The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Mithradates Master of the Bosphoran Kingdom
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 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 Panticapaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exorbitant
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 surrender 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 judiciously 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;
50,000 of them fled before his 6000 phalangites, and the Pontic arms
penetrated as far as the Dnieper.(7) Thus Mithradates acquired here
a second 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 200 talents (48,000 pounds) 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.
Lesser Armenia
Alliance with Tigranes
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
dependent 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 off 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 ally.
Paphlagonia and Cappadocia Acquired
Lastly, in Asia Minor the king turned his eyes towards the interior
of Paphlagonia--the coast had for long belonged to the Pontic empire--
and towards Cappadocia.(8) The former was claimed on the part of
Pontus as having 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 reunion. 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 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.
Empire 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 officers
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.
The Romans and Mithradates
Intervention of the Senate
That the Roman senate asserted its general policy--of keeping down
the states more or less dependent on it--also in dealing with that
of Pontus, is shown by its attitude on 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 conferred on his father for his taking part in the war
against Aristonicus or rather for his good money,(9) and this region
was added to the territory immediately subject to Rome.(10) But,
after this boy had at length 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 developed 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 much deceived as grateful for any pretext which
spared it from serious interference. Meanwhile the complaints
became daily more numerous and more urgent. The princes 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,(11) 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 last turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom
of Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of Bithynia--
who on his part had hoped to gain possession of Cappadocia by
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 by 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 it, a king was once more to be appointed
by free popular election.
Sulla Sent to Cappadocia
The decrees sounded energetic enough; only it was an error, that
instead of sending an army they directed the governor of Cilicia,
Lucius Sulla, with the handful of troops whom he commanded there
against the pirates and robbers, 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
contented 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 governor 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.
First Contact between the Romans and the Parthians
When Sulla in following out his expedition arrived in the region of
the Euphrates, in whose waters the Roman standards were then first
mirrored, the Romans came for the first time into contact with the
Parthians, who in consequence of the variance between them and Tigranes
had 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 Parthian 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 afterwards forfeited
his life to his masters resentment. But for the moment this contact
had no further result. Nicomedes in reliance on the favour of
the Romans omitted to evacuate 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 status quo in the east seemed to be restored (662).
New Aggressions of Mithradates
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 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.
Aquillius 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 governor there the consular Manius Aquillius--
an officer 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 officer accomplished the
commission entrusted to him with the aid of the small Roman corps
which the governor of 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).
The State of Things Intermediate between War and Peace
It was a singular complication. Mithradates was fully convinced
that he could do nothing against the Romans in open conflict, and
was therefore firmly resolved not to allow matters to come to an
open rupture and war with them. Had he not been so resolved, there
was no more favourable 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 pass without profiting by
the opportunity. Nevertheless he pursued with equal tenacity and
activity his plan of extending his territory in Asia Minor. This
strange combination 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 of the Cimbrian 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 it. 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 it was to
confound the bribery of a Roman commander and the corruption
of a Roman army with the conquest of the Roman people.
Aquillius Brings about War
Nicomedes
Thus matters stood between peace and war, and looked quite as if
they would drag on for long in the same indecisive position. But
it 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 complying 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 a complaint
with the Roman envoys and asked them either to mediate or to allow
him the 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
Ariobarzanes received orders to advance into Cappadocia; a message
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).
Preparations of Mithradates
Mithradates prosecuted the political and military preparations for
the passage of arms thus forced upon him with all his characteristic
energy. First of all he drew 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 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 300 Pontic decked and 100 open vessels put
to sea, seem not 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
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.
Weak Counterpreparatons of the Romans
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 about the rupture between Rome and
Mithradates at this precise 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 difficult 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 Paphlagonian territory between
Amastris and Sinope, and the divisions under Lucius Cassius, Manius
Aquillius, and Quintus Oppius, farther back in the Bithynian, Galatian,
and Cappadocian territories, while the Bithyno-Roman fleet continued
to blockade the Bosporus.
Mithradates Occupies Asia Minor
Anti-Roman Movements There
In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the
offensive. On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern
Tesch Kopri), the Pontic vanguard of cavalry and light-armed
troops encountered the Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very
superior 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; 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 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.(12) 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
again 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.