious resolution to entrust the task of
winter of 679—68o.
75-74. The maritime war against the pirates, which began at War with
clearing the seas from the corsairs to single admiral in supreme command, the praetor Marcus Antonius. But at the very outset they had made an utter mistake in the choice of the leader; or rather those, who had
carried this measure so appropriate in itself, had not taken into account that in the senate all personal questions were decided by the influence of Cethegus (p. 268) and similar coterie-considerations. They had moreover neglected to furnish the admiral of their choice with money and ships in manner befitting his comprehensive task, so that with his enormous requisitions he was almost as burdensome to
74
the provincials whom he befriended as were the corsairs. The results were corresponding. In the Campanian waters
Defeat of
the fleet of Antonius captured number of piratical vessels.
But an engagement took place with the Cretans, who had entered into friendship and alliance with the pirates and abruptly rejected his demand that they should desist from such fellowship; and the chains, with which the foresight
of Antonius had provided his vessels for the purpose of placing the captive buccaneers in irons, served/to fasten
the quaestor and the other Roman prisoners to the masts
of the captured Roman ships, when the Cretan generals Lasthenes and Panares steered back in triumph to Cydonia from the naval combat in which they had engaged the Romans off their island. Antonius, after having squan dered immense sums and accomplished not the slightest result his inconsiderate mode of warfare, died in 683 71. at Crete. The ill success of his expedition, the costliness
2,? ? ? “ donh.
by
a
it,
a
(p. a
Cretan war.
of building a fleet, and the repugnance of the oligarchy to confer any powers of a more comprehensive kind on the magistrates, led them, after the practical termination of this enterprise by Antonius’ death, to make no farther nomination of an admiral-in-chief, and to revert to the old system of leaving each governor to look after the suppres sion of piracy in his own province: the fleet equipped by Lucullus for instance 329) was actively employed for this purpose the Aegean sea.
So far however as the Cretans were concerned, disgrace like that endured off Cydonia seemed even to the degene rate Romans of this age as could be answered only by
declaration of war. Yet the Cretan envoys, who in the 70. year 684 appeared in Rome with the request that the
prisoners might be taken back and the old alliance re established, had almost obtained favourable decree of the senate what the whole corporation termed disgrace, the individual senator was ready to sell for substantial price.
was not till formal resolution of the senate rendered the loans of the Cretan envoys among the Roman bankers non-actionable—that not until the senate had incapa citated itself for undergoing bribery—that decree passed to the effect that the Cretan communities, they wished to avoid war, should hand over not only the Roman deserters but the authors of the outrage perpetrated off Cydonia the leaders Lasthenes and Panares—to the Romans for befitting punishment, should deliver up all ships and boats of four or more oars, should furnish 40o hostages, and should pay fine of 4000 talents (£975,000). When the envoys declared that they were not empowered to enter into such terms, one of the consuls of the next year was appointed to depart on the expiry of his official term for Crete, in order either to receive there what was demanded or to begin the war.
Accordingly in 685 the proconsul Quintus Metellus
352
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
a
if a
a
a is,
(p.
It
;-
a
a a
if it
a
in
CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
353
appeared in the Cretan waters. The communities of the Metellu island, with the larger towns Gortyna, Cnossus, Cydonia at 21:2” their head, were resolved rather to defend themselves in
arms than to submit to those excessive demands. The Cretans were a nefarious and degenerate people (iii. 291),
with whose public and private existence piracy was as intimately associated as robbery with the commonwealth of
the Aetolians ; but they resembled the Aetolians in valour
as in many other respects, and accordingly these two were
the only Greek communities that waged a courageous and honourable struggle for independence. At Cydonia, where Metellus landed his three legions, a Cretan army of 24,000
men under Lasthenes and Panares was ready to receive
him; a battle took place in the open field, in which the victory after a hard struggle remained with the Romans. Nevertheless the towns bade defiance from behind their
walls to the Roman general ; Metellus had to make up
his mind to besiege them in succession. First Cydonia, in
which the remains of the beaten army had taken refuge,
was after a long siege surrendered by Panares in return
for the promise of a free departure for himself. Lasthenes,
who had escaped from the town, had to be besieged a second time in Cnossus; and, when this fortress also
was on the point of falling, he destroyed its treasures
and escaped ohce more to places which still continued
their defence, such as Lyctus, Eleuthera, and others.
Two years (686, 687) elapsed, before Metellus became 68, 67 master of the whole island and the last spot of free Greek
soil thereby passed under the control of the dominant Romans ; the Cretan communities, as they were the first of all Greek commonwealths to develop the free urban con stitution and the dominion of the sea, were also to be the last of all those Greek maritime states that formerly filled
the Mediterranean to succumb to the Roman continental
power.
you IV
:23
354
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
All the legal conditions were fulfilled for celebrating another of the usual pompous triumphs; the gm: of the Metelli could add to its Macedonian, Numidian, Dalmatian, Balearic titles with equal right the new title of Creticus, and Rome possessed another name of pride. Nevertheless the power of the Romans in the Mediterranean was never lower, that of the corsairs never higher, than in those
Well might the Cilicians and Cretans of the seas, who are said to have numbered at this time 1000 ships, mock the Isauricus and the Creticus, and their empty victories. With what effect the pirates interfered in the Mithradatic war, and how the obstinate resistance of the Pontic maritime towns derived its best resources from the corsair-state, has been already related. But that state transacted business on a hardly less grand scale on its own behoof. Almost under the eyes of the fleet of Lucul
69. lus, the pirate Athenodorus surprised in 685 the island of Delos, destroyed its far-famed shrines and temples, and carried off the whole population into slavery. The island Lipara near Sicily paid to the pirates a fixed tribute annually, to remain exempt from like attacks. Another
12. pirate chief Heracleon destroyed in 682 the squadron equipped in Sicily against him, and ventured with no more than four open boats to sail into the harbour of Syracuse. Two years later his colleague'Pyrganion even landed at the same port, established himself there and sent forth flying parties into the island, till the Roman governor at last compelled him to re-embark. People grew at length quite accustomed to the fact that all the provinces equipped squadrons and raised coastguards, or were at any rate taxed for both; and yet the pirates appeared to plunder the provinces with as much regularity as the Roman
terranean.
years.
But even the sacred soil of Italy was now no longer respected by the shameless transgressors: from Croton they carried off with them the templetreasures
governors.
CHAP. n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
355
of the Lacinian Hera; they landed in Brundisium, Misenurn, Caieta, in the Etruscan ports, even in Ostia itself; they seized the most eminent Roman oflicers as captives, among others the admiral of the Cilician army and two praetors with their whole retinue, with the dreaded farcer themselves and all the insignia of their dignity; they carried away from a villa at Misenum the very sister of the Roman admiral-in-chief Antonius, who was sent forth to annihilate the pirates ; they destroyed in the port of Ostia the Roman war fleet equipped against them and commanded by a consul. The Latin husbandman, the traveller on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terres trial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their pro perty or their life for a single moment; all traflic and all intercourse were suspended; the most dreadful scarcity prevailed in Italy, and especially in the capital, which subsisted on transmarine corn. The contemporary world and history indulge freely in complaints of insupportable distress; in this case the epithet may have been appro
priate.
We have already described how the senate restored by Servile
Sulla carried out its guardianship of the frontier in Mace disturb donia, its discipline over the client kings of Asia Minor,
and lastly its marine police; the results were nowhere satisfactory. Nor did better success attend the government
in another and perhaps even more urgent matter, the supervision of the provincial, and above all of the Italian, proletariate. The gangrene of a slave-proletariate gnawed at the vitals of all the states of antiquity, and the more so, the more vigorously they had risen and prospered ; for the power and riches of the state regularly led, under the existing circumstances, to a disproportionate increase of the body of slaves. Rome naturally suffered more severely from this cause than any other state of antiquity. Even the government of the sixth century had been under the
.
355
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
necessity of sending troops against the gangs of runaway herdsmen and rural slaves. The plantation-system, spreading more and more among the Italian speculators, had infinitely increased the dangerous evil: in the time of the Gracchan and Marian crises and in close connection with them servile revolts had taken place at numerous points of the Roman empire, and in Sicily had even grown into two bloody wars
185-182. (619-622 and 652-654; iii. 309-311, 382-386). But the ten
102-100.
years of the rule of the restoration after Sulla’s death formed the golden age both for the buccaneers at sea and for bands of a similar character on land, above all in the Italian penin sula, which had hitherto been comparatively well regulated. The land could hardly be said any longer to enjoy peace. In the capital and the less populous districts of Italy robberies were of everyday occurrence, murders were frequent. A special decree of the people was issued-— perhaps at this epoch—against kidnapping of foreign slaves and of free men ; a special summary action was ab ut this time introduced against violent deprivation of landed
These crimes could not but appear specially dangerous, because, while they were usually perpetrated by the proletariate, the upper class were to a great extent also concerned in them as moral originators and partakers in the gain. The abduction of men and of estates was very frequently suggested by the overseers of the large estates and carried out by the gangs of slaves, frequently armed, that were collected there: and many a man even of high
property.
did not disdain what one of his oflicious slave-overseers thus acquired for him, as Mephistopheles
for Faust the lime-trees of Philemon. The state of things is shown by the aggravated punish ment for outrages on property committed by armed bands, which was introduced by one of the bette Optimates, Marcus Lucullus, as presiding over the administration of justice in the capital about the year
respectability
acquired
CHAP. u RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
357
676,1 with the express object of inducing the pro 78. prietors of large bands of slaves to exercise a more strict
over them and thereby avoid the penalty of seeing them judicially condemned. Where pillage and
murder were thus carried on by order of the world of quality, it was natural for these masses of slaves and pro letarians to prosecute the same business on their own account; a spark was sufficient to'set fire to so inflammable materials, and to convert the proletariate into an insurrec
superintendence
An occasion was soon found.
The gladiatorial games, which now held the first rank Outbreak
among the popular amusements in Italy, had led to the of the gla diatorial
institution of numerous establishments, more especially in war in and around Capua, designed partly for the custody, partly Italy. for the training of those slaves who were destined to kill or
be killed for the amusement of the sovereign multitude.
These were naturally in great part brave men captured in
war, who had not forgotten that they had once faced the
Romans in the field. A number of these desperadoes
broke out of one of the Capuan gladiatorial schools (681), 78.
and sought refuge on Mount Vesuvius. At their head
were two Celts, who were designated by their slave-names
Crixus and Oenomaus, and the Thracian Spartacus. The Spartacus. latter, perhaps a scion of the noble family of the Spartocids
which attained even to royal honours in its Thracian home and in Panticapaeum, had served among the Thracian auxiliaries in the Roman army, had deserted and gone as a brigand to the mountains, and had been there recaptured and destined for the gladiatorial games.
The inroads of this little band, numbering at first only The
seventy-four persons, but rapidly swelling by concourse from insurrec tion takel
the surrounding country, soon became so troublesome to shape. the inhabitants of the rich region of Campania, that these,
I These enactments gave rise to the conception of robbery as a separate crime, while the older law comprehended robbery under theft.
tionary army.
358
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
after having vainly attempted themselves to repel them, sought help against them from Rome. A division of
3000 men hurriedly collected appeared under the leadership of Clodius Glaber, and occupied the approaches to Vesuvius with the view of starving out the slaves. But the brigands in spite of their small number and their defective armament had the boldness to scramble down steep declivities and to fall upon the Roman posts; and when the wretched militia saw the little band of desperadoes unexpectedly assail them, they took to their heels and fled on all sides. This first success procured for the robbers arms and increased acces sions to their ranks. Although even now a great portion of them carried nothing but pointed clubs, the new and stronger division of the militia—two legions under the praetor Publius Varinius—which advanced from Rome into Campania, found them encamped almost like a regular army in the plain. Varinius had a diflicult position. His militia, compelled to bivouac opposite the enemy, were severely weakened by the damp autumn weather and the diseases which it engendered; and, worse than the epidemics, cowardice and insubordination thinned the ranks. At the very outset one of his divisions broke up entirely, so that the fugitives did not fall back on the main corps, but went straight home. Thereupon, when the order was given to advance against the enemy’s entrenchments and attack them, the greater portion of the troops refused to comply with it. Nevertheless Varinius set out with those who kept their ground against the robber-band ; but it was no longer to be found where he sought it. It had broken up in the deepest silence and had turned to the south towards Picentia (Vicenza near Amalfi), where Varinius overtook it indeed, but could not prevent it from retiring over the Silarus into the interior of Lucania, the chosen land of shepherds and robbers. Varinius followed thither, and there at length the despised enemy arrayed themselves for
CHAY’. ii RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
359
battle. All the circumstances under which the combat took place were to the disadvantage of the Romans: the soldiers,
as they had demanded battle a little before, fought ill; Varinius was completely vanquished; his horse and the insignia of his ofi’i'cial dignity fell with the Roman camp itself into the enemy’s hand. The south-Italian slaves, especially the brave half-savage herdsmen, flocked in crowds to the banner of the deliverers who had so unexpectedly appeared; according to the most moderate estimates the number of armed insurgents rose to 40,000 men. Campania, just evacuated, was speedily reoccupied, and the Roman corps which was left behind there under Gaius Thoranius, the quaestor of Varinius, was broken and
In the whole south and south-west of Italy the open country was in the hands of the victorious bandit chiefs; even considerable towns, such as Consentia in the Bruttian country, Thurii and Metapontum in Lucania, Nola and Nuceria in Campania, were stormed by them, and suffered all the atrocities which victorious barbarians could inflict on defenceless civilized men, and unshackled slaves on their former masters.