The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Western Asia
Cappadocia
The numerous other small states and cities of western Asia--
the kingdom of Bithynia, the Paphlagonian and Gallic principalities,
the Lycian and Pamphylian confederacies, the free cities of Cyzicus
and Rhodes--continued in their former circumscribed relations.
Beyond the Halys Cappadocia--after king Ariarathes V Philopator
(591-624) had, chiefly by the aid of the Attalids, held his ground
against his brother and rival Holophernes who was supported by Syria--
followed substantially the Pergamene policy, as respected both absolute
devotion to Rome and the tendency to adopt Hellenic culture. He was
the means of introducing that culture into the hitherto almost barbarous
Cappadocia, and along with it its extravagancies also, such as
the worship of Bacchus and the dissolute practices of the bands
of wandering actors--the "artists" as they were called. In reward
for the fidelity to Rome, which had cost this prince his life in the
struggle with the Pergamene pretender, his youthful heir Ariarathes
VI was not only protected by the Romans against the usurpation
attempted by the king of Pontus, but received also the south-eastern
part of the kingdom of the Attalids, Lycaonia, along with the
district bordering on it to the eastward reckoned in earlier
times as part of Cilicia.
Pontus
In the remote north-east of Asia Minor "Cappadocia on the sea,"
or more briefly the "sea-state," Pontus, increased in extent and
importance. Not long after the battle of Magnesia king Pharnaces I
had extended his dominion far beyond the Halys to Tius on the
frontier of Bithynia, and in particular had possessed himself of
the rich Sinope, which was converted from a Greek free city into the
residence of the kings of Pontus. It is true that the neighbouring
states endangered by these encroachments, with king Eumenes II at
their head, had on that account waged war against him (571-575), and
under Roman mediation had exacted from him a promise to evacuate
Galatia and Paphlagonia; but the course of events shows that Pharnaces
as well as his successor Mithradates V. Euergetes (598?-634),
faithful allies of Rome in the third Punic war as well as in the
struggle with Aristonicus, not only remained in possession beyond
the Halys, but also in substance retained the protectorate over
the Paphlagonian and Galatian dynasts. It is only on this hypothesis
that we can explain how Mithradates, ostensibly for his brave
deeds in the war against Aristonicus, but in reality for
considerable sums paid to the Roman general, could receive Great
Phrygia from the latter after the dissolution of the Attalid
kingdom. How far on the other hand the kingdom of Pontus about
this time extended in the direction of the Caucasus and the sources
of the Euphrates, cannot be precisely determined; but it seems
to have embraced the western part of Armenia about Enderes and
Divirigi, or what was called Lesser Armenia, as a dependent
satrapy, while the Greater Armenia and Sophene formed distinct
and independent kingdoms.
Syria and Egypt
While in the peninsula of Asia Minor Rome thus substantially conducted
the government and, although much was done without or in opposition
to her wishes, yet determined on the whole the state of possession,
the wide tracts on the other hand beyond the Taurus and the Upper
Euphrates as far down as the valley of the Nile continued to be mainly
left to themselves. No doubt the principle which formed the basis of
the regulation of Oriental affairs in 565, viz. That the Halys should
form the eastern boundary of the Roman client-states,(35) was not
adhered to by the senate and was in its very nature untenable.
The political horizon is a self-deception as well as the physical;
if the state of Syria had the number of ships of war and war-elephants
allowed to it prescribed in the treaty of peace,(36) and if the
Syrian army at the bidding of the Roman senate evacuated Egypt when
half-won(37), these things implied a complete recognition of hegemony
and of clientship. Accordingly the disputes as to the throne in
Syria and in Egypt were referred for settlement to the Roman
government. In the former after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes
(590) Demetrius afterwards named Soter, the son of Seleucus IV,
living as a hostage at Rome, and Antiochus Eupator, a minor, the son
of the last king Antiochus Epiphanes, contended for the crown; in
the latter Ptolemy Philometor (573-608), the elder of the two
brothers who had reigned jointly since 584, had been driven from
the country (590) by the younger Ptolemy Euergetes II or the Fat
(d. 637), and had appeared in person at Rome to procure his restoration.
Both affairs were arranged by the senate entirely through diplomatic
agency, and substantially in accordance with Roman advantage.
In Syria Demetrius, who had the better title, was set aside, and
Antiochus Eupator was recognized as king; while the guardianship of
the royal boy was entrusted by the senate to the Roman senator Gnaeus
Octavius, who, as was to be expected, governed thoroughly in the
interest of Rome, reduced the war-marine and the army of elephants
agreeably to the treaty of 565, and was in the fair way of completing
the military ruin of the country. In Egypt not only was the
restoration of Philometor accomplished, but--partly in order to put
an end to the quarrel between the brothers, partly in order to weaken
the still considerable power of Egypt--Cyrene was separated from that
kingdom and assigned as a provision for Euergetes. "The Romans make
kings of those whom they wish," a Jew wrote not long after this, "and
those whom they do not wish they chase away from land and people."
But this was the last occasion--for a long time--on which the Roman
senate came forward in the affairs of the east with that ability and
energy, which it had uniformly displayed in the complications with
Philip, Antiochus, and Perseus. Though the internal decline of the
government was late in affecting the treatment of foreign affairs,
yet it did affect them at length. The government became unsteady and
vacillating; they allowed the reins which they had just grasped to
slacken and almost to slip from their hands. The guardian-regent
of Syria was murdered at Laodicea; the rejected pretender Demetrius
escaped from Rome and, setting aside the youthful prince, seized the
government of his ancestral kingdom under the bold pretext that the
Roman senate had fully empowered him to do so (592). Soon afterwards
war broke out between the kings of Egypt and Cyrene respecting the
possession of the island of Cyprus, which the senate had assigned first
to the elder, then to the younger; and in opposition to the most
recent Roman decision it finally remained with Egypt. Thus the
Roman government, in the plenitude of its power and during the most
profound inward and outward peace at home, had its decrees derided
by the impotent kings of the east; its name was misused, its ward
and its commissioner were murdered. Seventy years before, when
the Illyrians had in a similar way laid hands on Roman envoys,
the senate of that day had erected a monument to the victim in the
market-place, and had with an army and fleet called the murderers to
account. The senate of this period likewise ordered a monument to be
raised to Gnaeus Octavius, as ancestral custom prescribed; but instead
of embarking troops for Syria they recognized Demetrius as king of the
land. They were forsooth now so powerful, that it seemed superfluous
to guard their own honour. In like manner not only was Cyprus
retained by Egypt in spite of the decree of the senate to the
contrary, but, when after the death of Philometor (608) Euergetes
succeeded him and so reunited the divided kingdom, the senate
allowed this also to take place without opposition.
India, Bactria
After such occurrences the Roman influence in these countries was
practically shattered, and events pursued their course there for
the present without the help of the Romans; but it is necessary for
the right understanding of the sequel that we should not wholly omit
to notice the history of the nearer, and even of the more remote,
east. While in Egypt, shut off as it is on all sides, the status quo
did not so easily admit of change, in Asia both to the west and
east of the Euphrates the peoples and states underwent essential
modifications during, and partly in consequence of, this temporary
suspension of the Roman superintendence. Beyond the great desert
of Iran there had arisen not long after Alexander the Great
the kingdom of Palimbothra under Chandragupta (Sandracottus)
on the Indus, and the powerful Bactrian state on the upper Oxus,
both formed from a mixture of national elements with the most
eastern offshoots of Hellenic civilization.
Decline of the Kingdom of Asia
To the west of these began the kingdom of Asia, which, although
diminished under Antiochus the Great, still stretched its unwieldy
bulk from the Hellespont to the Median and Persian provinces, and
embraced the whole basin of the Euphrates and Tigris. That king had
still carried his arms beyond the desert into the territory of the
Parthians and Bactrians; it was only under him that the vast state
had begun to melt away. Not only had western Asia been lost in
consequence of the battle of Magnesia; the total emancipation of the
two Cappadocias and the two Armenias--Armenia proper in the northeast
and the region of Sophene in the south-west--and their conversion
from principalities dependent on Syria into independent kingdoms
also belong to this period.(38) Of these states Great Armenia in
particular, under the Artaxiads, soon attained to a considerable
position. Wounds perhaps still more dangerous were inflicted on the
empire by the foolish levelling policy of his successor Antiochus
Epiphanes (579-590). Although it was true that his kingdom resembled
an aggregation of countries rather than a single state, and that the
differences of nationality and religion among his subjects placed the
most material obstacles in the way of the government, yet the plan
of introducing throughout his dominions Helleno-Roman manners and
Helleno-Roman worship and of equalizing the various peoples in a
political as well as a religious point of view was under any
circumstances a folly; and all the more so from the fact, that
this caricature of Joseph II was personally far from equal to so
gigantic an enterprise, and introduced his reforms in the very worst
way by the pillage of temples on the greatest scale and the most
insane persecution of heretics.
The Jews
One consequence of this policy was, that the inhabitants of the
province next to the Egyptian frontier, the Jews, a people formerly
submissive even to humility and extremely active and industrious, were
driven by systematic religious persecution to open revolt (about 587).
The matter came to the senate; and, as it was just at that time with
good reason indignant at Demetrius Soter and apprehensive of a
combination between the Attalids and Seleucids, while the establishment
of a power intermediate between Syria and Egypt was at any rate for
the interest of Rome, it made no difficulty in at once recognizing
the freedom and autonomy of the insurgent nation (about 593). Nothing,
however, was done by Rome for the Jews except what could be done
without personal exertion: in spite of the clause of the treaty
concluded between the Romans and the Jews which promised Roman aid to
the latter in the event of their being attacked, and in spite of the
injunction addressed to the kings of Syria and Egypt not to march
their troops through Judaea, it was of course entirely left to the Jews
themselves to hold their ground against the Syrian kings. The brave
and prudent conduct of the insurrection by the heroic family of the
Maccabees and the internal dissension in the Syrian empire did more
for them than the letters of their powerful allies; during the strife
between the Syrian kings Trypho and Demetrius Nicator autonomy and
exemption from tribute were formally accorded to the Jews (612);
and soon afterwards the head of the Maccabaean house, Simon son of
Mattathias, was even formally acknowledged by the nation as well as by
the Syrian great-king as high priest and prince of Israel (615).(39)
The Parthian Empire
Of still more importance in the sequel than this insurrection of
the Israelites was the contemporary movement--probably originating
from the same cause--in the eastern provinces, where Antiochus Epiphanes
emptied the temples of the Persian gods just as he had emptied that at
Jerusalem, and doubtless accorded no better treatment there to the
adherents of Ahuramazda and Mithra than here to those of Jehovah.
Just as in Judaea--only with a wider range and ampler proportions--
the result was a reaction on the part of the native manners and
the native religion against Hellenism and the Hellenic gods; the
promoters of this movement were the Parthians, and out of it arose
the great Parthian empire. The "Parthwa," or Parthians, who are early
met with as one of the numerous peoples merged in the great Persian
empire, at first in the modern Khorasan to the south-east of the
Caspian sea, appear after 500 under the Scythian, i. e. Turanian,
princely race of the Arsacids as an independent state; which,
however, only emerged from its obscurity about a century afterwards.
The sixth Arsaces, Mithradates I (579?-618?), was the real founder
of the Parthian as a great power. To him succumbed the Bactrian
empire, in itself far more powerful, but already shaken to the very
foundation partly by hostilities with the hordes of Scythian horsemen
from Turan and with the states of the Indus, partly by internal
disorders. He achieved almost equal successes in the countries
to the west of the great desert. The Syrian empire was just then
in the utmost disorganization, partly through the failure of the
Hellenizing attempts of Antiochus Epiphanes, partly through the
troubles as to the succession that occurred after his death; and
the provinces of the interior were in full course of breaking off
from Antioch and the region of the coast. In Commagene for instance,
the most northerly province of Syria on the Cappadocian frontier,
the satrap Ptolemaeus asserted his independence, as did also on
the opposite bank of the Euphrates the prince of Edessa in northern
Mesopotamia or the province of Osrhoene, and the satrap Timarchus in
the important province of Media; in fact the latter got his independence
confirmed by the Roman senate, and, supported by Armenia as his ally,
ruled as far down as Seleucia on the Tigris. Disorders of this sort
were permanent features of the Asiatic empire: the provinces under
their partially or wholly independent satraps were in continual
revolt, as was also the capital with its unruly and refractory
populace resembling that of Rome or Alexandria. The whole pack of
neighbouring kings--those of Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Pergamus--
incessantly interfered in the affairs of Syria and fostered disputes
as to the succession, so that civil war and the division of the
sovereignty de facto among two or more pretenders became almost
standing calamities of the country. The Roman protecting power,
if it did not instigate these neighbours, was an inactive spectator.
In addition to all this the new Parthian empire from the eastward
pressed hard on the aliens not merely with its material power, but
with the whole superiority of its national language and religion
and of its national military and political organization. This is
not yet the place for a description of this regenerated empire of
Cyrus; it is sufficient to mention generally the fact that powerful
as was the influence of Hellenism in its composition, the Parthian
state, as compared with that of the Seleucids, was based on a national
and religious reaction, and that the old Iranian language, the order
of the Magi and the worship of Mithra, the Oriental feudatory system,
the cavalry of the desert and the bow and arrow, first emerged there
in renewed and superior opposition to Hellenism. The position of the
imperial kings in presence of all this was really pitiable. The family
of the Seleucids was by no means so enervated as that of the Lagids
for instance, and individuals among them were not deficient in
valour and ability; they reduced, it may be, one or another of those
numerous rebels, pretenders, and intermeddlers to due bounds; but
their dominion was so lacking in a firm foundation, that they were
unable to impose even a temporary check on anarchy. The result was
inevitable. The eastern provinces of Syria under their unprotected
or even insurgent satraps fell into subjection to the Parthians;
Persia, Babylonia, Media were for ever severed from the Syrian
empire; the new state of the Parthians reached on both sides of the
great desert from the Oxus and the Hindoo Coosh to the Tigris and
the Arabian desert--once more, like the Persian empire and all the
older great states of Asia, a pure continental monarchy, and once
more, just like the Persian empire, engaged in perpetual feud on
the one side with the peoples of Turan, on the other with the
Occidentals. The Syrian state embraced at the most Mesopotamia
in addition to the region of the coast, and disappeared, more in
consequence of its internal disorganization than of its diminished
size, for ever from the ranks of the great states. If the danger--
which was repeatedly imminent--of a total subjugation of the land by
the Parthians was averted, that result must be ascribed not to the
resistance of the last Seleucids and still less to the influence of
Rome, but rather to the manifold internal disturbances in the Parthian
empire itself, and above all to the incursions of the peoples of the
Turanian steppes into its eastern provinces.
Reaction of the East against the West
This revolution in the relations of the peoples in the interior of
Asia is the turning-point in the history of antiquity. The tide of
national movement, which had hitherto poured from the west to the east
and had found in Alexander the Great its last and highest expression,
was followed by the ebb. On the establishment of the Parthian state
not only were such Hellenic elements, as may still perhaps have
been preserved in Bactria and on the Indus, lost, but western Iran
also relapsed into the track which had been abandoned for centuries
but was not yet obliterated. The Roman senate sacrificed the first
essential result of the policy of Alexander, and thereby paved the
way for that retrograde movement, whose last offshoots ended in
the Alhambra of Granada and in the great Mosque of Constantinople.
So long as the country from Ragae and Persepolis to the Mediterranean
obeyed the king of Antioch, the power of Rome extended to the border
of the great desert; the Parthian state could never take its place
among the dependencies of the Mediterranean empire, not because
it was so very powerful, but because it had its centre far from
the coast, in the interior of Asia. Since the time of Alexander
the world had obeyed the Occidentals alone, and the east seemed to
be for these merely what America and Australia afterwards became
for the Europeans; with Mithradates I the east re-entered the sphere
of political movement. The world had again two masters.
Maritime Relations
Piracy
It remains that we glance at the maritime relations of this period;
although there is hardly anything else to be said, than that there
no longer existed anywhere a naval power. Carthage was annihilated;
the war-fleet of Syria was destroyed in accordance with the treaty;
the war-marine of Egypt, once so powerful, was under its present
indolent rulers in deep decay. The minor states, and particularly
the mercantile cities, had doubtless some armed transports; but
these were not even adequate for the task--so difficult in the
Mediterranean--of repressing piracy. This task necessarily devolved
on Rome as the leading power in the Mediterranean. While a century
previously the Romans had come forward in this matter with especial
and salutary decision, and had in particular introduced their supremacy
in the east by a maritime police energetically handled for the general
good,(40) the complete nullity of this police at the very beginning
of this period as distinctly betokens the fearfully rapid decline of
the aristocratic government. Rome no longer possessed a fleet of
her own; she was content to make requisitions for ships, when it
seemed necessary, from the maritime towns of Italy, Asia Minor,
and elsewhere. The consequence naturally was, that buccaneering
became organized and consolidated. Something, perhaps, though
not enough, was done towards its suppression, so far as the direct
power of the Romans extended, in the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas.
The expeditions directed against the Dalmatian and Ligurian coasts
at this epoch aimed especially at the suppression of piracy in the
two Italian seas; for the same reason the Balearic islands were
occupied in 631.(41) But in the Mauretanian and Greek waters the
inhabitants along the coast and the mariners were left to settle
matters with the corsairs in one way or another, as they best
could; for Roman policy adhered to the principle of troubling
itself as little as possible about these more remote regions.
The disorganized and bankrupt commonwealths in the states along
the coast thus left to themselves naturally became places of refuge
for the corsairs; and there was no want of such, especially in Asia.
Crete
A bad pre-eminence in this respect belonged to Crete, which, from its
favourable situation and the weakness or laxity of the great states
of the west and east, was the only one of all the Greek settlements
that had preserved its independence. Roman commissions doubtless came
and went to this island, but accomplished still less there than they
did even in Syria and Egypt. It seemed almost as if fate had left
liberty to the Cretans only in order to show what was the result of
Hellenic independence. It was a dreadful picture. The old Doric
rigour of the Cretan institutions had become, just as in Tarentum,
changed into a licentious democracy, and the chivalrous spirit
of the inhabitants into a wild love of quarrelling and plunder;
a respectable Greek himself testifies, that in Crete alone nothing
was accounted disgraceful that was lucrative, and even the Apostle
Paul quotes with approval the saying of a Cretan poet,
--Kretes aei pseustai, kaka theria, gasteres argai--.
Perpetual civil wars, notwithstanding the Roman efforts to bring
about peace, converted one flourishing township after another
on the old "island of the hundred cities" into heaps of ruins.
Its inhabitants roamed as robbers at home and abroad, by land and
by sea; the island became the recruiting ground for the surrounding
kingdoms, after that evil was no longer tolerated in the Peloponnesus,
and above all the true seat of piracy; about this period, for instance,
the island of Siphnus was thoroughly pillaged by a fleet of Cretan
corsairs. Rhodes--which, besides, was unable to recover from the loss
of its possessions on the mainland and from the blows inflicted on its
commerce(42)--expended its last energies in the wars which it found
itself compelled to wage against the Cretans for the suppression of
piracy (about 600), and in which the Romans sought to mediate, but
without earnestness and apparently without success.
Cilicia
Along with Crete, Cilicia soon began to become a second home for
this buccaneering system. Piracy there not only gained ground
owing to the impotence of the Syrian rulers, but the usurper Diodotus
Tryphon, who had risen from a slave to be king of Syria (608-615),
encouraged it by all means in his chief seat, the rugged or western
Cilicia, with a view to strengthen his throne by the aid of the
corsairs. The uncommonly lucrative character of the traffic with
the pirates, who were at once the principal captors of, and dealers
in slaves, procured for them among the mercantile public, even in
Alexandria, Rhodes, and Delos, a certain toleration, in which the
very governments shared at least by inaction. The evil was so
serious that the senate, about 611, sent its best man Scipio
Aemilianus to Alexandria and Syria, in order to ascertain on the spot
what could be done in the matter. But diplomatic representations of
the Romans did not make weak governments strong; there was no other
remedy but that of directly maintaining a fleet in these waters, and
for this the Roman government lacked energy and perseverance. So all
things just remained on the old footing; the piratic fleet was the
only considerable naval power in the Mediterranean; the capture of
men was the only trade that flourished there. The Roman government
was an onlooker; but the Roman merchants, as the best customers in
the slave market, kept up an active and friendly traffic with the
pirate captains, as the most important wholesale dealers in that
commodity, at Delos and elsewhere.