The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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Chapter IV
Pompeius and the East
Pompeius Suppresses Piracy
We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs
of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687
Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude of power, undertook
the conduct of the war against the pirates. He began by dividing
the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts
and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants,
for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching
the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them
into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the best part
of the ships of war that were available--among which on this occasion
also those of Rhodes were distinguished--early in the year to sea,
and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian
waters, with a view especially to re-establish the supply of grain
from these provinces to Italy. His lieutenants meanwhile addressed
themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts.
It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted
from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate
of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province
of Narbo--an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same
time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against
the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared
in Rome.(1) When at the end of forty days the navigation had been
everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean,
Pompeius proceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern
seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy,
the Lycian and Cilician waters. On the news of the approach
of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere disappeared
from the open sea; and not only so, but even the strong Lycian fortresses
of Anticragus and Cragus surrendered without offering serious
resistance. The well-calculated moderation of Pompeius helped
even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible
marine strongholds. His predecessors had ordered every captured
freebooter to be nailed to the cross; without hesitation he gave
quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found
in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence.
The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain
at least their own waters by arms against the Romans; after having
placed their children and wives and their rich treasures for
security in the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited
the Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the offing
of Coracesium. But here the ships of Pompeius, well manned and well
provided with all implements of war, achieved a complete victory.
Without farther hindrance he landed and began to storm and break up
the mountain-castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer
to themselves freedom and life as the price of submission. Soon
the great multitude desisted from the continuance of a hopeless war
in their strongholds and mountains, and consented to surrender.
Forty-nine days after Pompeius had appeared in the eastern seas,
Cilicia was subdued and the war at an end.
The rapid suppression of piracy was a great relief, but not a grand
achievement; with the resources of the Roman state, which had been
called forth in lavish measure, the corsairs could as little cope
as the combined gangs of thieves in a great city can cope
with a well-organized police. It was a naive proceeding to celebrate
such a razzia as a victory. But when compared with the prolonged
continuance and the vast and daily increasing extent of the evil,
it was natural that the surprisingly rapid subjugation
of the dreaded pirates should make a most powerful impression
on the public; and the more so, that this was the first trial of rule
centralized in a single hand, and the parties were eagerly waiting
to see whether that hand would understand the art of ruling better
than the collegiate body had done. Nearly 400 ships and boats,
including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either taken
by Pompeius or surrendered to him; in all about 1300 piratical vessels
are said to have been destroyed; besides which the richly-filled
arsenals and magazines of the buccaneers were burnt.
Of the pirates about 10,000 perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive
into the hands of the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral
of the Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other
individuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long believed
at home to be dead, obtained once more their freedom through
Pompeius. In the summer of 687, three months after the beginning
of the campaign, commerce resumed its wonted course and instead
of the former famine abundance prevailed in Italy.
Dissensions between Pompeius and Metellus as to Crete
A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however,
disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the Roman arms.
There Quintus Metellus was stationed in the second year of his command,
and was employed in finishing the subjugation-already substantially
effected--of the island,(2) when Pompeius appeared in the eastern
waters. A collision was natural, for according to the Gabinian law
the command of Pompeius extended concurrently with that of Metellus
over the whole island, which stretched to a great length but was
nowhere more than ninety miles broad;(3) but Pompeius was considerate
enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants. The still resisting
Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen
taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned
on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit
of imposing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south
of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius.
He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment,
from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius
to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions
and to take over the towns. This proceeding was, no doubt,
not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side
of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when,
utterly ignoring the convention of the cities with Pompeius,
he continued to treat them as hostile. In vain Octavius protested;
in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned
from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there;
Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna,
besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person
was taken prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans
who were taken with him were consigned to the executioner.
Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna,
at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader's
death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been
commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war
in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna,
where both made a stand, was only subdued by Metellus
after the most obstinate resistance.
In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal
civil war at his own hand against the generalissimo of the democracy.
It shows the indescribable disorganization in the Roman state,
that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter
correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years
afterwards were sitting once more peacefully and even "amicably"
side by side in the senate.
Pompeius Takes the Supreme Command against Mithradates
Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing
for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans
or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal
which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs
of the mainland of Asia Minor. The portion of the Lucullan army
that was still left after the losses which it had suffered
and the departure of the Fimbrian legions remained inactive
on the upper Halys in the country of the Trocmi bordering
on the Pontic territory. Lucullus still held provisionally
the chief command, as his nominated successor Glabrio continued
to linger in the west of Asia Minor. The three legions
commanded by Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive
in Cilicia. The Pontic territory was again wholly in the power
of king Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities
that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria,
pay for their revolt with cruel severity. The kings of the east
did not proceed to any serious offensive movement against the Romans,
either because it formed no part of their plan, or--as was asserted--
because the landing of Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates
and Tigranes to desist from advancing farther. The Manilian law
realized the secretly-cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly
than he probably himself anticipated; Glabrio and Rex
were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia and Cilicia
with the troops stationed there, as well as the management
of the Pontic-Armenian war along with authority to make war, peace,
and alliance with the dynasts of the east at his own discretion,
were transferred to Pompeius. Amidst the prospect of honours
and spoils so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising
of an ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty laurels;
he abandoned the expedition against Crete and the farther pursuit
of the corsairs, and destined his fleet also to support the attack
which he projected on the kings of Pontus and Armenia. Yet amidst
this land-war he by no means wholly lost sight of piracy,
which was perpetually raising its head afresh. Before he left Asia
(691) he caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against
the corsairs; on his proposal in the following year a similar measure
was resolved on for Italy, and the sum needed for the purpose
was granted by the senate. They continued to protect the coasts
with guards of cavalry and small squadrons, and though
as the expeditions to be mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696
and Egypt in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet
after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes
and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its head
and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as it had done
under the government of the mouldering oligarchy.
War Preparations of Pompeius
Alliance with the Parthians
Variance between Mithradates and Tigranes
The few months which still remained before the commencement
of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed by the new commander-
in-chief with strenuous activity in diplomatic and military
preparations. Envoys were sent to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre
than to attempt a serious mediation. There was a hope at the Pontic
court that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by the recent
considerable successes which the allies had achieved over Rome
to enter into the Pontic-Armenian alliance. To counteract this, Roman
envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles,
which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid.
A son of the great-king Tigranes, bearing the same name
had rebelled against his father, either because he was unwilling
to wait for the death of the old man, or because his father's
suspicion, which had already cost several of his brothers their
lives, led him to discern his only chance of safety in open
insurrection. Vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge
with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid,
and intrigued against his father there. It was partly due
to his exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward
which was offered to him by both sides for his accession--the secured
possession of Mesopotamia--from the hand of the Romans, renewed
with Pompeius the agreement concluded with Lucullus respecting
the boundary of the Euphrates,(4) and even consented to operate
in concert with the Romans against Armenia. But the younger Tigranes
occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out of his
promoting the alliance between the Romans and the Parthians,
for his insurrection produced a variance between the kings
Tigranes and Mithradates themselves. The great-king cherished
in secret the suspicion that Mithradates might have had a hand
in the insurrection of his grandson--Cleopatra the mother
of the younger Tigranes was the daughter of Mithradates--
and, though no open rupture took place, the good understanding
between the two monarchs was disturbed at the very moment
when it was most urgently needed.
At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike preparations
with energy. The Asiatic allied and client communities were warned
to furnish the stipulated contingents. Public notices summoned
the discharged veterans of the legions of Fimbria to return
to the standards as volunteers, and by great promises and the name
of Pompeius a considerable portion of them were induced in reality
to obey the call. The whole force united under the orders
of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries,
to between 40,000 and 50,000 men.(5)
Pompeius and Lucullus
In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, to take
the chief command of the troops of Lucullus and to advance
with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Cilician legions
were directed to follow. At Danala, a place belonging to the Trocmi,
the two generals met; but the reconciliation, which mutual friends
had hoped to effect, was not accomplished. The preliminary
courtesies soon passed into bitter discussions, and these
into violent altercation: they parted in worse mood than they had met.
As Lucullus continued to make honorary gifts and to distribute
lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared
all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to
his own arrival null and void. Formally he was in the right;
customary tactin the treatment of a meritorious and more than
sufficientlymortified opponent was not to be looked for from him.
Invasion of Pontus
Retreat of Mithradates
So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops crossed
the frontier of Pontus. There they were opposed by king Mithradates
with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry. Left in the lurch by his
allies and attacked by Rome with reinforced power and energy,
he made an attempt to procure peace; but he would hear nothing
of the unconditional submission which Pompeius demanded--what worse
could the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him? That he might
not expose his army, mostly archers and horsemen, to the formidable
shock of the Roman infantry of the line, he slowly retired before
the enemy, and compelled the Romans to follow him in his various
cross-marches; making a stand at the same time, wherever there was
opportunity, with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy,
and occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding
their supplies. At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted
from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone,
proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates,
crossed it, and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire.
But Mithradates followed along the left bank of the Euphrates,
and when he had arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province,
he intercepted the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira,
which was strong and well provided with water, and from which
with his light troops he commanded the plain. Pompeius,
still wanting the Cilician legions and not strong enough to maintain
himself in this position without them, had to retire over the Euphrates
and to seek protection from the cavalry and archers of the king
in the wooded ground of Pontic Armenia extensively intersected
by rocky ravines and deep valleys. It was not till the troops
from Cilicia arrived and rendered it possible to resume the offensive
with a superiority of force, that Pompeius again advanced, invested
the camp of the king with a chain of posts of almost eighteen miles
in length, and kept him formally blockaded there, while the Roman
detachments scoured the country far and wide. The distress in the Pontic
camp was great; the draught animals even had to be killed; at length
after remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick
and wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to leave
in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death by his own troops,
and departed during the night with the utmost secrecy towards
the east. Cautiously Pompeius followed through the unknown land:
the march was now approaching the boundary which separated
the dominions of Mithradates and Tigranes. When the Roman general
perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest
to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the enemy away
after him into the far distant regions of the east, he determined
not to permit this.
Battle at Nicopolis
The two armies lay close to each other. During the rest at noon
the Roman army set out without the enemy observing the movement,
made a circuit, and occupied the heights, which lay in front
and commanded a defile to be passed by the enemy, on the southern bank
of the river Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Enderes,
at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built. The following
morning the Pontic troops broke up in their usual manner,
and, supposing that the enemy was as hitherto behind them, after,
accomplishing the day's march they pitched their camp
in the very valley whose encircling heights the Romans had occupied.
Suddenly in the silence of the night there sounded all around them
the dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides
poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp-followers,
chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other; and amidst
the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness, not a missile
failed to take effect. When the Romans had expended their darts,
they charged down from the heights on the masses which had now become
visible by the light of the newly-risen moon, and which were
abandoned to them almost defenceless; those that did not fall
by the steel of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful pressure
under the hoofs and wheels. It was the last battle-field
on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans. With three
attendants--two of his horsemen, and a concubine who was accustomed
to follow him in male attire and to fight bravely by his side--
he made his escape thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither
a portion of his trusty followers found their way to him. He divided
among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents of gold
(1,400,000 pounds); furnished them and himself with poison;
and hastened with the band that was left to him up the Euphrates
to unite with his ally, the great-king of Armenia.
Tigranes Breaks with Mithradates
Mithradates Crosses the Phasis
This hope likewise was vain; the alliance, on the faith of which
Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already by that time
existed no longer. During the conflicts between Mithradates
and Pompeius just narrated, the king of the Parthians, yielding
to the urgency of the Romans and above all of the exiled Armenian prince,
had invaded the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had
compelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains.
The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata;
but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure
with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered
the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led
by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom
Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little
inclined to fight with the freshly-victorious Romans, and least
of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates; whom he trusted less
than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son
intended to betake himself to his grandfather. So he entered into
negotiations with the Romans for a separate peace; but he did not wait
for the conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance
which linked him to Mithradates. The latter, when he had arrived
at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn that the great-king
Tigranes had set a price of 100 talents (24,000 pounds)
on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had delivered them
to the Romans. King Mithradates saw his kingdom in the hands
of the enemy, and his allies on the point of coming to an agreement
with them; it was not possible to continue the war; he might deem
himself fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along
the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in perhaps
dislodging his son Machares--who had revolted and entered into
connection with the Romans(6)--once more from the Bosporan kingdom,
and in finding on the Maeotis a fresh soil for fresh projects.
So he turned northward. When the king in his flight had crossed
the Phasis, the ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time
discontinued his pursuit; but instead of returning to the region
of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into the region
of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.
Pompeius at Artaxata
Peace with Tigranes
Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the region
of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his camp thirteen miles
from the city. There he was met by the son of the great-king,
who hoped after the fall of his father to receive the Armenian diadem
from the hand of the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every
way to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father
and the Romans. The great-king was only the more resolved to purchase
peace at any price. On horseback and without his purple robe,
but adorned with the royal diadem and the royal turban, he appeared
at the gate of the Roman camp and desired to be conducted
to the presence of the Roman general. After having given up
at the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman camp
required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself in barbarian
fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in token of unconditional
surrender placed the diadem and tiara in his hands. Pompeius,
highly delighted at a victory which cost nothing, raised up
the humbled king of kings, invested him again with the insignia
of his dignity, and dictated the peace. Besides a payment of;
1,400,000 pounds (6000 talents) to the war-chest and a present
to the soldiers, out of which each of them received 50 -denarii-
(2 pounds 2 shillings), the king ceded all the conquests which
he had made, not merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian
possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right bank
of the Euphrates; he was again restricted to Armenia proper,
and his position of great-king was, of course, at an end.
In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued the two mighty kings
of Pontus and Armenia. At the beginning of 688 there was not a Roman
soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its
close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without
an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat
on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal
of Rome. The whole domain of Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates
unconditionally obeyed the Romans; the victorious army took up
its winter-quarters to the east of that stream on Armenian soil,
in the country from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur,
from which the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.
The Tribes of the Caucasus
Iberians
Albanians
But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot, raised up
for them new conflicts. The brave peoples of the middle and eastern
Caucasus saw with indignation the remote Occidentals encamping
on their territory. There--in the fertile and well-watered tableland
of the modern Georgia--dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well-organized,
agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs
cultivated the soil according to the system of common possession,
without any separate ownership of the individual cultivators. Army
and people were one; the people were headed partly by the ruler-
clans--out of which the eldest always presided over the whole
Iberian nation as king, and the next eldest as judge and leader
of the army--partly by special families of priests, on whom chiefly
devolved the duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties
concluded with other peoples and of watching over their observance.
The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the king.
Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans, who were settled
on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, were in a far lower
stage of culture. Chiefly a pastoral people they tended, on foot
or on horseback, their numerous herds in the luxuriant meadows
of the modern Shirvan; their few tilled fields were still cultivated
with the old wooden plough without iron share. Coined money
was unknown, and they did not count beyond a hundred. Each of their
tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief and spoke its distinct
dialect. Far superior in number to the Iberians, the Albanians
could not at all cope with them in bravery. The mode of fighting
was on the whole the same with both nations; they fought chiefly
with arrows and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian
fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods
behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops of trees
on the foe; the Albanians had also numerous horsemen partly mailed
after the Medo-Armenian manner with heavy cuirasses and greaves.
Both nations lived on their lands and pastures in a complete
independence preserved from time immemorial. Nature itself
as it were, seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and Asia
as a rampart against the tide of national movements; there the arms
of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly found their limit;
now the brave garrison of this partition-wall set themselves
to defend it also against the Romans.