The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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Syrian Cities
Amidst the system of violence and feud which thus prevailed
from one end of Syria to another, the larger cities were of course
the principal sufferers, such as Antioch, Seleucia, Damascus,
whose citizens found themselves paralysed in their husbandry
as well as in their maritime and caravan trade. The citizens of Byblus
and Berytus (Beyrout) were unable to protect their fields
and their ships from the Ityraeans, who issuing from their mountain
and maritime strongholds rendered land and sea equally insecure.
Those of Damascus sought to ward off the attacks of the Ityraeans
and Ptolemaeus by handing themselves over to the more remote kings
of the Nabataeans or of the Jews. In Antioch Sampsiceramus and Azizus
mingled in the internal feuds of the citizens, and the Hellenic
great city had wellnigh become even now the seat of an Arab emir.
The state of things reminds us of the kingless times of the German
middle ages, when Nuremberg and Augsburg found their protection
not in the king's law and the king's courts, but in their own walls
alone; impatiently the merchant-citizens of Syria awaited the strong
arm, which should restore to them peace and security of intercourse.
The Last Seleucids
There was no want, however, of a legitimate king in Syria;
there were even two or three of them. A prince Antiochus
from the house of the Seleucids had been appointed by Lucullus
as ruler of the most northerly province in Syria, Commagene.(13)
Antiochus Asiaticus, whose claims on the Syrian throne had met
with recognition both from the senate and from Lucullus,(14)
had been received in Antioch after the retreat of the Armenians
and there acknowledged as king. A third Seleucid prince Philippus
had immediately confronted him there as a rival; and the great
population of Antioch, excitable and delighting in opposition
almost like that of Alexandria, as well as one or two
of the neighbouring Arab emirs had interfered in the family strife
which now seemed inseparable from the rule of the Seleucids.
Was there any wonder that legitimacy became ridiculous and loathsome
to its subjects, and that the so-called rightful kings
were of even somewhat less importance in the land than the petty
princes and robber-chiefs?
Annexation of Syria
To create order amidst this chaos did not require either brilliance
of conception or a mighty display of force, but it required a clear
insight into the interests of Rome and of her subjects, and vigour
and consistency in establishing and maintaining the institutions
recognized as necessary. The policy of the senate in support
of legitimacy had sufficiently degraded itself; the general,
whom the opposition had brought into power, was not to be guided
by dynastic considerations, but had only to see that the Syrian kingdom
should not be withdrawn from the clientship of Rome in future either
by the quarrels of pretenders or by the Covetousness of neighbours.
But to secure this end there was only one course; that the Roman
community should send a satrap to grasp with a vigorous hand
the reins of government, which had long since practically slipped
from the hands of the kings of the ruling house more even through
their own fault than through outward misfortunes. This course Pompeius
took. Antiochus the Asiatic, on requesting to be acknowledged
as the hereditary ruler of Syria, received the answer that Pompeius
would not give back the sovereignty to a king who knew neither how
to maintain nor how to govern his kingdom, even at the request
of his subjects, much less against their distinctly expressed wishes.
With this letter of the Roman proconsul the house of Seleucus
was ejected from the throne which it had occupied for two hundred
and fifty years. Antiochus soon after lost his life through
the artifice of the emir Sampsiceramus, as whose client he played
the ruler in Antioch; thenceforth there is no further mention of these
mock-kings and their pretensions.
Military Pacification of Syria
But, to establish the new Roman government and introduce
any tolerable order into the confusion of affairs, it was further
necessary to advance into Syria with a military force and to terrify
or subdue all the disturbers of the peace, who had sprung
up during the many years of anarchy, by means of the Roman legions.
Already during the campaigns in the kingdom of Pontus and on the Caucasus
Pompeius had turned his attention to the affairs of Syria
and directed detached commissioners and corps to interfere,
where there was need. Aulus Gabinius--the same who as tribune
of the people had sent Pompeius to the east--had in 689 marched
along the Tigris and then across Mesopotamia to Syria, to adjust
the complicated affairs of Judaea. In like manner the severely pressed
Damascus had already been occupied by Lollius and Metellus. Soon
afterwards another adjutant of Pompeius, Marcus Scaurus, arrived
in Judaea, to allay the feuds ever breaking out afresh there.
Lucius Afranius also, who during the expedition of Pompeius
to the Caucasus held the command of the Roman troops in Armenia,
had proceeded from Corduene (the northern Kurdistan) to upper
Mesopotamia, and, after he had successfully accomplished
the perilous march through the desert with the sympathizing help
of the Hellenes settled in Carrhae, brought the Arabs in Osrhoene
to submission. Towards the end of 690 Pompeius in person arrived
in Syria,(15) and remained there till the summer of the following
year, resolutely interfering and regulating matters for the present
and the future. He sought to restore the kingdom to its state
in the better times of the Seleucid rule; all usurped powers were set
aside, the robber-chiefs were summoned to give up their castles,
the Arab sheiks were again restricted to their desert domains,
the affairs of the several communities were definitely regulated.
The Robber-Chiefs Chastised
The legions stood ready to procure obedience to these stern orders,
and their interference proved especially necessary against
the audacious robber-chiefs. Silas the ruler of Lysias, Dionysius
the ruler of Tripolis, Cinyras the ruler of Byblus were taken prisoners
in their fortresses and executed, the mountain and maritime strongholds
of the Ityraeans were broken up, Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus in Chalcis
was forced to purchase his freedom and his lordship with a ransom
of 1000 talents (240,000 pounds). Elsewhere the commands
of the new master met for the most part with unresisting obedience.
Negotiations and Conflicts with the Jews
The Jews alone hesitated. The mediators formerly sent by Pompeius,
Gabinius and Scaurus, had--both, as it was said, bribed
with considerable sums--in the dispute between the brothers
Hyrcanus and Aristobulus decided in favour of the latter, and had also
induced king Aretas to raise the siege of Jerusalem and to proceed
homeward, in doing which he sustained a defeat at the hands
of Aristobulus. But, when Pompeius arrived in Syria, he cancelled
the orders of his subordinates and directed the Jews to resume their
old constitution under high-priests, as the senate had recognized
it about 593,(16) and to renounce along with the hereditary
principality itself all the conquests made by the Hasmonaean
princes. It was the Pharisees, who had sent an embassy of two
hundred of their most respected men to the Roman general and procured
from him the overthrow of the kingdom; not to the advantage
of their own nation, but doubtless to that of the Romans,
who from the nature of the case could not but here revert
to the old rights of the Seleucids, and could not tolerate a conquering
power like that of Jannaeus within the limits of their empire.
Aristobulus was uncertain whether it was better patiently
to acquiesce in his inevitable doom or to meet his fate with arms
in hand; at one time he seemed on the point of submitting to Pompeius,
at another he seemed as though he would summon the national party
among the Jews to a struggle with the Romans. When at length,
with the legions already at the gates, he yielded to the enemy,
the more resolute or more fanatical portion of his army refused
to comply with the orders of a king who was not free. The capital
submitted; the steep temple-rock was defended by that fanatical band
for three months with an obstinacy ready to brave death, till at last
the besiegers effected an entrance while the besieged were resting
on the Sabbath, possessed themselves of the sanctuary, and handed over
the authors of that desperate resistance, so far as they had
not fallen under the sword of the Romans, to the axes of the lictors.
Thus ended the last resistance of the territories newly annexed
to the Roman state.
The New Relations of the Romans in the East
The work begun by Lucullus had been completed by Pompeius;
the hitherto formally independent states of Bithynia, Pontus,
and Syria were united with the Roman state; the exchange--which
had been recognized for more than a hundred years as necessary--
of the feeble system of a protectorate for that of direct sovereignty
over the more important dependent territories,(17) had at length
been realized, as soon as the senate had been overthrown and the Gracchan
party had come to the helm. Rome had obtained in the east
new frontiers, new neighbours, new friendly and hostile relations.
There were now added to the indirect territories of Rome
the kingdom of Armenia and the principalities of the Caucasus,
and also the kingdom on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the small remnant
of the extensive conquests of Mithradates Eupator, now a client-state
of Rome under the government of his son and murderer Pharnaces;
the town of Phanagoria alone, whose commandant Castor had given
the signal for the revolt, was on that account recognized by the Romans
as free and independent.
Conflicts with the Nabataeans
No like successes could be boasted of against the Nabataeans.
King Aretas had indeed, yielding to the desire of the Romans,
evacuated Judaea; but Damascus was still in his hands,
and the Nabataean land had not yet been trodden by any Roman soldier.
To subdue that region or at least to show to their new neighbours
in Arabia that the Roman eagles were now dominant on the Orontes
and on the Jordan, and that the time had gone by when any one was free
to levy contributions in the Syrian lands as a domain without a master,
Pompeius began in 691 an expedition against Petra; but detained
by the revolt of the Jews, which broke out during this expedition,
he was not reluctant to leave to his successor Marcus Scaurus
the carrying out of the difficult enterprise against the Nabataean city
situated far off amidst the desert.(18) In reality Scaurus also
soon found himself compelled to return without having accomplished
his object. He had to content himself with making war
on the Nabataeans in the deserts on the left bank of the Jordan,
where he could lean for support on the Jews, but yet bore off only
very trifling successes. Ultimately the adroit Jewish minister
Antipater from Idumaea persuaded Aretas to purchase a guarantee
for all his possessions, Damascus included, from the Roman governor
for a sum of money; and this is the peace celebrated on the coins
of Scaurus, where king Aretas appears--leading his camel--
as a suppliant offering the olive branch to the Roman.
Difficulty with the Parthians
Far more fraught with momentous effects than these new relations
of the Romans to the Armenians, Iberians, Bosporans, and Nabataeans
was the proximity into which through the occupation of Syria they
were brought with the Parthian state. Complaisant as had been
the demeanour of Roman diplomacy towards Phraates while the Pontic
and Armenian states still subsisted, willingly as both Lucullus
and Pompeius had then conceded to him the possession of the regions
beyond the Euphrates,(19) the new neighbour now sternly took up
his position by the side of the Arsacids; and Phraates, if the royal
art of forgetting his own faults allowed him, might well recall now
the warning words of Mithradates that the Parthian by his alliance
with the Occidentals against the kingdoms of kindred race paved
the way first for their destruction and then for his own.
Romans and Parthians in league had brought Armenia to ruin;
when it was overthrown, Rome true to her old policy now reversed
the parts and favoured the humbled foe at the expense
of the powerful ally. The singular preference, which the father
Tigranes experienced from Pompeius as contrasted with his son
the ally and son-in-law of the Parthian king, was already
part of this policy; it was a direct offence, when soon afterwards
by the orders of Pompeius the younger Tigranes and his family
were arrested and were not released even on Phraates interceding
with the friendly general for his daughter and his son-in-law.
But Pompeius paused not here. The province of Corduene,
to which both Phraates and Tigranes laid claim, was at the command
of Pompeius occupied by Roman troops for the latter, and the Parthians
who were found in possession were driven beyond the frontier
and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene, without the government
of Ctesiphon having even been previously heard (689).
Far the most suspicious circumstance however was, that the Romans
seemed not at all inclined to respect the boundary of the Euphrates
fixed by treaty. On several occasions Roman divisions
destined from Armenia for Syria marched across Mesopotamia;
the Arab emir Abgarus of Osrhoene was received under singularly
favourable conditions into Roman protection; nay, Oruros, situated
in Upper Mesopotamia somewhere between Nisibis and the Tigris 220
miles eastward from the Commagenian passage of the Euphrates,
was designated as the eastern limit of the Roman dominion--
presumably their indirect dominion, inasmuch as the larger
and more fertile northern half of Mesopotamia had been assigned
by the Romans in like manner with Corduene to the Armenian empire.
The boundary between Romans and Parthians thus became the great
Syro-Mesopotamian desert instead of the Euphrates; and this too
seemed only provisional. To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist
on the maintenance of the agreements--which certainly, as it would
seem, were only concluded orally--respecting the Euphrates
boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous reply that the territory
of Rome extended as far as her rights. The remarkable intercourse
between the Roman commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps
of the region of Media and even of the distant province Elymais
(between Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern Luristan) seemed
a commentary on this speech.(20) The viceroys of this latter
mountainous, warlike, and remote land had always exerted themselves
to acquire a position independent of the great-king; it was
the more offensive and menacing to the Parthian government,
when Pompeius accepted the proffered homage of this dynast.
Not less significant was the fact that the title of "king of kings,"
which had been hitherto conceded to the Parthian king by the Romans
in official intercourse, was now all at once exchanged by them
for the simple title of king. This was even more a threat than
a violation of etiquette. Since Rome had entered on the heritage
of the Seleucids, it seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert
at a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran and Turan
were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet no Parthian empire
but merely a Parthian satrapy. The court of Ctesiphon would thus
have had reason enough for going to war with Rome; it seemed
the prelude to its doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia
on account of the question of the frontier. But Phraates had not
the courage to come to an open rupture with the Romans at a time
when the dreaded general with his strong army was on the borders
of the Parthian empire. When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle
amicably the dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded
to the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in their
award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene and northern
Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards his daughter with her son and her
husband adorned the triumph of the Roman general. Even the Parthians
trembled before the superior power of Rome; and, if they had not,
like the inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the Roman
arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had not ventured
to stand the conflict.
Organization of the Provinces
There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating
the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and of removing
as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years' desolating war.
The work of organization begun in Asia Minor by Lucullus
and the commission associated with him, and in Crete by Metellus,
received its final conclusion from Pompeius. The former province
of Asia, which embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was converted
from a frontier province into a central one. The newly-erected
provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus, which was formed
out of the whole former kingdom of Nicomedes and the western half
of the former Pontic state as far as and beyond the Halys;
that of Cilicia, which indeed was older, but was now for the first
time enlarged and organized in a manner befitting its name,
and comprehended also Pamphylia and Isauria; that of Syria,
and that of Crete. Much was no doubt wanting to render that mass
of countries capable of being regarded as the territorial possession
of Rome in the modern sense of the term. The form and order
of the government remained substantially as they were; only the Roman
community came in place of the former monarchs. Those Asiatic provinces
consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of domanial possessions,
urban territories de facto or de jure autonomous, lordships pertaining
to princes and priests, and kingdoms, all of which were as regards
internal administration more or less left to themselves,
and in other respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes
in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its proconsuls
very much as formerly on the great-king and his satraps.
Feudatory Kings
Cappadocia
Commagene
Galatia
The first place, in rank at least, among the dependent dynasts
was held by the king of Cappadocia, whose territory Lucullus had
already enlarged by investing him with the province of Melitene
(about Malatia) as far as the Euphrates, and to whom Pompeius
farther granted on the western frontier some districts taken off
Cilicia from Castabala as far as Derbe near Iconium, and on the eastern
frontier the province of Sophene situated on the left bank
of the Euphrates opposite Melitene and at first destined
for the Armenian prince Tigranes; so that the most important passage
of the Euphrates thus came wholly into the power of the Cappadocian
prince. The small province of Commagene between Syria
and Cappadocia with its capital Samosata (Samsat) remained a dependent
kingdom in the hands of the already-named Seleucid Antiochus;(21)
to him too were assigned the important fortress of Seleucia (near
Biradjik) commanding the more southern passage of the Euphrates,
and the adjoining tracts on the left bank of that river; and thus
care was taken that the two chief passages of the Euphrates
with a corresponding territory on the eastern bank were left in the hands
of two dynasts wholly dependent on Rome. Alongside of the kings
of Cappadocia and Commagene, and in real power far superior to them,
the new king Deiotarus ruled in Asia Minor. One of the tetrarchs
of the Celtic stock of the Tolistobogii settled round Pessinus,
and summoned by Lucullus and Pompeius to render military service
with the other small Roman clients, Deiotarus had in these campaigns
so brilliantly proved his trustworthiness and his energy as contrasted
with all the indolent Orientals that the Roman generals conferred
upon him, in addition to his Galatian heritage and his possessions
in the rich country between Amisus and the mouth of the Halys,
the eastern half of the former Pontic empire with the maritime towns
of Pharnacia and Trapezus and the Pontic Armenia as far as
the frontier of Colchis and the Greater Armenia, to form the kingdom
of Lesser Armenia. Soon afterwards he increased his already
considerable territory by the country of the Celtic Trocmi,
whose tetrarch he dispossessed. Thus the petty feudatory became
one of the most powerful dynasts of Asia Minor, to whom might
be entrusted the guardianship of an important part of the frontier
of the empire.
Princes and Chiefs
Vassals of lesser importance were, the other numerous Galatian
tetrarchs, one of whom, Bogodiatarus prince of the Trocmi,
was on account of his tried valour in the Mithradatic war presented
by Pompeius with the formerly Pontic frontier-town of Mithradatium;
Attalus prince of Paphlagonia, who traced back his lineage
to the old ruling house of the Pylaemenids; Aristarchus and other petty
lords in the Colchian territory; Tarcondimotus who ruled in eastern
Cilicia in the mountain-valleys of the Amanus; Ptolemaeus son
of Mennaeus who continued to rule in Chalcis on the Libanus; Aretas
king of the Nabataeans as lord of Damascus; lastly, the Arabic
emirs in the countries on either side of the Euphrates, Abgarus
in Osrhoene, whom the Romans endeavoured in every way to draw over
to their interest with the view of using him as an advanced post
against the Parthians, Sampsiceramus in Hemesa, Alchaudonius
the Rhambaean, and another emir in Bostra.
Priestly Princes
To these fell to be added the spiritual lords who in the east
frequently ruled over land and people like secular dynasts,
and whose authority firmly established in that native home
of fanaticism the Romans prudently refrained from disturbing,
as they refrained from even robbing the temples of their treasures:
the high-priest of the Goddess Mother in Pessinus; the two high-priests
of the goddess Ma in the Cappadocian Comana (on the upper Sarus)
and in the Pontic city of the same name (Gumenek near Tocat),
both lords who were in their countries inferior only to the king
in power, and each of whom even at a much later period possessed
extensive estates with special jurisdiction and about six thousand
temple-slaves--Archelaus, son of the general of that name
who passed over from Mithradates to the Romans, was invested
by Pompeius with the Pontic high-priesthood--the high-priest
of the Venasian Zeus in the Cappadocian district of Morimene,
whose revenues amounted annually to 3600 pounds (15 talents);
the "archpriest and lord" of that territory in Cilicia Trachea,
where Teucer the son of Ajax had founded a temple to Zeus, over which
his descendants presided by virtue of hereditary right; the "arch-priest
and lord of the people" of the Jews, to whom Pompeius, after having
razed the walls of the capital and the royal treasuries and strongholds
in the land, gave back the presidency of the nation with a serious
admonition to keep the peace and no longer to aim at conquests.
Urban Communities
Alongside of these secular and spiritual potentates stood the urban
communities. These were partly associated into larger unions
which rejoiced in a comparative independence, such as in particular
the league of the twenty-three Lycian cities, which was well organized
and constantly, for instance, kept aloof from participation
in the disorders of piracy; whereas the numerous detached communities,
even if they had self-government secured by charter,
were in practice wholly dependent on the Roman governors.
Elevation of Urban Life in Asia
The Romans failed not to see that with the task of representing
Hellenism and protecting and extending the domain of Alexander
in the east there devolved on them the primary duty of elevating
the urban system; for, while cities are everywhere the pillars
of civilization, the antagonism between Orientals and Occidentals
was especially and most sharply embodied in the contrast between
the Oriental, military-despotic, feudal hierarchy and the Helleno-
Italic urban commonwealth prosecuting trade and commerce. Lucullus
and Pompeius, however little they in other respects aimed at
the reduction of things to one level in the east, and however much
the latter was disposed in questions of detail to censure and alter
the arrangements of his predecessor, were yet completely agreed
in the principle of promoting as far as they could an urban life in Asia
Minor and Syria. Cyzicus, on whose vigorous resistance the first
violence of the last war had spent itself, received from Lucullus
a considerable extension of its domain. The Pontic Heraclea,
energetically as it had resisted the Romans, yet recovered
its territory and its harbours; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against
the unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate.
Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had refused
him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus from devastation
by the Pontic soldiery and his own: he did at least what he could
to restore them, extended considerably their territories, peopled them
afresh--partly with the old inhabitants, who at his invitation
returned in troops to their beloved homes, partly with new settlers
of Hellenic descent--and provided for the reconstruction
of the buildings destroyed. Pompeius acted in the same spirit
and on a greater scale. Already after the subjugation of the pirates
he had, instead of following the example of his predecessors
and crucifying his prisoners, whose number exceeded 20,000, settled
them partly in the desolated cities of the Plain Cilicia,
such as Mallus, Adana, Epiphaneia, and especially in Soli,
which thenceforth bore the name of Pompeius' city (Pompeiupolis),
partly at Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum. This colonizing
by means of pirates met with manifold censure,(22) as it seemed
in some measure to set a premium on crime; in reality it was,
politically and morally, well justified, for, as things then stood,
piracy was something different from robbery and the prisoners
might fairly be treated according to martial law.