No More Learning

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. Since Rome had entered on the heritage of the Seleucids, it seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert at a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran and Turan were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet no Parthian empire but merely a Parthian satrapy. The court of Ctesiphon would thus have had reason enough for going to war with Rome; it seemed the prelude to its doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia on account of the question of the frontier. But Phraates had not the courage to come to an open rupture with the Romans at a time when the dreaded general with his strong army was on the borders of the Parthian empire. When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle amicably the dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded to the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in their award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene and northern Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards his daughter with her son and her husband adorned the triumph of the Roman general. Even the Parthians trembled before the superior power of Rome; and, if they had not, like the inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the Roman arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had not ventured to stand the conflict.
razzia against the Gaetulians (p. 94) into a march to the west coast of Africa (Plut. Pump. 38), his abortive expedition against the'Nabataeans into a conquest of the city of Petra, and his award as to the boundaries of Armenia into a fixing of the boundary of the Roman empire beyond Nrsibir.
tion ofthe provinces.
There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and of removing as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years’ desolating war. The work of organization begun in Asia Minor by Lucullus and the commission associated with him, and in Crete by Metellus, received its final conclusion from Pompeius. The former province of Asia, which embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was con verted from a frontier province into a central one. The newly-erected provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus, which was formed out of the whole former kingdom of
Nicomedes and the western half of the former Pontic state as far as and beyond the Halys; that of Cilicia, which indeed was older, but was now for the first time enlarged and organized in a manner befitting its name, and compre hended also Pamphylia and Isauria; that of Syria, and that of Crete. Much was no doubt wanting to render
that mass of countries capable of being regarded as the territorial possession of Rome in the modern sense of the term. The form and order of the government remained substantially as they were; only the Roman community came in place of the former monarchs. Those Asiatic
436
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK V
consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of domanial possessions, urban territories de facto or de jure autonomous, lordships pertaining to princes and priests, and kingdoms, all of which were as regards internal
provinces
more or less left to themselves, and in other respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its pro
consuls very much as formerly on the great-king and his
satraps.
The first place, in rank at least, among the dependent
dynasts was held by the king of Cappadocia, whose terri tory Lucullus had already enlarged by investing him with the province of Melitene (about Malatia) as far as the
administration
can. rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
437
and to whom Pompeius farther granted on the western frontier some districts taken off Cilicia from Casta
bala as far as Derbe near Iconium, and on the eastern frontier the province of Sophene situated on the left bank
of the Euphrates opposite Melitene and at first destined
for the Armenian prince Tigranes; so that the most im
portant passage of the Euphrates thus came wholly into the
power of the Cappadocian prince. The small province of Commagene between Syria and Cappadocia with its capital Comma Samosata (Samsat) remained a dependent kingdom in the gem hands of the already-named Seleucid Antiochus;1 to him
too were assigned the important fortress of Seleucia (near Biradjik) commanding the more southern passage of the Euphrates, and the adjoining tracts on the left bank of
that river; and thus care was taken that the two chief passages of the Euphrates with a corresponding territory
on the eastern bank were left in the hands of two dynasts
wholly dependent on Rome. Alongside of the kings of Cappadocia and Commagene, and in real power far superior
to them, the new king Deiotarus ruled in Asia Minor.
One of the tetrarchs of the Celtic stock of the Tolistobogii Galatin. settled round Pessinus, and summoned by Lucullus and Pompeius to render military service with the other small
Roman clients, Deiotarus had in these campaigns so brilliantly proved his trustworthiness and his energy as contrasted with all the indolent Orientals that the Roman
Euphrates,
conferred upon him, in addition to his Galatian heritage and his possessions in the rich country between Amisus and the mouth of the Halys, the eastern half of the former Pontic empire with the maritime towns of
1 The war which this Antiochus is alleged to have waged with Pompeius (Appian, Mil/tr.
r06, n7) is not very consistent with the treaty which he concluded with Lucullus (Dio, xxxvi. 4), and his undisturbed continuance in his sovereignty; presumably it has been concocted simply from the circumstance, that Antiochus of Commagene figured among the kings subdued by Pompeius.
generals
Princes and chiefs.
Vassals of lesser importance were, the other numerous Galatian tetrarchs, one of whom, Bogodiatarus prince of the Trocmi, was on account of his tried valour in the Mithradatic war presented by Pompeius with the formerly Pontic frontier-town of Mithradatium ; Attalus prince of Paphlagonia, who traced back his lineage to the old ruling house of the Pylaemenids; Aristarchus and other
lords in the Colchian territory; Tarcondimotus who ruled in eastern Cilicia in the mountain-valleys of the Amanus ; Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus who continued to rule in Chalcis on the Libanus ; Aretas king of the Nabataeans as lord of Damascus; lastly, the Arabic emirs in the countries on either side of the Euphrates, Abgarus in Osrhoene, whom the Romans endeavoured in every way to draw over to their interest with the view of using him as an advanced post against the Parthians, Sampsiceramus in Hemesa, Alchaudonius the Rhambaean, and another emir in Bostra.
To these fell to be added the spiritual lords who in the east frequently ruled over land and people like secular dynasts, and whose authority firmly established in that native home of fanaticism the Romans prudently refrained from disturbing, as they refrained from even robbing the temples of their treasures: the high-priest of the Goddess Mother in Pessinus; the two high-priests of the goddess Ma in the Cappadocian Comana (on the upper Sarus) and
438
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
Pharnacia and Trapezus and the Pontic Armenia as far as the frontier of Colchis and the Greater Armenia, to form the kingdom of Lesser Armenia. Soon afterwards he increased his already considerable territory by the country of the Celtic Trocmi, whose tetrarch he dispossessed. Thus the petty feudatory became one of the most powerful dynasts of Asia Minor, to whom might be entrusted the
guardianship empire.
of an important part of the frontier of the
Priestly princes.
. v:
petty
CHAP. rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
439
in the Pontic city of the same name (Gumenek near Tocat), both lords who were in their countries inferior only to the king in power, and each of whom even at a much later period possessed extensive estates with special jurisdiction and about six thousand temple-slaves—Archelaus, son of the general of that name who passed over from Mithradates to the Romans, was invested by Pompeius with the Pontic high-priesthood—the high-priest of the Venasian Zeus in the Cappadocian district of Morimene, whose revenues amounted annually to £3600 (r5 talents); the “arch priest and lord " of that territory in Cilicia Trachea, where Teucer the son of Ajax had founded a temple to Zeus, over which his descendants presided by virtue of hereditary right; the "arch-priest and lord of the people” of the Jews, to whom Pompeius, after having razed the walls of the capital and the royal treasuries and strongholds in the land, gave back the presidency of the nation with a serious admonition to keep the peace and no longer to aim at conquests.
Alongside of these secular and spiritual potentates stood the urban communities. These were partly associated into larger unions which rejoiced in a comparative independence, such as in particular the league of the twenty-three Lycian cities, which was well organized and constantly, for instance, kept aloof from participation in the disorders of piracy; whereas the numerous detached communities, even if they had self-government secured by charter, were in practice wholly dependent on the Roman governors.
Urban communi tiu.
The Romans failed not to see that with the task of Elevation
representing Hellenism and protecting and extending the of urban lifein
domain of Alexander in the east there devolved on them Asia. the primary duty of elevating the urban system ; for, while
cities are everywhere the pillars of civilization, the antagon ism between Orientals and Occidentals was especially and most sharply embodied in the contrast between the Oriental,
44o
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST aoox \
military-despotic, feudal hierarchy and the Hellen0-Italic urban commonwealth prosecuting trade and commerce. Lucullus and Pompeius, however little they in other respects aimed at the reduction of things to one level in the east, and however much the latter was
disposed in questions of detail to censure and alter the arrange
ments of his predecessor, were yet completely agreed in the principle of promoting as far as they could an urban life in Asia Minor and Syria. Cyzicus, on whose vigorous resistance the first violence of the last war had spent itself, received from Lucullus a considerable extension of its domain. The Pontic Heraclea, energetically as it had
resisted the Romans, yet recovered its territory and its harbours; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against the unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate. Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had refused him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus from devastation by the Pontic soldiery and his own : he did at least what he could to restore them, extended con siderably their territories, peopled them afresh-—partly with the old inhabitants, who at his invitation returned in troops to their beloved homes, partly with new settlers of Hellenic descent-—and provided for the reconstruction of the build
ings destroyed. Pompeius acted in the same spirit and on a. greater scale. Already after the subjugation of the pirates he had, instead of following the example of his predecessors and crucit'ying his prisoners, whose number exceeded 20,000, settled them partly in the desolated cities of the Plain Cilicia, such as Mallus, Adana, Epi.
and especially in Soli, which thenceforth bore the name of Pompeius’ city (Pompeiupolis), partly at Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum. This colonizing by means of pirates met with manifold censure,l as it
1 To this Cicero's reproach presumably points (De 0}. ‘ iii. 12, 49): jiratu immuner luzbemus, rociar vechlgaler; in so far, namely, as those
phaneia,
CHAP. 1v POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
441
seemed in some measure to set a premium on crime; in reality it was, politically and morally, well justified, for, as things then stood, piracy was something different from robbery and the prisoners might fairly be treated according to martial law.
But Pompeius made it his business above all to promote New towns
urban life in the new Roman provinces. We have already stab lished.
observed how poorly provided with towns the Pontic empire was 12): most districts of Cappadocia even century after this had no towns, but merely mountain fortresses as refirge for the agricultural population in war the whole cast of Asia Minor, apart from the sparse Greek colonies on the coasts, must have been at this time in similar plight. The number of towns newly established by Pom peius in these provinces including the Cilician settle ments, stated at thirty-nine, several of which attained great
The most notable of these townships in the former kingdom of Pontus were Nicopolis, the “city of victory,” founded on the spot where Mithradates sustained the last decisive defeat 4o9)-—the fairest memorial of general rich in similar trophies Megalopolis, named from Pompeius’ surname, on the frontier of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia, the subsequent Sebasteia (now Siwas) Ziela, where the Romans fought the unfortunate battle (p. 348), a township which had arisen round the temple of Anaitis there and hitherto had belonged to its high-priest, and to which Pompeius now gave the form and privileges of city Diopolis, formerly Cabira, afterwards Neocaesarea (Niksar), likewise one of the battle-fields of the late war; Magnopolis or Pompeiupolis, the restored Eupatoria at the confluence of the Lycus and the Iris, originally built by Mithradates, but again destroyed him on account of
pirate-colonies probably had the privilege of immunity conferred on them by Pompeius, while, as well known, the provincial communities de pendent on Rome were, as a rule, liable to taxation.
prosperity.
is
by
a ;
(p.
(p. ;
is,
a ;aa
;
a
442
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
the defection of the city to the Romans 404) Neapolis, formerly Phazemon, between Amasia and the Halys. Most of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing colonists from distance, but by the suppression of villages and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring wall only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and veterans of his army, who preferred to establish home for themselves there at once rather than afterwards in Italy. But at other places also there arose on the sugges tion of the regent new centres of Hellenic civilization. In Paphlagonia third Pompeiupolis marked the spot where the
88. army of Mithradates in 666 achieved the great victory over the Bithynians 29 f). In Cappadocia, which perhaps had suffered more than any other province by the war, the royal residence Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea, now Kaisarieh) and seven other townships were re-established
Pompeius and received urban institutions. In Cilicia and Coelesyria there were enumerated twenty towns laid out Pompeius.
In the districts ceded by the Jews, Gadara in the Decapolis rose from its ruins at the command of Pompeius, and the city of Seleucis was founded. By far the greatest portion of the domain-land at his disposal on the Asiatic continent must have been applied by Pompeius for his new settle ments; whereas in Crete, about which Pompeius troubled himself little or not at all, the Roman domanial possessions seem to have continued tolerably extensive.
Pompeius was no less intent on regulating and elevating the existing communities than on founding new townships. The abuses and usurpations which prevailed were done away with as far as lay in his power; detailed ordinances drawn up carefully for the different provinces regulated the particulars of the municipal system. A number of the
most considerable cities had fresh privileges conferred on them. Autonomy was bestowed on Antioch on the Orontes, the most important city of Roman Asia and but
by
by ; a
a (p.
a
;
(p.
CHAP. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
443
little inferior to the Egyptian Alexandria and to the Bagdad of antiquity, the city of Seleucia in the Parthian empire; as also on the neighbour of Antioch, the Pierian Seleucia, which was thus rewarded for its courageous resistance to Tigranes; on Gaza and generally on all the towns liberated from the Jewish rule; on Mytilene in the west of Asia Minor; and on Phanagoria on the Black Sea.
Thus was completed the structure of the Roman state in Asia, which with its feudatory kings and vassals, its priests made into princes, and its series of free and half-free cities puts us vividly in mind of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties overcome or as respects the consum mation attained; nor was it made so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise of Pompeius. Pompeius in particular consented to be praised, and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was. If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their deliverer and founder, as the man who had as well by land as by sea terminated the wars with which the world was filled, such a homage might not seem too extravagant for the vanquisher of the pirates and of the empires of the east. But the Romans this time surpassed the Greeks. The triumphal inscriptions of Pompeius himself enumerated
12 millions of people as subjugated and 1538 cities and strongholds as conquered-——it seemed as if quantity was to
make up for quality—and made the circle of his victories extend from the Maeotic Sea to the Caspian and from the latter to the Red Sea, when his eyes had never seen any one of the three ; nay farther, if he did not exactly say so, he at any rate induced the public to suppose that the annexation of Syria, which in truth was no heroic deed, had added the whole east as far as Bactria and India to the
Aggregate results.
444
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
Roman empire—so dim was the mist of distance, amidst which according to his statements the boundary-line of his eastern conquests was lost. The democratic servility, which has at all times rivalled that of courts, readily entered into these insipid extravagances. It was not satisfied by the pompous triumphal procession, which moved through the
O1. streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept. 693-—the forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great—adorned, to say nothing of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of Mithradates and by the children of the three mightiest kings ofAsia, Mithradates, Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its general, who had conquered twenty-two kings, with regal honours and bestowed on him the golden chaplet and the insignia of the magistracy for life. The coins struck in his honour exhibit the globe itself placed amidst the triple laurels brought home from the three continents, and sur mounted by the golden chaplet conferred by the burgesses on the man who had triumphed over Africa, Spain, and
Asia. It need excite no surprise, if in presence of such childish acts of homage voices were heard of an opposite import. Among the Roman world of quality it was currently aflirmed that the true merit of having subdued the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only gone thither to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around his own brow the laurels which another hand had plucked. Both statements were totally erroneous: it was not Pompeius but Glabrio that was sent to Asia to relieve Lucullus, and, bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was a fact that, when Pompeius took the supreme command, the Romans had forfeited all their earlier successes and had not a foot’s breadth of Pontic soil in their possession. More pointed and effective was the ridicule of the inhabitants of the capital, who failed not to nickname the mighty conqueror of the globe after the great powers which he had con quered, and saluted him now as “conqueror of Salem,’
CHAP- rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
445
now as “emir” (Arabarc/zcs), now as the Roman Sampsi ceramus.
The unprejudiced judge will not agree either with those exaggerations or with these disparagements. Lucullus and Pompeius, in subduing and regulating Asia, showed them as admin!
selves to be, not heroes and state-creators, but sagacious and energetic army-leaders and governors. As general Lucullus displayed no common talents and a self-confidence bordering on rashness, while Pompeius displayed military judgment and a rare self-restraint; for hardly has any general with such forces and a position so wholly free ever acted so cautiously as Pompeius in the east. The most brilliant undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him on all sides; he was free to start for the Cimmerian Bosporus and for the Red Sea ; he had opportunity of de claring war against the Parthians ; the revolted provinces of
Egypt invited him to dethrone king Ptolemaeus who was not recognized by the Romans, and to carry out the testament of Alexander; but Pompeius marched neither to Pantica paeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria; throughout he gathered only those fruits which of them selves fell to his hand. In like manner he fought all his battles by sea and land with a crushing superiority of force. Had this moderation proceeded from the strict observance
of the instructions given to him, as Pompeius was wont to profess, or even from a perception that the conquests of Rome must somewhere find a limit and that fresh acces
sions of territory were not advantageous to the state, it would deserve a higher praise than history confers on the most talented oflicer; but constituted as Pompeius was, his self-restraint was beyond doubt solely the result of his peculiar want of decision and of initiative—defects, indeed, which were in his case far more useful to the state than the opposite excellences of his predecessor. Certainly very grave errors were perpetrated both by Lucullus and by
Lucullus
Pompeius strators.
446
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST Boox v
Pompeius. Lucullus reaped their fruits himself, when his imprudent conduct wrested from him all the results of his victories; Pompeius left it to his successors to bear the consequences of his false policy towards the Parthians. He might either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized, as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood, which the court of
Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised, impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation. As administrator of Asia Lucullus acquired a more than princely wealth; and Pompeius also received as reward for its organization large sums in cash and still more considerable promissory notes from the king of Cappadocia, from the rich city of Antioch, and from other lords and communities. But such exactions had become almost a customary tax ; and both generals showed them selves at any rate to be not altogether venal in questions of greater importance, and, if possible, got themselves paid by the party whose interests coincided with those of Rome. Looking to the state of the times, this does not prevent us from characterizing the administration of both as compara tively commendable and conducted primarily in the interest of Rome, secondarily in that of the provincials.
The conversion of the clients into subjects, the better
of the eastern frontier, the establishment of a single and strong government, were full of blessing for the rulers as well as for the ruled. The financial gain acquired by Rome was immense; the new property tax, which with the exception of some specially exempted communities all those princes, priests, and cities had to pay to Rome, raised the Roman state-revenues almost by a half above their
regulation
can. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 447
former amount. Asia indeed suffered severely. Pompeius brought in money and jewels an amount of £2,000,000 (200,000,000 sesterces) into the state-chest and distributed £3,900,000 (1 6,000 talents) among his oflicers and soldiers ; if we add to this the considerable sums brought home by Lucullus, the non-oflicial exactions of the Roman army, and the amount of the damage done by the war, the financial exhaustion of the land may be readily conceived. The Roman taxation of Asia was perhaps in itself not worse than that of its earlier rulers, but it formed a heavier burden on the land, in so far as the taxes thenceforth went out of the country and only the lesser portion of the proceeds was again expended in Asia; and at any rate it was, in the old as well as the newly-acquired provinces, based on a system atic plundering of the provinces for the benefit of Rome. But the responsibility for this rests far less on the generals
personally than on the parties at home, whom these had to consider; Lucullus had even exerted himself energetically to set limits to the usurious dealings of the Roman capital ists in Asia, and this essentially contributed to bring about his fall. How much both men earnestly sought to revive the prosperity of the reduced provinces, is shown by their action in cases where no considerations of party policy tied their hands, and especially in their care for the cities of Asia Minor. Although for centuries afterwards many an Asiatic village lying in ruins recalled the times of the great war, Sinope might well begin a new era with the date of its re-establishment by Lucullus, and almost all the more con siderable inland towns of the Pontic kingdom might grate fully honour Pompeius as their founder. The organization of Roman Asia by Lucullus and Pompeius may with all its undeniable defects be described as on the whole judicious and praiseworthy ,; serious as were the evils that might still adhere to could not but be welcome to the sorely tormented Asiatics for the very reason that came attended
it
it, it
The east after the departure
Pompeius.
by the inward and outward peace, the absence of which had been so long and so painfully felt.
Peace continued substantially in the east, till the idea— merely indicated by Pompeius with his characteristic timidity —of joining the regions eastward of the Euphrates to the Roman empire was taken up again energetically but unsuc
cessfully by the new triumvirate of Roman regents, and soon thereafter the civil war drew the eastern provinces as well as all the rest into its fatal vortex. In the interval the governors of Cilicia had to fight constantly with the mountain tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes of the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins especially many Roman troops were destroyed; but these movements had no farther significance. More remarkable was the obstinate resistance, which the tough Jewish nation opposed to the conquerors. Alexander son of the deposed king Aristobulus, and Aristobulus himself who after some time succeeded in escaping from captivity, excited during
448
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
57-54. the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700) three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which the govem ment of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently succumbed. It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous of these revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army of occu pation in consequence of the Egyptian crisis furnished the immediate impulse, began with the murder of the Romans settled in Palestine. It was not without difliculty that the able governor succeeded in rescuing the few Romans, who had escaped this fate and found a temporary refuge on Mount Gerizim, from the insurgents who kept them block aded there, and in overpowering the revolt after several severely contested battles and tedious sieges. In consequence
of this the monarchy of the high-priests was abolished and
can. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
4. 49
the Jewish land was broken up, as Macedonia had formerly been, into five independent districts administered by governing colleges with an Optimate organization ; Samaria and other townships razed by the Jews were re-established, to form a counterpoise to Jerusalem ; and lastly a heavier tribute was imposed on the Jews than on the other Syrian
subjects of Rome
It still remains that we should glance at the kingdom of The
Egypt along with the last dependency that remained to it of ‘Si-“Egg; the extensive acquisitions of the Lagids, the fair island of
Cyprus. Egypt was now the only state of the Hellenic cast
that was still at least nominally independent ; just as formerly, when the Persians established themselves along
the eastern half of the Mediterranean, Egypt was their last conquest, so now the mighty conquerors from the west long delayed the annexation of that opulent and peculiar country. The reason lay, as was already indicated, neither in any fear of the resistance of Egypt nor in the want of a fitting occasion. Egypt was just about as powerless as Syria, and had already in 673 fallen in all due form of law to the ar. Roman community (p. 318). The control exercised over
the court of Alexandria by the royal guard—which appointed and deposed ministers and occasionally kings, took for itself what it pleased, and, if it was refused a rise of pay, besieged the king in his palace—was by no means liked in the country or rather in the capital (for the country with its population of agricultural slaves was hardly taken into account); and at least a party there wished for the annexa tion of Egypt by Rome, and even took steps to procure it. But the less the kings of Egypt could think of contending in arms against Rome, the more energetically Egyptian gold set itself to resist the Roman plans of union ; and in con sequence ofthe peculiar despotico-communistic centralization of the Egyptian finances the revenues of the court of
Alexandria were still nearly equal to the public income of
von iv
I29
450
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 800! v
Cyprus armored.
58,
Rome even after its augmentation by Pompeius. The suspicious jealousy of the oligarchy, which was chary of allowing any individual either to conquer or to administer Egypt, operated in the same direction. So the d: fade rulers of Egypt and Cyprus were enabled by bribing the leading men in the senate not merely to respite their totter ing crowns, but even to fortify them afresh and to purchase from the senate the confirmation of their royal title. But with this they had not yet obtained their object. Formal state-law required a decree of the Roman burgesses; until this was issued, the Ptolemies were dependent on the caprice of every democratic holder of power, and they had thus to commence the warfare of bribery also against the
other Roman party, which as the more powerful stipulated for far higher prices.
The result in the two cases was different. The annexa tion of Cyprus was decreed in 696 by the people, that
by the leaders of the democracy, the support given to piracy the Cypriots being alleged as the official reason why that course should now be adopted. Marcus Cato, entrusted by his opponents with the execution of this measure, came to the island without an army but he had no need of one. The king took poison; the inhabitants submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate, and were placed under the governor of Cilicia. The ample treasure of nearly 7000 talents (£1,700,000), which the
covetous and miserly king could not prevail on himself to apply for the bribes requisite to save his crown, fell along with the latter to the Romans, and filled after desirable fashion the empty vaults of their treasury.
On the other hand the brother who reigned in Egypt
decree of the the purchase
said to have amounted to 6000 talents
exasperated
equally
Ptolemaeus
25553;,’ succeeded in purchasing his recognition but [59. people from the new masters of Rome in 69
money
subjects, (£1,460,000). The citizens indeed, long
gpglsed
is
by
5 ;
by
;
a
is,
cr-rn. rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
451
against their good flute-player and bad ruler, and now reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus and the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans (696), chased him on that account out of the country. us. When the king thereupon applied, as if on account of his eviction from the estate which he had purchased, to those who sold these were reasonable enough to see that
was their duty as honest men of business to get back his kingdom for Ptolemaeus only the parties could not agree as to the person to whom the important charge of occupying
Egypt by force along with the perquisites thence to be
should be assigned. It was only when the triumvirate was confirmed anew at the conference of Luca, that this afl‘air was also arranged, after Ptolemaeus had agreed to further payment of 10,000 talents (£2,400,000) the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, now obtained orders from those in power to take the necessary steps immediately for bringing back the king. The citizens of Alexandria had meanwhile placed the crown on the head of Berenice the eldest daughter of the ejected king, and given to her a husband in the person of one of the spiritual princes of Roman Asia, Archelaus the high-priest of Comana
expected
439), who possessed ambition enough to hazard his secure and
respectable position in the hope of mounting the throne of the Lagids. His attempts to gain the Roman regents to his interests remained without success; but he did not recoil before the idea of being obliged to maintain his new kingdom with arms in hand even against the Romans.
Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war and
against Egypt but directed to do so by the regents, made
pretext out of the alleged furtherance of piracy the Gabinlu Egyptians and the ‘building of fleet Archelaus, and
started without delay for the Egyptian frontier (699). 55,
The march through the sandy desert between Gaza and
gags;
a
by
by
(p.
a ; it
a
it,
;
A Roman garrison remains in Alexandria.
country
45: POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK V
Pelusium, in which so many invasions
against Egypt had broken down, was on this occasion successfully accomplished—a result especially due to the quick and skilful leader of the cavalry Marcus Antonius. The frontier fortress of Pelusium also was surrendered without resistance by the Jewish garrison stationed there.
In front of this city the Romans met the Egyptians, defeated them—on which occasion Antonius again distinguished himself—and arrived, as the first Roman army, at the Nile. Here the fleet and army of the Egyptians were drawn up for the last decisive struggle; but the Romans once more conquered, and Archelaus himself with many of his followers perished in the combat. Immediately after this battle the capital surrendered, and therewith all resistance was at an
end The unhappy land was handed over to its legitimate oppressor ; the hanging and beheading, with which, but for the intervention of the chivalrous Antonius, Ptolemaeus would have already in Pelusium begun to celebrate the restoration of the legitimate government, now took its course unhindered, and first of all the innocent daughter was sent by her father to the scaffold. The payment of the reward
with the regents broke down through the absolute impossibility of exacting from the exhausted land the enormous sums required, although they took from the
poor people the last penny; but care was taken that the
should at least be kept quiet by the garrison of Roman infantry and Celtic and German cavalry left in the capital, which took the place of the native praetorians and otherwise emulated them not unsuccessfully. The previous hegemony of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a direct military occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double burden imposed on it.
agreed upon
previously directed
CHAP. v PARTIES DURING ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
453
CHAPTER V
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS.
WITH the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the The
capital changed positions. From the time that the elected defeated
' general of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his aristocracy.
party, or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance in the capital. The nobility doubtless still stood in compact array, and still as before there issued from the comitial machinery none but consuls, who according to the ex pression of the democrats were already designated to the consulate in their cradles ; to command the elections and break down the influence of the old families over them was beyond the power even of the holders of power. But unfortunately the consulate, at the very moment when they
had got the length of virtually excluding the “new men” from began itself to grow pale before the newly-risen star of the exceptional military power. The aristocracy
felt this, though they did not exactly confess it; they gave themselves up as lost. Except Quintus Catulus, who with honourable firmness persevered at his far from pleasant post as champion of vanquished party down to his death (694), no Optimate could be named from the highest ranks 60 of the nobility, who would have sustained the interests of the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness. Their very men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus
a
it,
Cato.
95.
Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired, so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas, in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the senate-house amidst their gardens and libraries, their aviaries and fish-ponds. Still more, of course, was this the case with the younger generation of the aristocracy, which was either wholly absorbed in luxury and literature or turning towards the rising sun.
There was among the younger men a single exception ; it was Marcus Porcius Cato (born in 6 5 man of the best intentions and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most Quixotic and one of the most cheerless phenomena in this age so abounding in political caricatures. Honourable and steadfast, earnest in purpose and in action, full of attach ment to his country and to its hereditary constitution, but dull in intellect and sensuously as well as morally destitute of passion, he might certainly have made tolerable state accountant. But unfortunately he fell early under the power of formalism, and swayed partly the phrases of the
toa, which in their abstract baldness and spiritless isolation were current among the genteel world of that day, partly by the example of his great-grandfather whom he deemed
his especial task to reproduce, he began to walk about in the sinful capital as model burgess and mirror of virtue, to scold at the times like the old Cato, to travel on foot instead of riding, to take no interest, to decline badges of distinction as soldier, and to introduce the restoration of the good old days by going after the precedent of king Romulus without shirt. A strange caricature of his ancestor—the gray-haired farmer whom hatred and anger made an orator, who wielded in masterly style the plough as well as the sword, who with his narrow, but original and sound common sense ordinarily hit the nail on the head— was this young unimpassioned pedant from whose
454
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK . V
lips dropped scholastic wisdom and who was everywhere seen
a a
a
it
by
a
9), a
CHAP. v DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
sitting book in hand, this philosopher who understood neither the art of war nor any other art whatever, this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals. Yet he attained to moral and thereby even to political importance. In an utterly wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told powerfully on the multitude; he
even formed a school, and there were individuals—it is true they were but few—who in their turn copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher. On the same cause depended also his political influence. As he was the only conservative of note who possessed if not talent and insight, at any rate integrity and courage, and was always ready to throw himself into the breach whether it was necessary to do so or not, he soon became the
recognized champion of the Optimate party, although neither his age nor his rank nor his intellect entitled him to be so. Where the perseverance of a single resolute man could decide, he no doubt sometimes achieved a success, and in questions of detail, more particularly of a financial character, he often judiciously interfered, as indeed he was absent from no meeting of the senate; his quaestorship in fact formed an epoch, and as long as he lived he checked the details of the public budget, regarding which he maintained of course a constant warfare with the farmers of the taxes.
For the rest, he lacked simply every ingredient of a states man. He was incapable of even comprehending a political aim and of surveying political relations; his whole tactics consisted in setting his face against every one who deviated or seemed to him to deviate from the traditionary moral and political catechism of the aristocracy, and thus of course he worked as often into the hands of his opponents as into those of his own party. The Don Quixote of the aristocracy, he
proved by his character and his actions that at this time, while there was certainly still an aristocracy in existence, the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.
4'J5
456 Democra
tic attacks.
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK v
To continue the conflict with this aristocracy brought little honour. Of course the attacks of the democracy on the vanquished foe did not on that account cease. The pack of the Populares threw themselves on the broken ranks of the nobility like the sutlers on a conquered camp, and the surface at least of politics was by this agitation ruffled into high waves of foam. The multitude entered into the matter the more readily, as Gaius Caesar especially kept them in good humour by the extravagant magnificence of his games (689)—in which all the equipments, even the cages of the wild beasts, appeared of massive silver—and generally by a liberality which was all the more princely that it was based solely on the contraction of debt. The attacks on the nobility were of the most varied kind. The abuses of aristocratic rule afforded copious materials; magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed a
iberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, Marcus Cicero, continued systematically to unveil the most offensive and scandalous aspects of the Optimate doings and to propose laws against them. The senate was directed to give access to foreign envoys on set days, with the view of preventing the usual postponement of audiences. Loans raised by foreign ambassadors in Rome were declared non actionable, as this was the only means of seriously checking the corruptions which formed the order of the day in the
07. senate (68 The right of the senate to give dispensation 67. in particular cases from the laws was restricted (687) as was also the abuse whereby every Roman of rank, who had private business to attend to in the provinces, got
himself invested by the senate with the character of 68. Roman envoy thither (691). They heightened the penalties against the purchase of votes and electioneering intrigues
57, es. (687, 691); which latter were especially increased in scandalous fashion by the attempts of the individuals ejected from the senate 380) to get back to through re-election.
(p.
it
aa
;
7).
CHAP. v DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
457
What had hitherto been simply understood as matter of course was now expressly laid down as a law, that the
were bound to administer justice in conformity with the rules set forth by them, after the Roman fashion,
at their entering on office (687). 67.
But, above all, efforts were made to complete the democratic restoration and to realize the leading ideas of the Gracchan period in a form suitable to the times. The
election of the priests by the comitia, which Gnaeus Domitius had introduced (iii. 46 3) and Sulla had again done away 115), was established by law of the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 69 r. The democrats were fond 68. of pointing out how much was still wanting towards the restoration of the Sempronian corn-laws in their full extent, and at the same time passed over in silence the fact that under the alteredb circumstances—with the straitened condition of the public finances and the great increase in
the number of fully-privileged Roman citizens—that restora
tion was absolutely impracticable. In the country between Trans the Po and the Alps they zealously fostered the agitation padanes. for political equality with the Italians. As early as 686 68. Gaius Caesar travelled from place to place there for this purpose; in 689 Marcus Crassus as censor made arrange 65. ments to enrol the inhabitants directly in the burgess-roll
—which was only frustrated by the resistance of his colleague; in the following censorships this attempt seems
praetors
to have been repeated. As formerly Gracchus and Flaccus had been the patrons of the Latins, so the present leaders of the democracy gave themselves forth as
of the Transpadanes, and Gaius Piso (consul in i
687) had bitterly to regret that he had ventured to outrage 67.
one of these clients of Caesar and Crassus. On the other Freedmen. hand the same leaders appeared no means disposed to
advocate the political equalization of the freedmen the
tribune of the people Gaius Manilius, who thinly
regularly
protectors
in a
;
by
(p.
a
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK V
67.