The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Reaction in Asia Minor against Mithradates
Meanwhile the circumstances of Asia Minor also had undergone a
material change. If king Mithradates had once come forward as the
liberator of the Hellenes, if he had introduced his rule with the
recognition of civic independence and with remission of taxes, they
had after this brief ecstasy been but too rapidly and too bitterly
undeceived. He had very soon emerged in his true character, and
had begun to exercise a despotism far surpassing the tyranny of
the Roman governors--a despotism which drove even the patient
inhabitants of Asia Minor to open revolt. The sultan again resorted
to the most violent expedients. His decrees granted independence
to the townships which turned to him, citizenship to the -metoeci-,
full remission of debts to the debtors, lands to those that had none,
freedom to the slaves; nearly 15,000 such manumitted slaves fought
in the army of Archelaus. The most fearful scenes were the result
of this high-handed subversion of all existing order. The most
considerable mercantile cities, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, Tralles,
Sardes, closed their gates against the king's governors or put
them to death, and declared for Rome.(16) On the other hand the
king's lieutenant Diodorus, a philosopher of note like Aristion, of
another school, but equally available for the worst subservience,
under the instructions of his master caused the whole town-council
of Adramyttium to be put to death. The Chians, who were suspected
of an inclination to Rome, were fined in the first instance in 2000
talents (480,000 pounds) and, when the payment was found not correct,
they were en masse put on board ship and deported in chains under
the charge of their own slaves to the coast of Colchis, while their
island was occupied with Pontic colonists. The king gave orders that
the chiefs of the Celts in Asia Minor should all be put to death along
with their wives and children in one day, and that Galatia should be
converted into a Pontic satrapy. Most of these bloody edicts were
carried into effect either at Mithradates' own headquarters or in
Galatia, but the few who escaped placed themselves at the head of
their powerful tribes and expelled Eumachus, the governor of the king,
out of their bounds. It may readily be conceived that such a king
would be pursued by the daggers of assassins; sixteen hundred men
were condemned to death by the royal courts of inquisition as having
been implicated in such conspiracies.
Lucullus and the Fleet on the Asiatic Coast
While the king was thus by his suicidal fury provoking his
temporary subjects to rise in arms against him, he was at the same
time hard pressed by the Romans in Asia, both by sea and by land.
Lucullus, after the failure of his attempt to lead forth the Egyptian
fleet against Mithradates, had with better success repeated his
efforts to procure vessels of war in the Syrian maritime towns, and
reinforced his nascent fleet in the ports of Cyprus, Pamphylia, and
Rhodes till he found himself strong enough to proceed to the attack.
He dexterously avoided measuring himself against superior forces and
yet obtained no inconsiderable advantages. The Cnidian island and
peninsula were occupied by him, Samos was assailed, Colophon and
Chios were wrested from the enemy.
Flaccus Arrives in Asia
Fimbria
Fimbria's Victory at Miletopolis
Perilous Position of Mithradates
Meanwhile Flaccus had proceeded with his army through Macedonia and
Thrace to Byzantium, and thence, passing the straits, had reached
Chalcedon (end of 668). There a military insurrection broke out
against the general, ostensibly because he embezzled the spoil
from the soldiers. The soul of it was one of the chief officers
of the army, a man whose name had become a proverb in Rome for a
true mob-orator, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who, after having differed
with his commander-in-chief, transferred the demagogic practices
which he had begun in the Forum to the camp. Flaccus was deposed
by the army and soon afterwards put to death at Nicomedia, not far
from Chalcedon; Fimbria was installed by decree of the soldiers
in his stead. As a matter of course he allowed his troops every
indulgence; in the friendly Cyzicus, for instance, the citizens
were ordered to surrender all their property to the soldiers on pain
of death, and by way of warning example two of the most respectable
citizens were at once executed. Nevertheless in a military point
of view the change of commander-in-chief was a gain; Fimbria was not,
like Flaccus, an incapable general, but energetic and talented.
At Miletopolis (on the Rhyndacus to the west of Brussa) he defeated
the younger Mithradates, who as governor of the satrapy of Pontus had
marched against him, completely in a nocturnal assault, and by this
victory opened his way to Pergamus, the capital formerly of the
Roman province and now of the Pontic king, whence he dislodged the
king and compelled him to take flight to the port of Pitane not far
off, with the view of there embarking. Just at that moment Lucullus
appeared in those waters with his fleet; Fimbria adjured him to
render assistance so that he might be enabled to capture the king.
But the Optimate was stronger in Lucullus than the patriot; he
sailed onward and the king escaped to Mitylene. The situation
of Mithradates was even thus sufficiently embarrassed. At the end
of 669 Europe was lost, Asia Minor was partly in rebellion against
him, partly occupied by a Roman army; and he was himself threatened
by the latter in his immediate vicinity. The Roman fleet under
Lucullus had maintained its position on the Trojan coast by two
successful naval engagements at the promontory of Lectum and at
the island of Tenedos; it was joined there by the ships which had
in the meanwhile been built by Sulla's orders in Thessaly, and by
it position commanding the Hellespont it secured to the general of
the Roman senatorial army a safe and easy passage next spring to Asia.
Negotiations for Peace
Mithradates attempted to negotiate. Under other circumstances no
doubt the author of the edict for the Ephesian massacre could never
have cherished the hope of being admitted at all to terms of peace
with Rome; but amidst the internal convulsions of the Roman
republic, when the ruling government had declared the general sent
against Mithradates an outlaw and subjected his partisans at home to
the most fearful persecutions, when one Roman general opposed the
other and yet both stood opposed to the same foe, he hoped that he
should be able to obtain not merely a peace, but a favourable peace.
He had the choice of applying to Sulla or to Fimbria; he caused
negotiations to be instituted with both, yet it seems from the first
to have been his design to come to terms with Sulla, who, at least
from the king's point of view, seemed decidedly superior to his
rival. His general Archelaus, a instructed by his master, asked
Sulla to cede Asia to the king and to expect in return the king's
aid against the democratic party in Rome. But Sulla, cool and
clear as ever, while urgently desiring a speedy settlement of
Asiatic affairs on account of the position of things in Italy,
estimated the advantages of the Cappadocian alliance for
the war impending over him in Italy as very slight, and was
altogether too much of a Roman to consent to so disgraceful
and so injurious a concession.
Preliminaries of Delium
In the peace conferences, which took place in the winter of 669-70,
at Delium on the coast of Boeotia opposite to Euboea, Sulla distinctly
refused to cede even a foot's-breadth of land, but, with good
reason faithful to the old Roman custom of not increasing after
victory the demands made before battle, did not go beyond the
conditions previously laid down. He required the restoration of
all the conquests made by the king and not wrested from him again--
Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, Asia Minor and the
islands--the surrender of prisoners and deserters, the delivering
up of the eighty war-vessels of Archelaus to reinforce the still
insignificant Roman fleet; lastly, pay and provisions for the army
and the very moderate sum of 3000 talents (720,000 pounds) as
indemnity for the expenses of the war. The Chians carried off to
the Black Sea were to be sent home, the families of the Macedonians
who were friendly to Rome and had become refugees were to be
restored, and a number of war-vessels were to be delivered to the
cities in alliance with Rome. Respecting Tigranes, who in strictness
should likewise have been included in the peace, there was silence on
both sides, since neither of the contracting parties cared for the
endless further steps which would be occasioned by making him a party.
The king thus retained the state of possession which he had before
the war, nor was he subjected to any humiliation affecting his
honour.(17) Archelaus, clearly perceiving that much comparatively
beyond expectation was obtained and that more was not obtainable,
concluded the preliminaries and an armistice on these conditions,
and withdrew the troops from the places which the Asiatics
still possessed in Europe.
New Difficulties
Sulla Proceeds to Asia
But Mithradates rejected the peace and demanded at least that
the Romans should not insist on the surrender of the war-vessels
and should concede to him Paphlagonia; while he at the same time
asserted that Fimbria was ready to grant him far more favourable
conditions. Sulla, offended by this placing of his offers on an
equal footing with those of an unofficial adventurer, and having
already gone to the utmost measure of concession, broke off the
negotiations. He had employed the interval to reorganize Macedonia
and to chastise the Dardani, Sinti, and Maedi, in doing which he at
once procured booty for his army and drew nearer Asia; for he was
resolved at any rate to go thither, in order to come to a reckoning
with Fimbria. He now at once put his legions stationed in Thrace as
well as his fleet in motion towards the Hellespont. Then at length
Archelaus succeeded in wringing from his obstinate master a reluctant
consent to the treaty; for which he was subsequently regarded with
an evil eye at court as the author of the injurious peace, and even
accused of treason, so that some time afterwards he found himself
compelled to leave the country and to take refuge with the Romans,
who readily received him and loaded him with honours. The Roman
soldiers also murmured; their disappointment doubtless at not
receiving the expected spoil of Asia probably contributed to that
murmuring more than their indignation--in itself very justifiable--
that the barbarian prince, who had murdered eighty thousand of their
countrymen and had brought unspeakable misery on Italy and Asia,
should be allowed to return home unpunished with the greatest part
of the treasures which he had collected by the pillage of Asia.
Sulla himself may have been painfully sensible that the political
complications thwarted in a most vexatious way a task which was
in a military point of view so simple, and compelled him after
such victories to content himself with such a peace. But the self-
denial and the sagacity with which he had conducted this whole war
were only displayed afresh in the conclusion of this peace; for war
with a prince, to whom almost the whole coast of the Black Sea
belonged, and whose obstinacy was clearly displayed by the very last
negotiations, would still under the most favourable circumstances
require years, and the situation of Italy was such that it seemed
almost too late even for Sulla to oppose the party in power there
with the few legions which he possessed.(18) Before this could be
done, however, it was absolutely necessary to overthrow the bold
officer who was at the head of the democratic army in Asia, in order
that he might not at some future time come from Asia to the help of
the Italian revolution, just as Sulla now hoped to return from Asia
and crush it. At Cypsela on the Hebrus Sulla obtained accounts of
the ratification of the peace by Mithradates; but the march to Asia
went on. The king, it was said, desired personally to confer with
the Roman general and to cement the peace with him; it may be
presumed that this was simply a convenient pretext for transferring
the army to Asia and there putting an end to Fimbria.
Peace at Dardanus
Sulla against Fimbria
Fimbria's Death
So Sulla, attended by his legions and by Archelaus, crossed the
Hellespont; after he had met with Mithradates on its Asiatic shore
at Dardanus and had orally concluded the treaty, he made his army
continue its march till he came upon the camp of Fimbria at
Thyatira not far from Pergamus, and pitched his own close beside
it. The Sullan soldiers, far superior to the Fimbrians in number,
discipline, leadership, and ability, looked with contempt on the
dispirited and demoralized troops and their uncalled commander-in-
chief. Desertions from the ranks of the Fimbrians became daily more
numerous. When Fimbria ordered an attack, the soldiers refused to
fight against their fellow-citizens, or even to take the oath which he
required that they would stand faithfully by each other in battle.
An attempt to assassinate Sulla miscarried; at the conference which
Fimbria requested Sulla did not make his appearance, but contented
himself with suggesting to him through one of his officers a means of
personal escape. Fimbria was of an insolent temperament, but he was
no poltroon; instead of accepting the vessel which Sulla offered to
him and fleeing to the barbarians, he went to Pergamus and fell on
his own sword in the temple of Asklepios. Those who were most
compromised in his army resorted to Mithradates or to the pirates,
with whom they found ready reception; the main body placed itself
under the orders of Sulla.
Regulation of Asiatic Affairs
Sulla determined to leave these two legions, whom he did not trust
for the impending war, behind in Asia, where the fearful crisis
left for long its lingering traces in the several cities and
districts. The command of this corps and the governorship of Roman
Asia he committed to his best officer, Lucius Licinius Murena.
The revolutionary measures of Mithradates, such as the liberation
of the slaves and the annulling of debts, were of course cancelled;
a restoration, which in many places could not be carried into effect
without force of arms. The towns of the territory on the eastern
frontier underwent a comprehensive reorganization, and reckoned
from the year 670 as the date of their being constituted. Justice
moreover was exercised, as the victors understood the term.
The most noted adherents of Mithradates and the authors of the
massacre of the Italians were punished with death. The persons
liable to taxes were obliged immediately to pay down in cash according
to valuation the whole arrears of tenths and customs for the last five
years; besides which they had to pay a war-indemnity of 20,000
talents (4,800,000 pounds), for the collection of which Lucius
Lucullus was left behind. These were measures fearful in their rigour
and dreadful in their effects; but when we recall the Ephesian decree
and its execution, we feel inclined to regard them as a comparatively
mild retaliation. That the exactions in other respects were not
unusually oppressive, is shown by the value of the spoil afterwards
carried in triumph, which amounted in precious metal to only about
1,000,000 pounds. The few communities on the other hand that had
remained faithful--particularly the island of Rhodes, the region of
Lycia, Magnesia on the Maeander--were richly rewarded: Rhodes received
back at least a portion of the possessions withdrawn from it after
the war against Perseus.(19) In like manner compensation was made
as far as possible by free charters and special favours to the Chians
for the hardships which they had borne, and to the Ilienses for the
insanely cruel maltreatment inflicted on them by Fimbria on account
of the negotiations into which they had entered with Sulla. Sulla
had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia to meet
the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made them all promise to live
in peace and good neighbourhood; on which occasion, however, the
haughty Mithradates had refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not
descended of royal blood--the slave, as he called him--to his
presence. Gaius Scribonius Curio was commissioned to superintend
the restoration of the legal order of things in the two kingdoms
evacuated by Mithradates.
Sulla Embarks for Italy
The goal was thus attained. After four years of war the Pontic
king was again a client of the Romans, and a single and settled
government was re-established in Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor;
the requirements of interest and honour were satisfied, if not
adequately, yet so far as circumstances would allow; Sulla had not
only brilliantly distinguished himself as a soldier and general, but
had the skill, in his path crossed by a thousand obstacles, to preserve
the difficult mean between bold perseverance and prudent concession.
Almost like Hannibal he had fought and conquered, in order that
with the forces, which the first victory gave him, he might prepare
forthwith for a second and severer struggle. After he had in some
degree compensated his soldiers for the fatigues which they had
undergone by luxurious winter-quarters in the rich west of Asia Minor,
he in the spring of 671 transferred them in 1600 vessels from
Ephesus to the Piraeeus and thence by the land route to Patrae,
where the vessels again lay ready to convey the troops to Brundisium.
His arrival was preceded by a report addressed to the senate
respecting his campaigns in Greece and Asia, the writer of which
appeared to know nothing of his deposition; it was the mute herald
of the impending restoration.
Chapter IX
Cinna and Sulla
Ferment in Italy
This state of suspense and uncertainty existing in Italy when
Sulla took his departure for Greece in the beginning of 667 has been
already described: the half-suppressed insurrection, the principal
army under the more than half-usurped command of a general whose
politics were very doubtful, the confusion and the manifold
activity of intrigue in the capital. The victory of the oligarchy
by force of arms had, in spite or because of its moderation,
engendered manifold discontent. The capitalists, painfully
affected by the blows of the most severe financial crisis which
Rome had yet witnessed, were indignant at the government on account
of the law which it had issued as to interest, and on account
of the Italian and Asiatic wars which it had not prevented.
The insurgents, so far as they had laid down their arms, bewailed
not only the disappointment of their proud hopes of obtaining equal
rights with the ruling burgesses, but also the forfeiture of their
venerable treaties, and their new position as subjects utterly
destitute of rights. The communities between the Alps and the Po
were likewise discontented with the partial concessions made to
them, and the new burgesses and freedmen were exasperated by
the cancelling of the Sulpician laws. The populace of the city
suffered amid the general distress, and found it intolerable that
the government of the sabre was no longer disposed to acquiesce in
the constitutional rule of the bludgeon. The adherents, resident
in the capital, of those outlawed after the Sulpician revolution--
adherents who remained very numerous in consequence of the
remarkable moderation of Sulla--laboured zealously to procure
permission for the outlaws to return home; and in particular some
ladies of wealth and distinction spared for this purpose neither
trouble nor money. None of these grounds of ill-humour were such
as to furnish any immediate prospect of a fresh violent collision
between the parties; they were in great part of an aimless and
temporary nature; but they all fed the general discontent, and had
already been more or less concerned in producing the murder of
Rufus, the repeated attempts to assassinate Sulla, the issue
of the consular and tribunician elections for 667 partly in
favour of the opposition.
Cinna
Carbo
Sertorius
The name of the man whom the discontented had summoned to the head
of the state, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, had been hitherto scarcely
heard of, except so far as he had borne himself well as an officer
in the Social war. We have less information regarding the
personality and the original designs of Cinna than regarding those
of any other party leader in the Roman revolution. The reason is,
to all appearance, simply that this man, altogether vulgar and
guided by the lowest selfishness, had from the first no ulterior
political plans whatever. It was asserted at his very first
appearance that he had sold himself for a round sum of money to
the new burgesses and the coterie of Marius, and the charge looks
very credible; but even were it false, it remains nevertheless
significant that a suspicion of the sort, such as was never
expressed against Saturninus and Sulpicius, attached to Cinna.
In fact the movement, at the head of which he put himself, has
altogether the appearance of worthlessness both as to motives and
as to aims. It proceeded not so much from a party as from a number
of malcontents without proper political aims or notable support,
who had mainly undertaken to effect the recall of the exiles by
legal or illegal means. Cinna seems to have been admitted into the
conspiracy only by an afterthought and merely because the intrigue,
which in consequence of the restriction of the tribunician powers
needed a consul to bring forward its proposals, saw in him among
the consular candidates for 667 its fittest instrument and so
pushed him forward as consul. Among the leaders appearing in the
second rank of the movement were some abler heads; such was the
tribune of the people Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, who had made himself
a name by his impetuous popular eloquence, and above all Quintus
Sertorius, one of the most talented of Roman officers and a man
in every respect excellent, who since his candidature for the
tribunate of the people had been a personal enemy to Sulla and had
been led by this quarrel into the ranks of the disaffected to which
he did not at all by nature belong. The proconsul Strabo, although
at variance with the government, was yet far from going along
with this faction.
Outbreak of the Cinnan Revolution
Victory of the Government
So long as Sulla was in Italy, the confederates for good reasons
remained quiet. But when the dreaded proconsul, yielding not to
the exhortations of the consul Cinna but to the urgent state of
matters in the east, had embarked, Cinna, supported by the majority
of the college of tribunes, immediately submitted the projects
of law which had been concerted as a partial reaction against
the Sullan restoration of 666. They embraced the political
equalization of the new burgesses and the freedmen, as Sulpicius
had proposed it, and the restitution of those who had been banished
in consequence of the Sulpician revolution to their former status.
The new burgesses flocked en masse to the capital, that along with
the freedmen they might terrify, and in case of need force, their
opponents into compliance. But the government party was determined
not to yield, consul stood against consul, Gnaeus Octavius against
Lucius Cinna, and tribune against tribune; both sides appeared in
great part armed on the day and at the place of voting. The
tribunes of the senatorial party interposed their veto; when swords
were drawn against them even on the rostra, Octavius employed force
against force. His compact bands of armed men not only cleared the
Via Sacra and the Forum, but also, disregarding the commands of
their more gentle-minded leader, exercised horrible atrocities
against the assembled multitude. The Forum swam with blood on this
"Octavius' day," as it never did before or afterwards--the number
of corpses was estimated at ten thousand. Cinna called on the
slaves to purchase freedom for themselves by sharing in the
struggle; but his appeal was as unsuccessful as the like appeal of
Marius in the previous year, and no course was left to the leaders
of the movement but to take flight. The constitution supplied no
means of proceeding farther against the chiefs of the conspiracy,
so long as their year of office lasted. But a prophet presumably
more loyal than pious had announced that the banishment of the
consul Cinna and of the six tribunes of the people adhering to
him would restore peace and tranquillity to the country; and,
in conformity not with the constitution but with this counsel of
the gods fortunately laid hold of by the custodiers of oracles,
the consul Cinna was by decree of the senate deprived of his office,
Lucius Cornelius Merula was chosen in his stead, and outlawry was
pronounced against the chiefs who had fled. It seemed as if the
whole crisis were about to end in a few additions to the number
of the men who were exiles in Numidia.