No More Learning

What had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained ; the senate had ceased to govern. But when the few old men who had seen the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi, compared that time with the present they found that everything had in the interval changed
398
THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY BOOK v
and citizens, state-law and military discipline, life and manners; and well might those painfully smile, who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period with their
countrymen
can. nr AND THE RULE OF POMPEIUS 39g
realization. Such reflections however belonged to the past. For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall of the aristocracy was an accomplished fact. The oligarchs resembled an army utterly broken up, whose scattered bands might serve to reinforce another body of troops, but could no longer themselves keep the field or risk a combat on their own account. But as the old struggle came to an end, a new one was simultaneously beginning—the struggle between the two powers hitherto leagued for the overthrow
of the aristocratic constitution, the civil-democratic opposi tion and the military power daily aspiring to greater ascendency. The exceptional position of Pompeius even under the Gabinian, and much more under the Manilian, law was incompatible with a republican organization. He had been, as even then his opponents urged with good reason, appointed by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but as regent of the empire; not unjustly was he designated by a Greek familiar with eastern afl'airs “king of kings. " If he should hereafter, on returning from the east once more
victorious and with increased glory, with well-filled chests, and with troops ready for battle and devoted to his cause, stretch forth his hand to seize the crown-—who would then arrest his arm? Was the consular Quintus Catulus, forsooth, to summon forth the senators against the first general of his time and his experienced legions? or was the designated aedile Gaius Caesar to call forth the civic multitude, whose eyes he had just feasted on his three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators with their silver equipments? Soon, exclaimed Catulus, it would be necessary once more to flee to the rocks of the Capitol, in order to save liberty. It was not the fault of the prophet, that the storm came'not, as he expected, from the east, but that on the contrary fate, fulfilling his words more literally than he himself anticipated, brought on destroying tempest a few years later from Gaul.
the
Pompeius suppresses
piracy.
CHAPTER IV
rourarus am) 'rrra EAST
WE have already seen how wretched was the state of the
40o POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
affairs of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the 57, commencement of 687 Pompeius, with an almost unlimited
of power, undertook the conduct of the war against the pirates. He began by dividing the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants, for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the best part of the ships of war that were available—among which on this occasion also those of Rhodes were dis
plenitude
in the year to sea, and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian waters, with a view especially to reestablish the supply of grain from
these provinces to Italy. His lieutenants meanwhile addressed themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts. It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province of Narbo—an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius tempor
tinguished-—early
CIXAP- XV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
40]
arily reappeared in Rome 385). When at the end of forty days the navigation had been everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean, Pompeius pro ceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy, the Lycian and Cilician waters. On the news of the approach of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere dis appeared from the open sea; and not only so, but even the strong Lycian fortresses of Anticragus and Cragus
surrendered without offering serious resistance. The well calculated moderation of Pompeius helped even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible marine strongholds. His predecessors had ordered every captured freebooter to be nailed to the cross without hesitation he gave quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence. The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain at least their own waters by arms against the Romans; after having placed their children and wives and their rich treasures for security in the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited the Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the offing of Coracesium. But here the ships of Pompeius, well manned and well provided with all implements of war, achieved complete victory. Without farther hindrance he landed and began to storm and break up the mountain castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer to themselves freedom and life as the price of submission. Soon the great multitude desisted from the continuance of
hopeless war in their strongholds and mountains, and consented to surrender. Forty-nine days after Pompeius had appeared in the eastern seas, Cilicia was subdued and the war at an end.
The rapid suppression of piracy was great relief, but not grand achievement; with the resources of the Roman
v01. iv 12o
a
a
a
a
;
(p.
Dissen sions be tween Pom peius and
A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however, disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the Roman arms. There Quintus Metellus was stationed in
4o:
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
state, which had been called forth in lavish measure, the corsairs could as little cope as the combined gangs of thieves in a great city can cope with a well-organized police. It was a naive proceeding to celebrate such a razzia as a victory. But when compared with the pro longed continuance and the vast and daily increasing extent of the evil, it was natural that the surprisingly rapid subjugation of the dreaded pirates should make a most powerful impression on the public; and the more so, that this was the first trial of rule centralized in a single hand, and the parties were eagerly waiting to see whether that hand would understand the art of ruling better than the collegiate body had done. Nearly 400 ships and boats, including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either taken by Pompeius or surrendered to him; in all about
1300 vpiratical vessels are said to have been destroyed; besides which the richly-filled arsenals and magazines of the buccaneers were burnt. Of the pirates about 10,000 perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive into the hands of the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral of the Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other mdividuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long believed at home to be dead, obtained once more their
61. freedom through Pompeius. In the summer of 687, three months after the beginning of the campaign, commerce resumed its wonted course and instead of the former famine abundance prevailed in Italy.
Metellus as the second year of his command, and was employed in
finishing the subjugation—already substantially efl'ected— of the island 3 5 when Pompeius appeared in the eastern waters. A collision was natural, for according to the Gabinian law the command of Pompeius extended con
to Crete.
3),
CHAP- XV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
4o;
currently with that of Metellus over the whole island, which stretched to a great length but was nowhere more than ninety miles broad ;1 but Pompeius was considerate enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants. The still resisting Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit of im posing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius. He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment, from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions and to take over the towns. This proceeding was, no doubt, not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when, utterly ignoring the conven tion of the cities with Pompeius, he continued to treat them as hostile. In vain Octavius protested; in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there; Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna, besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person was taken
and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans who were taken with him were consigned to the execu tioner. Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna, at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader’s death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna, where both made a
l [Literally " twenty German mil" ; but the breadth of the island does not seem in reality half so much. —TR. ]
prisoner
Pompeius takes the supreme command against Mithra dateo.
404
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK V
stand, was only subdued by Metellus after the most obstinate resistance.
In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal civil war at his own hand against the general issimo of the democracy. It shows the indescribable
in the Roman state, that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years afterwards were
sitting once more peacefully and even “amicably ” side by side in the senate.
Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor. The portion of the Lucullan army that was still left after the losses which it had suffered and the departure of the Fimbrian legions remained inactive on the upper Halys in the country of the Trocmi bordering on the Pontic territory. Lucullus still held provisionally the chief command, as his nominated successor Glabrio continued to linger in the west of Asia Minor. The three legions commanded by Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive in Cilicia. The Pontic territory was again wholly in the power of king Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria,
pay for their revolt with cruel severity. The kings of the east did not proceed to any serious offensive movement against the Romans, either because it formed no part of their plan, or—as was asserted—because the landing of Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates and Tigranes to desist from advancing farther. The Manilian law realized the secretly-cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly than he probably himself anticipated; Glabrio and Rex
were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia
disorganization
CHM’. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
405
and Cilicia with the troops stationed there, as well as the management of the Pontic-Armenian war along with authority to make war, peace, and alliance with the dynasts of the east at his own discretion, were transferred to Pompeius. Amidst the prospect of honours and spoils so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising of an ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty laurels 5 he abandoned the expedition against Crete and the farther pursuit of the corsairs, and destined his fleet
also to support the attack which he projected on the kings
of Pontus and Armenia. Yet amidst this land-war he by
no means wholly lost sight of piracy, which was perpetually raising its head afresh. Before he left Asia (691) he 88.
caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against the corsairs ; on his proposal in the following year a similar measure was resolved on for Italy, and the sum needed for the purpose was granted by the senate. continued to protect the coasts with guards of cavalry and small squadrons, and though, as the expeditions to be mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696 and
Egypt 58. in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet 55.
after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its head and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as it had done under the government of the mouldering oligarchy.
The few months which still remained
mencement of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed parationl by the new commander-in-chief with of Pom
strenuous activity in peius diplomatic and military preparations. Envoys were sent
to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre than
serious mediation. There was a hope at the Pontic court Alllancl that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by with the the recent considerable successes which the allies had Parthian. achieved over Rome to enter into
They
before the com War pro
to attempt a
the Pontic-Armenian
406
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
Variance between Mithra dates and Tigranes.
alliance. To counteract this, Roman envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles, which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid. A son of the‘great-king Tigranes, bearing the same name, had rebelled against his father, either because he was unwilling to wait for the death of the old man, or because his father’s suspicion, which had already cost several of his brothers their lives, led him to discern his only chance of safety in open insurrection. vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid, and in trigued against his father there. It was partly due to his exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward which was offered to him by both sides for his accession—the
secured possession of Mesopotamia—from the hand of the Romans, renewed with Pompeius the agreement concluded with Lucullus respecting the boundary of the Euphrates (p. 343), and even consented to operate in concert with the Romans against Armenia. But the younger Tigranes occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out of his promoting the alliance between the Romans and the Parthians, for his insurrection produced a variance between the kings Tigranes and Mithradates themselves. The great-king cherished in secret the suspicion that Mithradates might have had a hand in the insurrection of his grandson -—Cleopatra the mother of the younger Tigranes was the daughter of Mithradates—and, though no open rupture took place, the good understanding between the two monarchs was disturbed at the very moment when it was most urgently needed.
At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike
with energy. The Asiatic allied and client communities were warned to furnish the stipulated con tingents. Public notices summoned the discharged veterans of the legions of Fimbria to return to the standards as
preparations
can. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
407
volunteers, and by great promises and the name of Pompeius a considerable portion of them were induced in reality to obey the call. The whole force united under the orders of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries, to between 40,000 and 50,000 men. 1
In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, 66.
to take the chief command of the troops of Lucullus and Pompeius
to advance with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Cilician legions were directed to follow. AtDanala, a place belonging to the Trocmi, the two generals met; but the reconciliation, which mutual friends had hoped to effect, was not accomplished. The preliminary courtesies soon passed into bitter discussions, and these into violent alterca tion: they parted in worse mood than they had met. As Lucullus continued to make honorary gifts and to distribute lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to his own arrival null and void. Formally he was in the right; customary tact in the treatment of a meritorious and more than sufficiently mortified opponent was not to be looked for from him.
Lucullus.
So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops Invasion of crossed the frontier of Pontus. There they were opposed Pontus.
by king Mithradates with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry.
Left in the lurch by his allies and attacked by Rome with
reinforced power and energy, he made an attempt to procure
peace; but he would hear nothing of the unconditional submission which Pompeius demanded-——what worse could
the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him? That
he might not expose his army, mostly archers and horsemen,
to the formidable shock of the Roman infantry of the line,
1 Pompeius distributed among his soldiers and ofl-icers as presents 384,000,000 sesterces (=16. 0o0 talents, App. Mithr. 116); as the oflicers received 100,000,000 (Plin. H. N. :rirxviiv 2, 16) and each of the common soldiers 6000 sesterces (Plin. , App. ), the army still numbered It its triumph about 40,000 men.
Retreat of Mithra dates.
408
PQMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
he slowly retired before the enemy, and compelled the Romans to follow him in his various cross-marches ; making a stand at the same time, wherever there was opportunity, with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy, and occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding their supplies. At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone, proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates, crossed and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire. But Mithradates followed along the left bank of the Euphrates, and when he had arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province, he intercepted the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira, which was strong and well provided with water, and from which with his light troops he commanded the plain. Pompeius, still wanting the Cilician legions and not strong enough to maintain himself in this position without them, had to retire over the Euphrates and to seek protection from the cavalry and archers of the king in the wooded ground of Pontic Armenia extensively intersected by rocky ravines and deep
was not till the troops from Cilicia arrived and rendered possible to resume the offensive with superior ity of force, that Pompeius again advanced, invested the camp of the king with chain of posts of almost eighteen miles in length, and kept him formally blockaded there, while the Roman detachments scoured the country far and wide. The distress in the Pontic camp was great; the draught animals even had to be killed; at length after remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick and wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to leave in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death
his own troops, and departed during the night with the utmost secrecy towards the east. Cautiously Pompeius followed through the unknown land: the march was now approaching the boundary which separated the dominions
valleys.
by
a
it It
a
it,
CHAP- rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
409
of Mithradates and Tigranes. When the Roman general perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the enemy away after him into the far distant regions of the east, he determined not to permit this.
The two armies lay close to each other. During the Battle at rest at noon the Roman army set out without the enemy Nioopoll observing the movement, made a circuit, and occupied the
heights, which lay in front and commanded a defile to be
passed by the enemy, on the southern bank of the river
Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Enderes,
at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built. The following morning the Pontic troops broke up in their
usual manner, and, supposing that the enemy was as
hitherto behind them, after accomplishing the day’s march
they pitched their camp in the very valley whose encircling
heights the Romans had occupied. Suddenly in the
silence of the night there sounded all around them the
dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides
poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp
followers, chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other;
and amidst the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness,
not a missile failed to take effect. When the Romans had expended their darts, they charged down from the heights
on the masses which had now become visible by the light
of the newly-risen moon, and which were abandoned
them almost defenceless ; those that did not fall by the steel
of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful pressure under the hoofs and wheels. It was the last battle-field on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans. With three attendants—two of his horsemen, and a con cubine who was accustomed to follow him in male attire and to fight bravely by his side—he made his escape thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither a portion of his trusty followers found their way to him. He divided
to
41o
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents of gold (£1,400,000); furnished them and himself with poison; and hastened with the band that was left to him
W up the Euphrates to unite with his ally, the great-king of Armenia.
This hope likewise was vain; the alliance, on the faith of which Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already
breaks
with mm
radatu. by that time existed no longer. During the conflicts
between Mithradates and Pompeius just narrated, the king of the Parthians, yielding to the urgency of the Romans and above all of the exiled Armenian prince, had invaded the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had com pelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains. The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata; but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little inclined to fight with the freshlyovictorious Romans, and least of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates ; whom he trusted less than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son intended to betake himself to his grandfather. So he entered into negotiations with the
Romans for a separate peace ; but he did not wait for the conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance which linked him to Mithradates. The latter, when he had arrived at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn that the great-king Tigranes had set a price of I00 talents (,6 2 4,000) on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had delivered them to the Romans. King Mithradates saw his kingdom in the hands of the enemy, and his allies on the point of coming to an agreement with them; it was not possible to continue the war; he might deem himself
CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
4! !
fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in perhaps dislodging his son Machares—who had revolted and entered into connection with the Romans 334)—once more from the Bosporan kingdom, and in finding on the Maeotis fresh soil for fresh projects. So he turned northward. When the king in his flight had crossed the Phasis, the ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time discontinued his pursuit; but instead of returning to the region of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into the region of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.
Mithra
3:53am Phasil
Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the
region of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his
camp thirteen miles from the city. There he was met
the son of the great-king, who hoped after the fall of his
father to receive the Armenian ‘diadem from the hand of
the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every way
to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father
and the Romans. The great-king was only the more Peace with resolved to purchase peace at any price. On horseback T'gmm' and without his purple robe, but adorned with the royal
diadem and the royal turban, he appeared at the gate of
the Roman camp and desired to be conducted to the
presence of the Roman. general. After having given up at
the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman
camp required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself
in barbarian fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in
token of unconditional surrender placed the diadem and
tiara in his hands. Pompeius, highly delighted at
which cost nothing, raised up the humbled king of kings,
invested him again with the insignia of his dignity, and
dictated the peace. Besides payment of £1,400,000
(6000 talents) to the war-chest and a present to the soldiers,
out of which each of them received 50 denarz'i (,6 2s),
the king ceded all the conquests which he had made, not
victory
Pompeius “Airman
2 :
a
a
by a
(p.
The tribes of the Cau cams.
lberianl.
But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot, raised up for them new conflicts. The brave peoples of the middle and eastern Caucasus saw with indignation the remote Occidentals encamping on their territory. There —-in the fertile and well-watered tableland of the modern Georgia—dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well-organized, agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs cultivated the soil according to the system of common possession, without any separate ownership of the individual cultivators. Army and people were one; the people were headed partly by the ruler-clans-—out of which the eldest always presided over the whole Iberian nation as king, and the next eldest as judge and leader of the army—partly by special families of priests, on whom chiefly devolved the duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties concluded with other peoples and of watching over their observance. The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the king. Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans,
Albanians.
4r:
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right bank of the Euphrates ; he was again restricted to Armenia proper, and his position of great-king was, of course, at an end. In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued the two mighty kings of Pontus and Armenia. At the
60. beginning of 688 there was not a Roman soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal of Rome. The whole domain of Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates unconditionally obeyed the Romans; the victorious army took up its winter-quarters to the east of that stream on Armenian soil, in the country from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur, from which the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.
CRAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
us
who were settled on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, were in a far lower stage of culture. Chiefiy a pastoral people they tended, on foot or on horseback, their numerous herds in the luxuriant meadows of the modern Shirvan ; their few tilled fields were still cultivated with the old wooden plough without iron share. Coined money was unknown, and they did not count beyond a hundred. Each of their tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief and spoke its distinct dialect. Far superior in number to the Iberians, the Albanians could not at all cope with them
in bravery. The mode of fighting was on the whole the same with both nations; they fought chiefly with arrows and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops of trees on the foe; the Albanians had also numerous horsemen partly mailed after the Medo-Armenian manner with heavy cuirasses and greaves. Both nations lived on their lands and pastures in a complete independence preserved from time immemorial. Nature itself, as it were, seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and Asia as a rampart against the tide of national movements; there the arms of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly found their limit; now the brave garrison of this partition wall set themselves to defend it also against the Romans.
Alarmed by the information that the Roman commander in-chief intended next spring to cross the mountains and to pursue the Pontic king beyond the Caucasus—for Mithra
dates, they heard, was passing the winter in Dioscurias (Iskuria between Suchum Kale and Anaklia) on the Black Sea-—the Albanians under their prince Oroizes first crossed
the Kur in the middle of the winter of 688-689 and threw 06-61. themselves on the army, which was divided for the sake oi
its supplies into three larger corps under Quintus Metellus Celer, Lucius Flaccus, and Pompeius in person. But Celer,
Iberians conquered.
on whom the chief attack fell, made a brave stand, and Pompeius, after having delivered himself from the division sent to attack him, pursued the barbarians beaten at all points as far as the Kur. Artoces the king of the Iberians
414
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
and promised peace and friendship; but informed that he was secretly arming so as to fall upon the Romans on their march in the passes of the
Caucasus, advanced in the spring of 689, before resuming the pursuit of Mithradates, to the two fortresses just two miles distant from each other, Harmozica (Horum Ziche or Armazi) and Seusamora (Tsumar) which a little above the modern Tiflis command the two valleys of the river Kur and its tributary the Aragua, and with these the only passes leading from Armenia to Iberia. Artoces, surprised by the enemy before he was aware of hastily burnt the bridge over the Kur and retreated negotiating into the interior. Pompeius occupied the fortresses and followed the Iberians to the other bank of the Kur which he hoped to induce them to immediate submission. But Artoces retired farther and farther into the interior, and, when at length he halted on the river Pelorus, he did so not to surrender but to fight. The Iberian archers however withstood not for moment the onset of the Roman legions, and, when Artoces saw the Pelorus also crossed by the Romans, he submitted at length to the conditions which the victor pro posed, and sent his children as hostages.
kept quiet Pompeius,
Pompeius
Pompeius
now, agreeably to the plan which he had
proceeds to formerly projected, marched through the Sarapana pass from
Colchis.
the region of the Kur to that of the Phasis and thence down that river to the Black Sea, where on the Colchian coast the fleet under Servilius already awaited him. But was for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost unsubstantial, that the army and fleet were thus brought to the richly fabled shores of Colchis. The laborious march just completed
through unknown and mostly hostile nations was nothing
it
a
; by
it,
CRAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
41s
when compared with what still awaited them , and if they should really succeed in conducting the force from the mouth of the Phasis to the Crimea, through warlike and poor barbarian tribes, on inhospitable and unknown waters, along a coast where at certain places the mountains sink pendicularly into the sea and it would have been absolutely necessary to embark in the ships—if such a march should be successfully accomplished, which was perhaps more difficult than the campaigns of Alexander and Hannibal what was gained by it even at the best, corresponding at all to its toils and dangers? The war doubtless was not ended,
so long as the old king was still among the living; but who could guarantee that they would really succeed in catching the royal game for the sake of which this unparalleled chase was to be instituted? Was it not better, even at the risk of Mithradates once more throwing the torch of war into Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised so little gain and so many dangers? Doubtless numerous
voices in the army, and still more numerous voices in the capital, urged the general to continue the pursuit incessantly and at any price ; but they were the voices partly of foolhardy Hotspurs, partly of those perfidious friends, who would gladly at any price have kept the too-powerful Im perator aloof from the capital and entangled him amidst interminable undertakings in the east.
Pompeius was too experienced and too discreet an oflicer to stake his fame and his army in obstinate adherence to so injudicious an expedition ; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the
army furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit of the king and arranging its return. The fleet received instructions to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the northern coast of Asia Minor against any hostile invasion, and strictly to blockade the Cimmerian Bosporus under the threat of death to any trader who should break the blockade. Pompeius conducted the land troops not without
per
great
Fresh con. diets with the Alban
hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory to the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the stream, into the Albanian plain.
For several days the Roman army had to march in the glowing heat through this almost waterless flat country, with out encountering the enemy; it was only on the left bank of the Abas (probably the river elsewhere named Alazonius, now Alasan) that the force of the Albanians under the leadership of Coses, brother of the king Oroizes, was drawn up against the Romans; they are said to have amounted, including the contingent which had arrived from the inhabitants of the Transcaucasian steppes, to 60,000 infantry and r2,0o0 cavalry. Yet they would hardly have risked the battle, unless they had supposed that they had merely to fight with the Roman cavalry; but the cavalry had only been placed in front, and, on its retiring, the masses of Roman infantry showed themselves from their concealment behind. After a short conflict the army of the barbarians was driven into the woods, which Pompeius gave orders to invest and set on fire. The Albanians thereupon consented to make peace; and, following the example of the more powerful peoples, all the tribes settled between the Kur and the Caspian concluded a treaty with the Roman general. The Albanians, Iberians, and generally the peoples settled to the south along, and at the foot of, the Caucasus, thus entered at least for the moment into a relation of depend ence on Rome. When, on the other hand, the peoples between the Phasis and the Maeotis—Colchians, Soani, Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae were inscribed in the long list of the nations subdued by Pompeius, the notion of subjugation was evidently employed in a manner very far from exact. The Caucasus once more verified its significance in the history of the world; the Roman conquest, like the Persian and the Hellenic, found its limit there.
4l6
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
cHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
417
Accordingly king Mithradates was left to himself and to Mithra
destiny. As formerly his ancestor, the founder of the Pontic dates goes to Pantica
state, had first entered his future kingdom as a fugitive paeum. from the executioners of Antigonus and attended only by
six horsemen, so had the grandson now been compelled
once more to cross the bounds of his kingdom and to turn
his back on his own and his fathers’ conquests. But for no one had the dice of fate turned up the highest gains and
the‘ greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously than for the old sultan of Sinope ; and the fortunes of men change rapidly and incalculably in the east. Well might Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only thing constant was the perpetual change of fortune. Inas much as the Roman rule was intolerable for the Orientals at the very core of their nature, and Mithradates himself
was in good and in evil a true prince of the east, amidst the laxity of the rule exercised by the Roman senate over the provinces, and amidst the dissensions of the political parties
in Rome fermenting and ripening into civil war, Mithradates might, if he was fortunate enough to bide his time, doubt
less re-establish his dominion yet a third time. For this very reason—because he hoped and planned while still there was life in him—he remained dangerous to the Romans so long as he lived, as an aged refugee no less than when he had marched forth with his hundred thousands to wrest Hellas and Macedonia from the Romans. The rest
less old man made his way in the year 689 from Dioscurias 66.
amidst unspeakable hardships partly by land partly by sea
to the kingdom of Panticapaeum, where by his reputation and his numerous retainers he drove his renegade son Machares from the throne and compelled him to put him self to death. From this point he attempted once more to negotiate with the Romans; he besought that his paternal
v01. xv
127
His last
WP"! tions against Rome.
kingdom might be restored to him, and declared himself ready to recognize the supremacy of Rome and to pay tribute as a vassal. But Pompeius refused to grant the king a position in which he would have begun the old game afresh, and insisted on his personal submission.
Mithradates, however, had no thought of delivering himself into the hands of the enemy, but was projecting new and still more extravagant plans. Straining all the resources with which the treasures that he had saved and the remnant of his states supplied him, he equipped a new army of 36,000 men consisting partly of slaves which he armed and exercised after the Roman fashion, and a war fleet; according to rumour he designed to march west ward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Pannonia, to carry along with him the Scythians in the Sarmatian steppes and the Celts on the Danube as allies, and with this avalanche of peoples to throw himself on Italy. This has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war of the Pontic king has been compared with the military march of Hannibal; but the same project, which in a gifted man is a stroke of genius, becomes folly in one who is wrong-headed. This intended invasion of Italy
by the Orientals was simply ridiculous, and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair. Through the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans were pre vented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been
soon enough met at the foot of the Alps.
In fact, while Pompeius, without troubling himself
Revolt against Mithra dates.
further as to the threats of the impotent giant, was em ployed in organizing the territory which he had gained, the destinies of the aged king drew on to their fulfilment without Roman aid in the remote north.
418
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
His extravagant preparations had produced the most violent excitement
ps4
CHAP. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
419
among the Bosporans, whose houses were torn down, and whose oxen were taken from the plough and put to death, in order to procure beams and sinews for constructing engines of war. ' The soldiers too were disinclined to enter on the hopeless Italian expedition. Mithradates had constantly been surrounded by suspicion and treason ; he had not the gift of calling forth affection and fidelity among those around him. As in earlier years he had compelled his distinguished general Archelaus to seek pro tection in the Roman camp; as during the campaigns of Lucullus his most trusted oflicers Diocles, Phoenix, and even the most notable of the Roman emigrants had passed over to the enemy; so now, when his star grew pale and the old, infirm, embittered sultan was accessible to no one else save his eunuchs, desertion followed still more rapidly on desertion. Castor, the commandant of the fortress Phanagoria (on the Asiatic coast opposite Kertch), first raised the standard of revolt; he proclaimed the free
dom of the town and delivered the sons of Mithradates that were in the fortress into the hands of the Romans. While the insurrection spread among the Bosporan towns, and Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), Theudosia (Kaffa), and others joined the Phanagorites, the king allowed his suspicion and his cruelty to have free course. On the information of despicable eunuchs his most con fidential adherents were nailed to the cross; the king’s own sons were the least sure of their lives. The son who was his father’s favourite and was probably destined by him as his successor, Pharnaces, took his resolution and
headed the insurgents. The servants whom Mithradates sent to arrest him, and the troops despatched against him, passed over to his side; the corps of Italian deserters, perhaps the most efficient among the divisions of Mithra dates’ army, and for that very reason the least inclined to share in the romantic—and for the deserters peculiarly
Death of Mithra dates.
hazardous-expedition against Italy, declared itself 01 marr: for the prince ; the other divisions of the army and the fleet followed the example thus set.
After the country and the army had abandoned the king, the capital Panticapaeum at length opened its gates to the insurgents and delivered over to them the old king enclosed in his palace. From the high wall of his castle the latter
besought his son at least to grant him life and not imbrue his hands in his father’s blood; but the request came ill from the lips of a man whose own hands were stained with the blood of his mother and with the recently-shed blood of his innocent son Xiphares ; and in heartless severity and inhumanity Pharnaces even outstripped his father. Seeing therefore he had now to die, the sultan resolved at least to die as he had lived; his wives, his concubines and his daughters, including the youthful brides of the kings of Egypt and Cyprus, had all to suffer the bitterness of death
and drain the poisoned cup, before he too took and then, when the draught did not take efi'ect quickly enough, pre sented his neck for the fatal stroke to Celtic mercenary Betuitus. So died in 691 Mithradates Eupator, in the sixty-eighth year of his life and the fifty-seventh of his reign, twenty-six years after he had for the first time taken the field against the Romans. The dead body, which king Pharnaces sent as voucher of his merits and of his loyalty to Pompeius, was by order of the latter laid in the royal
sepulchre of Sinope.
The death of Mithradates was looked on by the Romans
as equivalent to victory: the messengers who reported to the general the catastrophe appeared crowned with laurel, as they had victory to announce, in the Roman camp before Jericho. In him great enemy was borne to the tomb, greater than had ever yet withstood the Romans in the indolent east. Instinctively the multitude felt this: as formerly Scipio had triumphed even more over Hannibal
420
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
68.
if a
a
a
a
a
a
it,
CHAP- rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 421
than over Carthage, so the conquest of the numerous tribes of the east and of the great-king himself was almost forgotten in the death of Mithradates; and at the solemn entry of Pompeius nothing attracted more the eyes of the multitude than the pictures, in which they saw king Mithradates as a fugitive leading his horse by the rein and thereafter sinking down in death between the dead bodies of his daughters.
Whatever judgment may be formed as to the idiosyncrasy of the king, he is a figure of great significance-—in the full sense of the expression—for the history of the world. He was not a personage of genius, probably not even of rich endowments; but he possessed the very respectable gift of hating, and out of this hatred he sustained an unequal conflict against superior foes throughout half a century, without success doubtless, but with honour. He became still more significant through the position in which history had placed him than through his individual character. As the forerunner of the national reaction of the Orientals against the Occidentals, he opened the new conflict of the east against the west; and the remained with the vanquished as with the victors, that his death was not so much the end as the beginning.
Meanwhile Pompeius, after his warfare in 689 with the Pom- [65. peoples of the Caucasus, had returned to the kingdom of ‘1:31? ? Pontus, and there reduced the last castles still offering Syria. resistance; these were razed in order to check the evils of brigandage, and the castle wells were rendered unserviceable
by rolling blocks of rock into them. Thence he set out in the summer of 690 for Syria, to regulate its affairs. 64.
It is difficult to present a clear view of the state of State of
disorganization which then prevailed in the Syrian provinces. 87m‘ It is true that in consequence of the attacks of Lucullus the Armenian governor Magadates had evacuated these provinces
in 685 341), and that the Ptolemies, gladly as they would 60. have renewed the attempts of their predecessors to attach
feeling
(p.
Arabian princes.
the Syrian coast to their kingdom, were yet afraid to provoke the Roman government by the occupation of Syria; the more so, as that government had not yet regulated their more than doubtful legal title even in the case of Egypt, and had been several times solicited by the Syrian princes to recognize them as the legitimate heirs of the extinct house of the Lagids. But, though the greater powers all at the moment refrained from interference in the affairs of Syria, the land suffered far more than it would have suffered amidst a great war, through the endless and aimless feuds of the princes, knights, and cities.
The actual masters in the Seleucid kingdom were at this time the Bedouins, the Jews, and the Nabataeans. The inhospitable sandy steppe destitute of springs and trees,
422
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
from the Arabian peninsula up to and the Euphrates, reaches towards the west as far as the Syrian mountain-chain and its narrow belt of coast,
toward the east as far as the rich lowlands of the Tigris and
which, stretching beyond
Asiatic Sahara—was the primitive home of the sons of Ishmael ; from the commencement of tradition we find the “Bedawi,” the “son of the desert,”
lower Euphrates—this
his tents there and pasturing his camels, or his swift horse in pursuit now of the foe of his tribe, now of the travelling merchant. Favoured formerly
by king Tigranes, who made use of them for his plans half commercial half political 317), and subsequently by the total absence of any master in the Syrian land, these children of the desert spread themselves over northern Syria. Wellnigh the leading part in political point of view was enacted by those tribes, which had appropriated the first
Mesopotamia
pitching mounting
of settled existence from the vicinity of the
rudiments
civilized Syrians.
Abgarus, chief of the Arab tribe of the Mardani, whom Tigranes had settled about Edessa and Carrhae in upper
The most noted of these emirs were
317)
then to the west of the Euphrates
;
a
(p. a
CBAP. XV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
413
Sampsiceramus, emir of the Arabs of Hemesa
between Damascus and Antioch, and master of the strong fortress Arethusa ; Azizus the head of another horde roam ing in the same region; Alchaudonius, the prince of the Rhambaeans, who had already put himself into communica tion with Lucullus; and several others.
Alongside of these Bedouin princes there had everywhere Robber
appeared bold cavaliers, who equalled or excelled the children of the desert in the noble trade of waylaying. Such was Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus, perhaps the most powerful among these Syrian robber-chiefs and one of the richest men of this period, who ruled over the territory of the Ityraeans-—the modern Druses—in the valleys of the
Libanus as well as on the coast and over the plain of . Massyas to the northward with the cities of Heliopolis
and Chalcis, and maintained 8000 horsemen at his own expense; such were Dionysius and Cinyras, the masters of the maritime cities Tripolis (Tarablus) and Byblus (between Tarablus and Beyrout) ; such was the Jew Silas in Lysias, a fortress not far from Apamea on the Orontes.
In the south of Syria, on the other hand, the race of the Jews seemed as though it would about this time consolidate itself into a political power. Through the devout and bold defence of the primitive Jewish national worship, which was imperilled by the levelling Hellenism of the Syrian kings, the family of the Hasmonaeans or the Makkabi had not only attained to their hereditary principality and gradually to kingly honours (iii. 286) ; but these princely high-priests had also spread their conquests to the north, east, and south.
chiefs
(Horns)
(Baalbec)
When the brave Jannaeus Alexander died (675), the Jewish 79. kingdom stretched towards the south over the whole Philis
tian territory as far as the frontier of Egypt, towards the south-east as far as that of the Nabataean kingdom of Petra, from which Jannaeus had wrested considerable tracts on
424
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK V
the right bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, towards the north over Samaria and Decapolis up to the lake of Gennesareth ; here he was already making arrangements to occupy Ptolemais (Acco) and Victoriously to repel the aggres sions of the Ityraeans. The coast obeyed the Jews from Mount Carmel as far as Rhinocorura, including the import ant Gaza—Ascalon alone was still free ; so that the territory of the Jews, once almost cut off from the sea, could now be enumerated among the asylums of piracy. Now that the Armenian invasion, just as it approached the borders
of Judaea, was averted from that land by the intervention of Lucullus 339), the gifted rulers of the Hasmonaean house would probably have carried their arms still farther, had not the development of the power of that remarkable conquering priestly state been nipped in the bud by internal
divisions.
The spirit of religious independence, and the spirit of
national independence—the energetic union of which had called the Maccabee state into life—speedily became once
more dissociated and even antagonistic. The orthodoxy or Pharisaism, as was called, was content with the free exercise of religion, as had been asserted in defiance of the Syrian rulers; its practical aim was com munity of Jews, composed of the orthodox in the lands of all rulers, essentially irrespective of the secular government —a community which found its visible points of union in the tribute for the temple at Jerusalem, which was obligatory on every conscientious Jew, and in the schools of religion
Sndducees. and spiritual courts. Overagainst this orthodoxy, which turned away from political life and became more and more stiffened into theological formalism and painful ceremonial service, were arrayed the defenders of the national inde pendence, invigorated amidst successful struggles against foreign rule, and advancing towards the ideal of restoration of the Jewish state, the representatives of the old great
Jewish
a
a
it it
(p.
CRAP. lV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
42s
families—the so-called Sadducees—partly on dogmatic grounds, in so far as they acknowledged only the sacred books themselves and conceded authority merely, not canonicity, to the “bequests of the scribes,” that to canonical tradition partly and especially on political
so far as, instead of fatalistic waiting for the strong arm of the Lord of Zebaoth, they taught that the salvation of the nation was to be expected from the weapons
of this world, and from the inward and outward strengthening
of the kingdom of David as re-established in the glorious times of the Maccabees. Those partisans of orthodoxy found their support in the priesthood and the multitude; they contested with the Hasmonaeans the legitimacy of their high-priesthood, and fought against the noxious heretics with all the reckless implacability, with which the pious are often found to contend for the possession of earthly goods. The state-party on the other hand relied for support on intelligence brought into contact with the influences of Hellenism, on the army, in which numerous Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries served, and on the abler kings, who here strove with the ecclesiastical power much as thousand years later the Hohenstaufen strove with the Papacy. Jannaeus had kept down the priesthood with strong hand under his two sons there arose (685 et req. ) civil and 69. fraternal war, since the Pharisees opposed the vigorous Aristobulus and attempted to obtain their objects under the nominal rule of his brother, the good-natured and in dolent Hyrcanus. This dissension not merely put a stop
to the Jewish conquests, but gave also foreign nations
Thus the Sadducees rejected the doctrine of angels and spirits and the resurrection of the dead. Most of the traditional points of difference between Pharisees and Sadducees relate to subordinate questions of ritual,
jurisprudence, and the calendar. It characteristic fact, that the victorious Pharisees have introduced those days, on which they definitively obtained the superiority in particular controversies or ejected heretical members from the supreme consistory, into the list of the memorial and festival days of the nation.
grounds,
is a
a
1
a a
a
;
in
51
is,
Nabatae
opportunity to interfere and thereby obtain a commanding position in southern Syria.
This was the case first of all with the Nabataeans. This remarkable nation has often been confounded with its eastern neighbours, the wandering Arabs, but it is more closely related to the Aramaean branch than to the proper children of Ishmael. This Aramaean or, according to the designation of the Occidentals, Syrian stock must have in very early times sent forth from its most ancient settlements about Babylon a colony, probably for the sake of trade, to the northern end of the Arabian gulf; these were the Nabataeans on the Sinaitic peninsula, between the gulf of Suez and Aila, and in the region of Petra (Wadi Mousa). In their ports the wares of the Mediterranean were exchanged for those of India; the great southern caravan route, which ran from Gaza to the mouth of the Euphrates and the Persian gulf, passed through the capital of the Nabataeans-—Petra—whose still magnificent rock-palaces and rock-tombs furnish clearer evidence of the Nabataean civilization than does an almost extinct tradition. The leaders of the Pharisees, to whom after the manner of priests the victory of their faction seemed not too dearly bought at the price of the independence and integrity of their country, solicited Aretas the king of the Nabataeans
for aid against Aristobulus, in return for which they promised to give back to him all the conquests wrested from him by Jannaeus. Thereupon Aretas had advanced with, it was said, 50,000 men into Judaea and, reinforced by the adherents of the Pharisees, he kept king Aristobulus besieged in his capital.
Amidst the system of violence and feud which thus prevailed from one end of Syria to another, the larger cities were of course the principal sufferers; such as Antioch, Seleucia, Damascus, whose citizens found themselves paralysed in their husbandry as well as in their maritime
426
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
Syrian cities.
CHAP- rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
427
and caravan trade. The citizens of Byblus and Berytus (Beyrout) were unable to protect their fields and their ships from the Ityraeans, who issuing from their mountain and maritime strongholds rendered land and sea equally insecure. Those of Damascus sought to ward off the attacks of the Ityraeans and Ptolemaeus by handing them selves over to the more remote kings of the Nabataeans or of the Jews. In Antioch Sampsiceramus and Azizus mingled in the internal feuds of the citizens, and the Hellenic great city had wellnigh become even now the seat of an Arab emir. The state of things reminds us of the king
less times of the German middle ages, when Nuremberg and Augsburg found their protection not in the king's law and the king’s courts, but in their own walls alone ; impatiently the merchant-citizens of Syria awaited the strong arm, which should restore to them peace and security of intercourse.
There was no want, however, of a legitimate king in
Syria; there were even two or three of them. A prince Seleucids. Antiochus from the house of the Seleucids had been appointed by Lucullus as ruler of the most northerly
province in Syria, Commagene 341). Antiochus Asiaticus, whose claims on the Syrian throne had met with recognition both from the senate and from Lucullus
(p. 341), had been received in Antioch after the retreat
of the Armenians and there acknowledged as king. A third Seleucid prince Philippus had immediately confronted him there as rival and the great population of Antioch, excitable and delighting in opposition almost like that of Alexandria, as well as one or two of the neighbouring Arab
'emirs had interfered in the family strife which now seemed inseparable from the rule of the Seleucids. Was there any wonder that legitimacy became ridiculous and loathsome to its subjects, and that the so-cal1ed rightful kings were of even somewhat less importance in the land than the petty princes and robber-chiefs?
The last
a ;
3 3
5,
(p.
tion of 51th
To create order amidst this chaos did not require either brilliance of conception or a mighty display of force, but it required a clear insight into the interests of Rome and of her subjects, and vigour and consistency in establishing and maintaining the institutions recognized as necessary. The policy of the senate in support of legitimacy had sufliciently degraded itself; the general, whom the opposi tion had brought into power, was not to be guided by
considerations, but had only to see that the Syrian kingdom should not be withdrawn from the client ship of Rome in future either by the quarrels of pretenders or by the covetousness of neighbours. But to secure this end there was only one course ; that the Roman community should send a satrap to grasp with a vigorous hand the reins of government, which had long since practically slipped from the hands of the kings of the ruling house more even through their own fault than through outward misfortunes. This course Pompeius took. Antiochus the Asiatic, on requesting to be acknowledged as the hereditary ruler of Syria, received the answer that Pompeius would not give back the sovereignty to a king who knew neither how to maintain nor how to govern his kingdom, even at the request of his subjects, much less against their distinctly expressed wishes. With this letter of the Roman proconsul the house of Seleucus was ejected from the throne which it had occupied for two hundred and fifty years. Antiochus soon after lost his life through the artifice of the emir Sampsiceramus, as whose client he played the ruler in Antioch; thenceforth there is no further mention of these mock-kings and their pretensions.
But, to establish the new Roman government and introduce any tolerable order into the confusion of affairs, it was further necessary to advance into Syria with a military force and to terrify or subdue all the disturbers of the peace, who had sprung up during the many years of
428
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
dynastic
CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
429
anarchy, by means of the Roman legions. Already during
the campaigns in the kingdom of Pontus and on the Caucasus Pompeius had turned his attention to the affairs
of Syria and directed detached commissioners and corps to interfere, where there was need. Aulus Gabinius-—the same who as tribune of the people had sent Pompeius to
the east—had in 689 marched along the Tigris and then 65. across Mesopotamia to Syria, to adjust the complicated affairs of Judaea. In like manner the severely pressed Damascus had already been occupied by Lollius and Metellus. Soon afterwards another adjutant of Pompeius, Marcus Scaurus, arrived in Judaea, to allay the feuds ever breaking out afresh there. Lucius Afranius also, who during the expedition of Pompeius to the Caucasus held
the command of the Roman troops in Armenia, had proceeded from Corduene (the northern Kurdistan) to upper Mesopotamia, and, after he had successfully accom plished the perilous march through the desert with the
sympathizing help of the Hellenes settled in Carrhae, brought the Arabs in Osrhoene to submission. Towards the end of 690 Pompeius in person arrived in Syria,1 and 64. remained there till the summer of the following year, resolutely interfering and regulating matters for the present and the future. He sought to restore the kingdom to its state in the better times of the Seleucid rule; all usurped powers were set aside, the robber-chiefs were summoned to give up their castles, the Arab sheiks were again restricted
1 Pompeius spent the winter of 689-690 still in the neighbourhood of 65-“ the Caspian Sea. (Dio, xxxvii. 7). In 690 he first reduced the last strongholds still offering resistance in the kingdom of Pontus, and then
moved slowly, regulating matters everywhere, towards the south. That
the organization of Syria began in 690 is confirmed by the fact that the CL Syrian provincial era begins with this year, and by Cicero's statement respecting Commagene (Ad Q. fr. 12, 2; comp. Dio, xxxvii. 7).
During the winter of 690-691 Pompeius seems to have had his head 64-“ quarters in Antioch (Joseph. xiv. 3, 2, where the confusion has been
rectified by Niese in the Harmer, xi. p. 471).
r,
ii.
robber chiefs chastised.
to their desert domains, the affairs of the several commu nities were definitely regulated.
The legions stood ready to procure obedience to these
stern orders, and their interference proved
necessary against the audacious robber-chiefs. Silas the ruler of Lysias, Dionysius the ruler of Tripolis, Cinyras the ruler of Byblus were taken prisoners in their fortresses and executed, the mountain and maritime strongholds of the Ityraeans were broken up, Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus in Chalcis was forced to purchase his freedom and his lordship with a ransom of 1000 talents (£240,000). Else where the commands of the new master met for the most part with unresisting obedience.
The Jews alone hesitated. The mediators formerly sent by Pompeius, Gabinius and Scaurus, had—both, as it was said, bribed with considerable sums—in the dispute between the brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus decided in favour of the latter, and had also induced king Aretas to raise the siege of Jerusalem and to proceed homeward, in doing which he sustained a defeat at the hands of Aristobulus. But, when Pompeius arrived in Syria, he cancelled the orders of his subordinates and directed
Jews to resume their old constitution under high-priests,
Negotia tions and conflicts with the
43°
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
101. as the senate had recognized it about 593 (ii. 28 5 fl), and to renounce along with the hereditary principality itself all the conquests made by the Hasmonaean princes. It was the Pharisees, who had sent an embassy of two hundred of their most respected men to the Roman general and
from him the overthrow of the kingdom ; not to the advantage of their own nation, but doubtless to that of the Romans, who from the nature of the case could not but here revert to the old rights of the Seleucids, and could not tolerate a conquering power like that of Jannaeus within the limits of their empire. Aristobulus was un certain whether it was better patiently to acquiesce in his
procured
especially
the
CHAP- iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
43x
inevitable doom or to meet his fate with arms in hand; at one time he seemed on the point of submitting to Pompeius, at another he seemed as thoughv he would summon the national party among the Jews to a struggle with the Romans. When at length, with the legions already at the gates, he yielded to the enemy, the more resolute or more fanatical portion of his army'refused to comply with the orders of a king who was not free. The capital submitted; the steep temple-rock was defended by that fanatical band for three months with an obstinacy ready to brave death, till at last the besiegers effected an entrance while the besieged were resting on the Sabbath, possessed themselves of the sanctuary, and handed over the authors of that desperate resistance, so far as they had not fallen under the sword of the Romans, to the axes of the lictors. Thus ended the last resistance of the terri tories newly annexed to the Roman state.
The work begun by Lucullus had been completed by Thevnew Pompeius; the hitherto formally independent states of 313:“: Bithynia, Pontus, and Syria were united with the Roman Romansln state ; the exchange—which had been recognized for more them than a hundred years as necessary-—of the feeble system of
a protectorate for that of direct sovereignty over the more important dependent territories 34f. ), had at length been realized, as soon as the senate had been overthrown and the Gracchan party had come to the helm. Rome had obtained in the east new frontiers, new neighbours, new friendly and hostile relations. There were now added to the indirect territories of Rome the kingdom of Armenia and the principalities of the Caucasus, and also the king dom on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the small remnant of the extensive conquests of Mithradates Eupator, now client-state of Rome under the government of his son and murderer Pharnaces the town of Phanagoria alone, whose commandant Castor had given the signal for the revolt,
;
a
(ii. 2
Conflicts with the Nabatae
was on that account recognized by the Romans as free and independent.
No like successes could be boasted of against the Nabataeans. King Aretas had indeed, yielding to the desire of the Romans, evacuated Judaea; but Damascus was still in his hands, and the Nabataean land had not yet been trodden by any Roman soldier. To subdue that
region or at least to show to their new neighbours in Arabia that the Roman eagles were now dominant on the Orontes and on the Jordan, and that the time had gone by when any one was free to levy contributions in the Syrian lands as a domain without a master, Pompeius began in 691 an expedition against Petra; but detained by the revolt of the Jews, which broke out during this expedition, he was not reluctant to leave to his successor Marcus Scaurus the carrying out of the difficult enterprise against the Nabataean city situated far off amidst the desert. 1 In reality Scaurus also soon found himself com pelled to return without having accomplished his object. He had to content himself with making war on the Nabataeans in the deserts on the left bank of the Jordan,
where he could lean for support on the Jews, but yet bore off only very trifling successes. Ultimately the adroit Jewish minister Antipater from Idumaea persuaded Aretas to purchase a guarantee for all his possessions, Damascus included,‘ from the Roman governor for a sum of money; and this is the peace celebrated on the coins of Scaurus, where king Aretas appears—leading his camel—as a suppliant offering the olive branch to the Roman.
1 Orosius indeed (vi. 6) and Dio (xxxvii. r5), both of them doubtless following Livy, make Pompeius get to Petra and occupy the city or even reach the Red Sea ; but that he, on the contrary, soon after receiving the news of the death of Mithradates. which came to him on his march towards Jerusalem, returned from Syria to Pontus, is stated by Plutarch (Porn). 41. 42) and is confirmed by Florus 39) and Josephus (xiv. 3, 3, 4). If king Aretas figures in the bulletins among those conquered by Pompeius, this sufficiently accounted for by his withdrawal from Jerusalem at the instigation of Pompeius.
431
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
is
(i.
CRAP. tv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
433
Far more fraught with momentous effects than these Difliculty
new relations of the Romans to the Armenians, Iberians,
Bosporans,
the occupation of Syria they were brought with the Parthian state. Complaisant as had been the de meanour of Roman diplomacy towards Phraates while the Pontic and Armenian states still subsisted, willingly as both Lucullus and Pompeius had then conceded to him the possession of the regions beyond the Euphrates 343,
406), the new neighbour now sternly took up his position by the side of the Arsacids and Phraates, the royal art of forgetting his own faults allowed him, might well recall now the warning words of Mithradates that the Parthian by his alliance with the Occidentals against the kingdoms of kindred race paved the way first for their destruction and then for his own. Romans and Parthians in league had brought Armenia to ruin; when was overthrown, Rome true to her old policy now reversed the parts and favoured the humbled foe at the expense of the powerful
ally. The singular preference, which the father Tigranes experienced from Pompeius as contrasted with his son the ally and son-in-law of the Parthian king, was already part of this policy; was direct offence, when soon after wards by the orders of Pompeius the younger Tigranes and his family were arrested and were not released even on Phraates interceding with the friendly general for his daughter and his son-in-law. But Pompeius paused not here. The province of Corduene, to which both Phraates and Tigranes laid claim, was at the command of Pompeius occupied by Roman troops for the latter, and the Parthians who were found in possession were driven
with the
through
Parthian and Nabataeans was the proximity into which
beyond the frontier and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene,
without the government of Ctesiphon having even been previously heard (689). Far the most suspicious circum 65. stance however was, that the Romans seemed not at all
v01~ xv 128
it a
it
5
if
(p.
434
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST B002 v
inclined to respect the boundary of the Euphrates fixed by treaty. On several occasions Roman divisions destined from Armenia for Syria marched across Mesopotamia ; the Arab emir Abgarus of Osrhoene was received under singularly favourable conditions into Roman protection; nay, Oruros, situated in Upper Mesopotamia somewhere between Nisibis and the Tigris 220 miles eastward from the Commagenian passage of the Euphrates, was designated as the eastern limit of the Roman dominion—presumably their indirect dominion, inasmuch as the larger and more fertile northern half of Mesopotamia had been
assigned by the Romans in like manner with Corduene to the Armenian empire. The boundary between Romans and
Parthians thus became the great Syro-Mesopotamian desert instead of the Euphrates; and this too seemed only provi sional. To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist on the maintenance of the agreements—which certainly, as it would seem, were only concluded
orally-—respecting the Euphrates boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous reply that the territory of Rome extended as far as her
The remarkable intercourse between the Roman commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps of the region of Media and even of the distant province Elymais
rights.
(between
Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern
seemed a commentary on this speech. 1 The viceroys of this latter mountainous, warlike, and remote land had always exerted themselves to acquire a position
1 This view rests on the narrative of Plutarch (Porn). 36) which is sup ported by Strabo's (xvi. 744) description of the position of the satrap 0f
It is an embellishment of the matter, when in the lists of the countries and kings conquered by Pompeius Media and its king Darius are enumerated (Diodorus, Fr. Vat. p. 14. 0; Appian, Milltr. 117); and from this there has been further concocted the war of Pompeius with the Medes (Vell. ii. 40; Appian, Mil/tr. r06, I14) and then even his ex‘ pedition to Ecbatana (Oros. vi. 5). A confusion with the fabulous town of the same name on Carmel has hardly taken place here; it is simply that intolerable exaggeration-apparently originating in the grandiloquent and designedly ambiguous bulletins of Pompeius—which has converted his
Luristan)
Elymais.
can. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
435
independent of the great-king; it was the more offensive and menacing to the Parthian government, when Pompeius
the proffered homage of this dynast. Not less was the fact that the title of “king of kings,”
accepted
significant
which had been hitherto conceded to the Parthian king by the Romans in official intercourse, was now all at once exchanged by them for the simple title of king. This was even more a threat than a violation of etiquette.