The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Chapter VIII
The East and King Mithradates
State of the East
The state of breathless excitement, in which the revolution kept
the Roman government by perpetually renewing the alarm of fire and
the cry to quench it, made them lose sight of provincial matters
generally; and that most of all in the case of the Asiatic lands,
whose remote and unwarlike nations did not thrust themselves so
directly on the attention of the government as Africa, Spain, and
its Transalpine neighbours. After the annexation of the kingdom of
Attalus, which took place contemporaneously with the outbreak of
the revolution, for a whole generation there is hardly any evidence
of Rome taking a serious part in Oriental affairs--with the exception
of the establishment of the province of Cilicia in 652,(1) to which
the Romans were driven by the boundless audacity of the Cilician
pirates, and which was in reality nothing more than the institution
of a permanent station for a small division of the Roman army and
fleet in the eastern waters. It was not till the downfall of Marius
in 654 had in some measure consolidated the government of the
restoration, that the Roman authorities began anew to bestow
some attention on the events in the east
Cyrene Romans
In many respects matters still stood as they had done thirty years
ago. The kingdom of Egypt with its two appendages of Cyrene and
Cyprus was broken up, partly de jure, partly de facto, on the death
of Euergetes II (637). Cyrene went to his natural son, Ptolemaeus
Apion, and was for ever separated from Egypt. The sovereignty of
the latter formed a subject of contention between the widow of
the last king Cleopatra (665), and his two sons Soter II Lathyrus
(673) and Alexander I (666); which gave occasion to Cyprus also to
separate itself for a considerable period from Egypt. The Romans
did not interfere in these complications; in fact, when the
Cyrenaean kingdom fell to them in 658 by the testament of the
childless king Apion, while not directly rejecting the acquisition,
they left the country in substance to itself by declaring the Greek
towns of the kingdom, Cyrene, Ptolemais, and Berenice, free cities
and even handing over to them the use of the royal domains.
The supervision of the governor of Africa over this territory was
from its remoteness merely nominal, far more so than that of the
governor of Macedonia over the Hellenic free cities. The consequences
of this measure--which beyond doubt originated not in Philhellenism,
but simply in the weakness and negligence of the Roman government--
were substantially similar to those which had occurred under the like
circumstances in Hellas; civil wars and usurpations so rent the land
that, when a Roman officer of rank accidentally made his appearance
there in 668, the inhabitants urgently besought him to regulate
their affairs and to establish a permanent government among them.
In Syria also during the interval there had not been much change,
and still less any improvement. During the twenty years' war of
succession between the two half-brothers Antiochus Grypus (658) and
Antiochus of Cyzicus(659), which after their death was inherited by
their sons, the kingdom which was the object of contention became
almost an empty name, inasmuch as the Cilician sea-kings, the Arab
sheiks of the Syrian desert, the princes of the Jews, and the
magistrates of the larger towns had ordinarily more to say than the
wearers of the diadem. Meanwhile the Romans established themselves
in western Cilicia, and the important Mesopotamia passed over
definitively to the Parthians.
The Parthian State
Armenia
The monarchy of the Arsacids had to pass through a dangerous crisis
about the time of the Gracchi, chiefly in consequence of the inroads
of Turanian tribes. The ninth Arsacid, Mithradates II or the Great
(630?-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 country, which since its declaration of independence(2) had
been divided into the north-eastern portion or Armenia proper, the
kingdom of the Artaxiads, and the south-western or Sophene, the
kingdom of the Zariadrids, was for the first time united into one
kingdom by 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 it had passed from the Achaemenids
to the Seleucids and from the Seleucids to the Arsacids.
Asia Minor
Lastly in Asia Minor the territorial arrangements, which had been
made under Roman influence after the dissolution of the kingdom of
Attalus,(3) still subsisted in the main unchanged. In the condition
of the dependent states--the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia,
Pontus, the principalities 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 alteration. 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 -decumanus-, 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,
if once there should appear among them a man who knew how to
give the signal for revolt.
Mithradates Eupator
There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithradates VI
surnamed Eupator (born about 624, 691) who traced back his lineage on
the father's side in the sixteenth 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 about 634, when a boy of eleven
years of age; but the 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 tradition, 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, however, 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 Mithradates, 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 off 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 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 precious 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 confidential
servants. In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan, that
he afterwards, for the mere purpose of withdrawing 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 experimental
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 everybody 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
undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom
he trusted. At the same time we doubtless 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 assembling armies--which were usually,
in his earlier years at least, led against the enemy not by the king
in person, but by some Greek -condottiere---in efforts to add new
satrapies to the old. Of higher elements--desire to advance
civilization, 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
Cappadocians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary stamp,
coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, superstitious, 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 republic it was easier to offer resistance to Rome than in the
times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only the complication of the
Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy which rendered
it possible for Mithradates to resist the Romans twice as long as
Jugurtha did, it remains nevertheless 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 Tigranids 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 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.
The Nationalities of Asia Minor
Manifest however as is the foreign and un-Hellenic character of
the whole life and action of the Cappadocian king, it is difficult
definitely to specify the national element preponderating in it,
nor will research perhaps ever succeed in getting beyondbgeneralities
or in attaining clear views on this point. In the whole circle
of ancient civilization there is no region where the stocks
subsisting side by side or crossing 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 it the
original stock of the population along the west coast in the regions
of Caria and Lydia seems also to have 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 by Indo-Germanic peoples most
nearly cognate to the Iranian. In the case of the Armenian and
Phrygian languages(4) it is ascertained, in that of the Cappadocian
it is highly probable, that they had immediate affinity with the Zend;
and the statement made as to the Mysians, that among them the Lydian
and Phrygian languages met, just denotes a 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 is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the
native 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 of the Greek nation, has been set
forth in outline already.
Pontus
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 northeastern extremity of Asia
Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the
Iranian nationality presumably 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 important
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
comparatively 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.
Acquisitions of Territory by Mithradates
Colchis
Northern Shores of the Black Sea
He appears more actively employed--likewise quite in the Oriental
style--in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not
small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find
his armies, his fleets, 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 at that time we must not
omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to
give a really distinct idea of it. 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 commercial town
of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into
a satrapy of Pontus. Of still greater moment were his enterprises in
the northern regions.(5) The wide steppes destitute of hills and
trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus,
and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions--more
especially 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 a 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 it is at the present
day.(6) 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, Jazyges,--who are
commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which
we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more affinity with Median
and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the
great Zend stock. Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direction,
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.
Hellenism in That Quarter
In sharp contrast to all these barbarians stood the 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 burgomasters, 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 Panticapaeum 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 Panticapaeum 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 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 off 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 without in
front of the gates; the territory was laid waste, the field-labourers
were dragged away en masse, 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 already contemplated
its entire surrender.