The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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New Towns Established
But Pompeius made it his business above all to promote urban life
in the new Roman provinces. We have already observed how poorly
provided with towns the Pontic empire was:(23) most districts
of Cappadocia even a century after this had no towns, but merely
mountain fortresses as a refuge for the agricultural population
in war; the whole east of Asia Minor, apart from the sparse Greek
colonies on the coasts, must have been at this time in a similar
plight. The number of towns newly established by Pompeius in these
provinces is, including the Cilician settlements, stated at thirty-
nine, several of which attained great prosperity. The most notable
of these townships in the former kingdom of Pontus were Nicopolis,
the "city of victory," founded on the spot where Mithradates
sustained the last decisive defeat(24)--the fairest memorial
of a general rich in similar trophies; Megalopolis, named from Pompeius'
surname, on the frontier of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia,
the subsequent Sebasteia (now Siwas); Ziela, where the Romans fought
the unfortunate battle,(25) a township which had arisen round
the temple of Anaitis there and hitherto had belonged to its high-
priest, and to which Pompeius now gave the form and privileges
of a city; Diopolis, formerly Cabira, afterwards Neocaesarea (Niksar),
likewise one of the battle-fields of the late war; Magnopolis
or Pompeiupolis, the restored Eupatoria at the confluence of the Lycus
and the Iris, originally built by Mithradates, but again destroyed
by him on account of the defection of the city to the Romans;(26)
Neapolis, formerly Phazemon, between Amasia and the Halys. Most
of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing
colonists from a distance, but by the suppression of villages
and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring-wall;
only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and veterans of his army,
who preferred to establish a home for themselves there at once
rather than afterwards in Italy. But at other places also
there arose on the suggestion of the regent new centres of Hellenic
civilization. In Paphlagonia a third Pompeiupolis marked the spot
where the army of Mithradates in 666 achieved the great victory
over the Bithynians.(27) In Cappadocia, which perhaps had suffered
more than any other province by the war, the royal residence Mazaca
(afterwards Caesarea, now Kaisarieh) and seven other townships
were re-established by Pompeius and received urban institutions.
In Cilicia and Coelesyria there were enumerated twenty towns laid
out by Pompeius. In the districts ceded by the Jews, Gadara
in the Decapolis rose from its ruins at the command of Pompeius,
and the city of Seleucis was founded. By far the greatest portion
of the domain-land at his disposal on the Asiatic continent must have
been applied by Pompeius for his new settlements; whereas in Crete,
about which Pompeius troubled himself little or not at all,
the Roman domanial possessions seem to have continued tolerably extensive.
Pompeius was no less intent on regulating and elevating the existing
communities than on founding new townships. The abuses and usurpations
which prevailed were done away with as far as lay in his power;
detailed ordinances drawn up carefully for the different provinces
regulated the particulars of the municipal system. A number
of the most considerable cities had fresh privileges conferred on them.
Autonomy was bestowed on Antioch on the Orontes, the most important
city of Roman Asia and but little inferior to the Egyptian Alexandria
and to the Bagdad of antiquity, the city of Seleucia in the Parthian
empire; as also on the neighbour of Antioch, the Pierian Seleucia,
which was thus rewarded for its courageous resistance to Tigranes;
on Gaza and generally on all the towns liberated from the Jewish rule;
on Mytilene in the west of Asia Minor; and on Phanagoria
on the Black Sea.
Aggregate Results
Thus was completed the structure of the Roman state in Asia,
which with its feudatory kings and vassals, its priests made
into princes, and its series of free and half-free cities puts
us vividly in mind of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation.
It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties
overcome or as respects the consummation attained; nor was it made
so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality
lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise
of Pompeius. Pompeius in particular consented to be praised,
and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might
almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was.
If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their deliverer
and founder, as the man who had as well by land as by sea terminated
the wars with which the world was filled, such a homage might
not seem too extravagant for the vanquisher of the pirates
and of the empires of the east. But the Romans this time surpassed
the Greeks. The triumphal inscriptions of Pompeius himself enumerated
12 millions of people as subjugated and 1538 cities and strongholds
as conquered--it seemed as if quantity was to make up for quality--
and made the circle of his victories extend from the Maeotic Sea
to the Caspian and from the latter to the Red Sea, when his eyes had
never seen any one of the three; nay farther, if he did not exactly
say so, he at any late induced the public to suppose that the annexation
of Syria, which in truth was no heroic deed, had added
the whole east as far as Bactria and India to the Roman empire--
so dim was the mist of distance, amidst which according to his
statements the boundary-line of his eastern conquests was lost.
The democratic servility, which has at all times rivalled
that of courts, readily entered into these insipid extravagances.
It was not satisfied by the pompous triumphal procession, which moved
through the streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept. 693--
the forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great--adorned, to say nothing
of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of Mithradates
and by the children of the three mightiest kings of Asia, Mithradates,
Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its general, who had conquered
twenty-two kings, with regal honours and bestowed on him the golden
chaplet and the insignia of the magistracy for life. The coins struck
in his honour exhibit the globe itself placed amidst the triple
laurels brought home from the three continents, and surmounted
by the golden chaplet conferred by the burgesses on the man
who had triumphed over Africa, Spain, and Asia. It need excite
no surprise, if in presence of such childish acts of homage voices
were heard of an opposite import. Among the Roman world of quality
it was currently affirmed that the true merit of having subdued
the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only gone thither
to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around his own brow the laurels
which another hand had plucked. Both statements were totally
erroneous: it was not Pompeius but Glabrio that was sent to Asia
to relieve Lucullus, and, bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was
a fact that, when Pompeius took the supreme command, the Romans
had forfeited all their earlier successes and had not a foot's breadth
of Pontic soil in their possession. More pointed and effective
was the ridicule of the inhabitants of the capital, who failed not
to nickname the mighty conqueror of the globe after the great powers
which he had conquered, and saluted him now as "conqueror of Salem,"
now as "emir" (-Arabarches-), now as the Roman Sampsiceramus.
Lucullus and Pompeius as Administrators
The unprejudiced judge will not agree either with those exaggerations
or with these disparagements. Lucullus and Pompeius, in subduing
and regulating Asia, showed themselves to be, not heroes
and state-creators, but sagacious and energetic army-leaders
and governors. As general Lucullus displayed no common talents
and a self-confidence bordering on rashness, while Pompeius displayed
military judgment and a rare self-restraint; for hardly
has any general with such forces and a position so wholly free
ever acted so cautiously as Pompeius in the east. The most brilliant
undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him on all sides;
he was free to start for the Cimmerian Bosporus and for the Red
Sea; he had opportunity of declaring war against the Parthians;
the revolted provinces of Egypt invited him to dethrone king
Ptolemaeus who was not recognized by the Romans, and to carry
out the testament of Alexander; but Pompeius marched neither
to Panticapaeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria;
throughout he gathered only those fruits which of themselves fell
to his hand. In like manner he fought all his battles by sea
and land with a crushing superiority of force. Had this moderation
proceeded from the strict observance of the instructions given
to him, as Pompeius was wont to profess, or even from a perception
that the conquests of Rome must somewhere find a limit and that
fresh accessions of territory were not advantageous to the state,
it would deserve a higher praise than history confers on the most
talented officer; but constituted as Pompeius was, his self-
restraint was beyond doubt solely the result of his peculiar want
of decision and of initiative--defects, indeed, which were in his
case far more useful to the state than the opposite excellences
of his predecessor. Certainly very grave errors were perpetrated
both by Lucullus and by Pompeius. Lucullus reaped their fruits himself,
when his imprudent conduct wrested from him all the results
of his victories; Pompeius left it to his successors to bear
the consequences of his false policy towards the Parthians. He might
either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage
to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized,
as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid
for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted
to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood,
which the court of Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised,
impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing
the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation.
As administrator of Asia Lucullus acquired a more than princely
wealth; and Pompeius also received as reward for its organization
large sums in cash and still more considerable promissory notes
from the king of Cappadocia, from the rich city of Antioch,
and from other lords and communities. But such exactions had become
almost a customary tax; and both generals showed themselves at any rate
to be not altogether venal in questions of greater importance,
and, if possible, got themselves paid by the party whose interests
coincided with those of Rome. Looking to the state of the times,
this does not prevent us from characterizing the administration
of both as comparatively commendable and conducted primarily
in the interest of Rome, secondarily in that of the provincials.
The conversion of the clients into subjects, the better regulation
of the eastern frontier, the establishment of a single and strong
government, were full of blessing for the rulers as well as
for the ruled. The financial gain acquired by Rome was immense;
the new property tax, which with the exception of some specially
exempted communities all those princes, priests, and cities had to pay
to Rome, raised the Roman state-revenues almost by a half above their
former amount. Asia indeed suffered severely. Pompeius brought
in money and jewels an amount of 2,000,000 pounds (200,000,000
sesterces) into the state-chest and distributed 3,900,000 pounds
(16,000 talents) among his officers and soldiers; if we add to this
the considerable sums brought home by Lucullus, the non-official
exactions of the Roman army, and the amount of the damage done
by the war, the financial exhaustion of the land may be readily
conceived. The Roman taxation of Asia was perhaps in itself
not worse than that of its earlier rulers, but it formed a heavier
burden on the land, in so far as the taxes thenceforth went
out of the country and only the lesser portion of the proceeds
was again expended in Asia; and at any rate it was, in the old
as well as the newly-acquired provinces, based on a systematic plundering
of the provinces for the benefit of Rome. But the responsibility
for this rests far less on the generals personally than on the parties
at home, whom these had to consider; Lucullus had even exerted himself
energetically to set limits to the usurious dealings of the Roman
capitalists in Asia, and this essentially contributed to bring
about his fall. How much both men earnestly sought to revive
the prosperity of the reduced provinces, is shown by their action
in cases where no considerations of party policy tied their hands,
and especially in their care for the cities of Asia Minor. Although
for centuries afterwards many an Asiatic village lying in ruins
recalled the times of the great war, Sinope might well begin a new
era with the date of its re-establishment by Lucullus, and almost
all the more considerable inland towns of the Pontic kingdom might
gratefully honour Pompeius as their founder. The organization
of Roman Asia by Lucullus and Pompeius may with all its undeniable
defects be described as on the whole judicious and praiseworthy;
serious as were the evils that might still adhere to it,
it could not but be welcome to the sorely tormented Asiatics
for the very reason that it came attended by the inward
and outward peace, the absence of which had been so long
and so painfully felt.
The East after the Departure of Pompeius
Peace continued substantially in the east, till the idea--merely
indicated by Pompeius with his characteristic timidity--of joining
the regions eastward of the Euphrates to the Roman empire was taken
up again energetically but unsuccessfully by the new triumvirate
of Roman regents, and soon thereafter the civil war drew the eastern
provinces as well as all the rest into its fatal vortex.
In the interval the governors of Cilicia had to fight constantly
with the mountain-tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes
of the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins especially
many Roman troops were destroyed; but these movements had no farther
significance. More remarkable was the obstinate resistance,
which the tough Jewish nation opposed to the conquerors. Alexander,
son of the deposed king Aristobulus, and Aristobulus himself
who after some time succeeded in escaping from captivity,
excited during the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700)
three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which
the government of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently
succumbed. It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance
of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them
to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous
of these revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army
of occupation in consequence of the Egyptian crisis furnished
the immediate impulse, began with the murder of the Romans
settled in Palestine. It was not without difficulty
that the able governor succeeded in rescuing the few Romans,
who had escaped this fate and found a temporary refuge
on Mount Gerizim, from the insurgents who kept them blockaded there,
and in overpowering the revolt after several severely contested
battles and tedious sieges. In consequence of this the monarchy
of the high-priests was abolished and the Jewish land was broken up
as Macedonia had formerly been, into five independent districts
administered by governing colleges with an Optimate organization;
Samaria and other townships razed by the Jews were re-established,
to form a counterpoise to Jerusalem; and lastly a heavier tribute
was imposed on the Jews than on the other Syrian subjects of Rome.
The Kingdom of Egypt
It still remains that we should glance at the kingdom of Egypt
along with the last dependency that remained to it of the extensive
acquisitions of the Lagids, the fair island of Cyprus.
Egypt was now the only state of the Hellenic east that was still
at least nominally independent; just as formerly, when the Persians
established themselves along the eastern half of the Mediterranean,
Egypt was their last conquest, so now the mighty conquerors
from the west long delayed the annexation of that opulent
and peculiar country. The reason lay, as was already indicated,
neitherin any fear of the resistance of Egypt nor in the want
of a fitting occasion. Egypt was just about as powerless as Syria,
and had already in 673 fallen in all due form of law to the Roman
community.(28) The control exercised over the court of Alexandria
by the royal guard--which appointed and deposed ministers
and occasionally kings, took for itself what it pleased, and,
if it was refused a rise of pay, besieged the king in his palace--
was by no means liked in the country or rather in the capital (for
the country with its population of agricultural slaves was hardly taken
into account); and at least a party there wished for the annexation
of Egypt by Rome, and even took steps to procure it But the less
the kings of Egypt could think of contending in arms against Rome,
the more energetically Egyptian gold set itself to resist the Roman
plans of union; and in consequence of the peculiar despotico-
communistic centralization of the Egyptian finances the revenues
of the court of Alexandria were still nearly equal to the public
income of Rome even after its augmentation by Pompeius.
The suspicious jealousy of the oligarchy, which was chary of allowing
any individual either to conquer or to administer Egypt, operated
in the same direction. So the de facto rulers of Egypt and Cyprus
were enabled by bribing the leading men in the senate not merely
to respite their tottering crowns, but even to fortify them afresh
and to purchase from the senate the confirmation of their royal title.
But with this they had not yet obtained their object.
Formal state-law required a decree of the Roman burgesses;
until this was issued, the Ptolemies were dependent on the caprice
of every democratic holder of power, and they had thus to commence
the warfare of bribery also against the other Roman party,
which as the more powerful stipulated for far higher prices.
Cyprus Annexed
The result in the two cases was different. The annexation
of Cyprus was decreed in 696 by the people, that is, by the leaders
of the democracy, the support given to piracy by the Cypriots
being alleged as the official reason why that course should
now be adopted. Marcus Cato, entrusted by his opponents
with the execution of this measure, came to the island without an army;
but he had no need of one. The king took poison; the inhabitants
submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate,
and were placed under the governor of Cilicia. The ample treasure
of nearly 7000 talents (1,700,000 pounds), which the equally
covetous and miserly king could not prevail on himself to apply
for the bribes requisite to save his crown, fell along with the latter
to the Romans, and filled after a desirable fashion the empty vaults
of their treasury.
Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized but Expelled by His Subjects
On the other hand the brother who reigned in Egypt succeeded
in purchasing his recognition by decree of the people from the new
masters of Rome in 695; the purchase-money is said to have amounted
to 6000 talents (1,460,000 pounds). The citizens indeed, long
exasperated against their good flute-player and bad ruler,
and now reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus
and the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable
degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans (696),
chased him on that account out of the country. When the king thereupon
applied, as if on account of his eviction from the estate which he
had purchased, to those who sold it, these were reasonable enough
to see that it was their duty as honest men of business to get back
his kingdom for Ptolemaeus; only the parties could not agree
as to the person to whom the important charge of occupying Egypt
by force along with the perquisites thence to be expected should
be assigned. It was only when the triumvirate was confirmed anew
at the conference of Luca, that this affair was also arranged,
after Ptolemaeus had agreed to a further payment of 10,000 talents
(2,400,000 pounds); the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius,
now obtained orders from those in power to take the necessary steps
immediately for bringing back the king. The citizens of Alexandria
had meanwhile placed the crown on the head of Berenice the eldest
daughter of the ejected king, and given to her a husband
in the person of one of the spiritual princes of Roman Asia,
Archelaus the high-priest of Comana,(29) who possessed ambition enough
to hazard his secure and respectable position in the hope of mounting
the throne of the Lagids. His attempts to gain the Roman regents
to his interests remained without success; but he did not recoil
before the idea of being obliged to maintain his new kingdom
with arms in hand even against the Romans.
And Brought Back by Gabinius
A Roman Garrison Remains in Alexandria
Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war against Egypt
but directed to do so by the regents, made a pretext out of
the alleged furtherance of piracy by the Egyptians and the building
of a fleet by Archelaus, and started without delay for the Egyptian
frontier (699). The march through the sandy desert between Gaza
and Pelusium, in which so many invasions previously directed
against Egypt had broken down, was on this occasion successfully
accomplished--a result especially due to the quick and skilful
leader of the cavalry Marcus Antonius. The frontier fortress
of Pelusium also was surrendered without resistance by the Jewish
garrison stationed there. In front of this city the Romans met
the Egyptians, defeated them--on which occasion Antonius again
distinguished himself--and arrived, as the first Roman army,
at the Nile. Here the fleet and army of the Egyptians were drawn up
for the last decisive struggle; but the Romans once more conquered,
and Archelaus himself with many of his followers perished
in the combat. Immediately after this battle the capital surrendered,
and therewith all resistance was at an end. The unhappy land
was handed over to its legitimate oppressor; the hanging and beheading,
with which, but for the intervention of the chivalrous Antonius,
Ptolemaeus would have already in Pelusium begun to celebrate
the restoration of the legitimate government, now took its course
unhindered, and first of all the innocent daughter was sent
by her father to the scaffold. The payment of the reward agreed
upon with the regents broke down through the absolute impossibility
of exacting from the exhausted land the enormous sums required,
although they took from the poor people the last penny; but care
was taken that the country should at least be kept quiet
by the garrison of Roman infantry and Celtic and German cavalry
left in the capital, which took the place of the native praetorians
and otherwise emulated them not unsuccessfully. The previous hegemony
of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a direct military
occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy
was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double
burden imposed on it.
Chapter V
The Struggle of Parties During the Absence of Pompeius.
The Defeated Aristocracy
With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the capital
changed positions. From the time that the elected general
of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his party,
or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance in the capital.
The nobility doubtless still stood in compact array, and still
as before there issued from the comitial machinery none but consuls,
who according to the expression of the democrats were already
designated to the consulate in their cradles; to command the elections
andbreak down the influence of the old families over them was beyond
the power even of the holders of power. But unfortunately the consulate,
at the very moment when they had got the length of virtually excluding
the "new men" from it, began itself to grow pale before the newly-
risen star of the exceptional military power. The aristocracy felt
this, though they did not exactly confess it; they gave themselves
up as lost. Except Quintus Catulus, who with honourable firmness
persevered at his far from pleasant post as champion of a vanquished
party down to his death (694), no Optimate could be named
from the highest ranks of the nobility, who would have sustained
the interests of the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness.
Their very men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus
Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired,
so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas,
in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the senate-house
amidst their gardens and libraries, their aviaries and fish-ponds.
Still more, of course, was this the case with the younger generation
of the aristocracy, which was either wholly absorbed in luxury
and literature or turning towards the rising sun.