No More Learning

The monarchy of the Arsacids had to pass through a dangerous crisis about the time of the Gracchi, chiefly in
The Parthian state.
of the inroads of Turanian tribes. The ninth Arsacid, Mithradates II. or the Great (63o P~667 had recovered for the state its position of ascendency in the
interior of Asia, repulsed the Scythians, and advanced the
frontier of the kingdom towards Syria and Armenia; but
towards the end of his life new troubles disturbed his reign
and, while the grandees of the kingdom including his own
brother Orodes rebelled against the king and at length that
brother overthrew him and had put him to death, the hitherto unimportant Armenia rose into power. This Armenll.
which since its declaration of independence (ii. 473) had been divided into the north-eastern portion or Armenia proper, the kingdom of the Artaxiads, and the south-westem or Sophene, the kingdom of the Zariadrids, was for the first time united into one kingdom the Artaxiad Tigranes (who had reigned since 660); and this
doubling of his power on the one hand, and the weakness of the Parthian rule on the other, enabled the new king of all Armenia not only to free himself from dependence on the Parthians and to recover the provinces formerly ceded to them, but even to bring to Armenia the titular supremacy of Asia, as had passed from the Achaemenids to the Seleucids and from the Seleucids to the Arsacids.
Lastly in Asia Minor the territorial arrangements, which Asia had been made under Roman influence after the dissolution Minor. of the kingdom of Attalus (iii. :80), still subsisted in the
main unchanged. In the condition of the dependent states
consequence
country,
124-87.
it
by
P),
;
Mithn dates
Eupator.
1 80438.
6 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES 300x IV
—the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pontus, the prin cipalities of Paphlagonia and Galatia, the numerous city leagues and free towns—no outward change was at first discernible. But, intrinsically, the character of the Roman rule had certainly undergone everywhere a material altera- tion. Partly through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the Roman revolution— in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the soil in the province of Asia by Gaius Gracchus, in the Roman tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of the revenue added to their other avocations there—the Roman rule, barely tolerable even from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia that neither the crown of the king nor the hut of the peasant there was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn seemed to grow for the Roman decumanur, and every child of free parents seemed to be born for the Roman slave-drivers. It is true that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his inexhaustible passive endurance; but it was not patience and reflection that made him bear it peacefully. It was rather the peculiarly Oriental lack of initiative; and in these peaceful lands, amidst these effeminate nations,
strange and terrible things might happen, it once there should appear among them a man who knew how to give the signal for revolt.
There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithradates VI. surnamed Eupator (born about 624, t 691) who traced back his lineage on the father’s side in the six teenth generation to king Darius the son of Hystaspes and
in the eighth to Mithradates I. the founder of the Pontic kingdom, and was on the mother’s side descended from the Alexandrids and the Seleucids. After the early death of his father Mithradates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Sinope, he had received the title of king
CHAP- vm THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
7
about 634, when a boy of eleven years of age; but the 110. diadem brought to him only trouble and danger. His guardians, and even as it would seem his own mother called to take a part in the government by his father’s will, conspired against the boy-king's life. It is said that, in order to escape from the daggers of his legal protectors, he became of his own accord a wanderer, and during seven years, changing his resting-place night after night, a fugitive
in his own kingdom, led the homeless life of a hunter. Thus the boy grew into a powerful man. Although our accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to written records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradi tion, which is generated in the east with the rapidity of lightning, early adorned the mighty king with many of the traits of its Samsons and Rustems. These traits, how ever, belong to the character, just as the crown of clouds belongs to the character of the highest mountain-peaks; the outlines of the figure appear in both cases only more coloured and fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered. The armour, which fitted the gigantic frame of king Mithra dates, excited the wonder of the Asiatics and still more that of the Italians. As a runner he overtook the swiftest deer; as a rider he broke in the wild steed, and was able by changing horses to accomplish 120 miles in a day; as a charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand, and gained in competition many a prize—it was dangerous, no doubt, in such sport to carry of victory from the king. In hunting on horseback, he hit the game at full gallop and never missed his aim. He challenged competition at table also —he arranged banqueting matches and carried off in person the prizes proposed for the most substantial eater and the hardest drinker—and not less so in the pleasures of the harem, as was shown among other things by the licentious letters of his Greek mistresses, which were found among his papers. His intellectual wants he satisfied by the
8 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK 1v
wildest superstition—the interpretation of dreams and the Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king’s hours and by a rude adoption of Hellenic civilization. He was fond of Greek art and music; that is to say, he collected
articles, rich furniture, old Persian and Greek objects of luxury—his cabinet of rings was famous—he had constantly Greek historians, philosophers, and poets in his train, and proposed prizes at his court-festivals not only for the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest jester and the best singer. Such was the man ; the sultan corresponded. In the east, where the relation between the ruler and the ruled bears the character of natural rather than of moral law, the subject resembles the dog alike in
fidelity and in falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful. In both respects Mithradates has hardly been surpassed.
By his orders there died or pined in perpetual captivity for real or alleged treason his mother, his brother, his sister espoused to him, three of his sons and as many of his daughters. Still more revolting perhaps is the fact, that among his secret papers were found sentences of death,
drawn up beforehand, against several of his most con fidential servants. In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan, that he afterwards, for the mere purpose of
from his enemies the trophies of victory, caused his two Greek wives, his sister and his whole harem to be put to death, and merely left to the women the choice of the mode of dying. He prosecuted the experi mental study of poisons and antidotes as an important branch of the business of government, and tried to inure his body to particular poisons. He had early learned to look for treason and assassination at the hands of every body and especially of his nearest relatives, and he had
early learned to practise them against everybody and most of all against those nearest to him ; of which the necessary consequence—attested by all his history-—was, that all his
precious
withdrawing
CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES 9
undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom he trusted. At the same time we dcubtless meet with isolated traits of high-minded justice: when he punished traitors, he ordinarily spared those who had become involved in the crime simply from their personal relations with the leading culprit; but such fits of equity are not wholly wanting in every barbarous tyrant. What really distinguishes Mithradates amidst the multitude of similar sultans, is his boundless activity. He disappeared one fine morning from his palace and remained unheard of for months, so that he was given over as lost; when he returned, he had wandered incognito through all western Asia and reconnoitred everywhere the country and the people. In like manner he was not only in general a man of fluent speech, but he administered justice to each of the twenty-two nations over which he ruled in its own language without needing an interpreter—a trait significant of the versatile ruler of the many-tongued east. His whole activity as a ruler bears the same character. So far as we know
(for our authorities are unfortunately altogether silent as to his internal administration) his energies, like those of every other sultan, were spent in collecting treasures, in assem bling armies—which were usually, in his earlier years at least, led against the enemy not by the king in person, but by some Greek £0na'0tz‘z'ere—in efforts to add new satrapies to the old. Of higher elements—desire to advance civiliza tion, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special gifts of genius-there are found, in our traditional accounts at least, no distinct traces in Mithradates, and we have no reason to place him on a level even with the great rulers of the Osmans, such as Mohammed II. and Suleiman. Notwithstanding his Hellenic culture, which sat on him not much better than the Roman armour sat on his Cappa docians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary stamp, coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, super
IO THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK IV
stitious, cruel, perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous in organization, so powerful in physical endowments, that his defiant laying about him and his unshaken courage in resistance look frequently like talent, sometimes even like genius. Granting that during the death-struggle of the re public it was easier to offer resistance to Rome than in the times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only the complica tion of the Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy which rendered it possible for Mithradates to resist the Romans twice as long as J'ugurtha did, it remains neverthe less true that before the Parthian wars he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in the east, and that he defended himself against them as the lion of the desert defends himself against the hunter. Still we are not entitled, in accordance with what we know, to recognize in him more than the resistance to be expected from so vigorous a nature.
But, whatever judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king, his historical position remains in a high degree significant. The Mithradatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political opposition offered by Hellas to Rome, and the beginning of a revolt against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper grounds of antagonism—the national reaction of the Asiatics against the Occidentals. The empire of Mithradates was, like himself, Oriental; polygamy and the system of the harem prevailed at court and generally among persons of rank ; the religion of the inhabitants of the country as well as the official religion of the court was pre-eminently the old national worship; the Hellenism there was little different from the Hellenism of the Armenian Tigra nids and the Arsacids of the Parthian empire. The Greeks of Asia Minor might imagine for a brief moment that they had found in this king a support for their political dreams ; his battles were really fought for matters very different from those which were decided on the fields of
CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES I1
Magnesia and Pydna. They formed—after a long truce— a new passage in the huge duel between the west and the east, which has been transmitted from the conflicts at Marathon to the present generation and will perhaps reckon its future by thousands of years as it has reckoned its past.
Manifest however as is the foreign and un-Hellenic cha The
racter of the whole life and action of the Cappadocian king, nationali ties of
it is diflicult definitely to specify the national element pre Asia
in nor will research perhaps ever succeed in Minor. getting beyond generalities or in attaining clear views on
this point. In the whole circle of ancient civilization there
no region where the stocks subsisting side by side or cross ing each other were so numerous, so heterogeneous, so variously from the remotest times intermingled, and where in consequence the relations of the nationalities were less clear than in Asia Minor. The Semitic population continued in an unbroken chain from Syria to Cyprus and Cilicia, and to the original stock of the population along the west coast in the regions of Caria and Lydia seems also to havc belonged, while the north-western point was occupied by the Bithynians, who were akin to the Thracians in Europe. The
interior and the north coast, on the other hand, were filled chiefly Indo-Germanic peoples most nearly cognate to the
ponderating
Iranian. In the case of the Armenian and languages1 ascertained, in that of the Cappadocian
highly probable, that they had immediate aflinity with the Zend and the statement made as to the Mysians, that
among them the Lydian and Phrygian languages met, just denotes mixed Semitic-Iranian population that may be compared perhaps with that of Assyria. As to the regions stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially Lydia, there still, notwithstanding the full remains of the native
The words quoted as Phrygian Ba-yaTos=Zeus and the old royal name Mdns have been beyond doubt correctly referred to the Zend bagluz=God and the Germanic Murmur, Indian Mama (Lassen, leimbnftderdeumbcn morgmldnd. Gudhcbafl, voL x. p. 329 L).
Phrygian
1
is
is
is
; a
it
it is
it,
it
by
Pontus.
language and writing that are in this particular instance extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable that these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo Germans rather than the Semites. How all this confused mass of peoples was overlaid first with a net of Greek mercantile cities, and then with the Hellenism called into life by the military as well as intellectual ascendency ot the Greek nation, has been set forth in outline already.
In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district in which, situated as it was at the north eastern extremity of Asia Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the Iranian nationality pre sumably preserved itself with less admixture than anywhere else in Asia Minor. Not even Hellenism had penetrated far into that region. With the exception of the coast where several originally Greek settlements subsisted—especially the im portant commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace and residence of Mithradates and the
most flourishing city of the empire~—the country was still in a very primitive condition. Not that it had lain waste ; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also compara tively populous. But there were hardly any towns properly so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser Armenia alone, in fact, there were
counted seventy-five of these little royal forts. We do not . find that Mithradates materially contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire ; and situated as he was,—in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite conscious, reaction against Hellenism,—this is easily conceivable.
II THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
BOOK Iv
CHAP. vm THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
13
He appears more actively employed—likewise quite in A‘cquisi
the Oriental style—in enlarging on all sides his kingdom,
which was even then not small, though its compass is prob- by Mithra ably over-stated at 2 300 miles ; we find his armies, his fleets, dues‘ and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well as towards
Armenia and towards Asia Minor. But nowhere did so free
and ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern
and northern shores of the Black Sea, the state of which a’.
that time we must not omit to glance at, however difficult
or in fact impossible it is to give a really distinct idea of
On the eastern coast of the Black Sea—which, previously
almost unknown, was first opened up to more general knowledge by Mithradates—the region of Colchis on the
Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important com- Colchis. mercial town of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into satrapy of Pontus. Of still
greater moment were his enterprises in the northern regions. 1
The wide steppes destitute of hills and trees, which stretch Nonhem to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, and of the 32%‘; Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions—more Sea.
225,01;
from the variations of temperature fluctuating between the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts for period of twenty-two months or longer—little adapted for agriculture or for permanent
settlement at all; and they always were so, although two thousand years ago the state of the climate was presumably somewhat less unfavourable than at the present
They are here grouped together, because, though they were in part doubtless not executed till between the first and the second war with Rome, they to some extent preceded even the first (Memn. 3o Justin. xxxviii. up. fin. App. Milhr. r3 Eutrop. v. and anarrative in chronological order in this case absolutely impracticable. Even the recently found decree of Chersonesus (p. 17) has given no information in this respect. According to Diophantus was twice sent against the Taurian Scythians but that the second insurrection of these connected with the decree of
the Roman senate in favour of the Scythian princes (p. 21) not clear from the document, and not even probable.
especially
is
;
is
it
5) is
;
1
it.
1 is ;
is ;
it
a
a
THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES B00! IV
The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them
into these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and
led (and still to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life
with their herds of oxen or still more frequently of horses, changing their places of abode and pasture, and carrying their effects along with them in Waggon-houses. Their equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode of life; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great measure on horseback and always in loose array, equipped with helmet and coat of mail of leather and leather-covered shield, armed with sword, lance, and bow—the ancestors of the modern Cossacks. The Scythians originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian tribes advancing from east to west,—Sauromatae, Roxolani, ]'azyges,—who are commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more aflinity with Median and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the great Zend stock. Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direc tion, particularly the Getae, who reached as far as the Dniester. Between the two there intruded themselves— probably as offsets of the great Germanic migration, the main body of which seems not to have touched the Black Sea—the Celts, as they were called, on the Dnieper, the Bastarnae in the same quarter, and the Peucini at the mouth of the Danube. A state, in the proper sense, was nowhere formed; every tribe lived by itself under its princes and elders.
In sharp contrast to all these barbarians stood the
1 It is very probable that the extraordinary drought, which is the chief obstacle now to agriculture in the Crimea and in these regions generally, has been greatly increased by the disappearance of the forests of central and southern Russia, which formerly to some extent protected the coast-provinces from the parching north-east wind.
X4
day. 1
Hellenism in that quarter.
CRAP. vm THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES r 5
Hellenic settlements, which at the time of the mighty impetus given to Greek commerce had been founded chiefly
by the efforts of Miletus on these coasts, partly as trading— marts, partly as stations for prosecuting important fisheries
and even for agriculture, for which, as we have already said,
the north-western shores of the Black Sea presented in antiquity conditions less unfavourable than at the present
day. For the use of the soil the Hellenes paid here, like
the Phoenicians in Libya, tax and ground-rent to the native rulers. The most important of these settlements were the
free city of Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), built on
the territory of the Scythians in the Tauric peninsula (Crimea), and maintaining itself in moderate prosperity, under circumstances far from favourable, by virtue of its good constitution and the public spirit of its citizens; and Panticapaeum (Kertch) at the opposite side of the peninsula
on the straits leading from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, governed since the year 457 by hereditary burgo- 297. masters, afterwards called kings of the Bosporus, the Archaeanactidae, Spartocidae, and Paerisadae. The culture
of corn and the fisheries of the Sea of Azov had rapidly raised the city to prosperity. Its territory still in the time of Mithradates embraced the lesser eastern division of the Crimea including the town of Theodosia, and on the opposite Asiatic continent the town of Phanagoria and the district of Sindica. In better times the lords of Panti capaeum had by land ruled the peoples on the east coast of the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Kuban, and had commanded the Black Sea with their fleet; but Panti capaeum was no longer what it had been. Nowhere was the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt more deeply than at these distant outposts. Athens in its good times had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the
duties of a leading power—duties which certainly were specially brought home to the Athenians by their need of
Mithra dates mater of the Bos poran kingdom.
16 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK 1v
Pontic grain. After the downfall of the Attic maritime power these regions were, on the whole, left to themselves. The Greek land-powers never got so far as to intervene seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and Lysimachus sometimes attempted it ; and the Romans, on whom with the conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor devolved the political obligation of becoming the strong protectors of Greek civilization at the point where it needed such protection, utterly neglected the summons of interest as well as of honour. The fall of Sinope, the decline of Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the
northern shore of the Black Sea. A vivid picture of their position with reference to the roving barbarians is given to us by an inscription of Olbia (near Oczakow not far from the mouth of the Dnieper), which apparently may be placed not long before the time of Mithradates. The citizens had not only to send annual tribute to the court-camp of the barbarian king, but also to make him a gift when he encamped before the town or even simply passed by, and in a similar way to buy ofl" minor chieftains and in fact sometimes the whole horde with presents; and it fared ill with them if the gift appeared too small. The treasury of the town was bankrupt and they had to pledge the temple jewels. Meanwhile the savage tribes were thronging with out in front of the gates; the territory was laid waste, the field-labourers were dragged away an mama, and, what was worst of all, the weaker of their barbarian neighbours, the Scythians, sought, in order to shelter themselves from the pressure of the more savage Celts, to obtain possession of the walled town, so that numerous citizens were leaving it and the inhabitants alreadycontemplated its entire surrender.
Such was the state in which Mithradates found matters, when his Macedonian phalanx crossing the ridge of the Caucasus descended into the valleys of the Kuban and Terek and his fleet at the same time appeared in the
CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
17
Crimean waters. No wonder that here too, as had already been the case in Dioscurias, the Hellenes everywhere received the king of Pontus with open arms and regarded the half-Hellene and his Cappadocians armed in Greek fashion as their deliverers. What Rome had here neglected, became apparent. The demands on the rulers of Panti- capaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exor bitant height; the town of Chersonesus found itself hard pressed by Scilurus king of the Scythians dwelling in the peninsula and his fifty sons; the former were glad to sur render their hereditary lordship, and the latter their long preserved freedom, in order to save their last possession, their Hellenism. It was not in vain. Mithradates’ brave generals, Diophantus and Neoptolemus, and his disciplined troops easily got the better of the peoples of the steppes. Neoptolemus defeated them at the straits of Panticapaeum partly by water, partly in winter on the ice; Chersonesus
was delivered, the strongholds of the Taurians were broken, and the possession of the peninsula was secured by judi ciously constructed fortresses. Diophantus marched against the Reuxinales or, as they were afterwards called, the Roxolani (between the Dnieper and Don) who came forward to the aid of the Taurians 5 50,000 of them fled before his 6000 phalangites, and the Pontic arms penetrated as far as the Dnieper. 1 Thus Mithradates acquired here a second
1 The recently discovered decree of the town of Chersonesus in honour of this Diophantus (Dittenberger, Syll. n. 252) thoroughly confirms the traditional account. It shows us the city in the immediate vicinity-the port of Balaclava must at that time have been in the power of the Tauri and Siinferopol in that of the Scythians—hard pressed partly by the Tauri on the south coat of the Crimea, partly and especially by the Scythians who held in their power the whole interior of the peninsula and the main land adjoining; it shows us further how the general of king Mithradates relieves on all sides the Greek city, defeats the Tauri, and erccts in their territory a stronghold (probably Eupatorion), restores the connection between the western and the eastern Hellenes of the peninsula, over powers in the west the dynasty of Scilurus, and in the east Saumacus prince of the Scythians, pursues the Scythians even to the mainland, and at length conquers them with the Reuxinales—such is the name given to the
VOL. IV 102
18 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK Iv
kingdom combined with that of Pontus and, like the latter, mainly based on a number of Greek commercial towns. It was called the kingdom of the Bosporus; it embraced the modern Crimea with the opposite Asiatic promontory, and annually furnished to the royal chests and magazines 20o talents (£48,000) and 270,000 bushels of grain. The tribes of the steppe themselves from the north slope of the Caucasus to the mouth of the Danube entered, at least in great part, into relations of dependence on, or treaty with, the Pontic king and, if they furnished him with no other aid, afforded at any rate an inexhaustible field for recruiting his armies.
While thus the most important successes were gained towards the north, the king at the same time extended his dominions towards the east and the west. The Lesser Armenia was annexed by him and converted from a de pendent principality into an integral part of the Pontic kingdom ; but still more important was the close connection which he formed with the king of the Greater Armenia. He not only gave his daughter Cleopatra in marriage to Tigranes, but it was mainly through his support that Tigranes shook ofi" the yoke of the Arsacids and took their place in Asia. An agreement seems to have been made between the two to the effect that Tigranes should take in hand to occupy Syria and the interior of Asia, and Mithradates Asia Minor and the coasts of the Black Sea, under promise of mutual support ; and it was beyond doubt the more active and capable Mithradates who brought about this agreement
with a view to cover his rear and to secure a powerful
later Roxolani here, where they first appear--in the great pitched battle. which is mentioned also in the traditional account. There does not seem to have been any formal subordination of the Greek city under the king ; Mithradates appears only as protecting ally, who fights the battles against the Scythians that passed as invincible (Tot): dvwroo'rd'rovs (Iona/Was $1,149), on behalf of the Greek city, which probably stood to him nearly in the relation of Massilia and Athens to Rome. The Scythians on the other hand in the Crimea become subjects (i‘ndnoot) of Mithradates.
ally.
CRAP. V"! THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
19
Lastly, in Asia Minor the king turned his eyes towards Paphla the interior of Paphlagonia—the coast had for long belonged 3133;“ to the Pontic empire—and towards Cappadocia. 1 The docin former was claimed on the part of Pontus as having acquimd' been bequeathed by the testament of the last of the Pylaemenids to king Mithradates Euergetes: against this,
however, legitimate or illegitimate pretenders and the land
itself protested. As to Cappadocia, the Pontic rulers had
not forgotten that this country and Cappadocia on the sea had
been formerly united, and continually cherished ideas of re
union. Paphlagonia was occupied by Mithradates in concert
with Nicomedes king of Bithynia, with whom he shared
the land. When the senate raised objections to this course, Mithradates yielded to its remonstrance, while Nicomedes
equipped one of his sons with the name of Pylaemenes and under this title retained the country to himself. The policy
of the allies adopted still worse expedients in Cappadocia, King Ariarathes VI. was killed by Gordius, it was said by the orders, at any rate in the interest, of Ariarathes’ brother
in-law Mithradates Eupator: his young son Ariarathes knew no means of meeting the encroachments of the king of Bithynia except the ambiguous help of his uncle, in return for which the latter then suggested to him that he should allow the murderer of his father, who had taken flight, to return to Cappadocia. This led to a rupture and to war; but when the two armies confronted each other ready for battle, the
1 The chronology of the following eventscanonlybedetermined approxi
mately. Mithradates Eupator seems to have practically entered on the government somewhere about 640 ; Sulla‘s intervention took place in 662
(Liv. E). 70) with which accords the calculation assigning to the Mith
radatic wars 2. period of thirty years (662-691) (l’lin. 1:’. 1V. vii. 26, 97). 92-68, In the interval fell the quarrels as to the Paphlagonian and Cappadocian succession, with which the bribery attempted by Mithradates in Rome
(Diod. 631) apparently in the first tribunate of Saturninus in 651 (iii. 466) 103, was probably connected. Marius, who left Rome in 665 and did not 99. remain long in the east, found Mithradates already in Cappadocia and
Mnegotiated with him regarding his aggressions (Cic. ad Brut. i. 5 ; Plut. . War. 31); Ariarathes VI. had consequently been by that time put to
114, 92,
30 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK |v
uncle requested a previous conference with the nephew and thereupon cut down the unarmed youth with his own hand. Gordius, the murderer of the father, then undertook the government by the directions of Mithradates ; and although the indignant population rose against him and called the younger son of the last king to the throne, the latter was unable to offer any permanent resistance to the superior forces of Mithradates. The speedy death of the youth placed by the people on the throne gave to the Pontic king the greater liberty of action, because with that youth the Cappadocian royal house became extinct. A pseudo
Ariarathes was proclaimed as nominal regent, just as had been done in Paphlagonia; under whose name Gordius administered the kingdom as lieutenant of Mithradates.
Mightier than any native monarch for many a day had been, Mithradates bore rule alike over the northern and the southern shores of the Black Sea and far into the interior of Asia Minor. The resources of the king for war by land and by sea seemed immeasurable. His recruiting field stretched from the mouth of the Danube to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea; Thracians, Scythians, Sauromatae, Bastarnae, Colchians, Iberians (in the modern Georgia) crowded under his banners ; above all he recruited his war-hosts from the brave Bastarnae. For his fleet the
satrapy of Colchis supplied him with the most excellent timber, which was floated down from the Caucasus, besides flax, hemp, pitch, and wax; pilots and oflicers were hired in Phoenicia and Syria. The king, it was said, had marched into Cappadocia with 600 scythe-chariots, 10,000 horse,
80,000 foot; and he had by no means mustered for this war all his resources. In the absence of any Roman or other naval power worth mentioning, the Pontic fleet, with Sinope and the ports of the Crimea as its rallying points, had exclusive command of the Black Sea.
CHAP- VIII THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES 21
That the Roman senate asserted its general policy—of The keeping down the states more or less dependent on it--also if: in dealing with that of Pontus, is shown by its attitude on radates occasion of the succession to the throne after the sudden
death of Mithradates V. From the boy in minority who followed him there was taken away Great Phrygia, which
had been :‘onferred on his father for his taking part in
the war against Aristonicus or rather for his good money
(iii. 358), and this region was added to the territory im
mediately subject to Rome. 1 But, after this boy had at
attained majority, the same senate showed utter passiveness towards his aggressions on all sides and towards the formation of this imposing power, the development of which occupies perhaps a period of twenty years. It was passive, while one of its dependent states became
into a great military power, having at command more than a hundred thousand armed men ; while the ruler of that state entered into the closest connection with the new great-king of the east, who was placed partly by his aid at the head of the states in the interior of Asia; while he annexed the neighbouring Asiatic kingdoms and principalities under pretexts which sounded almost like a mockery of the ill-informed and far-distant protecting power; while, in fine, he even established himself in Europe and ruled as king over the Tauric peninsula, and as lord-protector almost to the Macedono-Thracian frontier. These circumstances indeed formed the subject of discussion in the senate; but when the illustrious corporation consoled itself in the affair of the Paphlagonian succession with the fact that Nicomedes appealed to his pseudo-Pylaemenes, it was evidently not so
1 A decree of the senate of the year 638 recently found in the village 116. Aresti to the south of Synnada (Viereck, Sermo Gran-ur qua rmalu: Romanur urur rit, p.
51) confirms all the regulations made by the king up
to his death and thus shows that Great Phrygia after the death of the father was not merely taken from the son, as Appian also states. but was thereby brought directly under Roman allegiance.
length
developed
Interven
Sulla sent to Cappa docia
22 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK iv
much deceived as grateful for any pretext which spared it from serious interference. Meanwhile the complaints became daily more numerous and more urgent. The
of the Tauric Scythians, whom Mithradates had driven from the Crimea, turned for help to Rome; those of the senators who at all reflected on the traditional maxims of Roman policy could not but recollect that formerly, under circumstances so wholly different, the crossing of king Antiochus to Europe and the occupation of the Thracian Chersonese by his troops had become the signal for the Asiatic war 453), and could not but see that the occupation of the Tauric Chersonese by the Pontic king ought still less to be tolerated now. The scale was at
princes
tion of the last turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom of senate.
Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of Bithynia—who on his part had hoped to gain possession of
another pseudo-Ariarathes, and now saw that the Pontic pretender excluded his own—would hardly fail to urge the Roman government to intervention. The senate resolved that Mithradates should reinstate the
Scythian princes—so far were they driven out of the track of right policy their negligent style of government, that instead of supporting the Hellenes against the barbarians they had now on the contrary to support the Scythians against those who were half their countrymen. Paphlagonia was declared independent, and the pseudo-Pylaemenes of Nicomedes was directed to evacuate the country. In like manner the pseudo-Ariarathes of Mithradates was to retire from Cappadocia, and, as the representatives of the country refused the freedom proffered to king was once more to be appointed by free popular election.
The decrees sounded energetic enough only was an error, that instead of sending an army they dircrted the governor of Cilicia, Lucius Sulla, with the handful of troops whom he commanded there against the pirates and robbers,
Cappadocia
;
it
it, a
by
by
(ii.
CHAP. V! ! ! THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
23
to intervene in Cappadocia. Fortunately the remembrance of the former energy of the Romans defended their interests in the east better than their present government did, and the energy and dexterity of the governor supplied what the senate lacked in both respects. Mithradates kept back and con tented himself with inducing Tigranes the great-king of Armenia, who held a more free position with reference to the Romans than he did, to send troops to Cappadocia. Sulla quickly collected his forces and the contingents of the Asiatic allies, crossed the Taurus, and drove the
Gordius along with his Armenian auxiliaries out of Cappadocia. This proved effectual. Mithradates yielded on all points; Gordius had to assume the blame of the Cappadocian troubles, and the pseudo-Ariarathes disappeared; the election of king, which the Pontic faction had vainly attempted to direct towards Gordius, fell on the respected Cappadocian Ariobarzanes.
When Sulla in following out his expedition arrived in
the region of the Euphrates, in whose waters the Roman contact
governor
standards were then first mirrored, the Romans came for
the first time into contact with the Parthians, who in con
sequence of the variance between them and Tigranes had Parthians occasion to make approaches to the Romans. On both
sides there seemed a feeling that it was of some moment, in
this first contact between the two great powers of the east
and the west, that neither should renounce its claims to the sovereignty of the world ; but Sulla, bolder than the Parthian envoy, assumed and maintained in the conference the place of honour between the king of Cappadocia and the Par thian ambassador. Sulla’s fame was more increased by this greatly celebrated conference on the Euphrates than by his
victories in the east; on its account the Parthian envoy after wards forfeited his life to his master's resentment. But for the moment this contact had no further result. Nicomedes in
reliance on the favour of the Romans omitted to evacuate
between
Romans and the
92.
New aggressions of Mithra dates.
Paphlagonia, but the decrees adopted by the senate against Mithradates were carried further into effect, the reinstatement of the Scythian chieftains was at least promised by him ; the earlier rtatus yuo in the east seemed to be restored (662).
So it was alleged; but in fact there was little trace of any real return of‘the former order of things. Scarce had Sulla left Asia, when Tigranes king of Great Armenia fell upon Ariobarzanes the new king of Cappadocia, expelled him, and reinstated in his stead the Pontic pretender Ariarathes. In Bithynia, where after the death of the old
:4
THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK IV
91. king Nicomedes II. (about 663) his son Nicomedes III. Philopator had been recognized by the people and by the Roman senate as legitimate king, his younger brother Socrates came forward as pretender to the crown and possessed himself of the sovereignty. It was clear that the real author of the Cappadocian as of the Bithynian troubles was no other than Mithradates, although he refrained from taking any open part. Every one knew that Tigranes only acted at his beck; but Socrates also had marched into Bithynia with Pontic troops, and the legitimate king’s life was threatened by the assassins of Mithradates. In the Crimea even and the neighbouring countries the Pontic king had no thought of receding, but on the contrary carried his arms farther and farther.
Aqnillius sent to Asia.
The Roman government, appealed to for aid by the kings Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes in person, despatched to Asia Minor in support of Lucius Cassius who was
there the consular Manius Aquillius—an ofiicer tried in the Cimbrian and Sicilian wars—not, however, as general at the head of an army, but as an ambassador, and directed the Asiatic client states and Mithradates in particular to lend armed assistance in case of need. The result was as it had been two years before. The Roman oflicer accomplished the commission entrusted to him with the aid of the small Roman corps which the governor of
governor
CHAP. vrrr THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
25
the province of Asia had at his disposal, and of the levy of the Phrygians and Galatians; king Nicomedes and king Ariobarzanes again ascended their tottering thrones; Mithradates under various pretexts evaded the summons to furnish contingents, but gave to the Romans no open resistance; on the contrary the Bithynian pretender Socrates was even put to death by his orders (664).
It was a singular complication. Mithradates was fully
90.
The state
convinced that he could do nothing against the Romans in of things inter
open conflict, and was therefore firmly resolved not to allow mediate
matters to come to an open rupture and war with them. between war and
Had he not been so resolved, there was no more favourable peace.
opportunity for beginning the struggle than the present: just at the time when Aquillius marched into Bithynia and Cappadocia, the Italian insurrection was at the height of
its power and might encourage even the weak to declare against Rome; yet Mithradates allowed the year 664 to '0. pass without profiting by the opportunity. Nevertheless he pursued with equal tenacity and activity his plan of ex tending his territory in Asia Minor. This strange combina
tion of a policy of peace at any price with a policy of conquest was certainly in itself untenable, and was simply
a fresh proof that Mithradates did not belong to the class
of genuine statesmen; he knew neither how to prepare for conflict like king Philip nor how to submit like king Attalus, but in the true style of a sultan was perpetually fluctuating between a greedy desire of conquest and the sense of his own weakness. But even in this point of view
his proceedings can only be understood, when we recollect that Mithradates had become acquainted by twenty years’ experience with the Roman policy of that day. He knew very well that the Roman government were far from desirous of war; that they in fact, looking to the serious danger which threatened their rule from any general of reputation, and with the fresh remembrance o’ the Cimbrian
Aquillius about war.
Nieo~ modes.
:6 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK iv
war and Marius, dreaded war still more if possible than he did himself. He acted accordingly. He was not afraid to demean himself in a way which would have given to any energetic government not fettered by selfish considerations manifold ground and occasion for declaring war; but he carefully avoided any open rupture which would have placed the senate under the necessity of declaring As soon as men appeared to be in earnest he drew back, before Sulla as well as before Aquillius; he hoped, doubtless, that he would not always be confronted by energetic generals, that he too would, as well as Jugurtha, fall in with his Scaurus or Albinus. It must be owned that this hope was not without reason although the very example of Jugurtha had on the other hand shown how foolish was to confound the bribery of Roman commander and the corruption of Roman army with the conquest of the
Roman people.
Thus matters stood between peace and war, and looked
quite as they would drag on for long in the same in decisive position. But was not the intention of Aquillius to allow this and, as he could not compel his government to declare war against Mithradates, he made use of
Nicomedes for that purpose. The latter, who was under the power of the Roman general and was, moreover, his debtor for the accumulated war expenses and for sums promised to the general in person, could not avoid comply ing with the suggestion that he should begin war with Mithradates. The declaration of war by Bithynia took place; but, even when the vessels of Nicomedes closed the Bosporus against those of Pontus, and his troops marched into the frontier districts of Pontus and laid waste the region of Amastris, Mithradates remained still unshaken in his policy of peace instead of driving the Bithynians over the frontier, he lodged complaint with the Roman envoys and asked them either to mediate or to allow him the
; a
a
5
if ;
it
a
it
it.
CHAP- vm THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
27
privilege of self-defence. But he was informed by Aquillius, that he must under all circumstances refrain from war against Nicomedes. That indeed was plain. They had employed exactly the same policy against Carthage; they allowed the victim to be set upon by the Roman hounds and forbade its defending itself against them. Mithradates reckoned himself lost, just as the Carthaginians had done; but, while the Phoenicians yielded from despair, the king of Sinope did the very opposite and assembled his troops and ships. “Does not even he who must succumb,” he is reported to have said, “defend himself against the robber? ” His son Ariobar zanes received orders to advance into Cappadocia 5 a
was sent once more to the Roman envoys to inform them of the step to which necessity had driven the king, and to demand their ultimatum. It was to the effect which was to be anticipated. Although neither the Roman senate nor king Mithradates nor king Nicomedes had desired the rupture, Aquillius desired it and war ensued
(end of 665). at Mithradates prosecuted the political and military pre
parations for the passage of arms thus forced upon him "OBS Mithm
with all his characteristic energy. First of all he drew datu closer his alliance with Tigranes king of Armenia, and obtained from him the promise of an auxiliary army which
was to march into western Asia and to take possession of
the soil there for king Mithradates and of the moveable property for king Tigranes. The Parthian king, offended by the haughty carriage of Sulla, though not exactly coming forward as an antagonist to the Romans, did not act as their ally. To the Greeks the king endeavoured to present himself in the character of Philip and Perseus, as the defender of the Greek nation against the alien rule of the Romans. Pontic envoys were sent to the king of Egypt and to the last remnant of free Greece, the league of the
message
28 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK rv
Cretan cities, and adjured those for whom Rome had already forged her chains to rise now at the last moment and save Hellenic nationality; the attempt was in the case of Crete at least not wholly in vain, and numerous Cretans took service in the Pontic army. Hopes were entertained that the lesser and least of the protected states—Numidia, Syria, the Hellenic republics—would successively rebel, and that the provinces would revolt, particularly the west of Asia Minor, the victim of unbounded oppression. Efforts were made to excite a Thracian rising, and even to arouse Macedonia to revolt. Piracy, which even previously was flourishing, was now everywhere let loose as a most welcome ally, and with alarming rapidity squadrons of corsairs, calling themselves Pontic privateers, filled the Mediterranean far and wide. With eagerness and delight accounts were received of the commotions among the Roman burgesses, and of the Italian insurrection subdued yet far from extinguished. No direct relations, however, were formed with the discontented and the insurgents in Italy; except that a foreign corps armed and organized in the Roman fashion was created in Asia, the flower of which consisted of Roman and Italian refugees. Forces like those of Mithradates had not been seen in Asia since the Persian wars. The statements that, leaving out of account the Armenian auxiliary army, he took the field with 250,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry, and that Pontic decked and 100 open vessels put to sea, seem no‘. too exaggerated in the case of a warlike sovereign who had at his disposal the numberless inhabitants of the steppes.
His generals, particularly the brothers Neoptolemus and Archelaus, were experienced and cautious Greek captains; among the soldiers of the king there was no want of brave men who despised death; and the armour glittering with gold and silver and the rich dresses of the Scythians and
Medes mingled gaily
with the bronze and steel of the
300
CHAP. vtu THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
19
Greek troopers. No unity of military organization, it is true, bound together these party-coloured masses; the army of Mithradates was just one of those unwieldy Asiatic war-machines, which had so often already—on the last occasion exactly a century before at Magnesia—succumbed to a superior military organization ; but still the east was in arms against the Romans, while in the western half of the empire also matters looked far from peaceful.
However much it was in itself a political necessity for
Rome to declare war against Mithradates, yet the particular moment was as unhappily chosen as possible; and for this
reason it is very probable that Manius Aquillius brought Roman about the rupture between Rome and Mithradates at this
time primarily from regard to his own interests. For the moment they had no other troops at their disposal in Asia than the small Roman division under Lucius Cassius and the militia of western Asia, and, owing to the military and financial distress in which they were placed at home in consequence of the insurrectionary war, a Roman army could not in the most favourable case land in Asia before the summer of 666. Hitherto the Roman magistrates there had a diflicult position; but they hoped to protect the Roman province and to be able to hold their ground as they stood—the Bithynian army under king Nicomedes in its position taken up in the previous year in the Paphla gonian territory between Amastris and Sinope, and the divisions under Lucius Cassius, Manius Aquillius, and
precise
Oppius, farther back in the Bithynian, Galatian, and Cappadocian territories, while the Bithyno-Roman fleet continued to blockade the Bosporus.
Quintus
In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the offensive. On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern Tesch Kiipri), the Pontic van Asia guard of cavalry and light-armed troops encountered the Minor.
Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very superior
Weak counter prepara tions of the
88.
Mith- [88. radates occupies
Antl movement:
numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the hands of the victors. It was mainly to Neoptolemus and Archelaus that the king was indebted for this brilliant success. The far more wretched Asiatic militia, stationed farther back, thereupon gave themselves up as vanquished, even before they encountered the enemy; when the
generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed. A Roman division was defeated in Cappadocia ; Cassius sought to keep the field in Phrygia with the militia, but he discharged it again without venturing on a battle, and threw himself with his few trustworthy troops into the townships on the upper Maeander, particularly into Apamea. Oppius in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself up in the Phrygian Laodicea ; Aquillius was overtaken while retreating at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and so totally defeated that he lost his camp and had to seek refuge at Pergamus in the Roman province 5 the latter also was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell into the hands of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships that were there. After each victory Mithradates had dismissed all the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor, and had neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the national sympathies that were from the first turned towards him. Now the whole country as far as the Maeander was with the exception of a few fortresses in his power; and news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution had broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles with each other in order . to settle to whom the chief command in the Asiatic war should belong. Rome seemed zealously employed in the work of self-destruction: it is no wonder that, though even now minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great
30
THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES BOOK rv
can. vin THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
31
body of the natives of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king. Hellenes and Asiatics united in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer ; it became usual to compliment the king, in whom as in the divine conqueror of the Indians Asia and Hellas once more found a common meeting-point, under the name of the new Dionysus. The cities and islands sent messengers to meet him, wherever he went, and to invite “the delivering god ” to visit them; and in festal attire the citizens flocked forth in front of their gates to receive him. Several places delivered the Roman officers sojourning among them in chains to the king; Laodicea thus surrendered Quintus Oppius, the commandant of the town, and Mytilene in Lesbos the consular Manius Aquillius. 1 The whole fury of the barbarian, who gets the man before whom he has trembled into his power, discharged itself on the unhappy author of the war. The aged man was led throughout Asia Minor, sometimes on foot chained to a powerful mounted Bastarnian, sometimes bound on an ass and proclaiming his own name; and, when at length the pitiful spectacle
arrived at the royal quarters in Pergamus, by the king’s orders molten gold was poured down his throat —in order to satiate his avarice, which had really occasioned the war—till he expired in torture.
But the king was not content with this savage mockery, which alone suffices to erase its author’s name from the roll of true nobility. From Ephesus king Mithradates issued
again
orders to all the governors and cities dependent on him to general
put to death on one and the same day all Italians residing within their bounds, whether free or slaves, without distinc tion of sex or age, and on no account, under severe penalties, to aid any of the proscribed to escape; to cast forth the
1 Retribution came upon the authors of the arrest and surrender of Aquillius twenty-five years afterwards, when after Mithradates’ death his son Pharnaces handed them over to the Romans.
Orders issued from Ephesus for a
massau-e.
3:
THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK Iv
corpses of the slain as a prey to the birds; to confiscate their property and to hand over one half of it to the murderers, and the other half to the king. The horrible orders were-excepting in a few districts, such as the island of Cos—punctually executed, and eighty, or according to other accounts one hundred and fifty, thousand-—if not innocent, at least defenceless—men, women, and children were slaughtered in cold blood in one day in Asia Minor ; a fearful execution, in which the good opportunity of getting rid of debts and the Asiatic servile willingness to perform any executioner’s oflice at the bidding of the sultan had at least as much part as the comparatively noble feeling of revenge. In a political point of view this measure was not only without any rational object—for its financial purpose might have been attained without this bloody edict, and the natives of Asia Minor were not to be driven into warlike zeal even by the consciousness of the most blood-stained guilt—but even opposed to the king’s designs, for on the one hand it compelled the Roman senate, so far as it was still capable of energy at all, to an energetic prosecution of the war, and on the other hand it struck at not the Romans merely, but the king’s natural allies as well, the non-Roman Italians. This Ephesian massacre was altogether a mere meaningless act of brutally blind revenge, which obtains a false semblance of grandeur simply through the colossal proportions in which the character of sultanic rule was here displayed.
The king’s views altogether grew high ; he had begun the war from despair, but the unexpectedly easy victory and
Organiza
tion of the
conquered
provinces. the non-arrival of the dreaded Sulla occasioned a transi
tion to the most highflown hopes. He set up his home in the west of Asia Minor; Pergamus the seat of the Roman governor became his new capital, the old kingdom of Sinope was handed over to the king’s son Mithradates to be administered as a viceroyship ; Cappadocia, Phrygia,
CHAP- V! " THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
33
Bithynia were organized as Pontic satrapies. The grandees of the empire and the king’s favourites were loaded with rich gifts and fiefs, and not only were the arrears of taxes remitted, but exemption from taxation for five years was promised, to all the communities—a measure which was as much a mistake as the massacre of the Romans, if the king expected thereby to secure the fidelity of the inhabitants of Asia Minor.
The king’s treasury was, no doubt, copiously replenished otherwise by the immense sums which accrued from the property of the Italians and other confiscations ; for instance in Cos alone 800 talents (,6 r 9 5,000) which the Jews had deposited there were carried off by Mithradates. The northern portion of Asia Minor and most of the islands belonging to it were in the king's power; except some petty Paphlagonian dynasts, there was hardly a district which still adhered to Rome ; the whole Aegean Sea was commanded by his fleets. The south-west alone, the city leagues of Caria and Lycia and the city of Rhodes, resisted him. In Caria, no doubt, Stratonicea was reduced by force of arms; but Magnesia on the Sipylus successfully withstood a severe siege, in which Mithradates’ ablest oflicer Archelaus was defeated and wounded. Rhodes, the asylum of the Romans who had escaped from Asia with the governor Lucius Cassius among them, was assailed on the part of Mithradates by sea and land with immense superiority of force. But his sailors, courageously as they did their duty under the eyes of the king, were awkward novices, and so Rhodian squadrons vanquished those of Pontus four times as strong and returned home with captured vessels. By land also the siege made no progress; after a part of the works had been destroyed, Mithradates abandoned enterprise, and the important island as well as the main land opposite remained in the hands of the Romans.
But not only was the Asiatic VOL IV
the
province occupied by 103
34
THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK iv
Pontle Mithradates almost without defending itself, chiefly in con invasion of sequence of the Sulpician revolution breaking out at a
most unfavourable time; Mithradates even directed an 92 attack against Europe. Already since 662 the neighbours
of Macedonia on her northern and eastern frontier had been
renewing their incursions with remarkable vehemence and
90. 89. perseverance ; in the years 664, 665 the Thracians overran
Europe.
Predatory inroads of the Thra
Macedonia and all Epirus and plundered the temple of Dodona. Still more singular was the circumstance, that with these movements was combined a renewed attempt to place a pretender on the Macedonian throne in the person of one Euphenes. Mithradates, who from the Crimea maintained connections with the Thracians, was hardly a stranger to all these events. The praetor Gaius Sentius defended himself, it is true, against these intruders with the aid of the Thracian Dentheletae ; but it was not long before mightier opponents came against him. Mithradates, carried away by his successes, had formed the bold resolution that he would, like Antiochus, bring the war for the sovereignty of Asia to a decision in Greece, and had by land and sea directed thither the flower of his troops. His son Ariarathes penetrated from Thrace into the weakly-defended Macedonia, subduing the country as he advanced and parcelling it into Pontic satrapies. Abdera and Philippi became the principal bases for the operations of the Pontic arms in Europe. The Pontic fleet, com
Thrace and Macedonia occupied
by the Pontic armies. Pontic
fleet in the manded by Mithradates’ best general Archelaus, appeared Aegean.
in the Aegean Sea, where scarce a Roman sail was to be found. Delos, the emporium of the Roman commerce in those waters, was occupied and nearly 20,000 men, mostly Italians, were massacred there; Euboea suffered a similar fate ; all the islands to the east of the Malean promontory were soon in the hands of the enemy ; they might proceed to attack the mainland itself. The assault, no doubt, which the Pontic fleet made from Euboea on the important
CHAP- vul THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
35
Demetrias, was repelled by Bruttius Sura, the brave lieu tenant of the governor of Macedonia, with his handful of troops and a few vessels hurriedly collected, and he even occupied the island of Sciathus; but he could not prevent the enemy from establishing himself in Greece proper.
There Mithradates carried on his operations not only The Pontic by arms, but at the same time by national propagandism.
His chief instrument for Athens was one Aristion, by birth Greece
an Attic slave, by profession formerly a teacher of the Epicurean philosophy, now a minion of Mithradates ; an
excellent master of persuasion, who by the brilliant career which he pursued at court knew how to dazzle the mob, and with due gravity to assure them that help was already on the way to Mithradates from Carthage, which had been for about sixty years lying in ruins. These addresses of the new Pericles were so far effectual that, while the few persons possessed of judgment escaped from Athens, the mob and one or two literati whose heads were turned formally renounced the Roman rule. So the ex-philosopher became a despot who, supported by his hands of Pontic mercenaries, commenced an infamous and bloody rule ; and the Piraeeus was converted into a Pontic harbour. As soon as the troops of Mithradates gained a footing on the Greek continent, most of the small free states—the Achaeans, Laconians, Boeotians—as far as Thessaly joined them. Sura, after having drawn some reinforcements from Macedonia, ad vanced into Boeotia to bring help to the besieged Thespiae
and engaged in conflicts with Archelaus and Aristion during
three days at Chaeronea ; but they led to no decision and
Sura was obliged to retire when the Pontic reinforcements
from the Peloponnesus approached (end of 666, beg. of 667). 88. 87.
So commanding was the position of Mithradates, parti cularly by sea, that an embassy of Italian insurgents could invite him to make an attempt to land in Italy; but their
Position of the Romans.
cause was already by that time lost, and the king rejected the suggestion.
The position of the Roman government began to be critical. Asia Minor and Hellas were wholly, Macedonia to a considerable extent, in the enemy’s hands ; by sea the Pontic flag ruled without a rival. Then there was the Italian insurrection, which, though baffled on the whole, still held the undisputed command of wide districts of Italy; the barely hushed revolution, which threatened every moment to break out afresh and more formidably ; and, lastly, the alarming commercial and monetary crisis (iii. 5 30) occasioned by the internal troubles of Italy and the enormous losses of the Asiatic capitalists, and the want of trustworthy troops. The government would have required three armies, to keep down the revolution in Rome, to crush completely the insurrection in Italy, and to wage war in Asia; it had but one, that of Sulla ; for the northern army was, under the untrustworthy Gnaeus Strabo, simply an additional embarrassment. Sulla had to choose which of these three tasks he would undertake; he decided, as we have seen, for the Asiatic war. It was
no trifling matter—we should perhaps say, it was a great act of patriotism—that in this conflict between the general interest of his country and the special interest of his party the former retained the ascendency ; and that Sulla, in spite of the dangers which his removal from Italy involved
for his constitution and his party, landed in the spring of 87. 667 on the coast of Epirus.
35
THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES BOOK IV
Sulla’: landing.
But he came not, as Roman commanders-in-chief had been wont to make their appearance in the East. That his army of five legions or of at most 30,000 men,1 was little stronger than an ordinary consular army, was the
1 We must recollect that after the outbreak of the Social War the legion had at least not more than half the number of men which it had previously, as it was no longer accompanied by Italian contingents.
CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
37
least element of difference. Formerly in the eastern wars a Roman fleet had never been wanting, and had in fact without exception commanded the sea ; Sulla, sent to reconquer two continents and the islands of the Aegean sea, arrived without a single vessel of war. Formerly the
had brought with him a full chest and drawn the greatest portion of his supplies by sea from home; Sulla came with empty hands-—for the sums raised with difliculty for the campaign of 666 were expended in Italy—and found himself exclusively left dependent on requisitions. Formerly the general had found his only opponent in the enemy’s camp, and since the close of the struggle between the orders political factions had without exception been united in opposing the public foe ; but Romans of note
fought under the standards of Mithradates, large districts
of Italy desired to enter into alliance with him, and it was
at least doubtful whether the democratic party would follow
the glorious example that Sulla had set before and keep
truce with him so long as he was fighting against the
Asiatic king. But the vigorous general, who had to contend with all these embarrassments, was not accus
tomed to trouble himself about more remote dangers
before finishing the task immediately in hand. When
his proposals of peace addressed to the king, which sub stantially amounted to restoration of the state of matters
before the war, met with no acceptance, he advanced just
as he had landed, from the harbours of Epirus to Boeotia, G\reece defeated the generals of the enemy Archelaus and Aristion occupied. there at Mount Tilphossium, and after that victory possessed
himself almost without resistance of the whole Grecian mainland with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the Piraeeus, into which Aristion and Archelaus had thrown themselves, and which he failed to carry by coup 4': main. A Roman division under Lucius Hortensius occupied Thessaly and made incursions into Macedonia another
general
a ;
it,
a
Protracted siege of Athens and the Piraeeus.
under Munatius stationed itself before Chalcis, to keep! off the enemy’s corps under Neoptolemus in Euboea; Sulla‘ himself formed a camp at Eleusis and Megara, from which‘ he commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and prose-' cuted the siege of the city and harbour of Athens. The Hellenic cities, governed as they always were by their immediate fears, submitted unconditionally to the Romans, and were glad when they were allowed to ransom them selves from more severe punishment by supplying provisions and men and paying fines.
The sieges in Attica advanced less rapidly. Sulla found himself compelled to prepare all sorts of heavy besieging implements for which the trees of the Academy and the Lyceum had to supply the timber. Archelaus conducted the defence with equal vigour and judgment; he armed the crews of his vessels, and thus reinforced repelled the attacks of the Romans with superior strength and made frequent and not seldom successful sorties. The Pontic army of Dromichaetes advancing to the relief of the city was defeated under the walls of Athens by the Romans after a severe struggle, in which Sulla’s brave legate Lucius Licinius Murena particularly distinguished himself; but the siege did not on that account advance more rapidly. From Macedonia, where the Cappadocians had meanwhile defini tively established themselves, plentiful and regular supplies arrived by sea, which Sulla was not in a condition to cut off from the harbour-fortress ; in Athens no doubt provisions were beginning to fail, but from the proximity of the two fortresses Archelaus was enabled to make various attempts to throw quantities of grain into Athens, which were not
38
THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES BOOK 1v!
87-86. wholly unsuccessful. So the winter of 667-8 passed away tediously without result. As soon as the season allowed, Sulla threw himself with vehemence on the Piraeeus; he in fact succeeded by missiles and mines in making a breach in part of the strong walls of Pericles, and immediately the
can. vm THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES
39
Romans advanced to the assault ; but it was repulsed, and on its being renewed crescent-shaped entrenchments were found constructed behind the fallen walls, from which the invaders‘ found themselves assailed on three sides with missiles and compelled to retire. Sulla then raised the siege, and contented himself with a blockade. In the mean while the provisions in Athens were wholly exhausted ; the garrison attempted to procure a capitulation, but Sulla sent back their fluent envoys with the hint that he stood before them not as a student but as a general, and would accept only unconditional surrender. When Aristion, well knowing what fate was in store for him, delayed compliance, the ladders were applied and the city, hardly any longer defended, was taken by storm (1 March 668). Aristion threw himself into the Acropolis, where he soon afterwards surrendered. The Roman general left the soldiery to murder and plunder in the captured city and the more considerable ringleaders of the revolt to be executed; but the city itself obtained back from him its liberty and its possessions—even the important Delos,—and was thus once more saved by its illustrious dead.
The Epicurean schoolmaster had thus been vanquished;
but the position of Sulla remained in the highest degree
diflicult, and even desperate. He had now been more
than a year in the field without having advanced a step
worth mentioning; a single port mocked all his exertions,
while Asia was utterly left to itself, and the conquest of Macedonia by Mithradates’ lieutenants had recently been completed by the capture of Amphipolis. Without a fleet Want of n —it was becoming daily more apparent—it was not only fleet. impossible to secure his communications and supplies in
of the ships of the enemy and the numerous but impossible to recover even the Piraeeus, to say nothing of Asia and the islands; and yet it was difficult to see how ships of war were to be got. As early as the
presence pirates,
Athens [86. falls.
Critical position of Sulla.
40
THE EAST AND KING MITl“IRADATES BOOK rv
87-86. winter of 667-8 Sulla had despatched one of his ablest and most dexterous oflicers, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, into the eastern waters, to raise ships there if possible.